#neither of them would have survived order 66 without the other

[fellthemarvelous]

Ahsoka sassing the shit out of Anakin and making Rex laugh the first time they meet.

Anakin had never before experienced such betrayal from his own Captain.

[andiinaraethtash]

please tell me about your favorite wip ?

Dude that is like the hardest question you could ask. I'm gonna say top three (though one is a bit cheaty bc it's a series rather than a single wip, but none of the parts of the series are done, so the whole series is a series of wips. It counts).

To Ash and Dust--Okay, I love this one, and it has great angst and humor just built into it. Basically the premise is that the Battle at the Acropolis in BoO goes very, very badly, to the point that they completely lose, so the Fates, in what little time they have, basically do a massive loop with the threads of Fate for the surviving heroes--meaning, of course, Percy and Annabeth. They wake up like. A few weeks before Annabeth, Luke, Thalia, and Grover make it to camp, and of course Annabeth has very conflicting emotions about Luke, bc on the one hand, she did love him, and he did sorta redeem himself, but on the other he betrayed her and got so many of her friends killed. Percy, meanwhile, woke up at the apartment he and his mom, who is dating Gabe at this point, share, and immediately is like, "idk whats going on but i need to get somewhere safe" and so he sneaks out and calls a pegasus to take him to camp. He shows up, giving Chiron a heart attack followed by a migraine, refuses to tell him pretty much anything, just his name, and then waits until Annabeth and the others get there, and in the middle of the storm, proceeds to take down as many monsters as possible to get the other four into the safety of the camp. Bear in mind, he is seven. And a kinda scrawny seven at that. Annabeth's immediate reaction is to just kinda squawk, "Seaweed Brain?" and he grins and shoots back, "Hey, Wise Girl," and Thalia, whose pov that section is written from, is like. "wtf how does Annabeth know this kid, why is this seven-year-old kicking so much ass, and also holy Styx that is a seven-year-old--" That's about as far as I've written, but there are other fun moments in store, though I've yet to decide what to actually do with Luke. (Advice would be appreciated :D)

And Yet, a Second Try--This is the one I've been working on for the last couple of days, and I'm sort of going back to my roots here, with a Star Wars time travel au. Basically, Obi-Wan and Anakin both wake up, a few months after the year on the run happens, in their younger bodies (Obi-Wan is like. 19, and Anakin is three) but the last thing they remember is their respective deaths. Neither knows the other is back, and Obi-Wan doesn't know that Anakin redeemed himself. So Obi-Wan almost immediately sneaks off to Tatooine, so he can rescue Anakin and Shmi both, and of course Anakin is suspicious, bc why is Obi-Wan here now, he's not supposed to be here now, but he doesn't say anything... at least not until some of the other kids are talking and one of them echoes that line that Anakin says in TPM, the "no one can kill a Jedi" and Anakin just. Gets up and leaves without a word, and he vanishes in the three seconds Obi-Wan and Shmi don't have eyes on him, and Obi-Wan manages to find him and they kind of both realise that they remember the future, and there's a lot of crying. It's very cathartic.

The Obani Chronicles--so this is the wip series, and my gosh, when I say this is a labor of love, I mostly mean it's a labor. There are several parts to it, some that are like. Alternate universes to the main one? Anyway--It's focused on an oc of mine, Kestrel Obani, or Kes, who was a Padawan, friends with Cal and Caleb. When Order 66 went out, she barely managed to escape in a fighter, then commandeered a pirate ship in the middle of an asteroid belt, set the autopilot of the fighter she'd stolen to shoot through the belt so it would crash, and successfully faked her death. She manages to lie low until shortly before the events of JFO, when she gets turned over to the Inquisitors after having to use the Force to escape a fight against a gang on Nar Shaddaa. So she's in the Fortress Inquisitorius when Cal and Cere break in, and manages to escape in the chaos, meeting up with Cal and Cere, who don't recognize her immediately (it's been five years and escaping the cell she'd been in had required an explosion which had burnt the left side of her face, neck and shoulder). After they escape, Cal is unconscious (bc he got skewered by his own lightsaber) so there's no reunion, but Kes gets to meet Merrin and Oh, Boy, do I love their dynamic. Merrin doesn't trust her, and she doesn't trust Merrin, and then they just sorta bond over how danger-prone Cal is, and of course once Cal does wake up there's that whole reunion, and that's about the summary of the first part of the series. From there, the main storyline has like. Two more main parts, and one that kinda explains where Kes was during the events of the second game, bc I am not going to try to rewrite that, thank you very much. In part two, they get a group of visitors on Koboh who call themselves the Spectres, which is so much fun. Part three covers the events of Ahsoka, which I did rewrite a little bc I have Thoughts about how that would go if Kes and the others were involved. Anyway I love them all so much and as much as I want to share this series with everyone, literally none of the parts are finished, so...

[testingforgravity]

Gravity's Story Guide

Hi there, and welcome to my blog! I’m a writer of messy, character driven stories for multiple fandoms. I go where my writing whims take me, which is typically in scattered directions (hence the blog name). My current published works span Star Wars, Harry Potter, & Six of Crows. I love chatting with readers, so if something I wrote resonated with you, let me know!!

If you’re interested in reading, here’s a masterlist of my ao3 published works (organized by fandom):

Star Wars

TCW Younglings Live On! Series: Your favorite gathering younglings survived order 66.

We Were Just Kids: Completed | 100k+ | Part 1 of TCW Younglings Live On!

More than a decade has passed since her life was destroyed. So many years separate Katooni then from Katooni now that the Tholothian pirate is often convinced she hallucinated her time as a Jedi completely. The Force is a phantom to her, and certainly not her friend. She hunts for treasure, swindles credits, and keeps her head down around the Imperials. But a supply run gone wrong lands Katooni face to face with a group of ghosts from her past, and suddenly the young pirate is confronted with a choice: keep running from the Empire, or finally draw her weapon.

Grand Theft Holo: WIP | Likely 100k+ | Sequel to Just Kids | Part 2 of TCW Younglings Live On!

The Sith Runestone. Rumored to hold a holocron containing a map to the ultimate power, whoever cracks the Sith Runestone controls the Galaxy. With the rebels in shambles following the Battle of Atollon, now is the perfect time for the Empire to swipe the artifact from the Metropolitan Museum of Coruscant and secure their victory over the growing rebellion. However, Emperor Palpatine isn’t the only one aware of the urban legend. To save the rebellion—the Galaxy—Petro decides he’s going to steal the runestone first. But he can’t do it alone. Six former Jedi. One impossible heist. There's nobody else in the rebellion Petro would choose for a job this important. But does his crew still trust each other enough to pull it off?

The Unspoken Rules of Dating (and Your Galactic Guide to Breaking Them): Completed | 5k | Mature | One-Shot | Part 3 of TCW Younglings Live On!

Petro and Zatt don’t know the rules of dating. Neither one of them have ever been on a date, much less a first date with each other. They’re trying to build a relationship backwards and, without an instruction manual, they’re destined to fail. Forget the past twenty-five years of friendship. In order for this first date to succeed, everything has to be different between them. Right?

Flying Solo: Completed | 3k | One-Shot | Part 4 of TCW Younglings Live On!

It’s tough to be a pilot in the rebellion. Pilots are left to fly solo while the rest of their crew have their boots on the ground. It’s a lonely job, and not one for the faint of heart. As they prepare for the Battle of Endor, three rebel fighter pilots face the daunting task of charging into the fray without their family. To make it through together, Hera, Omega, and Ganodi decide to develop a crew of their own.

Harry Potter

In Ten Years: WIP | Currently 17k+ | Mature & MCD Warning

Lily Evans hates Chicago. She’s here solely for her Ph.D. and does not plan to stay. Lily hates Chicago even more than she hates James Potter, her relentlessly optimistic neighbor who won’t stop asking her out. She wishes to skip ahead ten years, to the future her advisor asks her to imagine. In ten years, Lily expects to be miles away from Chicago, her roommates, and James bloody Potter. So when she wakes up a decade later married to Potter and working as a professor in the Windy City, Lily is convinced she must be living in a nightmare. This life can’t be hers, and if it is, she has to fix her mistakes. But as Lily scrambles to get away from her own future, she must confront the life she’s created for herself. Including all the people she never wanted to know.

Six of Crow/Shadow & Bone

The Bomb that Bested the Darkling: Completed | 1k | One-Shot

Kaz Brekker would be a fool to kidnap the Sun Summoner empty handed. His cane was hefty, reliable. Good for waylaying a few guards with a strike to the head. But to traverse the Fold twice and walk out of the Little Palace unscathed, Kaz suspected they might need some extra firepower. Luckily, he has an amatuer demo man in his pocket. Time to pay Wylan Van Eck a little visit.

[brachiosaurus-on]

Brachio, friend! Hello! How are you?

I know you are reading the High Republic books, and I have to wonder, has any of it given you the impression the Jedi of that time have a significantly different experience from the Jedi of the late Republic? I hear a lot of people implying that lately, but I don't quite buy it, and so I figured I would consult you.

Mon, friend! Hello! I'm well, thanks! How are you? I hope you don’t mind that I turned this answer into a bit of a rambling meta.

So, the short answer is no. Their experiences are a little bit different due to the circumstances outside of the Order being different, but I wouldn’t say that their experiences are significantly different until the Clone Wars start. The philosophy and culture within the Order is the same, and I can easily see the characters trading places or recognizing each other as Jedi. The biggest difference is the fashion.

I think that this perception may come from big differences in how they are presented.

The scope of the story is different. High Republic gives us a broad scope through several points of view; the Prequel Trilogy gives us a narrow scope through only a few points of view. The Prequel Trilogy only includes what’s relevant to either the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall (which eventually become intertwined themselves), and has a small cast of characters. High Republic has many concurrent and overlapping plots and subplots with twice as many main characters. The scope and focus of the stories are very, very different. You may have heard that High Republic suffers from having too many characters, which is valid, but the upside is that we get a very full picture of what’s going on around the galaxy.

The audience’s perspective is different. High Republic is told from the perspectives of Jedi who love the Order and enjoy the lifestyle. The Prequel Trilogy is told largely from the point of view of Anakin, who does not find the lifestyle fulfilling.

The structure of the story is different. The prequels are very plot driven and most of the story happens during important events; we see limited exposition, resolution, and downtime between major events. High Republic spends a lot of time in characters’ heads before, between, during, and after important events. There’s a much fuller picture of what these characters are going through and how they’re reacting to it.

The explanations of Jedi philosophy and internal workings of the Order are different. High Republic is very direct about explaining Jedi philosophy and internal workings, taking time to elaborate for the audience. The films primarily use Yoda to explain Jedi philosophy; Yoda does not elaborate and is intentionally indirect to encourage the audience to think for themselves. The films show some internal workings but are rarely explicit.

It’s also worth mentioning that the trilogies show us more ideal Jedi because they’re establishing & introducing the audience to what the Jedi actually are and using narrative foils for Anakin’s story. Because High Republic doesn’t have this burden, they have more freedom to write more relatable characters (slutty Elzar rights) with more common flaws.

