#literally what the stormtroopers will be

[furious-blueberry0]

Unpopular opinion but I really think we should explore the idea of the Coruscant Guard of being cops of the worst kind far more

[boasamishipper]

[image description: a comparison of luke skywalker in 'the last jedi' to maverick mitchell in 'top gun: maverick'. under a picture of luke, there is a list of traits that read:

old luke:

old and grumpy

nothing like the real luke

gives up on the jedi

ridiculed

refuses to train rey

sad and pathetic

won't fight

dies for nohing

under a picture of maverick, there is a list of traits that read:

old maverick:

older and wiser

same core character

still believes in top gun

respected

trains new pilots

jaded but inspiring

fights despite the odds

puts his life on the line

end id.]

listen i hate rian johnson and the last jedi as much as the next guy but this post Just Ain't It

[lynntheninja]

The Old Republic is the excesses and corruption of Western Civilization, dialed up to 11.

And it's still better than the TOTALITARIAN FASCIST GENOCIDAL EMPIRE.

[cosmicmordecai]

“ Why do people hate things being Jedi critical? It’s okay if they’re flawed.”

There’s flawed and then there’s presenting the idea the in universe religious minority who essentially have to fucking do everything as narratively ‘flawed’ bc they don’t appease everybody essentially. Be it Anakin, be it their philosophy, etc and correlate to the idea of how that leads to their fall. Most ‘Jedi critical’ points just assigns a unusual level of onus on them for simply existing. Jedi are human/human-like so we know they’re flawed to a point but when they’re accessory to slavery, accuse them of child taking, or whatever points and ignore context, it’s not being critical. Y’all just wanna slander.

Whats actually annoying is how this fandom & this franchise can look at this religious minority group (composing a lot of PoCs & allusions to other cultures) who get literally persecuted by a politician who created a entire army called Stormtroopers, which is right on the nose for Nazi allegories, and go “lets craft ideas & stories that suggest they’re at fault for really existing & not being perfect paragons of good.” This is the same fandom to say the Sith made some good “points” despite being a part of the problem, ignore the Mandalorian’s weird ass system of government, and find ways to sympathize with characters who participate in murder & genocide because they’re hot (Anakin, Kallus, Maul).

And to top it all off, the story had them killed via mind control to shoot them in the back by people they bonded with for maximum hurt & efficiency after fabricating a war using OTHERS.

[jedidruid]

Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age: Lightsabers and Blasters and the Jedi

If there's one concept I love to rotate around in my head, its the Jedi's use of lightsabers and how they rarely use blasters outside of very extreme or fringe situation.

Like, we know its a purposeful choice on their part. It's far far simpler to get good at shooting a gun than it would be to become a master sword fighter. Add the Force into the mix, and the Jedi would become even more deadly warriors in a galaxy where they're already among the best, if not the best.

Obi-wan's time undercover as Rako Hardeen shows that he's able to match the skill of someone know as the "Marksman of Concord Dawn" with little issue. Kanan and later Ezra show just how much of an edge the Force can give in a shoot-out. In the first episode of Rebels, we literally see Kanan drop three or four stormtroopers in rapid succession while driving a speeder bike. All when he's still actively disguising/holding back his connection to the Force. We even see examples of mixing blasters and lightsabers in the Jedi games, with Cere Junda using both at the end of Fallen Order and Cal developing his own style of it partway through Survivor.

Every time we've seen a Jedi pick up a blaster, they can easily match trained soldiers and experienced fighters.

It's easy, and that's arguably why we don't see more Jedi using them.

To be a Jedi, a blaster is a clumsy weapon not because it somehow inaccurate or unwieldy, but because it gives them too few options.

For a Jedi with just a blaster, the only way to defend themselves against other people with blasters is to shoot back. Sure they could try and shoot the weapons out of their opponents' hands, but even then they would have no way to defend themselves or others from numerous shooters, nor would it stop a disarmed enemy from grabbing another weapon and undoing the Jedi's progress.

For a Jedi with just a blaster, the best way, the safest way, to end the fight is always going to be to shoot to kill.

When a Jedi has a lightsaber, however, it gives them so much more flexibility. They can provide cover for their allies or those they are protecting, they can turn blaster bolts back on their aggressors to discourage them from attacking, they can more easily advance to nullify the main advantage of blasters or more easily retreat and escape from any pursers. That's not even mentioning all the practical uses a lightsaber has as a tool outside of combat.

And sure, it's not that blasters in and of themselves don't suit the Jedi way. Stun blasters or emp/electrial blasters could be useful if they suited the situation.

But again, it's not about whats optimal or easiest, its about what those options take away from the table.

If you see someone running towards you with a blaster, you might risk pulling out your own and shooting your way out, depending on how desperate you are. After all, if you are thinking your life could end at any moment on another's whim, it's becomes more enticing to take the initiate and put yourself on even ground.

But if you see someone with a lightsaber? Where the danger at range comes not from being shot, but from your own attacks being turned against you? It might make you hesitant to attack, more willing another way out of the situation, whether through surrender, fleeing, or talking things out.

Does it always work out this? No, of course not. Fear makes people act impulsively, recklessly. But at the very worst, it can make it easier for a Jedi to deescalated and take control of a fight, where a blaster might only escalate the situation beyond anyone's control.

All of this is not to mention how the use of blasters can affect a Jedi's mentality. Cere Junda and Cal Kestis both rely on blasters in their darkest moments, when Cere returns to the Fortress Inquisitorius and when Cal is pursuing someone who betrayed him and killed those he cared about. Ezra's switching to use a proper blaster instead of rebuilding his stunning blaster/saber combo marks a dangerous shift in his thinking.

After all, it's all so easy to shot and kill someone, you barely have to move or think. Aren't some enemies not worth the effort of using your lightsaber? Maybe they're so inconsequential they're not even worthy to die by the weapon of a Jedi... they're less than worthless, less than a real person, they need to get out of the way or be forced out of it, how dare they oppose you!?!?

... ... ...

A lightsaber is a Jedi's weapon because it reflects what a Jedi is.

A lightsaber can be as dangerous to its user as it can be to their opponents. It requires training, self discipline, a sense of purposefulness that a blaster simply doesn't. The Jedi know what happens when they seek a quick and easy path....

A self-imposed limitation. A defensive weapon. A purposeful weapon.

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

[holdmytesseract]

For the sleepover my love

Yn Kenobi looks for Kylo Ren after the force ghost of Anakin advised her to stop his dark path - they end up in a fight of swords and moral and attraction ❤️

Torn Apart

Kylo Ren x fem!Reader

Warnings: uhhh Star Wars stuff? Lightsabers/fights, angst, fluff? Y/N is Obi-Wan's granddaughter.

Word Count: definitely a bit more than a drabble 👀

a/n: Well... What can I say... I love this. Thank you so much, friend. I changed it up a bit, but you know. 😉

The hangar was bustling with pilots, droids and other Resistance fighters; maintaining and repairing their ships and coordinating things. You didn't pay much attention, though. Your focus was entirely on getting your X-Wing prepared for your mission. But just as you wanted to board your star-fighter, a voice cut through the noises of heavy machinery and chatter. A voice you only knew too well.

"Y/N! Y/N wait!"

You knew you shouldn't; knowing that your friend would only try to hold you back, but you also just couldn't leave.

"Y/N!" Finn called out again; reaching you completely out of breath. "Finn. What are you doing here?" You had a guess, but asked anyway.

"Don't... Don't go." The former stormtrooper panted; looked at you with a pleading gaze. You sighed. "Finn... I have to." He violently shook his head. "No, no you don't. We'll find another way!" "There's no other way," you said; placing a hand on his shoulder. "There always is!" Your friend immediately shot back; almost desperate. "No. Not this time."

A frustrated groan left the man's lips. "Why, Y/N? Why you?! Why must you do this?! Just because you're former friends with this... traitorous snake?"

You sighed once again; memories of your youth quite a few years back flooded your mind, causing you to quickly shut your eyes and close them off again. Now was not the time to wallow in the past.

"We weren't just friends, Finn." It was all you said, before you climbed inside the X-Wing.

"Not just friends?" Finn had clearly trouble to catch up what you meant. "What is that supposed to- Hold on..." All features of your friend's face derailed. The next words he literally shouted at you fell on deaf ears. The cockpit around you was already closed. You took a deep breath, ignored Finn and started the engines. He had no other choice than to step aside and let you go.

You left the hanger and with that the main Resistance cruiser behind. But before you set course for the planet below you, you sent a last message to your General. Leia Organa.