Scope

In High Republic, the story is about the Jedi working with the Republic, all of the Republic. We spend time with everyone, and I mean everyone: not just the main characters, but the side characters, and the background characters too; the worldbuilding is very detailed. We see plenty of Jedi with differing skillsets, opinions, experiences, and the story gives the audience breathing room to get to know them. They have many moments that are irrelevant to the plot, but tell us more about the characters themselves. We bounce between several Jedi Masters, who each play a different role in the Order, several knights who each have a different experience, and several padawans who are at different stages in their training. We have a broad view of the Order. We also get into the heads of the Chancellor, the Nihil, different politicians, diplomats, civilians, scientists, business people, reporters, an event coordinator, I could go on; aside from the Nihil, characters outside the Order are working with the Jedi and operating in good faith. We also know that the heroes are in a game that they can win, we know that both the Order and the Republic survive this era.

The Prequel Trilogy gave us the same huge galaxy and world building, but we saw most of it in the background. It’s extremely focused on the plot and Anakin’s character; if it’s not relevant to the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall, it’s not included. Even some things that were very relevant to the fall of the Republic were cut in favor of things more relevant to Anakin. Because it’s mostly about him and we don’t get the perspectives of other Jedi very often, we have a narrow view of the Order. We only spend time with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Mace, and Yoda even though there are plenty of diverse Jedi in the background that we never meet. We see diversity within the Order, we know other Jedi are doing other things in other places, but we don’t interact with them until Order 66, when they become relevant to the story. We rarely meet other characters outside of their interactions with the main characters. The outside perspectives we see are Sith Lords, Padmé, other politicians, the Naboo, the Kaminoans, bounty hunters, crime lords, and a few civilians. Most of the characters outside the Order are working against the Jedi or operating in bad faith. We also know that the heroes are playing an unwinnable game, the Order and the Republic will not survive this story.

Perspective

In High Republic the audience is spending a lot of time with the Order and mostly seeing things from the Order’s point of view; we bounce between several different Jedi who all find the lifestyle fulfilling in different ways and the story is about all of them. The primary viewpoint characters have a broad, positive, perspective of the Order. When we’re reading from Elzar’s point of view we see his satisfaction when he uses the Force, how much he cares about others, how much he gets wrapped up in his own issues; when we’re reading from Stellan’s point of view, we see how much he loves teaching, how much he relaxes when he gets a chance to teach, how much he loves Elzar, how much he cares about the Order, how he wants to help; with Bell, we see how much he loves his master, we see him grieving, we see him reach these milestones where he figures out what it means to be a Jedi and how it frees him from his pain. The main characters actively participate in the Order’s community. Even when the characters are frustrated or upset with the Order or other Jedi, we know that they still love them because we’re in their heads and we get the characters’ full train of thought.

In the Late Republic, the story is told mostly from Anakin’s point of view. We see his frustration with the Order, his longing to be with Padmé, his desire for more power, his love overshadowed by his attachment. We see Anakin’s respect for the Order clouded by his disillusion (spurred on by a Sith Lord) and we don’t see him look outside his own perspective. We see him finding the lifestyle unfulfilling and not committing to it. The primary viewpoint character has a narrow, negative perspective of the Order. Another big thing is that Anakin is a Jedi who didn’t grow up in the Order and doesn’t have that inherent trust in the community, so we the audience don’t have complete trust in the Order. We see more of Anakin’s point of view than we do of Obi-Wan and Yoda who do reflect a positive experience. In the films, we’re in the room with the characters, not in their heads. We have to deduce what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling; we do not have the characters’ full train of thought.

Structure

The High Republic books have much more spread out pacing. There’s more exposition and we’re already familiar with the characters before they’re thrown through the narrative and then we spend more time with them afterwards. We get their reactions to major events and we see them struggle through recovery. The Jedi in High Republic have time to catch their breath, they are not moving from crisis to crisis the way the Order is in the Late Republic, and we are shown the time in between crises.

The prequel trilogy jumps right into the plot. We’re introduced to the characters briefly and we get to know them as they move through the plot. We don’t see much aftermath of major events, and we don’t see the process they go through to recover. They move from crisis to crisis and we do not see the time in between.

Here’s a summary of the different structures: High Republic shows us Reath, Bell, and Stellan all grieve in different ways and come to terms with their grief, but the prequel trilogy shows us neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin coming to terms with their grief over similar losses.

Explanation

The High Republic authors explain the philosophy of the Jedi more explicitly within their stories; they’re very direct. They also elaborate on what they’re saying for the benefit of the audience. I speculate that they do this to clear up some misunderstandings...

In the films, George Lucas prioritized concision and used Yoda to inform the audience; Yoda speaks in riddles to encourage the audience to think about what he’s saying. He speaks indirectly and without elaboration. 

If you don’t have a background knowledge of Buddhism (or at least mindfulness), it’s not terribly difficult to misinterpret the prequel trilogy because there’s so little explanation. It’s also a little difficult to balance that within a film and there’s more room to do it in the novels.

Internal Differences within the Order

The most significant internal difference is the fashion: High Republic Jedi have fancy formal robes in addition to their day to day robes. My personal headcanon for why this is different is that as time went on and the golden age faded, the Jedi became busier, and didn’t have as much time for the fashion anymore (which is tragic, I love the concept art for their fancy robes) and by the time of the prequels we see it only in the Temple Guards, or the Order decided to dress less extravagantly to show greater humility.

We get descriptions of different career paths within the Order. This is probably where it seems most different from the Jedi in the Late Republic, but I don’t see any incompatibility. There’s nothing in the prequel trilogy or TCW to contradict the existence of these career paths, and in fact I’d say there’s evidence to support their existence. I’ll write a separate post about these because it’ll make more sense with examples and this is already quite long.

There are some other things that are different, but based on external factors. There’s one line about how Jedi don’t get killed in the field often, masters aren’t killed leaving a padawan behind, that it’s just not something that happens. I think it’s supposed to tell us about the time period, but then it happens at least 3 times, so I personally take it with a grain of salt. There’s one bit about how lightsaber dueling is primarily exercise because no one else carries a lightsaber and no Jedi would ever fight another (apparently Anakin missed that memo) but this is consistent with the culture shown in the prequel trilogy when they’re blindsided by Dooku’s betrayal.

[captainsophiestark]

Love

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Day Thirty of Fictober!

Fandom: Star Wars

Prompt: “Just say it.”

Summary: Reader is a Jedi, and has been on the front lines with the rest of the Order throughout the Clone Wars. They've gotten to be close with Padme and best friends with Anakin, to the point where Anakin trusted reader with the secret of his marriage to Padme and their soon-to-be-expanded family. Reader also got close with Obi-Wan, in a different way than all the others, but out of respect for the Order neither of them explored those possibilities. Everything comes to a grinding halt with Order 66. Reader was with the 212th when Cody got the word from Palpatine, and they barely made it out with their life. Now, after Padme's funeral and with the whole world falling apart, the reader might just find a new light to keep holding on to with darkness closing in from all sides.

Word Count: 2,471

Category: Angst, Fluff

A/N: Straight up, this is probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever written

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

"Obi-Wan!" I screamed, running down the familiar hallways of the Nabooian palace. They were dark and silent, my pounding footsteps echoing around the walls in the absence of the laughter and light that were usually present.

A light that might never return to this place.

"Obi-Wan! Where are you?" My voice was raw, and the words hurt as they left my throat. Tears burned at my eyes, but I tried to force them back as I focused on my breathing. I was a Jedi. I was not supposed to fall apart, no matter the circumstances.

I finally shoved open the double doors leading out to the back of the palace, an evening wind smacking me in the face. The doors led out onto a landing pad where a spaceship sat. The ramp was down, and I found Obi-Wan standing at the base of it, staring at me.

Waiting.

"Obi-Wan," I breathed, the tears threatening to overflow now as I reached him. I came to a jerking stop in front of him, the sorrow in his blue eyes almost knocking me flat. "What... what happened?"

He sighed and took his eyes off me for the first time since I'd made it outside.

"How much do you already know?" he asked, his voice miraculously calm.

"I know that Cody almost killed me," I choked out, the tears finally beginning to fall. "I know I couldn't reach you, or Ani, or anyone else, and I know that I walked onto my ship after fighting for my life against friends to see a cordial summons to the funeral of Padme Amidala."

Something inside me broke as I forced those words to come. Waves of grief for my fallen friends broke over me one after another, and the darkness started to close in on me from all sides.

I started shaking my head, and then I couldn't seem to stop. I was falling, falling, falling, with no end in sight-

"Y/N."

A pair of warm, steady hands landed on my shoulders. The contact worked like an anchor, and slowly, I felt the claws of that darkness recede. They were still there, still circling the outskirts of my mind, but they'd been pushed back to a manageable level.

I looked up and came back to my senses as I locked eyes with Obi-Wan.

"Y/N," he repeated. "I need you to hold on."

I nodded, barely able to muster the movement. I could feel Obi-Wan's intense sorrow through the Force, but even stronger than that was his determination to pull through. For me, and for...

"Their child survived?" I breathed, barely daring to voice the words in case I was wrong. I reached out through the Force and received a definitive answer before Obi-Wan said it; I could feel another life force on board the ship, its signature heartbreakingly similar to Padme's and Anakin's.

"Both of their children, yes," said Obi-Wan. I gave him a questioning look, so he explained. "Padme had twins. In light of everything going on, Master Yoda felt it would be safest to separate them. Bail and Breha have adopted the girl. I'm taking the boy to his remaining family on Tatooine."

I nodded, a million thoughts racing through my head at once. I was having trouble isolating one to focus on, and when I finally managed one, it was easily the most irrelevant thing I could've focused on, in light of the true hell that had just been unleashed on the galaxy. Still, it felt important to me.

"What are their names? The twins?"

Obi-Wan's eyebrows raised slightly, but he didn't question me.

"Padme named them Luke and Leia."

Luke and Leia. I focused on their names, on the hope they represented. I'd lost too many friends today, but Anakin and Padme lived on in their children. I'd sworn to Anakin the day he told me his secret that I would defend his family with my life, and I meant it.

I could hold on for Luke and Leia.

Once I'd managed to center myself just a little, I met Obi-Wan's eyes again. His hands were still on my shoulders, but I think he felt my shift in mindset through the Force, so he dropped them back to his sides. The sorrow was still written in every line of his face, but there was less worry now than there had been a few moments ago. But, while I no longer felt in danger of slipping over the edge, we hadn't passed our biggest hurdle yet.

"What happened to Anakin?"

My voice was calmer now than it had been since Cody had taken his first shot at me. My heart broke to even say the name of my best friend, but I needed to know.

"Y/N, I don't think now is the right time-"

I cut Obi-Wan off short, reaching out and taking his hands in mine. The touch surprised him enough to make him stop, which was my goal, but it also served to steady me. Whatever his answer might be—whatever that horrible pit in my stomach at the thought of my best friend meant—at least I still had Obi-Wan.

"Obi," I said, my voice miraculously calm. "Just say it."

He sighed and squeezed my hands a little tighter, but to his credit, when he looked back at me his voice was level.

"He went to the dark side. He killed a room full of younglings at the temple, and tried to kill Padme when we went to confront him. I... I almost killed him..." Obi-Wan's voice wavered and he had to look away. I took a step towards him and squeezed his hands, doing my best to anchor him the way he'd anchored me. "Palpatine, who is apparently the Sith Lord we've been searching for this whole time, found Anakin and finished turning him into a deadly Sith apprentice. And now, the greatest threat in the galaxy to his children is... himself."

A new wave of tears rushed down my face, and I didn't bother trying to stop them. It was mourning for my best friend, and anger at how badly Palpatine had managed to affect him, and all of us in turn.

The same waves of sorrow I'd been feeling from Obi-Wan kept coming, but an even stronger wave of guilt hit me like a freight train. I didn't hesitate to close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him in the tightest hug I could, choosing to focus on him here and now and deal with processing Anakin later.

"It was not your fault," I whispered to Obi, my voice determined. I felt Obi-Wan's breath shudder once as he wrapped his arms around me in return, holding me to him like his life depended on it.

We stayed like that long enough for Obi-Wan to take a few calming breaths, and then he carefully untangled himself from me and took a step back.

"So," I said, forcing myself to focus on the man in front of me, and not the one I'd lost who was galaxies away. "What now?"

"The Jedi go into hiding," said Obi-Wan simply. I could still sense the guilt and sadness pulsing off of him, but like the darkness around my own mind, it was at least held at bay for now. "I'm going to stay on Tatooine to keep an eye on Luke, and to work on a new form of training Master Yoda has for me."

I nodded slowly, trying to order my thoughts as much as possible. I wanted to be as close to my right mind as possible to make this decision.

After a few more beats, my resolve hardened. My whole world had fallen apart in a matter of hours, and now I had a choice to make. Light or dark. Future or past.

Love or anger.

I thought of Luke and Leia, and everything they represented as I met Obi-Wan's eyes again. I let myself feel everything I'd tried to ignore for the sake of the Order, let his blue eyes be the reason to keep pushing forward instead of losing myself to the same swirl of hurt and hate that had taken Anakin.

"I'm coming with you," I said with determination. Obi-Wan looked surprised, but I had made up my mind.

"Y/N... I don't know if that's the best idea..."

"Why not?" I demanded.

"Well, for starters... I'm going to be living far from civilization in the deserts of Tatooine. That might not be an environment you want to resign yourself to, especially without knowing when—or if—it will end."

"If you're set on becoming a sandy desert hermit, then I'm set on going with you."

Obi-Wan chuckled a little, and I felt the first tiny break in the storm of sorrow around him.

"Alright... then perhaps more importantly... this is a chance to start over. I don't want you to throw that chance away just to go somewhere with constant reminders of everything that went wrong, and everything that caused it."

"Obi... I appreciate you trying to look out for me, but... what chance? A chance to hide somewhere, and live in constant fear of being found? A chance to spend every waking moment worrying if my best friends will kill me, or kill you, or to spend every moment of every day thinking about whether there's a way to drag him back? Or if it would be worth it to die trying?"

Obi-Wan flinched, and I paused to take a deep breath and re-center myself. Then, I continued.

"This chance to start over without the Order is only meaningful if you're in it. That is the only possible bright side. And more importantly—no offense—the new most important things in my life are those children. I will spend every waking moment defending them, whether or not I'm also with you."

I paused, making sure Obi-Wan felt the full force of my words. Then, for the first time in a long time, I smiled.

"But for the record, I would much rather be a space hermit with you than be a space hermit by myself."

Obi-Wan smiled too, then reached out and took my hand. The cloud of sorrow and darkness was still there, edging around my mind, but I barely noticed it as the two of us turned and walked up the ramp together.

"We need to leave as soon as possible, but... do you want to meet Luke first?" he asked as the ramp closed behind us. An explosion of light shot through my heart at the name, and the small smile continued to grow as Obi and I stood in the hallway facing each other.

"Obi, there is nothing in this galaxy I would rather do."

I followed him through the ship to the medical bay, where the ship's med droid was hovering over a crib. It stepped aside as we got closer, and my whole world stopped when I saw the tiny baby boy laying in the crib in front of me.

"He... he feels like them," I whispered, not taking my eyes off Luke. "In the Force, from him... I can feel them both."

"I know," said Obi-Wan. Then, cautiously, he reached out and wrapped one arm around my waist, pulling me into his chest. I leaned against him as we both looked into the crib, and for a few moments, it was like nothing outside of this room existed.

We stayed like that for a long while, and then finally, Obi-Wan moved a step back. I sighed and followed him, forcing myself to take my eyes off the baby Skywalker-Amidala before me.

"We should go," said Obi-Wan gently. I nodded, turning to face him.

"Yeah, we should." He made to move for the cockpit, but I reached out and stopped him. "Hold on. There's one more thing I need to do first."

He raised an eyebrow in question, but I just stepped closer as my way of answering. I glanced down at his lips, then tried to shake off my nerves as I looked back up at him.

"Y/N..." he whispered, wrapping both arms cautiously around my waist. "The Order... We really shouldn't..."

"And why not?" I asked, my eyes searching his face. "The Order is gone. So is most of what it stood for. All we have left is... is love. And I love you, Obi-Wan."

"I love you too, Y/N."

Neither of us wasted another second before closing the rest of the space between us and finally, finally kissing. We'd danced around this in the name of the Order for years, but now there was no Order left to stay apart for. Sparks of electricity raced through my body when our lips met, and for just a second, the rest of the world faded away.

In a world of new, horrible darkness, Obi-Wan and I had managed to find a tiny, shimmering light.

We broke apart after just a few seconds, both of us smiling like absolute fools. He took my hand as we headed for the cockpit, and I knew we'd have plenty of time to make up for all those years we'd lost.

What else was there to do as a space hermit but spend time with the only other hermit around?

A familiar pang of sadness pulled at my heart as we settled into the cockpit without Anakin. It was strangely empty without his energy and dumb ideas. The road ahead was going to be a long one without him, or Padme, or any of the rest of our friends, and having a new relationship with Obi-Wan wouldn't magically make it easy.

Still, even as the darkness lingered around me, I knew we would make it through. Love—from Obi-Wan to the wonderful baby boy in the medical bay to the equally wonderful baby girl on her way to Alderaan—would be enough to get us through.

[dameronology]

things we lost in the fire {obi-wan x reader}

summary: on a slow morning in tatooine, you and obi-wan reflect on how lucky you are to still have each other 

warnings: swearing, angst, mentions of death 

another obi fic based on a bastille song?? more likely than you think!! but i swear, despite, all the warnings, this isn’t going to rip your heart out completely 

enjoy,

- val xx

Things had never been darker.

The stars still shone at night, silvers and steels and greys against the canvas of the midnight sky. The sun still came up everyday - doubly so on Tatooine. You woke up every morning to the twin suns blaring down on your new home, illuminating the place with a hauntingly golden glow. For a place that seemed to be so fundamentally built on black and white beliefs - good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark - the world seemed too bright. 

The stars shone at night. The sun still came up every day. The world seemed bright - but things had never seemed darker. 

You missed the life you had - no, you didn’t just miss it. You yearned for it. You ached for it. You wanted to wake up one of these particularly hot Tatooine mornings to find everything was just a dream; that Anakin was alive, that Padme was alive, that you still had a temple to come home to. Everything you’d ever loved had been thrown into the fiery pits of Mustafar, left to burn and turn to ash. 

Well, not everything.

You still had Obi-Wan Kenobi and you thanked the stars everyday for it. 

It was clear that he was hurting too - there was always a tinge of pain in his sarcastic quips, a sense of tiredness in his eyes whenever they creased with laughter. He was doing it for you, staying strong for you. He was holding you both up - after all, helping people was all he knew. Even when he’d lost everything, that didn’t change. 

Searching for positives was hard and after desperately seeking, you’d found a few. 

You were no longer sneaking around, so you could walk hand-in-hand through the winding streets of your local market together. You could lay-in every morning, not worried about meetings or missions or operations. The pressure to be a good Jedi was off and now you could just be together. It wasn’t much - but at the same time, it was everything.

It was a warm morning on Tatooine; the suns were high in the sky, even though it was barely 7AM. You were sprawled out on your mattress, sheets tangled in your legs from where you’d kicked them off in the night. The sunlight was streaming through the cracks in the curtains, showering you in a warm glow as you lazily stretched. You rolled over on your side, eyes falling on the half-awake man next to you.

Obi-Wan’s eyes were vacantly staring at the ceilings, lids heavy with post-sleep tiredness. Having sensed that you were awake, he lazily reached a hand out towards you, covering yours where it was splayed out on the mattress. You tangled your fingers with his, lighting squeezing his hand. 

‘You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?’ You quietly murmured. 

‘Always.’ He whispered back. 

You felt that - you really felt that. Anakin was always on your mind; not Darth Vader, not the twisted, dark person he’d become. Anakin. The cocky Jedi, the one who you’d called your best friend for years. He hadn’t died in the physical sense but emotionally and mentally, he was long gone. He’d gone insane trying to protect the woman he loved and he wasn’t coming back. 

You didn’t necessarily understand. You never could, but you were able resonate with his innate desire to stop at nothing for Padme. You would have crossed the galaxy ten times over and back to protect the man you loved. The panic you felt in the moments after Order 66, not knowing if Obi-Wan had survived was going to stick with you for a long time. 

The way you held each other, after colliding into one another in the middle of a jet? The way you cried, relief washing over you despite the fact that every you’d ever known was gone? That’s when you knew that you were never going to stray away from him again. Everything you’d argued about, everything you’d ever worried about or bickered about suddenly seemed so menial. It was the peak definition of not knowing what you had until you’d almost lost it.

But you hadn’t lost him - you’d got lucky. He’d got lucky too. 

‘I miss him too.’ You said. You softly brushed a few strands of hair out of his face, your free hand still holding his. ‘And I hate to say it, but there’s nothing we can do.’

You hated having to be the voice of reason - that had always been Obi-Wan’s job. It felt like a bit of a dick move to remind him that you could never return to your former life, but reality was harsh. It was a goddamned bitch. The acceptance of the situation had hit you like a ton of bricks and you couldn’t make it any easier for Obi-Wan. You wished that you could; that you could take his pain away and turn it into something better. All you could do was guide him through it in the same way he’d done for you every time that you’d been hurting throughout the years. 

‘I know.’ Obi-Wan finally turned to look at you, a forced smile playing on his lips. ‘I can’t help but think would what have happened if-’

‘- don’t think about the ifs.’ You cut him off. ‘Try as you might but you can’t change the past.’

‘I wish I could.’

You leant forward, pressing a kiss to his cheek. ‘I know.’

With that, you shuffled out of bed, reaching down to grab a shirt. You pulled it over your head and slipped on your shoes, peaking over your shoulder at him as you did. You tried to give him a reassuring smile, but it faltered slightly. 

For once, you were trying to be the strong one. He had been your driving force for so long, the reason that you’d got out of bed in the morning. If you hadn’t had him after everything that had happened? You didn’t know where you’d be. You probably owed it to him to take the weight of everything for once.