"This is Y/N Kenobi on my way back to D'Qar. General Organa... You might not agree on this, but we both know that I have to do it. It's probably my last- no... My only chance." You paused; taking another deep breath. "I'm going to bring him back to you, Leia. Back to us. I will leave D'Qar with him... Or not at all." With those words you ended your message and addressed your droid. "BB-7?" The familiar beeping of your mechanic friend caused you to smile. "Can you send this message to General Organa as soon as we landed?" The answer came promptly. "Thanks, buddy. Now let's get this done." With that you flew off; opposed the direction of your people. While the Resistance evacuated D'Qar, you flew straight back into the danger zone; hoping that your target would come alone and not bringing any friends.

On your monitor, you saw the ships of the Resistance fleet jump to light speed and vanish on the radar.

You flew straight back to the now former base, hid away your X-Wing in the deep forests of the planet and waited. Waited for your destiny to find its way to you.

And it did.

You could already feel his presence through the force. Even though he hadn't stepped a single foot on this planet. Yet.

You hid on top of one of the tarnished mounds, right behind a massive satellite; watching his shuttle invade the sky above you. You expected him to fire everything he got at the base, but you also knew that he wasn't stupid. He landed - and when the ramp lowered and he stepped out, you felt your breath catch in your throat; heartbeat quickening.

You hadn't seen him in years. Lastly when he destroyed Luke's Jedi temple on Ossus all those years back. Once more, memories flooded your mind. Of that very night. How you tried to talk sense into Ben; screaming his name through the fire, cries and whirring sound of lightsabers. In vain. It was the moment you realised that you had lost him.

And now you were here to get him back.

Due to the mask he wore, you couldn't see his face, of course, but you knew that he must at least feel that something was off. He stood in the middle of the deserted base; looking around for a few moments. Then he made his way towards one of the entries.

That was it. The moment you had waited for; destiny finally catching up with you.

You took a deep breath and left your hiding place.

"They aren't here anymore. Nobody is. You're too late."

Kylo stopped in his movements; like frozen to the ground with his back towards you. You jumped from the mound; landing on the earthy ground right behind him. He clearly needed a moment to recover.

"Am I?" His distorted voice urged to your ears; almost causing your knees to give in. You were so weak in this very moment; knowing that your feelings for him hadn't changed. Not even in the slightest. The difficulty was to hide it from him.

"Yes," you answered as stoically as possible. "You won't find the Resistance fighters here. Neither your mother, nor your uncle."

Suddenly, he turned to face you, "That may be. But you are here." and started to slowly pace up and down. "Why?"

"Because I have to. It's where I need to be. My destiny."

"Your destiny?" Kylo spat mockingly. "This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

Yes... That clearly wasn't the man you once knew. The man you kissed at night and secretly shared a bed with; breaking the rules. But what he did was way worse than breaking some rules.

You clenched your teeth; knowing that you had to stay strong.

"Take at least that stupid mask off you're hiding behind, when you talk to the woman you once shared a bed with!" You could tell that your words hit a nerve; seeing his fists clench and unclench.

Silence settled over the base, until a mechanic hiss sounded from across you. He was taking his mask off. You didn't expect this. Not at all. And when familiar brown eyes met yours, you felt like a deer caught in the headlights. You couldn't even move a single muscle. All you did was looking in those beautiful brown eyes, which were once filled with love and gentleness. The same brown eyes you so often sought and found comfort in. Which had been your safe haven. The key element of your whole existence. The ones you had trusted with your life.

And now? Now they only held darkness, strength and raw power. This realisation ripped your heart into shreds. You wanted to be so strong and now you had to fight so hard against the upcoming tears.

Avoiding his gaze was the only salvation. So you did; let your gaze wander over his facial features instead.

He had grown; was definitely more mature. That much you could tell. The sweet, happy, sunny boy replaced by a cold, harsh, merciless man.

Nevertheless, you couldn't deny that he was the same handsome man with the beautiful long black curls you fell in love with.

Kylo didn't say a single word either; just looking at you seemingly emotionless.

You shook your head; suppressing the tears. "What happened to you, Ben?" "I've seen the truth, Y/N. I killed the past."

This shot a searing pain through your whole body. "Killed the past? Ben, this isn't your destined path! You can still turn around! It's not too late!"

The man opposite you furrowed his brows. "That's why you're here? To win me over?" "No... This isn't just about winning you over. I'm here because I want the man I love back." Now Kylo was the one shaking his head. "It's too late for that, Y/N. You can't turn me. Nothing won't change my mind. Not even love. I'm going to do what I have to do and fulfil my grandfather's legacy...," he snarled; drawing his lightsaber. With an ear-piercing hiss came its blood red blade to light, "...and nobody will stop me. Not even you." pointed straight into your direction.

You swallowed hard and drew your lightsaber as well. Unlike Kylo's blade was yours blue. "Well, that's too bad for you, because I am not going to let you walk away a second time. I already made that mistake once. I won't let it happen again."

"Foolish of you to believe this. You've got too much of your father and grandfather in you." "Yes... Just like you, Solo."

Kylo gritted his teeth and stormed forwards; his lightsaber clashing against yours.

The fight was hard, rough and unforgiving. You and Kylo threw in everything you got; not once backing up or lacking stamina. One moment Kylo had the upper hand and the next you. Your battle had led you away from the base and all the way into the woods; leaving a trail of burnt earth and destroyed trees behind.

And to make matters even worse, it had started to rain.

You stood on a hill; panting heavily. Kylo stood on the forest ground beneath you; throwing you an angry look.

"Let us stop this madness! Ben, please!" You screamed through the rain; feeling the water soaking your robes. He shook his head; waterdrops dripping from his black curls, "No! We are going to finish what we started!" and raised his lightsaber once more; ready to attack. "It's me - or you!"

You just stared at him for another moment, before you took a deep breath - and jumped. With a loud hiss met your lightsaber his. The strength of your blow caused him to stumble backwards, but he quickly recovered. Once again he stormed forwards and wanted to strike you, but you lifted both your arms; catching his wrists before he was able to hit you.

It was the first time since years, that you touched Ben again - and it almost took your breath away. It felt like time itself froze around you and him.

The force flowing through both your veins connected you; causing visions to explode in front of your eyes. Visions of the future. What was and what could be. They flew by way too fast. It was impossible for you to grasp all of them. But no matter how fast they came and went, they all had one thing in common... A different setting, but the same outcome. You and Ben. Together.

One showed you the two of you flying around the galaxy; exploring every existent planet. Another showed the two of you leading the Resistance, together with his mother. You saw love, a marriage, children - a family.

And suddenly it was all gone. Nothing but silence. Around you. In your mind. Everywhere.

Slowly, you blinked your eyes open; feeling the cold, wet forest ground underneath you. Still a bit dizzy and confused, you stood up and tried to understand what had happened.

Kylo sat on the groud as well, quite a few meters away from you.

The force... The two of you touching each other after such a long time was apparently too much.

But you knew what you saw. He must've seen it, too...

On still wobbly legs and knees, you walked over to Ben; hand outstretched. "Come with me. Please. I've seen the conflict inside you. I've seen your future. Our future. You must have seen it, too!"

Once again were those beautiful brown eyes looking up at you; reflecting the conflict you had seen. "I..." He eyed your hand; the light and darkness battling within Kylo. "I can't," he breathed; eyes filling up with tears.

There it was. The glimmer of hope.

You nodded. "Yes, yes you can! Just take my hand!"

He blinked; torn apart about what to do.

You were absolutely certain that you made it - made him see, but then Kylo acted too fast for you to react. Within the blink of an eye, he jumped to his feet and brought you down on your knees; both lightsabers flying off the ground and into his hands.

That was it. He had overpowered you. You couldn't stand a chance.

Perhaps he was right and it was really too late - but you refused to believe this and started one last desperate try.

"What are you waiting for? Do it! Kill me!" Kylo activated both lightsabers; jaw clenching. "Do it!" You screamed at him again. "I'd rather die than live my life without you; knowing that I really lost you forever!"

Your words caused the man towering above you to freeze in his movements.

"You... You would rather die than live without me?" Kylo asked in disbelief. Wind blew through his hair; rain hitting his face again. "Of course I would! You are all I ever wanted and needed! Don't you see?!"

He answered nothing; only stared at you. The gears in his head turning at lightning speed. Seconds felt like minutes, before he extinguished both blades of the weapons in his hands and threw them carelessly aside. You couldn't believe your eyes when he was dropping to his knees as well in front of you; taking both your hands in his. "I... I think I see now. Clearly, for the first time in my life."

You hesitated at first, but then you felt the conflict in him was gone. There was love, peace and light. You made it. Your love made it.

[saphronethaleph]

Sibling Comparisons

Leia rose from her bed, confused, as the door hissed open.

Something seemed off about the situation, she could feel it. But she didn’t want to tip her hand – and a moment’s thought turned up an answer.