‘I’m gonna go make some caff.’ You said.

‘I’ll be out in a moment.’

You stood up, the footsteps of your unlaced boots echoing off the walls as you headed through to the kitchen. Your dwelling was humble; big enough for both of you (and more, if that was what the future held). It felt like home for no other reason than the fact Obi-Wan was there with you. 

After assembling a semi-decent cup of caff, you kicked open your front door and headed outside. There was a small bench at the front of the house, overlooking the village ahead. The early morning sun was beating down on you, the air fresh and untainted. The day felt new - full of hope, despite everything. 

Pulling your knees up to your chest, you cupped the warm drink between your hands. The road ahead of you was still empty - most people around here were older, retired or out of employment. They didn’t rise until much later in the morning - you wished you were capable of that, but years as a Jedi had drilled early starts into your system. 

‘I don’t always think about the past.’

The sound of Obi-Wan’s voice announced his present. 

‘Yeah?’ You replied, tilting your head to face him. He was stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He had a cup of caff in one hand and a book in the other. ‘So what do you think about?’

‘You.’ 

Tossing the book to the doorstep with a dusty thump, the Jedi moved to take a set next to you. He reached his arm out towards you and without having to say anything, you dropped your feet to the floor and fell into his side. He pressed a kiss to your temple, hand gently carding through your hair. 

It was so domestic - so simple, so suburban and ordinary. But, behind your small gestures of affection and words of love, there were galaxies of grief. The place you were now might have seemed peaceful and quiet but the journey to get there had been anything but. Between you, you’d experienced enough loss and enough pain to last ten lifetimes. 

‘That’s a grand statement.’ You shot back.

‘A grand statement for a grand person.’

‘Oh, you always have been a sweet talker.’ You chuckled. 

‘I mean it.’ He replied. ‘I don’t say often enough how grateful I am for you.’

You peered up at him, a small sigh escaping your lips. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I should though.’

‘And so should I.’ You shot back. ‘You have done everything for me since the day we met, Obi. I owe you so much-’

‘- you don’t owe me anything, darling.’ He softly murmured. ‘Simply staying by my side has put me in a lifetime of debt.’

You almost laughed at the thought of doing anything else. Staying with Obi-Wan had never even been a question - you were already packing your bags before he could even finish saying I’m moving to Tatooine. Neither of you had any idea where you were going, nor what you were doing. But, just like everything else, you were going to figure it out together. 

‘We’ll call it even.’ You leant up to kiss him, lips brushing against his.

‘I talk about what I’ve lost.’ He murmured, forehead resting on yours. ‘Anakin, Padme, the Jedi.’

That was the first time he’d said his name his everything had happened. It hurt - maker, it hurt - but the proud look on your face when it happened was almost enough to make it worth it. 

‘But I never talk about what I still have.’ He added. ‘You.’

‘You don’t need to talk about it.’ You shook your head. ‘I know the feeling.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course.’ You replied. ‘I think about that day all the time and all I can remember is that you were my first concern. I could only focus on finding you, on making sure that you were okay.’

‘You mean everything to me.’ Obi-Wan admitted. ‘You always have but even more so now.’

He hadn’t mean to become attached to you, even less so to indulge his addiction. Years ago, when you were both still sworn to a code, it had been hard. Choosing you over the very Order that he’d committed has life too had been a struggle - but now? He’d never been more grateful that he’d chosen you. 

‘It’s the same for you.’ You offered him a watery smile. ‘Guess we’re kinda stuck together, huh?’

‘Even if you strayed to the other side of the galaxy, we still have a Force connection.’ He reminded you. ‘So yes - I suppose we are stuck together.’

Obi-Wan was your backbone; the glue that held you together these days. It was easy to look at him as though he hung the stars in the sky - and as far as you were concerned, he did. You were living in dark times but he felt like the light at the end of the tunnel.

And, little did you know, but he felt the same. Having you by his side meant more to you than you’d ever realised. There was one specific second on the day of Order 66 that he held onto: the moment you met again, the moment that you tossed yourself towards him, not caring about whether or not he was going to catch you. That was when, despite everything, that he felt like things were going to be okay. 

The stars still shone at night. The sun still came up everyday. It felt like you were the reason why. 

tags: @cherieboba​ @valkyriesandbrokenhalos​ @cptnrex501​ @thespareoom​ 

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) aikiyc STAR WARS

Rex lost everything when Order 66 went live. He lost his sense of self, his purpose, his men - he lost brothers, and sisters, and siblings. He killed them himself, put them down to protect Ahsoka, and then he lost Ahsoka too as soon as the ashes settled and the dead were buried. She said it was because they were too identifiable to travel together, that they’d catch the wrong sort of attention, but Rex suspects it was a different reason that had her walking away again.

She couldn’t look at him, not after what his brothers did. She couldn’t look at him without being reminded of it all, of what she lost, and Rex couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t hold it against her for leaving, but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to see her go.

Over the following months, he had managed to establish contact with Echo and the Bad Batch, and working with them had managed to chase away the aching loneliness that had settled into his bones. No clone took well to being alone - they were supposed to be constantly surrounded by others, they were decanted together, they died together, and the survivors kept marching together. Having someone around made him feel like he was fighting for something again after being aimless and alone. They do what they can to hinder the Empire; they raid supply lines, blow up depots, and break into so many buildings that Rex actually starts to lose count, stealing away with anything that hadn’t been bolted down.

The Empire thinks they’re pirates, and they do nothing to hinder this belief.

It’s not long into their self-imposed mission to be as much of a pain to the newly formed Empire as possible when they find Gregor and Wolffe on separate planets, bothing having made it out of the fall of the Republic and the murder of the Jedi with only partially-active chips. They go under for the surgery and come out with most of their minds intact, heavy with grief and a desperate desire for revenge.

Having Wolffe near - a broken, quiet shadow of the fierce Commander he had been, but still Rex’s older brother - makes him miss his brothers even more. It brings back the fear that he had tried so hard to bury, wishing that he knew what had happened to Cody after the Republic burned. He knows that Cody was on Utapau when the Order went live, but he has no idea what had happened to his ori’vod after the fact. By the time he had made it to Utapau, back before he had met up with the Bad Batch, Ghost Company had already moved on, and Rex hadn’t stuck around for long to try to investigate. Neither Wolffe, a fellow Commander, or Gregor, a former member of the 212th, knew what had happened to Cody, and the lack of knowledge had begun to grate on them all - not even the combined slicing abilities of Echo and Tech could break through the newly upgraded and ever-changing firewalls the Empire employed to find Cody’s position.

They have no leads. None, that is, until they find a familiar clone balancing on the brink of death, abandoned with a sizzling lightsaber wound in his gut to die slowly and alone, a curse no clone would ever want. Wolffe had held his brother as he struggled for breath, begging Fox to pull through.

He doesn’t, but enough of Fox managed to shine through the haze of the chip to give them the authorization codes they need to get into the Empire’s systems. It took them longer than any of them wanted to admit to convince Wolffe to let go of his batchmate’s body to let them burn him, and Rex hadn’t been able to look anyone in the eye as Wrecker had carefully lowered the former Commander onto the unlit pyre. As the fire blazed, he felt numb. He hadn’t been close to Fox since Kamino, back when Cody would smuggle him into his batch’s bunks and hide him in his pod. Even then, he and Fox hadn’t been what others would consider friends, and after Fives - well, their relationship had been well and truly broken, and Rex is less than proud of his inability to feel saddened by Fox’s death beyond his sympathy for Wolffe’s agony.

It’s never easy to lose a brother, especially when they slip away in your arms, and Rex hates how often it had to happen.

Fox’s codes had helped immensely, and Rex passed what he could onto Ahsoka for her to disperse among her contacts. They continue combing through the Empire’s systems, picking apart what they can, and that’s when they find the internal bounty; Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had survived Order 66. It’s not very promising for Cody’s continued well-being.

Rex couldn’t imagine General Kenobi being able to kill Cody, not knowing what he did about his brother and his relationship with the General, but he can’t guarantee that Kenobi wouldn’t fight back like Ahsoka had when the clones turned on him. He didn’t want to think of General Kenobi cutting Cody down when his Commander turned his blaster on him, never knowing why his partner - in more ways than one - would turn on him when they were so close to the end of the War. So close to the chance to build the future the two of them so desperately wanted together. His dreams are haunted by the image of Cody on the ground, a lightsaber wound through his chest, or his brother being Force thrown into a raging inferno to burn alive. The sounds of screaming makes his head hurt even when he’s awake.

Not knowing makes it all worse.

It’s Echo who finds the security footage; it’s grainy and soundless, and someone had made an attempt to delete it, but it’s easy for Rex to see the scar curling around the temple of the clone in officer grays. He’s standing at the base of the Emperor’s throne, with a hulking figure in all black standing a few steps away. It’s Cody - Rex nearly screams when lighting leaps from Sidious’ fingers to strike his brother in the chest and throw him back. Wolffe snarls like a wounded beast, the others going still and quiet in a way that shows their readiness to throw themselves through the footage to protect their Commander. They’ve all seen too many men killed by weaponized electrical currents to not feel the choking fear that they’re witnessing Cody’s death months after it had happened. When Cody goes down, Rex feels his heart rate spike until the grainy footage shows his brother stirring and pushing himself to his feet to stumble to Sidious’ enforcer’s side.

He's still alive, and with the information they have on them now, they find proof that TK-2224, formerly CC-2224, had been demoted and reassigned to some unimportant moon outpost. While the disrespect aimed towards his brother's skills and talent leaves a sour taste in Rex’s mouth, he's overwhelmingly relieved that it’ll make rescuing his brother so much easier.

The moon is small, with only small mining colonies scattered across the surface, and scouting reveals that the Imperial garrison is manned by natborns who barely pay the single clone among them a second look. Watching Cody go about his duties leaves Rex with an immediate feeling that something is very wrong with his brother, beyond just the chip in his head. He lurches when he walks, stutters slightly on the rare occasions he talks, and the natborns call him defective. The snatches of conversations they manage to catch between the Imperials tells of an impending decommissioning if Cody continues to spiral. Sometimes they joke about putting the clone down themselves.

They need to get him out of there.

It's disturbingly easy to coax Cody away from the Imperial base and into their trap, especially because the Cody they had known was so much more cautious and would never have walked into such an obvious trap, unless it was while he was chasing after his reckless Jedi. The Cody they knew was a deadly fighter and a sharp tactician, while also being crazy enough to have won the respect of the Bad Batch. He had been one of the best, trained personally by Alpha-17 and had been one of the first ARC Program graduates - hells, a whole new rank had been created just for him because he was just so frighteningly competent. It had only been his status as a clone that had stopped him from being promoted to a general on his own merit.

The Cody serving the Empire - TK-2224 - is clumsy, easily distracted, and easier to take down. All it takes is Wrecker hoisting the white-armoured figure up by the armpits and pinning him against his chest in a parody of a hug. Cody squirms, thrashes, but it almost seems like his limbs aren't properly responding to him, and it makes Rex fear that, like Gregor, the chip in his brother's head had done more damage than he could see.

Rex steps forward, the others following his lead, and Cody goes limp at the sight of the familiar armour and patterns, making an odd choking noise that’s muffled by the blank helmet he wears, stripped of any and all personality. For so long, Rex had been imagining seeing his brother again, but now that he’s in front of him, Rex finds that he doesn't know what to say. Would Cody even recognize him , or would he just be CT-7567 to him, like he had been to Jesse and his men?

Cody gurgles something, twitching in Wrecker’s arms, and the giant of a man makes a quiet noise of worry that's broadcast across their comm channel, all-but hugging Cody to him as the former Commander's head lolls. The sight makes Rex’s heart leap into his throat, and he steps forward, pulling off his helmet and letting it drop to the ground, uncaring of where it would land in comparison to his spasming brother.

“ Rex ?” Cody’s voice is a garbled, pained moan that has Rex picking up his pace, Wolffe hot on his heels. “Wolffe?” He twitches again, head jerking to smack the back of his unpainted helmet against Wrecker’s chest plate, squirming away from Tech and his scanner. He's mumbling something unintelligible under his breath, gasping like he couldn't get enough air in his lungs.

Rex is in front of his brother in a heartbeat, grasping for the seal on Cody’s bucket with shaking hands - he hadn't managed to stop them from shaking since he had found Jesse's dying body on that moon, buried under the rubble and face twisted in a mask of bloodied hatred; the shaking has only gotten worse since then - and he peels the helmet off his brother's head. Cody’s face is waxy and wane, dark bags under his bloodshot eyes and scar standing out an angry red against his flushed, hollow cheeks. His eyes are rolling and darting, pupils two different sizes and dilating wildly, and most alarming of all is the steady drip of blood from his nose.

“ Cody .” He breathes like a prayer, as Wolffe makes a sound so wounded he’s almost afraid someone had gotten stabbed. “Shit vod , what did they do to you?”

Cody wheezes, head drooping towards his chest, and Wolffe reaches out to grasp his batchmate’s face in his hands, nearly desperate to touch. Cody’s lips part, letting out a stuttering breath, and the steady drip of blood turns into a stream. “C-chip.” Cody finally manages to gasp wetly, face screwing up in agony. “C-can’t - no more - follow orders - Good soldiers -” with every word, the twitches shaking his body grow more intense, and Echo makes himself known at Rex’s side, pressing a sedative into his hands, “- Please -” Cody chokes out, eyes meeting Rex’s with a desperate kind of madness to them, “- get it out .” He begs.

Rex doesn't need to be asked twice, burying the hypo in the side of his brother's neck. Cody goes stiff for a second, almost shaking out of his armour, before the tension leaves his limbs in a rush, and Wrecker gently releases Cody’s limp frame into Wolffe’s protective hold. He watches, heart pounding, as Wolffe clings to his batchmate, wiping the blood from Cody’s face with a gentleness he wouldn't offer just anyone. Cody’s eyes flutter as Wolffe speaks to him, gruff voice quiet and soothing, and he seems to just melt into the other Commander’s arms.

Finally, Cody’s eyes drift shut, coaxed into unconsciousness by the drugs in his system and Wolffe’s gentle touches, and something twisted and aching in Rex’s chest relaxes.

Nothing in the Galaxy has been fixed, but it still makes everything feel a little bit better.

[captainrexsoka]

Rexsoka Week

Tuesday - War - Sept. 29

So for today I want to do more of a meta post. aka my classic ramblings lol.

So I was thinking about war and the effect it had on both Rex and Ahsoka’s lives (because of this prompt lol)

And I just wanna talk about that conversation Rex and Ahsoka have just before Order 66.

You know? The one before all of our hearts were shattered?

“All I’ve been since I was a Padawan is a soldier.”

“Well, I’ve known no other way. Gives us clones all a mixed feeling about the war. Many people wish it never happened. But without it, we clones wouldn’t exist”

“Well, then perhaps some good has come from all of it. The Republic couldn’t have asked for better soldiers, nor I a better friend.”

Rex was bred for war. Ahsoka was molded by it. Without the war, who knows who they would be, if they would even exist in Rex’s case.

NEITHER of them knew another way of life. They were shaped by the battlefield and everything that came with it.

But despite everything. Despite all of the loss and the pain and trauma these two endured — they also formed something beautiful.

They formed a bond so strong that its implied they had a force bond. A bond so strong that when their entire world is crashing down around them, they looked towards each other and held on tight.

They chose to fight for each other. First, Rex saves Ahsoka by fighting against Order 66 for as long as he possibly could and then Ahsoka saves Rex by taking out the chip and so on and so on. There is nothing they wouldn’t have done for each other to make sure they survived. They were with each other till the end.

War took everything from them, but it also gave them each other. It gave them their best friend.

[maulsscream]

(gif by swladies)

TO FEEL ALIVE Maul x Ahsoka

Oh y’all thought I was done? NAH. I’ll be honest folks... this one is straight up smut. There barely is a set up. There is no plot. They just fuck and you’re gonna like it. I in fact do make the rules and this is what you get.

SUMMARY Rated E - 1,623 words

How they’ve survived Order 66 is short of a miracle. In the aftermath of their near death experience, Maul and Ahsoka just want to feel alive. They find solace in each other’s arms, even if they’ve barely begun to trust each other. It’s them against the galaxy now.

Technically part of another series of mine : So Close 01 - To Feel Alive 02

Ahsoka was backed against the central console of her ship, her legs kicking about until she managed to get them around his hips. Maul’s hand squeezed around the flesh of her thigh in order to keep her flush against him. Their faces where pressed together in desperate kisses, lips and teeth mashing together in a desperate display of gratefulness to be able to feel anything at all.

They had escaped death by execution. They had escaped Sidious and the long time friends who had turned against her. There had been no time to think until the moment they had jumped into hyperspace. And after that, neither of them had wished to think. It was better to avoid their feelings entirely. Neither of them had done anything that would be considered an act of faith towards the other. Ahsoka had sent him to his death and Maul... had his past to answer for.

Ahsoka made quick work on the top of Maul’s tunic, ripping it off of his shoulders and letting it drop to the floor so that she could feel his skin against her palms. During their encounters, she hadn’t really taken the time to observe him but now that her hands were roaming about she understood how each of his strikes had felt like a freighter being hurled at her. He was pure muscle wrapped in decorated red and black skin.

Below the waist, Maul was a strange combination of mechanical parts and flesh. One of his limb had been partially replaced from the middle of his thigh down while the other was fully robotic. It joined at the hip in a jagged scar that swallowed the edge of the metal. She could see him clearly now. He was a sight for sure.

Her arms extended in front of her to push him away so she could get a full view of his outer workings. She had seen prosthetics before. Anakin’s hand was a modern marvel with intricate wiring that allowed him full control of his limb. He could even feel with it. Whoever had given Maul those legs was talented but they weren’t from the top notch surgeons that the Jedi had had access too. She had gotten a display of his full range of motion and it was in no way limited. However, the weight of his legs could have been improved. They looked clunky and unpractical. She wondered how much more powerful he could have been had he been complete.

"Are you regretting it now, Lady Tano?”

Maul mumbled in between kisses placed along her neck. He had removed her top moments ago and was cupping her breasts that fit perfectly into his rough grasp. Ahsoka arched her back, pressing into his hand. She took hold of one of his horns and tilted his head back so that he was forced to look at her. How did he have the guts to talk smack while they were in the middle of this?

“I was hoping you wouldn’t make it.”, she retorted while pushing him down to his knees.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe that.”

Ahsoka had purposefully meant her remark to be hurtful. She wasn’t going to spare Maul her animosity just because he was surprisingly skilled at turning her on and was the only person in the Galaxy she could rely on right then.

His hands glided along her sides on the way down, grabbing the few layers she was wearing from the waist down and freeing her body from them. Ahsoka shimmied out of her clothes as best as she could while clutching the console for balance. Maul had time to look at her, too. She was lean and small but her proportions were perfect. Her lekku fell gracefully on her chest, the contrast with her skin blinding. He had seen a few females of different species before. They didn’t compare. He and her were polar opposite who were never meant to fit together. 

Maul kissed all the way up from her ankle to her inner thigh, his hands tracing up the back of her calf softly. It felt as if his kisses were burning her skin. He hooked her knees over his shoulders, continuing to kiss and nibble her flesh. Both of Ahsoka’s hands were holding on to the back of his head, trying to get the unyielding former Sith to give her what she wanted. To lead him.

“Maul.”

She panted out, sounding more like a threat than a cry of pleasure. Her nails racked along his nape. Hard enough to scratch.

“Has no one taught you patience, little one?”

As Maul rose to his feet once more she could see a dangerous smirk on his face. Under normal circumstances, it would have terrified her but in that moment it only thrilled her. It was a promise of what was to come.

Maul positioned himself at her entrance and Ahsoka took a deep breath to focus. Reaching out to the Force only felt like a dark hole trying to pull her in and swallow all her light. Instead she focused on the Zabrak. His large shoulders, his strong jaw, the way his eyes filled with relief and excitement at the mere sight of her. The sensation of his cock slowly entering her and spreading her open.

It was as if that moment erased anything between them. Nevermind the fact that he had tried to kill her on Mandalore or that she had used him as her pawn on that ship. All of that was behind them. They were going to have to go against an enemy that Maul knew intimately. And if Maul knew anything about Sidious, it was that they had no fighting chance. They were doomed. Their only hope was to hide and disappear.

This was goodbye.

Ahsoka laid back and he bent over her chest, his forehead pressed against hers. They stilled for what felt like an eternity. They were linked as one, always had been. They could feel each other through the force, what their experiences had been. The feeling overwhelmed the former Jedi and she began to move her hips so that Maul could fade out of her mind and be replaced by physically stimulation.

His forehead was now pressed against her collarbones. She could feel his warm breath between her breasts every time he thrusted forwards, deeper into her. She held him tight, her finger nails lodged into his skin. That would surely leave a mark, she thought. But it didn't seem to bother the former Sith. If anything, it spurred him one.

For her, it wouldn’t be enough. She needed more friction.

Ahsoka tapped Maul’s shoulders which caused him to look up at her in adoration. His movements didn’t falter for a second, making it difficult for her to focus. What was she going to say?

“Kriff…”, she cursed.

It took her all of her free will to get him off of her. The Zabrak seemed confused for a second but quickly got the hint. He turned her around, now facing the console on which she was balancing herself. Using his feet, Maul pushed her legs further apart and entered her again. He stayed there unmoving until Ahsoka began to rock back against him to egg him on.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired already.”

Maul could feel the smirk in her voice without having to be face to face with her. He groaned in response, a rumble deep in his chest that she felt against her back when his hand snaked along her chest and rested on her throat. Ahsoka swallowed thickly, half expecting him to squeeze down and choke her. Perhaps she even wanted it if only to remember she was alive and could feel.

The tightening of his fist never came, instead he simply used his hand to tilt her head back and hold onto her as he began to move again. He was agonisingly slow at first but the more sounds Ahsoka was making the more Maul became unhinged. The hand that had previously been holding on to the table lodged itself between her thigh and rubbed at her entrance in tight circles.