“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” she asked, thinking about minimum-height requirements that had been instituted in the days of transition from the clone army and never been rescinded.

“What?” the ‘trooper replied. “Oh, the uniform.”

He took off his helmet. “My name’s Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.”

Leia did a double-take.

“What is Kenobi thinking?” she asked. “He brought my brother here?”

Luke practically fell over.

“Brother!?” he asked. “But – you’re a princess-”

“Yes, yes, excellent cover identity, sheer audacity,” Leia replied. “Nobody would suspect the Senator for Alderaan, and if you’re going by Skywalker then the same idea must be in play for you. Where’s Kenobi? Is he going by Ben or Obi-Wan these days?”

“We were coming to Alderaan,” Luke said. “Ben’s off shutting down the tractor beam so we can leave – look, what do you mean, brother?”

“We can talk about that later,” Leia replied, striding past her brother to the door of the cell. “What’s your exfiltration plan?”

“My what?” Luke asked. “...we’ve got your R2 unit?”

“Hey, farmboy!” a voice called from up the detention block corridor, accompanied by the sound of blasters firing. “We’ve got company!”

Leia sighed. “Where’s R2-D2?” she asked. “He should be able to get us out of this.”

“About… what, ten floors above us?” Luke guessed, then a wookiee joined them along with someone else in stormtrooper armour.

“We’re not getting out that way,” the man said.

“I don’t suppose you brought a spare blaster for me?” Leia asked. “Is there another way out?”

“Let me check with Threepio,” Luke said, reaching for his comlink. “Seriously? You’re my sister?”

“Right now I’m mostly hoping I’m better at planning than you,” Leia shot back, as blaster bolts flashed down the corridor.

“...well, that worked, eventually,” Leia muttered, brushing herself off as they exited the trash compactor. “Which is a marked improvement on your way of getting us out of here, I have to point out.”

“I’m still waiting on an explanation,” Luke protested. “How can you be my sister?”

“What, you want me to draw a diagram?” Han asked.

Chewbacca roared something.

“Hey, he’s from Tatooine, it’s not an animal farm,” Han protested. “He might just not know.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Luke objected, flushing.

“We’re twins,” Leia replied. “Both of us were put into hiding because being known descendants of Anakin Skywalker is a serious health hazard, beyond just being Skywalkers which is separate… how much training did Ben give you?”

“A few hours,” Luke replied. “On the flight to Alderaan.”

“What was he doing with his time?” Leia asked. “My tutor is literally a state secret without any hands-”

She stopped, swallowing.

“Was, now,” she said, before shaking herself. “Anyway, I could only learn from him while on break on Alderaan and I still got a lot more training than that…”

Han made a curious noise.

“What are you talking about, exactly?” he said. “More of this force nonsense?”

“Where did you dig him up?” Leia asked her brother, with a sardonic eyebrow. “He looks old enough to remember the Clone Wars.”

Chewbacca sniggered.

“Laugh it up,” Han countered. “The Clone Wars weren’t that long ago.”

“That’s my point,” Leia replied, sharply. “The Clone Wars had the Jedi literally leading armies-”

She shook herself. “Okay, we need to focus. How exactly did you plan to get off this thing?”

“Once the tractor beam is down, we’ll be able to just fly right out of here,” Luke volunteered. “Han’s ship is more than it looks – which isn’t hard.”

“Hey!” Han protested.

“Well, if you’ve got Chewbacca with you, that’s a good sign at least,” Leia said, then held up her hand. “Wait – not this way, that way.”

“Based on what?” Han asked.

“That thing you don’t believe in,” Leia replied. “Master Windu couldn’t teach me to fight but he could teach me to avoid trouble…”

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

[generalkenobee]

Kylo finding you after being snatched from him and all he can focus on is getting you 🥹

"I wouldn't stop till I found you"

Hey so I literally thought I wrote this and had it posted but apparently Tumblr was being dumb so please don't be upset 😭

Warnings: language, violence, Kylo being the angry hoe he is, death, let me know if I missed anything:)

(he's so pretty omfg-)

"no, I don't think you understand." KYLOS VOUCE was so loud that it echoed through the hanger bag as he yelled at an assortment of different piolets and stormtroopers.

"we won't rest till she's found. We won't stop for anything, it doesn't matter what it is. This is our top priority!"

Kylo felt hot white rage seeping into his body. Why did they have to take you. They could've taken a stormtrooper, a cadet, Hux, there were so many people who knew more.

You were completely innocent, sitting in the rebels interrogation room being yelled at by some man with short brown curls, he was going on about how "we won't let you go till you tell us" he was going on with the act of why they would do.

"Poe stop it. It's not like she's Ren" a tall, young girl with quite the completion walked into the room slapping Poe's shoulder "I'll take it from here"

The women looked at you for a moment almost as if you was deciding something.

"you're not evil..you're" she paused taking your hand in hers and closing her eyes "well you're a kind soul with nothing but good intentions...why are you with Ren?"

You looked up at her from your seat not saying a word

---

"Supreme Leader, we've found something on the meridian system" The general said turning his data pad towards Kylo.

"well? Why are you still here ?! Go get the fighters ready and prepare my ship, we're going to the meridian system."

The supreme leader walked away from Hux feeling a new sense of pride in hopes of finding you.

---

"there they are sir"

"prepare for landing near the south passage. I have a Jedi to kill"

When his ship landed he practically jumped out and ran toward the entrance, saber in hand

He was so mad that anyone who came near him got thrown to the ground via the force. He didn't stop running till he got to the interaction room when you were sitting with Rey, her hand in yours

Now this was a sight to behold. How dare she?

Kylo used his saber to cut a hole through the door and walked through

"why?! Why would you take her?! She doesn't know anything, you could've taken anyone on the ship but you took her!" Kylo screamed throwing Rey against the wall so hard that there was now a crack where she had hit.

"Kylo!" You screamed jumping into his arms and wrapping your legs around him pulling him closer

"I-I didn't tell them anything-" hot tears started to pool in your eyes while Kylo traced your back giving it light scratches "I missed you so much..I didn't know if I would ever see you again.."

Kylo looked at you and laid his lips into yours more gentle then he ever has

"you know I wouldn't stop till I found you"

[strawberry-whorecake]

Good Girl | K.R.

pairing: Kylo Ren x fem!reader

summary: Kylo had something you needed… just like he always did. So you found yourself sneaking around Starkiller Base for the satisfaction of your urges.

word count: 1.9k

warnings: swearing, dirty talk, unprotected sex, oral sex (male receiving), PinV sex, praise

a/n: holy shit- can i just say thank you for all the interaction i’ve been getting on my fics-?? i’m genuinely floored, i was just writing and posting these for my own self-indulgence but it means literally so much that you guys have been enjoying them omg. since you enjoyed kylo so much last time heres a small lil smut in means of my appreciation <3

What the fuck were you doing?! 

You rushed down the halls ducking around corners, peering for a sign of any wanderers on Starkiller Base. You were terrified of being caught, but your impulse to sneak out of your quarters and into the Commander’s came strong and suddenly. 

Metallic footprints drew closer in front of you, eliciting a gasp from your throat which you quickly entrapped with the clasp of your hand as you ducked into an unseen corner. The footsteps neared– then faded, finally vanishing as you watched the Stormtrooper disappear from sight. 

That was fucking close… so why were you doing this again?

Your urges got the best of you, and now you were creeping around the base because it was well into the late hours of the night– or arguably the early hours of the morning, and Kylo had something you needed… just like he always did.

You waited around the corner for another couple seconds to make sure no one else would come around, and to your relief the halls were void, so you continued on your journey to the Commander’s chambers.

As you walked you scrutinized yourself, questioning how you’d fallen into the face of this predicament in the first place. You were a meer engineer, assigned to working on ships that flew in and out of the base. 

You recalled your first meeting with Kylo Ren, and how he immediately captivated and terrified you– and he of course knew, and played into. Somehow this thing had bloomed between you two, and you weren’t particularly interested in snuffing out its flame any time soon. 

After a while of stalking around with your guard up to not be caught, you reached his door. 

Glancing over your shoulders for any wanderers, you cursed yourself– no one was permitted in Kylo’s quarters without his direct permission, of course the halls would be void. 

You shook your head and quickly inputted the code to his lock system, listening to the metal doors reluctantly squeal open only seconds later. 

Dipping inside you peered around, his neat and orderly chambers were dark, and your eyes found his bed– found him, sleeping on one side. 

You watched the doors close behind you as you slipped off your shoes, leaving them in the doorway. Slowly you crept through his room, approaching his bed. As you drew nearer you pulled your top over your head before crawling in next to him. 