Ahsoka tensed, moaning out his name. She was tiptoeing on the edge, her whole body trembling with the anticipation of her release. Maul leaned into her and she could feel his teeth grazing her ear. His hips were unrelenting.

“Aren’t you glad you joined me?”

The sweet whisper of his voice although mocking was all it took for her to come crashing down. She shook against his chest, the walls of her warmth squeezing down on his cock like a vice, causing his own undoing. They barely let out a sound, unable to breath and too focused on their respective pleasure.

Once they had gathered their senses again, Maul slipped out from inside her and pressed a kiss to her shoulder blade. The action seemed more intimate than all of what had just happened between them. He regretted it instantly.

Ahsoka cleared her throat. She didn’t shake him off and didn’t trying to free herself from him either. Truth be told, she found comfort in having his body above her as if he were shielding her from the rest of the galaxy.

Maul felt oddly protective. All he had ever wanted was to belong, to find someone who understood. He thought he and Savage would have taken over the Galaxy. Instead, his family had been ripped from him. Ahsoka was the closest thing he had to an ally. Even if she had been against him and would be hard to turn to his cause, it was his duty to make sure she was safe.

Ahsoka could have gotten used to it.

[mistflyer1102]

desperate

A/N: ImpComm era, AU in which Etain survives Order 66. Spoilers for the beginning to Imperial Commando: 501st.

Summary: Darman just wants back the time that was taken from him.

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

No one can live forever.

Darman knew this. He knew it the same way he’d known for the entirety of his life that he was fated to die earlier than most beings. Yet, he’d managed to survive every challenge that Kal threw his way during training, then during the war. Now he wanted that extra time that the Kaminoans took from him. However, as he stood beside Kal and Mereel, finally a free man, he could still not shake the simmering frustration at the news that in a strange twist of fate, another Kaminoan held the key to his survival. Kal still hadn't mentioned yet how he’d found this one, a non-scientist named Kina Ha, but Darman imagined it had been through less than legal means. Ny Vollen, A’den’s pilot friend, was bringing Kina Ha to Kyrimorut, and was scheduled to arrive that morning.

Omega Squad had barely made it off Coruscant as a group after Order 66. Corr and Atin helped Darman recover an injured Niner from where he had fallen on the Shinarcan Bridge Extension when chaos erupted during the clan’s messy bang-out from Coruscant. Niner, having stubbornly held onto a support beam despite his injuries to avoid falling to the ground below, now lay nearby in a makeshift medical ward Mij Gilamar had set up on the main compound. Etain lay in a bed near Niner, still in a coma from the same attacks. Besany had offered to watch Kad this morning so Darman could get an idea of what they were dealing with with the new arrival without Kad presenting a potential target. Darman had gratefully accepted the offer.

“How old did you say Kina Ha was?” Mereel asked suddenly, glancing at Kal.

“If everyone has been honest, she’s hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. She’s been apparently hiding out on Kamino all this time, but fled when Order 66 went out,” Kal said, raking a tired hand through his hair. Darman had seen him talking to Mij earlier, and whatever their conversation had been about, Kal still seemed... perturbed by it. Mij, apparently having made whatever point he wanted to make, had already gone back inside the house. “What makes me concerned is how Ha connected up with the teenager Ny mentioned,” Kal finally said, shifting his weight. “Ny said the kid wasn’t as strong in the Force as the average Jedi, but Etain is pretty resourceful despite her claims of being in a similar situation when she and I first met each other.”

Present tense. Darman knew Etain had a chance as long as she kept breathing. “I doubt she’ll be as armed as Etain was during the war,” he pointed out, glancing first at Mereel, and then at Kal. He didn’t voice his other concern, though, that just because a Jedi perceived themselves as weak in the Force, didn’t mean they were defenseless. Etain had overcome her limitations well enough, both on the fly and in her Jedi and military training.

“Besides, an elderly Kaminoan and a teenager? We’ll be fine,” Jaing said, checking the Verpine shatter rifle that he was holding.

Kal huffed, but otherwise didn’t say anything. Darman held his peace, still feeling uneasy about having Jedi outside the clan being anywhere near Kad. Prior to her departure to Kashyyyk, Etain had mentioned that Jusik agreed to help ensure that the Order never found Kad. Jusik, however, didn’t seem as worried about the new arrivals that Darman assumed he would when he heard about them. A Padawan and a wanderer, Jusik had called them when they had been talking as a group a few nights earlier. Jusik seemed convinced that neither were near the level of a threat that a Jedi Master would present to Kad.

But the rules are different now, with the Jedi Order gone.

“A little too late to be asking this, but are we sure she wasn't lying about her age?” Mereel asked, glancing at Kal.

“Well, she stands to lose everything if she’s lying, and has nothing to gain. Especially since she doesn’t know what's going to happen once she gets here,” Jaing said, still examining the rifle. He didn’t say it, but they all knew Kal had withheld his reasons for allowing Kina Ha  to come to Kyrimorut from Ny. That in turn was not a surprise to anyone present. Darman knew better now. “We have the numbers, the firepower, the training-”

“And hopefully not the overconfidence,” Mereel interrupted, eyeing his brother.

Jaing huffed. “I know, I know,” he grumbled.

Darman glanced up as he heard a faint rumbling of now-familiar engines. “Well, we’re about to find out,” he said, glancing back at the house. “Where’s Bardan?”

“No idea, but I’ll call him,” Jaing said, finally lowering the rifle to pull his comm out. “Maybe it’s a good idea to have him out here, he can tell us if there’s more than just the two Jedi and Ny onboard.”

Shab. Darman hadn’t thought about that. He swallowed, shifting his stance so that he was closer to Kal, who took a few steps forward as the Cornucopia appeared on the horizon. Mereel moved to take up a position at Kal’s flank, squeezing Darman’s shoulder as he passed him. “Udesii, even if there were more people onboard than we planned, we have more than enough ammunition between the four of us,” he murmured to Darman, who just nodded. “Just like we talked about last night. Keep their attention on you and Kal’buir, off us, and we’ll be good to go if they try something. I personally doubt it, since I trust A’den’s judgment, but desperate times make desperate people, who do desperate things.” Mereel snorted as he began to walk away. “Like us, really,” he muttered under his breath loud enough for Darman to hear.

Darman huffed in agreement, but moved as they had rehearsed the night before, taking up his position behind Kal, but in a way that he’d have a clear line of sight if a firefight started. Jaing and Mereel took up their spots just out of the field of view of anyone disembarking from the Cornucopia, and they shifted into their respective positions. Kal, meanwhile kept his hands jammed into his pockets, looking for all intents and purposes a harmless civilian. A guise, Darman remembered, Kal had used to fool many beings over the past few years Darman had known him. No one moved as the Cornucopia began to descend, and Darman kept his hands at his side, but near the pistol he’d held onto after the escape from Coruscant.

He didn’t know what to expect, but he hoped that it would be the last time a Kaminoan held his future in their hands.

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

Sorry i just got so excited and heart broken but please please please do a version of Rex x Jedi!Reader where they're there with Ahoska when Order 66 hits. Thank you so much

You weren’t even supposed to be there

But, Obi Wan insisted there had to be at least one official Jedi Commander to go with the squadron headed to Mandalor

You had volunteered, glad to help take down Maul while also jumping at the opportunity to work along side Captain Rex

Your relationship was a secret to everyone

nobody knew, no one in 501st and especially no one in the order

You and Rex were especially cautious, but that also meant you rarely got to spend as much time together as you wanted

A siege was just as good a place as any

You fight along side each other as if you’ve been doing it your entire lives

You manage to steal a few moments; a meaningful glance here, a brush of the hand there, just enough to assure the other before facing the next crisis

Eventually Maul is captured and you, Rex and Ahsoka are heading back to Coruscant

You’re not on the bridge when the order comes

You had made you excuses saying you were going to rest and meditate in your room: you hoped Rex would find his own excuse and meet you so you could actually get some time alone

You never got the chance

You felt them coming before seeing them

Multiple life forms gathered in front of your door, each completely without feeling

It was the only warning you had before the door slid open and the Clones opened fire

You raised your lightsaber just in times to catch most of the blasts, aiming them towards the door frame rather than the clones

You managed to grab hold of the bed frame with the force and throw it towards the barrage of fire

This distracted them long enough for you to climb into the ventilation, but not before getting a blaster in the side for your efforts

One you were in the clear your goal became clear; find Ahsoka and find Rex

Rex had told you about what happened to Fives and his suspicions regarding his death

You hadn’t believed him at the time, but now it became obvious; the chip was the cause of all this

Finding Ahsoka was easy enough, being able to sense her through the force

After that, it’s a matter of finding Rex

It’s Ahsoka’s brilliance idea to use Maul as a distraction, and you’re too hurt and tired to argue

With the rest of the clones distracted, both you and Ahsoka are able to subdue Rex and get him on the operating table

As soon as Rex comes to, his first question is if you’re alright and immediately asks about your injury as if he hadn’t literally just gotten brain surgery

You lose all pretense and kiss him right then and there in front of Ahsoka

She turns her head away out of respect and Rex coughs out some lame excuse, but you dismiss it saying, “If we live through this, I’m not going to care what the Jedi Order thinks”

After that, it’s a fight to survive

Everything that can go wrong does, but by some miracle the three of you are able to get on a transport just before the entire ship goes down

You each stare out at the wreckage, none of you not quite knowing that to do

That’s when Rex takes a shovel and starts digging

It takes you a long time, but you find what bodies you can and take the time to mark each grave of the fallen clone troopers

Once you’re done, you and Rex look over the carnage, Rex with his arm wrapped around your waist holding you close to his side as if afraid to let you go

Neither of you know what to say or even do, all you know is that you survived and somehow you’re each going to have to find away to live with that

Send Me a Clone Wars Headcanon Prompt

[justdyingslowly]

1. Name justdyingslowly obviously come on

2. Nationality Australian

3. Age 22

4. Birthday nnnah dont feel like it

5. Zodiac sign (or your primal zodiac sign) Libra/Scorpio cusp

6. Gender wamon

7. Sexuality very very hetero

8. Your looks (add a picture or describe yourself) androgenous

9. What do you/did you study? Psychology (focus on sexology) and art.

10. What’s your current job like?/What job would you like to have? I am disabled you think I can work ha sexologist would be awesome. When I was a kid I wanted to be a fireman but Australias always burning

-

11. Your birth order head first

12. How many siblings do you have? 1

13. Do you have good relations with your family? yeah dads finally out of his abusive relationship, nearing age 70 and his emotions and his sexuality are finally opening up for the first time and that makes me SO happy.

14. How many friends do you have? what kind of fucked up question is this.

15. Your relationship status relationshipped. Fiance? got the marriage papers in a drawer somewhere with the car rego but can’t be fucked filling them?

16. What do you look for in a SO? empathetic, mature, calm. Always open to discussion. Prefers to be blunt rather than secretive. Emotional age over 14 (incredibly fucking rare apparently). Puts an importance on context and understanding other views above all else.

17. Do you have a crush? Hellll yeah Crush on my partner and got a crush on a mutual friend of ours who don’t even know hes cute af hehe one day partners gonna accidentally spill the beans and embarrass me coz hes shit with secrets RIP me.

18. When did you have your first kiss? You think I can remember this bullshit? Its not that big a deal

19. Do you prefer serious and meaningful relationships or casual dating/one night stands? One night stand sex almost exclusively sucks. Just. SUCKS. Because neither of you know what the other likes and it ends up being an awkward mix of trying to please yourself while trying to also be considerate.

20. What are your deal breakers? Plugging your ears to anything that feels gross, uncomfortable or disagrees with you. How can you grow as a person without introspection? How can you mold what you think and believe without taking in other arguments and comparing them to your beliefs to see how they stack up? Its pathetic.

-

21. How was your day? cute mutual friend had a fall this morning and were both worried about him. His back is bad and he’s getting a little older, he can’t be getting dizzy and having falls like that. other than that im anxious about seeing my gastro. He’s lovely but... specialists are specialists. Good at knowing what they know but not always great at listening.

22. Favourite food & drink you think im allowed to eat or drink? water and... foods a touchy subject.

23. What position do you sleep in? Usually on my side with a body pillow to grip so I don’t end up choking my partner in his sleep.

24. What was your last dream about? uuhhh...going to italy and being unable to get into this tiny basket boat properly.

25. Your fears does PTSD to medical shit count haha

26. Your dreams ... going to italy and being unable to get into a tiny basket boat thingy?

27. Your goals - get some sort of diagnosis eventually. Its been 3 years of trying and im tired. - get back to studying art part time for my bachelors. - pass JLPT N3. - go back to university for psychology. - do the dishes when I get home.

28. Any pets? two budgies. we also take care of any orphaned or injured birds.

29. What are your hobbies? feeling nauseous drawing writing a little bit im making a little gameboy game in C atm too

30. Any cool places in your area? i live next to a national park with waterfalls and koalas and emus and stuff

31. What was your last awkward situation? mutual friend made a comment on his chest i playfully smacked it (related to the comment) it was surprisingly hard “O-oh wow, thats... I didnt expect that” my partner laughed at me. it was awful.

32. What is your last regret? getting embarrassed at friends pecs stop making me think about it 33. Language/s you can speak english. N4 Japanese.

34. Do you believe in astrological stuff? (Zodiac, tarot, etc.) of course not what the fuck

35. Have any quirks? Quirkless. I do wiggle when im happy though apparently.

36. Your pet peeves open doors.

37. Ideal vacation spend a months chilling in an old japanese house in autumn hokkaido oooooof that sounds nice

38. Any scars? internal? yes

39. What does your last text message say? peepee poopoo ustinky

40. Last 5 things from your search history how do i find this

41. What’s your [device] background? Sam Porter Bridges walkin around Sam Porter Bridges cuddling BB-28 Louise while he sleeps my chicken

42. What do you daydream about? all might

43. Describe your dream home an old japanese house in autumn hokkaido oooooof that sounds nice

44. What’s your religion/Your thought about religion its a comforting thought having a parent-figure who cares about you and looks after all the big things you can’t manage yourself, but institutionalizing it runs a severe risk of becoming harmful cults. And it often does.

45. Your personality type me

46. The most dangerous thing you’ve done i saw the lost bunny that was on all the posters in the neighbourhood looked thin and patchy so i grabbed him to take him home. im allergic. sent me to hospital and I almost died.

47. Are you happy with your current life? feeling sick sucks and partners having a depressive episode but things are pretty good

48. Some things you’ve tried in your life living

-

49. What does your wardrobe consist of? blacks, reds, whites and pinks

50. Favourite colour to wear? at the moment pink. Red is always comforting though.

51. How would you describe your style? mix between lazy alternative punk, teenager with band shirts and harajuku peach kawaii uwu

52. Are you happy with your current looks? kinda wish i was a bit shorter but what can you do

53. If you could change/add something to your appearance - impossible or not - what would it be? bit shorter

54. Any tattoos or piercings? lol no PTSD

55. Do you get complimented often? by who? partner constantly, family haha are you kidding im australian so a friend’s version of showing affection is calling you a cunt and slapping your ass in public

56. Favourite aesthetic? all might

57. A popular trend that you dislike blocking because you disagree or find them distasteful. Ignoring all context to opposing thoughts and arguments. taking a personal feeling of disgust to mean something is evil. Blocking your ears to anything that isn’t a circlejerk of what you already think - and trying to isolate anyone who even just listens to something other then the noise of your sloppy dicks to have a thought of their own.

-

58. Songs you’re currently obsessed with? The Machine by Low Roar

59. Song you normally wouldn’t admit you like. why wouldnt i admit i like a song

60. Favourite genre? probably enka haha

61. Favourite artist/band/genre? probably enka haha oh and tatsuro yamashita

62. Hated popular songs/artists? why the hell would I hate something like a song? I hate aspects of the music industry as a whole I guess?

63. Put your music on shuffle and list first 5 which playlist they aren’t all together in one place

64. Can you sing or play any instruments? piano, saxophone... uh... partners good at making music and playing shakuhachi

65. Do you like karaoke? no.

66. Own any albums? yes? many?

67. Do you listen to radio? What stations? no. but triple J, ABC Jazz and Classical. sometimes they even play final fantasy and JRPG music on classical which is pretty neat. -

68. Favourite movie/series? can i make this about games because then the answer is Metal Gear Solid

69. Favourite genre of movies/books/etc ...shounen?

70. Your fictional crush/es if they’re over 40yrs old, male and happy and bubbily or grumpy and sad then there’s a big ol fat chance I wanna bone. Solid Snake from MGS4, All Might and pretty much anyone drawn by Tarou Madoromi.

71. Which fictional character is you? uh

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so what does this even mean what language is this

73. Favourite greek god? idk hades seems chill

74. A legend from where you live that you like the story of Tjilbruke is funny and good. all Kaurna stories are good.

75. Do you like art? What’s your favourite work or artist? im in a big egon schiele mood atm.

76. Can you share your other social media? no i am incapable

77. Favourite youtubers? many

78. Favourite platform? not too high up. actually i like being a little lower than ground level in corners.

79. How much time do you spend on the internet? too much

80. What video games have you played? Which one’s your favourite? look i just want to say that MGS4 is the best one in the series and Death Stranding is phenomenally engaging.

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts) these are all so goddamn definitive how can I pick? Oh wait the answer is One Piece

82. Do you play board/card games? I play DnD atm and know 15 yr old rules to Yugioh

83. Have you ever been to a night marathon in cinema? that shit dosn’t happen here

84. Favourite holiday golden week coz its a week also easter because thats when all the glucose based sweets come back

85. Are you into dramas? what kind

-

86. Would you use death note, if you had one? no. thats called being a murderer.

87. What changes would you make in the world, no matter how impossible, if you had the power to? chill people out a bit. when people feel unsafe they get really depenfive and territorial and block their ears to everything, making in-and-out groups for themsevles that end up putting them in more harm.

88. Could you survive a zombie apocalypse? im disabled with a disabled partner. we arent funny sure we can survive normal everyday life when society is angled so sharply against us.

89. If you had to be turned into a paranormal being, what would it be? id like to be a mimi spirit

90. What would you want to happen to you after your death? spooky time

91. If you had to change your name, what would be your pick? toshinori yagi

92. Who would you switch your life with for a week? anyone healthy

93. Pick an emoji to be your tattoo that cursed one with the intense eyes and the hand

94. Write 3 things about yourself - only one of them must be true im me im not me im pee

-

95. Cold or hot? cold.

96. Be a hero or be a villain? both are distasteful ideas in reality

97. Sing everything you want to say or rhyme? i can’t do either partner speak sin bad puns and its hell, these both sound about equal

98. Shapeshifting or controlling time? shapeshifting. controlling time is eithe rmanipulative or lonely. shapeshifing is every other superpower at once.

99. Be immortal or be immune to everything aside from natural death? both are deeply upsetting ideas

100. ….. or …..? jiji or ossan? generally Jiji, but ossans can be lovely too.

[aquaquadrant]

ravenous red

Star Wars: The Clone Wars fanfic Rating: T Warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, injury, blood, death Summary:

i heard you wanted a war funny, i wanted it more

~*~

So he says nothing, letting his gaze speak his hate as he relents, turning and walking away. It feels like disgrace, it feels like a failure, to go do her bidding- go cause some chaos, she taunts- but real victory lies in that which she does not yet know. Good at it, sure, he can admit as much, but the means to the end will be something she doesn’t expect. That’s how he’ll get her, collateral damage in this personal storm he directs.

At her request.

Lady Tano, you don’t know what you’ve just asked for.

A/N: I know I said my last oneshot was my tribute to the Clone Wars, but then I heard a song that fit Maul perfectly so I had to do a tribute to him too. It’s actually a song fic, I’ve been writing fanfic since I was 13 but this is my first song fic so hopefully I did it right. This is basically Order 66 from Maul’s POV, showing off how much of a spiteful, unhinged badass he really is. Hope you enjoy, reblogs/comments are appreciated! – Aqua

Song is Appetite for Destruction by Vo Williams

Click here to read on Archive of Our Own

Click here to support me on Ko-fi

~*~

ravenous red

It starts with a scream.

Ringing out through the force like a shot, chaos crashing in after it. Words pass in flashes, snippets he can’t quite decipher. The impressions of feelings brush against him; shock, betrayal, desperation. He feels the flicker of lightning, a bygone but familiar sensation. Someone somewhere has made a very poor choice, one that will echo for ages, one that he expected.

(He did try and warn them)

It’s not long before they come. Identical faces behind identical helmets approach without words. They are rigid, unflinching, as they move to lower the shield that protects him, ensnares him, with unspoken intent written plainly as anything else.

Any lingering sympathy he has for these beings, these clones that were raised to be tools- as was he- dissipates like mist in the sun. To think, they would kill him like this. Trapped and defenseless. A coward’s method of choice; it insults him, right to the core. Let him out, let him fight, he’ll give them a show. He’ll remove the spines they don’t deserve. They aren’t using them anyway.

The death in the air is a pulse in his brain, a constant crashing and ebb of bloody waves. It’s hard to concentrate, hard to mediate between what’s happening right in front of him and what’s happening lightyears away. The force is a furnace, thousands of bodies toppling into it to burn. It devours them gladly, wiping out light from the sky to leave nothing but smoke and ash in return.

He wants to join in, wants to destroy. Not a Sith, not quite, but he hunts like one still. The darkness beckons for him, a familiar cold, coursing through his veins. Yellow eyes glare through glass, burning with hatred and rage. He’d kill them, if only he could. He wants them to know it. He wants them to feel it.

If looks could kill, they’d already be dead.

this is the end of your days it's time we end the charades open the cage, i want to play time for the bridges to blaze

Blasters are raised- but cut down just as quickly.

His savior is a flash of blue. Unexpected but welcome (though he prefers red). Her hostility is unsurprising, her fear concealed well- but not completely. She feels the same death he does, but it frightens her, whereas it only strengthens his resolve. He will not fall as the Jedi do. He loathes the thought; there is too much unfinished business for him to perish now.