Your heart thumped wildly in your chest. Kylo was unpredictable– you had no way of knowing if he would be pleased with your appearance, or if he’d Force-throw you out of his chambers. Sure, he’d granted you permission to his quarters, under the premise he was in them, but how would he react to you waking him up?

Swallowing down your nerves, you gently caressed his cheek with your finger, which made him inhale deeply and stir despite still being asleep. 

Taking hold of his cheek you led his lips to yours, kissing him. When his lips met your own his eyes fluttered open slowly. At first his kiss was confused but it rather quickly grew hot and rough. 

Without tearing your mouth from his you gently pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him. He pulled away only for a moment, just to take you in– and he smirked before pulling your face into his and kissing you hungrily. 

His tongue twisted fervidly with yours, hot, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses and soft sounds of already growing pleasure leaked from your lips. When he pulled back again, his plush pink lips glistened with the mix of your saliva.

“I missed this.” he growled and warmth developed as you felt him grow hard beneath you. 

His kisses trailed from your lips down your jawline before they landed on your neck, sucking and nibbling at your skin. 

A moan escaped from your throat despite trying to suppress it by clenching your teeth to your lip. You pulled away from him and lowered yourself to his abdomen, kissing his exposed stomach and upper pelvis. 

Your eyes looked up pleadingly as you pulled down his boxers, and he only hummed in response. 

You licked your lips, building up wetness in your mouth as you took him in your hand, gently placing a kiss to his tip. 

Despite barely touching him, you knew how much he missed you by the bead of precum already dripping from him. 

Running your tongue along his base, you then placed him in your mouth, drawing in your cheeks and sucking at his length until you pulled a groan from his throat. 

He instinctively grabbed the back of your head, pushing himself deeper into your mouth, and making you gag lightly on his cock. 

You looked up, watching as he smirked. “Good girl.” he cooed. 

You caressed his skin as you swallowed him. “Fuck…” he let his dark waves crash against his pillow as he threw his head back. His brow furrowed lightly as his eyes fluttered shut. One of his hands still gripped your head while the other folded behind his own head. 

He looked incredible like this, the blinking stars gently illuminating him in a soft glow from the window positioned behind his bed. The muscles in his arms rippling as he let himself enjoy what you had to offer him, the sight of him quickly reminded you of why you risked coming to his quarters in the first place. 

His pleasure made you eager to keep going, and the arousal flooding between your own legs was increasingly difficult to ignore. You couldn’t wait any longer to have him as you slipped off of him and stripped yourself of the rest of your clothing, leaving yourself bare for him. 

You ignored the warmth that flooded to your cheeks as he looked you over, his stature relaxed with his arm still casually placed behind his head. 

You pulled at his boxers, removing them from his legs before disregarding them to the floor with your clothes. Crawling back on top of him you took him once more in your hand as you led him inside you.

Although this was farthest from your first time with Kylo, you would never be prepared for his size. 

Your mouth gaped as he entered you, squirming atop him as you worked to adjust to his size as he split you to the seam. He only chuckled as he watched you, but after a few moments you began riding him, dragging your hips against his. 

He moaned as you lowered yourself further onto him, his cock delving deeper into you. His arms wrapped around your frame and flipped you onto your back. 

He leveled himself up by placing one hand on the bed beside your head as the other gripped harshly at your throat. A soft gasp managed to escape from your slack lips and he loosened his grip– just slightly.

His own impatience took over as he pushed into you, not holding back. You whimpered at the sudden force and reached up for his arm clamped around your neck for something to hold onto. 

He smirked, shaking your hands off of him as he quickly caught them with both of his own and pinned them above your head before kissing you deeply and with need. 

He withdrew himself only to thrust back in, creating a pattern as he did so. His pace quickened as he swapped your pinned wrists to one hand, letting his now free hand find your chest, kneading and toying with your breasts. His thumb flicked at your bud making you mewl out again. 

You wiggled out of his grip, which he let you, and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, pulling his body closer to you.

He pounded into you faster, then slower, then harder– all rather quickly. His cock stroked your walls, cockhead prodding against that sweet spot that made your stomach churn in the best possible way. 

“Fuck... Ah- Kylo-” you groaned as you felt him pummeling against your core, tangling your legs around his waist. Your moans only continued to please him, proud of himself at how easily he could make you moan for him. He seized a handful of your hair into his fist and tugged slightly. 

Wrapping your arms around his broad back you pulled him deeper into you, and he didn’t hold back. He rocked his body back and forth with yours, you both synced in sin. 

The only sounds that filled the room were Kylo’s stuttered breaths, your moans, and the obscene sounds of skin slapping skin. 

He grabbed for your throat and pulled you into a steamy kiss, his tongue pushing past your teeth before dancing with yours. 

With every thrust inside you, you could feel yourself growing tighter as your walls clenched together, holding back euphoria. “Sh-shit- Kylo…” you mewled rather pathetically. 

In a hushed tone he growled, “Beg.” 

He fucked deeper into you than you thought was possible by now. “Kylo please I-” your words were cut off by a moan that was pulled from your throat at a particularly hasty thrust. You didn’t know how much longer you could take. 

“I said beg, slut.” he growled again.

He could feel you drawing you in, your walls growing claustrophobic around him, and he knew you were close, so he kept going. 

Quickening his pace, he placed your chin in his hand making you look at him while you pleaded. 

He glared into your eyes, then let his gaze drift to your perfectly parted lips as he mouthed the word “Beg” once more. 

Giving out you finally cried, “Please! Let me cum, Kylo-!” your mouth gaped, words straining out. Your eyes were barely open but remained locked on his. 

Kylo let his tongue dart past his own slightly parted lips, wetting them as he stared down at you, desperate and begging. 

He knew you didn’t have long before you had reached your limit, whether he wanted to deprive you of that or not, so he let you have it. 

“Good girl.” He hunched over so his lips just barely touched your ear as he whispered, “Now cum for me.” 

He himself didn’t have much longer with the way your velveteen walls stroked him with every buck of his hips. His pace was frantic as he slammed into you, watching the way your brows knit and you panted and moaned past your lips. 

His lips trailed down your neck, leaving bites and kisses as he made his way to your collarbone– the cherry on top. You clung to him as you tightened around him, reaching your high in a pathetic array of moans. 

Your vision faded out and shockwaves of electricity bolted through your nerves as you came around him, your walls milking him deliciously. He let out a groan of his own as his head lolled forward and he gripped your hips, pulling you down onto his cock. 

With a final groan you felt your cunt flood with warmth as he came inside you, still driving his hips into yours. 

His movements slowed, then stilled, and he pulled out of you with a grunt before laying down beside you. He pulled you close and coddled you through your finish. Your knees were lightly trembling which brought a smile to his face.

You buried your face into his chest as he let his fingers caress your skin before planting a kiss on your forehead, making your heart thump against your ribcage.

“Such a good girl.” he purred before placing a gentle kiss on your lips, “My good girl.” 

Your face grew hot. The tone of his voice and his words alone made your heart skip a beat. 

You were Commander Ren’s good girl.

[kowaiitenshii]

[Sunkiller Lullaby]

Pairing: Darth Vader x Reader 

Plot Summary: A slave girl given to The Empire as a token of loyalty, known as the Flower of Beauty on your long since destroyed homeplanet, you’re nearly sent back to be executed before Darth Vader deems you worthy of saving. What will happen as you form a new life as the personal servant to a Sith Lord? 

Warnings: Canon-level violence. Murder. Mentions of death. Corruption. Canon-divergent. Unburnt!Vader. Reader is a former slave. Vader is his own warning. Descriptions of mistreatment. AFAB reader, feminine pronouns & descriptions used. 18+ content to come in later chapters.

Words: 4.1k

A/N: Here it is! My first time writing anything Star Wars related, but most certainly not the last :) I’ve thought about this for a long time, but some things may still seem OOC so I’m sorry for that! Otherwise, please enjoy!

(p.s. I highly recommend you give a listen to the song that gave this fic its title, Sun Killer by Spiritbox!)

Part I:

The trembling sound of chains dragging across slick tiled flooring wakes you as two Stormtroopers led by an Imperial Commander haul you carelessly through the corridors of what you assume to be an Imperial ship. 

The air is cold on your bare skin, and the harsh grip of the Stormtroopers on your arms feels enough to be bruising. 

Blinking blearily through the shroud of unconsciousness, there is a palpable darkness hanging in the very air around you, as if it had been waiting for you, billowing over you and filling your lungs like smoke. 

The Stormtroopers drag your limp body into a huge open room in the core of the ship with high rounded ceilings and walls, all white, controls blinking throughout the room in greens and reds. 

 You don’t even have time to take in your surroundings and think before the Commander and Troopers stop abruptly, the Commander taking a step to the left side, revealing what they’ve brought you here for. 

That’s when you finally see the presence that you’ve sensed since you awoke. 

The imminent Sith Lord Darth Vader stands before the lot of you, his aura pulsing and filling the room, making the very air thick. His helmet has an appropriately severe expression to it and his cape billows around him as he turns. 

The commander and troopers stand straight as pins, their nerves radiating off of them.  You feel as if you could be sick.

“What is the meaning of this, Commander?” the Sith Lord demands, his booming voice breaking through the oppressive silence. 

Despite your intense fear of the outcome, you stand straight within the confines of the grip the troopers have on you. You hold your head high, despite the icy dread that washes over you in waves. Your years as a slave had taught you well, and you dared not show fear in the face of those who would subdue you. 

The Commander swallows, putting on his best little soldier facade as he speaks before his master. 

“A gift from the Hutts, Lord Vader.” the man speaks with enthusiastic trepidation. “They wish to show their loyalty to the Empire. They called her ‘The Flower’ of her home planet, for her beauty.” he babbles as he informs his master.

You subtly roll your eyes at the way the Commander sounds exactly like a used parts salesman. 

Darth Vader stares at you for a prolonged moment, and you hate the way that you cannot tell where he’s looking. You stare back at him despite the sinking in your stomach, refusing to look away, to submit. 

The rule of those in power was that of animals, those who submit die. 

You knew that well. 

“Send her back.” The Sith Lord commands plainly, and your heart drops. 

Your ears ring as you hear the commander stumbling. 

“S-Sir, I’m afraid we can’t simply ‘send her back’, she was a gift, and she-she, um.” he pauses to take in a shaky breath. “Her planet was destroyed long ago my Lord, if we send her back, she will be dishonoured and they’ll just kill-”

You jump slightly as the commander is suddenly cut off, literally choking on his words. Vader clenches his fist in front of him tightly as he chokes the man using an unseen force. 

“Then perhaps you should have considered this sooner, Commander.” Vader spits.

The commander is rooted in his spot, turning purple and clawing at his throat. 

Vader looks again to you, glued to the spot, pale as a ghost and trembling, and you can feel him creeping through the very life force within your body, tickling under your skin and flowing through your blood stream. 

“Take her away.” The Sith Lord commands the troopers with a flick of his wrist. 

The troopers drag you away, the sickening sound of the commander’s neck snapping echoing behind you as a tear slides down your cheek. 

However, to your surprise, the troopers don’t lead you to a ship, or a pod, or containment. Instead, they unceremoniously dump you into a large and lavishly furnished Imperial suite, the door sliding shut behind them. 

You spend a moment there on the carpet, wiping your tears and trying to calm your fear of the uncertainty before really taking a moment to look at your surroundings. 

Still sniffling, you pull yourself together and get to your feet. You’re in a large room, darkly-coloured with ambient lighting throughout. The magnificent bed with silken, plush sheets of crimson is the centrepiece of the room. 

To the right side of the bed there is a large window in the room, spanning the length of nearly the entire wall adorned with tasselled curtains.

Adjacent to the front of the bed is an entrance to a large washroom, equipped with both a soaking tub and a walk-in glass shower. 

You’re shocked as you marvel at the luxuries at your disposal, revelling in the abundance of the suite. It’s like nowhere you’ve ever had the chance to inhabit before. 

You waste no time in taking a lengthy bath, filling the tub with the salts and oils provided. The hot water does you well, soothing your aching muscles and your anxious soul. You can’t even remember how long it had been since you soaked, often being doused by cold water by your captors or simply being forced to bathe in streams. 

You shudder at the memories. 

You then dress yourself in the thick robes provided in your closet, and bask in the newfound comfort. 

Nobody bothers you for the remainder of the evening, left with nothing but your thoughts and the passing stars beyond the window. You solemnly ponder your fate, curious of Lord Vader’s intentions. 

You knew very well that he easily could have disposed of you the moment he laid eyes on you, which leaves you with a horrifying question. 

Why keep you? 

If he was keeping you, that is. You knew your life was not entirely guaranteed, but then why would Vader waste his time in keeping you for a night? 

This is what scares you. 

Never finding an answer that satisfies you, you lay in the satin sheets with the unnerving feeling that somebody is watching, creeping just out of the edges of your mind; close enough to feel them, too far to see. 

In the meantime, Darth Vader sits in contemplation in the privacy of his chambers. Taking you in is undoubtedly an inconvenience, and he would have to think long and hard to find an explanation worthy of the Emperor.

However, for reasons he did not fully understand… he could not deny you. He had no doubt of your status as the Flower, the beauty of your homeworld, that was evident. What intrigued him however, was your signature in the force. He could feel your presence so acutely, piercing through him like the ringing of bells. 

He had no doubt you were sensitive to it. 

If this were to be true, you could indeed be quite useful to both he and the Emperor, given the implication that he could break you to the dark side. 

He could feel your resentment, your anger, your lust for power; no doubt instilled in you by your years spent in torment. 

So it was decided. 

He would accept you, house you, mold you. And then he would break you.

Turning away from his window with purpose, he leaves to find a Commander to send a message. 

As you drift into sleep, you feel the dark presence again, tickling at the corners of your mind, creeping at the corners and crawling on the ceilings. 

You try your best to shove it away, but it’s stronger, more steadfast than you are. 

Unable to push the dark presence away, you relent, pulling your blankets tighter around yourself and trying to ignore the uneasiness. 

Eventually, you fall into fitful sleep, your mind full of dreams. For the most part they are very average dreams. Dreams of living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things. That is, except for the fleeting shadow that looms over your shoulders, or the piercing eyes you catch glimpses of in the darkness. 

The next morning you’re left to sleep as long as you please, waking up on your own agenda for the first time in countless years. Dragging yourself out of bed, your body still tired from dreaming the entire night through, you rise and dress yourself in darkly-coloured robes and underdresses. As you brush out your hair, anxiety begins seeping back in. You still had no clue as to why you were kept alive, or if your life was even safe to begin with. No idea what would be done with you, and no way of escape. 

After you’ve finished grooming, you’re greeted by a friendly droid sent to bring you breakfast. You eat well, offered a spread of toasted breads, honeyed butters, jams, and all manners of fruits and meat. 

The droid speaks up once you’ve finished, chirping news at you. 

“Lord Vader has requested your presence once you’re adequately satisfied, madam.” it announces cheerfully. 

Your stomach drops at the thought, moving from comfortably satisfied to anxiously nauseous in a matter of moments. 

Swallowing thickly, you part your lips to question the droid. 

“Did…Did he mention why?” you curse yourself for faltering. 

“No ma’am.” the droid answers to your dismay. “Lord Vader is exceedingly private in his affairs. I am afraid I am merely a messenger.” 

Feeling yourself go pale, you nod slowly in response. 

“I shall meet with him as soon as possible.” You concede, your voice barely higher than a whisper. 

The droid throws its hands up joyfully, exclaiming its reply. 

“Splendid! Lord Vader would like you to meet him in his private quarters, I shall inform him of your arrival!” The droid declares before abruptly leaving the suite. 

Left with your thoughts, your mind wanders in circles. You wonder about the Sith Lord’s intentions, about what he will do with you. About if the treatment you’ve been receiving was just a penance paid for your impending death. You wonder about your fate, if this was meant to be your last meal. 

For a short while you’re sick with worry. That is, until you remember your years spent under slavery. Those years in which you would have begged for the release of death; Those years in which you made peace with the quiet solace of oblivion. 

It is when you remind yourself of this truth that you finally gather yourself from the table.

This is an opportunity, you tell yourself, and you dare not waste it. 

After a short while, the droid returns to fetch you. As you traverse the sleek hallways with the silent droid, your ice cold nerves sink in. Your stomach twists in knots, becoming nauseous once again on your luxuriant breakfast. 

The droid's artificial voice cuts sharply through the tense silence. 

“I notice you’ve become pale, and your heart rate is increasing. These are common symptoms of anxiety.” the droid states in a cheerful tone. You chuckle slightly at the droid’s matter-of-factness. 

“Yes,” you laugh. “I must be honest, I am a little nervous to meet with Lord Vader.” you give the droid the understatement of the century, and saying it outloud only makes the knot in your gut tie tighter. 

“Not to worry!” the droid chirps “If Lord Vader meant to kill you, he would not go to the trouble of speaking with you first!” the droid attempts to reassure you. It does little to make you feel any better, your blood running cold from the words. 

You spend the rest of the walk in silence, steeling your nerves. The droid stops abruptly at a large doorway, entering a combination into the keypad on the wall and stepping to the side as the door slides open. 

“Here we are!” the droid chimes. “Lord Vader awaits you.”

The droid bows to you, and you nod your thanks to it before stepping into the doorway, the door sliding shut behind you. 

Before you even  step out of the entryway, you can hear the unnerving sound of the Sith Lord’s mechanical breathing just beyond, sending chills down your spine. 

The room is large and open, covered in control panels and other strange technology save for the wall length window. You take a deep breath as you spot Vader by the expansive window, his back turned to you. The sight of him alone, broad back turned to you, dressed in his  all-black suit and floor-length cape instils terror in you. 

Here you were, alone in a room with the most powerful and most dangerous man in the whole galaxy. 

Despite yourself and the urge to run screaming within, you pull it together and begin your approach. Holding your head high, you come to stand at the window next to the Sith Lord. 

“Lord Vader,” you begin calmly before bowing “You sent for me?” you ask, hands shaking. 

Finally, he turns to his left to regard you. The lights of the stars and the Imperial fleet beyond the window reflect off of his permanently scowling helmet, the unmoving coldness of its expression doing nothing to calm your nerves. The only thing that grounds you in this moment is the sound of the slow, deep breaths he takes. 

“Yes.” Lord Vader affirms sternly. “I’d like to make you an offer.” 

He catches you off guard with this, and you falter in reply. 

“A-An offer?” you curse yourself again for stuttering, praying to the maker and straightening up as he turns fully to face you. 

It’s only then that you notice how tall he truly is, having to crane your neck to look him in the face as he looms over you, heat rising to your cheeks purely from nerves. 

“Yes,” he states plainly. “I would like you to become my sole personal servant.”

His words fall upon you with the weight of a thousand stones, your knees beginning to shake from the implication alone, threatening to crumble beneath the weight. 

Never in a million years would you have believed what the Sith Lord just suggested, and yet there he was suggesting it. 

At the same time, a flame begins to spark in your chest, ignited by hope. Your years as a slave taught you better than to refuse a good offer when you got one.

“As you wish, My Lord.” you accept loud and clear, bowing your head to him in respect, and gratitude. The part of you that is fully entrenched in servitude and the woes of it can’t help but become a bit excited at the promise of security as his personal attendant, while the side of you that remembers freedom feels a measure of guilt for relenting so quickly. 

Still, your life was more important than the guilt you felt for agreeing to serve him. Anyone in your shoes would do the same, you were sure of it. 

He hums in satisfaction at your response, nodding.

“Very well then. Starting tomorrow, you will serve me, and me alone.” he commands firmly. You only nod, looking up at him and listening attentively as he continues. 

“You are to be at my disposal at all hours, save for when I command you to leave.” He states. While the idea pierces you with dread, you nod your compliance all the same. 

“You will come when I call, whenever I call.” He iterates, a drop of venom in his tone. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord.” you affirm as calmly as you can. 

“In return, no expense will be spared in caring for your needs.” he replies. 

You can’t help the warmth that grows within you at the idea. In all your years of servitude, never had anyone given a single thought toward your treatment. Feeling overwhelmed, your breath catches in your throat.

 It feels too good to be true.

 Here you were, thinking the droid was delivering you to your demise, when really you were receiving an opportunity countless others would kill to have. The opportunity for long lost comfort, the opportunity for power. 

You say nothing in response, smirking and nodding like a simpleton. As he notices your enthusiasm, Lord Vader’s tone turns harsh. 

“But do not forget, girl,” he hisses. “I own you.” 

Feeling yourself go pale, you swallow thickly, looking away as a wave of dread and shame washes over you. 

“If you betray the faith I am putting in you, if you disobey The Empire…” he emphasises darkly, before pausing. Although you’re unable to read his expression, you’re sure he’s staring straight through you. His gaze burns you like fire, and you can feel fear gripping your heart. 

“I will not hesitate in cutting you down.” he growls, and you can sense his stone-cold sincerity. You’re frozen with fear, feeling absolutely foolish for being remotely celebratory, even if only internally.

Blood running cold, shivers down your spine, you default to what you learned in your time as a slave. 

Without thinking, acting completely on something akin to muscle memory, you drop to your knees. Steadying yourself with your hands, you press your forehead to the toe of Lord Vader’s boot. 

For slaves, this is an ultimate display of respect and compliance to their masters. 

“Yes, Lord Vader.” you affirm, strong and clear. Vader seems slightly taken aback, stepping back and leaving your forehead to hit the cold tile flooring. Your cheeks go hot as you rise, hoping he understood the gesture as you stand sheepishly before him. 

“Very well.” he speaks again after you stand. “Starting tomorrow, you will act as my personal attendant. You may go. Rest.” He commands, turning away from you once more, his attention going back to the galaxy outside the expansive window. 

Overwhelmed and in a daze, you turn to leave in what feels like slow motion.

 The trip from Vader’s personal quarters back to your suite passes you by in technicolor. Bidding you a polite goodbye, the droid leaves you to your privacy. 

Shell-shocked tears slide silently down your cheeks as you plop onto the bed. The gamble of putting your life in Vader’s hands did not seem like a winning one, but you had no choice. The feeling is gut-wrenching, and tears flow freely now. 

You just felt so god-damned confused, it was making you sick. The last 24 hours hardly seemed real at all. It was useless to wonder ‘why me’ because you knew the answer would not come, but that didn’t stop it from running through your mind on repeat. You once again mourn the life you lived as a free person, the old wounds bleeding once again. 

Your life was not extravagant by any means, living as a local farm hand, but it was simple. It was simple, and it was easy, and it was peaceful. 

On your home planet, you were known by the locals and travellers as the ‘Flower’ of your city for your beauty, kindness, and good grace. These traits along with the rumours about them were the sole reason you had not been on-planet when it was destroyed. 

While your home was under siege, you were stolen and trafficked into slavery for your proposed “worth” to slave traders. 

The years after that, you lived as a ghost in a life that was not yours. 

And now here you were, selling your soul. A better person, a stronger person, would have chosen death over serving the Empire. 

But years of torture had twisted your spirit, broken you. No longer were you that kind and graceful girl from the village everyone had known and loved. Years of torment molded you into something fearful, something hurt and covetous. And you hated yourself for it, though you had no power to change it. The part of you that now craved power, craved vengeance on those who had destroyed you is unchangeable. 

Many years you had spent yearning to torment those who had stolen you, who had taken everything from you. Many nights had you spent dreaming of all the ways you would destroy them given the chance. 

And now here it was, a chance dropped into your very lap. The chance to get close to the face of the Empire. Not only that, but Lord Vader himself guaranteed your safety. There were not many more of those who would be as trustworthy in that guarantee. After all, he was the strongest man in the galaxy. 

Sniffling, you begin to wipe your tears. You had already agreed with Darth Vader, there was no point in tears now anyway. 

If you were to do this, and you were, you were going to do it well. 

Rising from your place on the bed, you finish wiping your tears and begin preparing for the days ahead of you. 

That night is again filled with dreams. 

You find yourself on a lush windswept hillside bordering the sea, the air fresh and salty as it blows through your hair and across your face. Blissfully you stroll along the cliffside, breathing in the fresh air. As you walk, you begin to see a cloaked figure in the distance. 

Really, you sense him before you see him. His energy mirrors that of the sea below, mesmerising, tumultuous, and full of depth. You’re drawn to him, slowly making your way to the place at the edge of the cliff where he stands. 

The sunset melting in hues of pink and orange highlights his figure against the horizon, and when you reach him he turns to face you. 

You’re struck by his beauty, as if he had stepped out of a painting from the old Republic. His jawline is strong, his lips are plump, and he has a heavy brow with sandy coloured curls of shoulder-length hair framing his features. Yet the most striking thing about him is his eyes. They are the very same piercing, fiery eyes that had haunted you the night prior, framed by long cherubic lashes. 

But in this moment, you felt no fear. In fact, you were serenely calm, sensing no malice or ill-intent of the man before you. He too, was very tall as you stood in front of him, having to look up to look him in the eye. 

You both stand there for a long moment, looking at each other, taking each other in and feeling each other’s energies. You can see the compassion and empathy he has for you in his eyes as well as sense it radiating warmly off of him, as if he knows your life, as if he had lived it too. 

All this, and you had never seen him before in your life. And yet somehow, it felt completely normal. As if you had known him forever, and you were just now remembering. 

After a long while he opens his arm to you, beckoning you to join him. You follow without a second thought, coming to his left side and allowing him to drape his arm over you and pull you close as you both watch the sunset. His cloak drapes over your shoulders as he holds you, warmth falling comfortably over you with it. He smells deeply of leather, of musk and of burnt wood, and you breathe him in deeply. He gazes at the sea as you rest your head on his chest, in ecstasy purely from the simple act of human contact. It has been years since you’ve experienced the simple pleasures of being close to someone, and you savour every single moment. The tips of his fingers ghost over your left arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. His arm comes up and he idly brushes his fingers through the soft locks of your hair as you listen to the steady thump of his heartbeat. 

Being held by him felt like home. 

As you both watch the cerulean waves crashing against the shore below, he presses a gentle kiss to the crown of your head and your eyes flutter shut. 

Credz:

Lightsaber graphic credit: @saradika

[furious-blueberry0]

Are there people out there that really think that Star Wars is too political? And say that as if it is a flaw?

Like, I’m sorry, but did people seriously look at a saga literally named Star WARS and manage to complain about the fact that it has politics? Did these people watch the movies and only saw the lightsabers, the cool music and the pew pews? Is that all their brain could comprehend?

I’m not saying that you can’t do that, if you want to look at the fun side of the saga only than good for you, but using the argument of “too much politics” and make it the flaw of the story is so stupid.

Like that’s the point, THAT’S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT.

George Lucas didn’t just make a story of a good guy vs a bad guy, he made a story where a Republic, a just system that has become corrupted to its core, finds itself into a devastating war and is pushed to its limit by a slimy and disgusting scheming bastard (inspired by George Bush), who then uses its weakness to take control of it and transform it, from a free system to a fascist dictatorship (inspired by Nazi Germany and the USA of the Vietnam war) and whose one of the first things he does is a literal genocide and ethnical cleansing of a religious order.

And this is only the Prequels, because in the OT the story is about how this Empire, whose head and right hand are literally the most powerful beings in the galaxy, gets utterly destroyed not by other powerful beings, not by superpowers, not by mystical forces that the human mind can’t comprehend.

But by people, normal people, the average person, who can’t fly, who can’t use mystical objects, who cannot move things with the mind or other tricks.

The heroes of these movies are the rebels, who are not fighting because of some ancient prophecy, or because of a quest given by mystical beings, or because they have to restore the fabric of the Universe, they fight because it’s the right thing to do, because this is what happens when you take away freedom from people, when you destroy their homes, when you kill their loved ones, when you obliterate everything they have ever known and loved.

Treat people like animals and they’ll react like animals, by biting the hand that carries the stick and then ripping it into shreds.

And yes, Luke is the hero that saves the day by killing Sidious and Vader, but he would have never, and I say NEVER have arrived at that point without the help of the Rebellion, it’s something that no one could have ever done alone, a single individual against an entire Empire is a suicide, no matter how powerful you are.

And I love it. I don’t even know how to put it into words, I love how this ancient and meticulous plan gets annihilated by normal people, who just wanted to be free.

THIS is Star Wars: a fight against tyranny.

And it makes me sad how people forget and ignore it. With the Rebellion it’s not just the special people who can be heroes, everyone can! And they don’t even need to do the heroic actions described in the stories and the myths.

A Hero says “No” when the Stormtroopers ask if they saw the young and scared boy who ran and hid behind the bins near their home.

A Hero gives extra blankets and food to the neighbor that is hiding refugees.

A Hero “accidentally” blocks the way of a squad of Stormtroopers, to give others the time to escape.

A Hero hides the weapons of the rebels in their well while the Stormtroopers raid all the houses.

A Hero runs through the streets and into the woods to go find the rebels that are hiding there, to tell them it’s time to run

A Hero talks loudly about the atrocities that the Empire is committing, forcing those who are silent to listen.

A Hero comforts the mother who lost all her children to the Empire.

A Hero organizes the funeral of that same mother, after she tried to take her revenge.

A Hero doesn’t let the Empire enter their head, they don’t let it change their being.

It’s all about the small acts of insurrection that pushes the line forward.

[ceilidhtransing]

Having spent pretty much the entire year immersed in studying Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and genocide more broadly, my heart is bursting with the need to stress how much you should take Project 2025 seriously. This is a long post but please stick with me.

Don't take this post as an attempt to concretely predict anything. We can't ever fully know the future and I think it's silly to say with total certainty “if Trump wins then America will become just like Nazi Germany” - not only because the future isn't written yet, but also because Germany under the Nazis was a very specific regime with its own quirks and peculiarities and I don't think that even a worst-case-scenario Trump regime would look exactly like Hitler's Germany. No two regimes ever look exactly alike: it would use the same colour palette as all far-right dictatorships but be constructed from a different medium, like what a watercolour is to an oil painting.

But just because Trump is a very different person from Hitler, and a worst-case-scenario Trump dictatorship would not literally be “Nazi Germany all over again”, that doesn't mean that what happened in Germany isn't instructive here. Forget the specifics of whether or not Trump as a dictator would organise a state identically to how the Nazis organised Germany or whatever; on a far broader and more relevant level, there is a distressing number of similarities. And too many people are falling into the same thought traps as they did then.

Please don't assume that Trump is “way too incompetent” to achieve what's in Project 2025 or Agenda 47. They said the same thing about Hitler. They said that there was no way this showman could govern effectively - holding big rallies and making speeches that get people riled up isn't the same as being good at running a functioning state and achieving what you want. The New York Times even wrote after he became Chancellor of Germany that this would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility”. And in many ways Hitler was pretty incompetent. But that didn't end up mattering. The greatest crime of the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, was masterminded mostly by a whole load of people besides Hitler, who were delegated the nitty-gritty task of actually orchestrating it. Hitler's personal incompetence didn't prevent war or genocide.

Please don't assume that Trump is “just a wacky nutcase” who “can't possibly be a real risk”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The mainstream media gave constant coverage to all the crazy extreme things Hitler said as if he was merely a bit of a joke and not a massive threat. The Nazis were quite happy with this. To quote Goebbels repeatedly in his diary, “The main thing is they're talking about us.”

Please don't assume that being in power will “moderate” Trump and that “of course he won't be able to do all the crazy stuff once he actually has to govern”. They said the same thing about Hitler. It was a common sentiment in the early 1930s that all the sensible politicians around him would force him to moderate his stances. Fritz von Papen, the last Chancellor of Weimar Germany, persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor by assuring him, “In a few months, we will have pushed [Hitler] so far into the corner that he will squeak.” It turns out that power doesn't “moderate” people who are openly talking about a dictatorship.

Please don't assume that there's any truth to the whole “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025 and trying to link it to him is just liberal hysteria” line. They said the same thing about Hitler. People repeatedly asserted that Nazi street violence wasn't really representative of the party leadership; it wasn't representative of Hitler. He was even subpoenaed by a very brave lawyer in 1931 in a bid to prove that recent violence by Nazi stormtroopers was committed with the knowledge and encouragement of the party leadership, with part of the prosecution's argument hanging on a pamphlet by Goebbels that promised a violent overthrow of the state if the Nazis couldn't come to power legitimately. Surely no legal political party could be publishing that. In a successful attempt to escape criminal charges, Hitler repeatedly lied that the pamphlet was not official Nazi Party material and that he didn't know anything about it. No Trump didn't write it, no it isn't an official GOP manifesto, but the links between Project 2025 and Trump, the previous Trump administration, and Trump allies are extremely well documented. Just the other day, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought was caught calling Trump's disavowals of the document “graduate-level politics” and saying, “what he's doing is just very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand ... he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”

Please don't assume that “there's no way something like that could happen here; we're way too educated and advanced”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The Germany of the 1920s and 1930s was one of the most educated and most scientifically and industrially advanced nations in the world, and its cities were some of the most progressive in the world. People were stunned and horrified that it was in Germany of all places - Germany, land of music and art and science and literature! - that fascism took root. Germany's economic and social advancement didn't stop about 40% of its voters choosing the Nazis. It didn't stop them taking power.

Please don't assume that Project 2025 is “just a wishlist” and “not actually a serious plan”. They said the same thing about Hitler. As is hopefully very clear by now, plenty of people did not think that the Nazis were capable of, or would dare to try, putting into actual practice the horrific ideas about race that undergirded so much of their ideology. “I like Hitler; he talks sense economically and I think all this stuff about Jews is just bluff and bluster.” “Every party has a loony wing, right? You have to understand they're not serious when they talk about this stuff; they're just telling their base what they want to hear.” “God have you heard this crazy race science shit about head shapes and stuff? It's hilarious! I'm sure none of them at the top really believe that; there's no way they'd be that nuts.” When a group of people like this tells you what they believe and tells you what they want to do with power, believe them. No matter how ridiculous they seem, they're not joking.

In the words of Hans Litten, the lawyer who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in that court case in 1931, “Don't listen to him; he's telling the truth.” Litten was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and spent the rest of his life being tortured in concentration camps before dying in Dachau in 1938 at the age of 34.

A tyrannical dictatorship can often be seen coming a mile away. I don't want to imply for a second that what the Nazis did came as a surprise to everyone and couldn't possibly have been predicted. There were people who saw this coming in the 1920s and 1930s and tried to sound the alarm while they still had a chance. But they were too often in the minority, taking the threat seriously while others had convinced themselves that there was no need for concern because the Nazis wouldn't really do all the things they repeatedly talked about wanting to do. Everyone should have seen this coming, but too many people wanted to believe it couldn't be true.

Don't let this scare you. Let it energise you. Talk to the people in your life about Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Push back against people who assert that “they'd never actually do all that stuff” or “Trump didn't even write Project 2025” or “it's not a real plan, just a list of crazy shit to get the base riled up”. Have conversations with folks you know who are on the fence about voting or about who to vote for and who seem persuadable. Make sure you're registered to vote, and keep making sure, especially if you live in a red state where people keep mysteriously dropping off voter rolls.

Now, again, please don't read this as some confident prediction that Trump will be a Hitler figure. I want to stress that is a worst-case scenario. If a Trump presidency is what happens, I would much prefer the best-case scenario: that he spends four years fumbling around and not really accomplishing anything and then gives up power at the end without much of a fight. But it would also be a folly to be smugly overconfident that the worst-case scenario “won't” or “can't” happen. It could. It has happened before. There is no reason it couldn't happen again.

[antianakin]

What are your thoughts about fans who say that Vader killed Fox for Ahsoka (in one of the comics) or Vader will brutally kill Barriss in the upcoming Tales of the Empire because of what she did to Ahsoka?

Vader didn't offer Ahsoka to join him in Rebels (been a while might be wrong), or offer any of his other jedi friends to be spared. Or any of the younglings. It seems fanfic-y for Ahsoka to get through to Vader more than his own son. Anakin obniously stopped giving a fuck about anyone but Padme, yet he still gets along-ish with the stormtroopers.

I feel like "getting along' with the stormtroopers is a stretch, personally, but I can't say I'm familiar enough with stuff set in that time period focusing on those characters to really speak to it with a lot of authority. I feel like he just doesn't care about them enough to bother them or actively try to kill them, but that doesn't equate to getting along.

As for Ahsoka, I feel like the claim that he killed Fox (I assume this is referencing that comic where he snaps Fox's neck shortly after O66) for Ahsoka is kind-of ridiculous. I haven't read it myself, but I've seen people discuss it and seen some of the panels and my understanding is that he kills Fox because the clones shot at him when they saw his lightsaber, not understanding that he wasn't another Jedi or whatever and Anakin just... kills Fox to demonstrate power. I dunno, this is what Anakin just... DOES. He chokes people who bother him in the OT all the fucking time, we see him get close during TCW all the time too. Anakin leans towards violence as a coping mechanism for a LOT of things, and the immediate motivation is the insult of being shot at by the troopers as an enemy and the disrespect he interprets it as, so he uses Fox as an example. COULD you choose to interpret it so that part of his motivation is that he already hates Fox because of what happened to Ahsoka during the Wrong Jedi arc? Sure. Is it the actual stated motivation within that storyline? No.

Honestly, I find the entire concept that people might be angry at FOX for the Wrong Jedi arc immensely ridiculous just to begin with. Like I get anger aimed at the Jedi Council and Wolffe/the 104th FAR more than I get anger aimed at Fox or the CG. Like Fox and the CG barely have anything to DO with the entire incident, they put her in a cell after a prisoner dies with no other obvious cause immediately after the sound is cut on the recordings, and then they try to recapture her after she does in fact literally break out of her cell and go on the run. Like she's under suspicion and then leaves without permission after a second incident happens, OF COURSE they're trying to get her to stop and come back. They're not HUNTING her. You know who DOES hunt her down? Plo Koon, Wolffe, Anakin, and Rex. All of them go out with squads of men to literally hunt her down and recapture her. And it's WOLFFE who ultimately finds her at the warehouse and stuns her. Fox has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS.

As for what Anakin will do with Barriss, I honestly can't say. I wouldn't put it past Filoni to have him kill Barriss simply because we know Filoni doesn't treat Barriss well and that sounds like something he'd find compelling and meaningful. I'm not planning on watching TOTE for exactly this reason, I'm waiting to see what everyone else says about it since it's bound to be bad no matter what happens.

[toby-du-coeur]

incomplete list of ways movie!newt could've survived, because

im rewatching tdc and i honestly can't take it and am gonna chew through my own arm in his memory

NEWT DOESN'T TURN

mary makes some extra serum for brenda for the road, & so they have it when newt is infected

since lawrence is gonna sacrifice himself anyway, gally gets the remainder of his serum from him in exchange for breaking into wckd, buying newt time

instead of getting drunk and wandering the halls she is IN CHARGE OF, ava kills janson or does anything else to thwart him & help the kids

there's some serum they're currently running tests on that's outside the vault, and they take a detour sometime in the minho-rescue to get some

gally deep enraged breaths gally takes the fucking serum with him, when he runs from brenda & the kids to go bring thominewt back

thomas kisses him and they cuddle a lot during all the shenanigans. this makes newt less stressed, buying time 😊😊😊

or. hear me out. xanax

during the battle, wckd captures thominewtally and takes them to teresa and ava, who make the serum and cure newt. then they break out

they continue talking to brenda through the walkie-talkie, and when the berg flies over them, they drop down a hook and pick the boys up. since we all know wckd has stormtrooper aim, they make it. and then maybe they pick up teresa from some rooftop

IF NEWT TURNS

thomas [sometime during wckd training, runner training, or vince] has learnt the fireman's carry and is able to carry newt faster and also like.. just let him gnaw on him or whatever if he starts to turn, or knock him out real quick

thomas hears teresa say 'it's your blood,' immediately cuts himself and newt open and does some kind of blood brothers thing, which.. at least shocks newt's system enough that the serum arrives. and then thomas is lowkey bleeding out but newt is back to sanity & sarcasm enough to finish things off

thomas knocks newt out with the gun or like shoots him in the leg, buying time

they've picked up one of those stun serum thingies like janson uses, and use it on newt

thomas sticks the serum in newt in desperation and rage after he's just been knifed, bella cullen style {with plenty of those squishy stabby noises like in breaking dawn} and he comes back to life

[and after that, as teresa's done her same speech over the intercom, newt is reasonable with him so they get thomas' sweet sweet cure blood as well]

they get some serum to newt and escape to the safe haven. teresa and that bit of serum from the napkin survive. newt stays v e r y c a l m and slowly deteriorates for months, living on the bag of serum and their half-botched attempts to make more. and then teresa shows up 😘

teresa doesn't survive, but thomas keeps newt alive with the extra serum until he manages to make a working cure out of sheer grit and bloodloss and memories of wckd, because he loves newt to the point of invention

and the one that i half-genuinely see in the canon film:

the knife misses his heart. {they LITERALLY do not pull the knife out, check for a heartbeat or touch him in any way, it's insane}. the thomas-blood-knife + newt's undying love [*] resurrect him. he battles his way to the safe haven and they can give him that vial of the cure that thomas is left just holding like a loose end <3

[*plus some faint multidimensional influence of the dashner canon that newt apparently IS the cure, which.. afaik how immunity/cure works is that your body produces enzymes that fight it off FOR YOU and therefore can be transferred to fight it off for others.. so what kinda shuck sense does t h a t make]

[kalak]

Absolutely FANTASTIC that luke doesn't wear ANY armor, even when he is in a situation that he absolutely, most definitely, should. Like I can understand anh because he technically did wear stormtrooper armor and he didn't need armor to pilot an x-wing. What's his excuse for esb and rotj. Literally just drop by an armorshop on your way to cloud city you're probably on your way to fight darth vader and you're really just going in with those gray fatigues huh. Same goes for going to fight jabba are you really going in like that?? And the same fit minus the tabard for getting literally voluntarily arrested in the death star 2. Not to mention him just flying in with a single x wing in the mandalorian.

He'd say some shit like 'I don't vibe with armor I like being able to move fluidly without clunk' 'I can deflect blaster bolts anyway its ok' too, ok moisture boy what about flying debris. What about when you don't have your saber. Him not wearing armor is the funniest thing for me cuz the potential reasons are all so funny. His fashion sense doesn't permit it. He looked at obiwan and Yoda and was like ok I guess jedi just wear robes huh. He geniunely doesn't care for it because he can rip any enemy to shreds. The thought never crossed his mind. Most likely reason is that the rebellion didn't have money for it and then Luke got too committed to the bit when he got enough money

Also the reactions of soldiers working with him being like wait you're going into battle with just a saber? Is. So good. He's a jedi knight and yes, he's going to save you with just a saber and the force.