(Kenobi will survive this because Maul must be the one to kill him, no one else, he wills this with every fiber of his being- and will is a powerful thing, will allowed him to survive being cleaved in half)

Between the two of them, everything falls into place. His master’s plan, beautiful and deadly. Brilliant and artful. Cowardly and despicable. To strike them down with the men who were created to serve, to protect. They’re nothing but droids now, mindless droids coated in flesh. It doesn’t matter to him; he’d kill either way, but he knows that she won’t.

It’s good that she’s come to him, he’ll do it for her, do what must be done to get them out alive-

Except, no.

She rejects him. She wants to strike out on her own, condemn him to the same lonely fate. It’s foolish. So blinded by her lofty morals that she fails to grasp they’re both members of the same dying breed. The Padawan who might’ve joined him has retreated far beneath the surface, hiding under a cloak of denial at the vision he sees. Her attachment is strong, too strong, that she cannot accept the truth even when given freely.

How dare she? How dare she?! Dare to use him and cast him aside, as so many others before- always remember that you are nothing- this child in a warrior’s mask, thinking he’ll act as her pawn. No, not anymore.

Oh, he’ll kill her. He’ll kill her for that. So many ways to do it, weapon or no. Reach out a hand, reach for the force, strangle the breath from her lungs, crushing her throat in his grasp. In this moment, he hates so greatly he truly thinks that he could. Crush her throat, or crush her skull, he wants to, grab her head and smash it against the wall. Red dripping down lekku of blue and white, a striking image it’d make, to be sure. He always did have an eye for these things.

He wants to see it.

i'm slipping into a craze twisted images into the brain turn up the volume on the pain give me the feeling i crave

But no.

Logic and reason win out. They dictate he cannot waste time on the likes of her. She proved a difficult fight before and his chances are slim as they are. Save his energy, save his effort for the real battle to come, for the ones who march to the tempo of death and come for him next, they’ll come for him just as well as for her.

Neither of them are Jedi but he knows they will not see it as so.

In the end that’s all that matters, how they will see you, how they perceive you, all the words in the world make no difference at all. Words do nothing, only action can produce results, as he’s clearly been shown.

So he says nothing, letting his gaze speak his hate as he relents, turning and walking away. It feels like disgrace, it feels like a failure, to go do her bidding- go cause some chaos, she taunts- but real victory lies in that which she does not yet know. Good at it, sure, he can admit as much, but the means to the end will be something she doesn’t expect. That’s how he’ll get her, collateral damage in this personal storm he directs.

At her request.

Lady Tano, you don’t know what you’ve just asked for.

show me your villainous ways show me the killer's awake make me afraid that's how you bring me to life make the adrenaline race i want a taste

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

Alone, he persists.

His path’s uncontested, legs of metal storming heavy and loud through the ship, not trying to hide. Let them come, he’ll be ready. This aggression needs somewhere to go, after all. It’s burning him up inside. He knows intimately what it’ll do to him, if he won’t let it out. The anger, the pain. It seeks to devour, a ravenous red haze flowing through him, taking control of his brain.

It guides him and he lets it. His stalk is a predator’s stalk, single-minded focus on the hunt. He’s not afraid. They’ll see they aren’t the only executioners at work today.

They find him quickly, scattered through the ship as they are, and greet him with a volley of fire. Metal bends to his will, peeling away like skin off of flesh. Weapons or no, he’s been given a task. He can be creative. The true measure of a warrior lies not in their blade. To wield power, he needs only to look within and ask.

The very walls of their ship become the instruments of their demise. He lifts without effort, advancing slowly but surely with an unbroken stride. Walls to deflect their shots, to smash them aside, to cut through armor, through flesh, and through bone. Two heads roll off with a thrust of his arm, slack faces concealed in their helms. Bodies crushed in between, crumbling limp to the floor. A sharp flick of the wrist pins one to the wall, sliced in half- the irony is not lost on him, but humor has no place here, in this tomb.

And finally, they make their retreat, aiming to seal him inside. But no, he’s not done with them yet. There’s something he needs and he’s not asking politely.

The arm comes off in the end, the vital comm-link still attached to the bracer. He slips it on, leaving the limb to bleed red on the floor, staining the armor- and he was right, what a striking image it makes. But he can’t linger long.

Chatter through the communicator gives him his next target.

Chaos… really, she should have been more specific.

i heard you wanted a war funny, i wanted it more here comes the "bang-bang" on your door it's time to back up the noise i've been ignoring the voice begging me seek and destroy it's eating my core feel like a time bomb in the eye of a storm

He makes it to the engine room without interruption.

It’s cavernous, the floor far below, a pit spanned by narrow bridges. It’s protected, as he expected, clones charge to stop him but they matter not. Their efforts are wasted. Over the edge they go; others fall to commandeered blaster fire, or to his fists. He will succeed by any means. It’s futile of them to resist.

(They can’t help it, he knows, but he doesn’t care- he wants their blood anyways)

The dark side has never flowed more strongly within him. It’s a wellspring inside his chest, filling him completely with inky black cold. Their will is one and the same; burn it all. He reaches out, power surging, fueling his rage as it takes hold. All around him, machinery falls. Sparks rain down from above as reactors are peeled off the walls.

He’ll tear them apart from within. Metal shrieks and groans as he pries it away. The ship’s hyperdrive core is his aim. Without it, they’re stranded. Him as well, but he’s not planning to stay. There must be shuttles, and nothing will get in his way.

The doors part, and another squadron advances to stop him- but they’re too late. He topples the reactors on top of them and down it all goes, crashing to the floor far below, sealing their fate.

And with that, it’s time to take his leave.

let all the chips hit the floor do everything that you want settle the score that's how you bring me to life that's when I'm feeling recharged i want it all

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

The flight deck is a battlefield.

She’s here- but of course- attempting to hold off the rest of the forces, their volley of fire. Somehow, someway, she’s pulled one to her side. Her little captain fights bravely, but there’s too many, it won’t be enough.

He senses opportunity, another chance perhaps to make her see. Come to her aid now and she’ll have no choice but to accept. Offer survival; a joint escape from this wreckage for her and her dog (though he cares not for three). Two are better than one, even if two is the way of the Sith, which he’s not. Their chances are better together. He knows this. He feels this.

Except, no.

She already had her chance, she had three. She rejected him. She scorned him. She cast him aside. You lie, she told him. Your vision is flawed. Arrogant. Stubborn. He hates her. He hates her.

Within a second, his choice is made. He runs past, towards the ship that would be her salvation- now it’s his. She pursues, he deflects; a dangerous dance. The world’s falling around them, and still they cannot help but fight- it’s in her nature, in her nature as well as in his.

You wanted this chaos, he taunts.

Then, without mercy, he pushes her over the edge.

i feel the monster rising up inside and i can't hold it down i'm hungry for destruction pieces crumbling, fall into the ground

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

She’s still alive when he leaves.

His ship arcs away from the crash, plowing through smoke and fire. The entire carrier is doomed, every last soul aboard sharing its fate. Escape pods destroyed, no more ships to salvage. Surely, then, this is their end- but not his.

(He did tell them they’d all burn; but while some burn in fire, others burn with it)

There’s no remorse in his escape. It’s a measure of strength; only he was enough to get out alive. He cares not for her, for how she will burn. She deserves it. In fact, he’d say out of all the beings on that ship, she’s the only one. The droids-who-were-clones cannot ‘deserve’ a fate either way. Every action is the command of somebody else, not their own.

A great victory for his master. The thought curls his lip. But he’ll count his blessings; he survived, and as the galaxy is reshaped, he knows that he has all the skills required to thrive. A tool he might be, but a sharp one. A deadly one.

His master saw to that. He should thank him. Maybe he will- before he kills him.

As for her... the possibility lingers that she might’ve survived as well. Resourceful. Determined. He sensed these traits in her. But he truly hopes that she hasn’t, that the firestorm has swallowed her whole. Not for his sake, but hers. Because if she survived, then the next time he sees her- and he will, if she has- she won’t be so lucky simply to burn.

He will kill her slowly, painfully. Unimaginable agony. Broken in body and mind. Enough to beg for death. Enough to understand what he’s felt, the culmination of all his suffering- truly, a fate to wish on no one.

Best to be taken in fire and chaos.

Lady Tano, isn’t that what you wanted?

i feel my rage erupting feed my appetite for destruction blood rushing i love when you feed my appetite for destruction

~*~

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 66 - The Promise of Spring

Chapter Rating: Mature Chapter Warnings: Gore, Dismemberment Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Action/Adventure, Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Fereldan Culture and Customs, Cousland Feels, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Read it on AO3

--

First day of Wintermarch, 9:32 Dragon, First Day

Dim, early morning light seeped through the curtains in Rosslyn’s room. Her windows faced east and north, over the sea, and for years her mornings had been spent hiding from the sun to catch a few more hours of sleep before the inevitable start to the castle’s day, but on this morning, the first peek of dawn did not bother her. She was already awake, if barely, warm under the covers and content. Alistair lay beside her, sharing her pillow, his legs tangled with hers, running gentle caresses along her arms and back with the tips of his fingers.

“I should go,” he told her, breaking into a yawn.

She nudged forwards, brushing a slow touch over his collarbone. “Just a little longer.”

“I’ll be missed,” he warned. “And then I won’t be ready in time. And neither will you.”

“You’ll be cold if you leave,” she pointed out, with a pout.

“I’ll just have to keep myself warm thinking of you.”

Still not quite awake enough to laugh properly, Rosslyn sighed, and leaned into the soft touch along the side of her face before wriggling closer to rest her forehead against his.

“You know, this wouldn’t be such a problem if you married me.”

Her smile widened. “Hush with your logic.”

The subject had become something of a joke between them, moments of levity strung out like beads on a necklace that started when she had airily asked if she could expect him to steal the last pastry at breakfast every morning of their lives. Since then, they had discussed so many things, from the inane to the serious, what colour they should use to monogram the egg-cups and whether it would be better to live in Denerim with the king, or in Highever where they could help Fergus rebuild.

She leaned into him now with a slow press of her lips against his, the gentle hitch of her leg over his waist, a quiet hum when his palm graced her thigh.

“Are you sure you’re not a little bit tempted to stay?” she asked, with her fingers carded in his hair.

“I know what this is,” he replied. His expression remained soft, but worry pulled at the corners of his eyes and she found herself wanting to hide away in the safety of his shoulder. “I won’t ask if you’re sure –”

“I am.”

“And I’ll be beside you for every step of today,” he promised. “And after that, it’ll be over.”

“But they’ll still be gone,” she mumbled. “Is it strange, that after all this time it still feels like a little part of me was hoping that… that they’d just spring back into being?”

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Alistair shook his head. “When my mother died, they wouldn’t let me see her.”

She held herself closer; he talked so rarely about his childhood.

“For months I wouldn’t believe she was dead, I kept insisting that she was travelling no matter what anyone told me. I grew out of it eventually, I guess, but it’s hard, not getting closure like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he answered. Their hands found each other and laced together. “I wish I could do more to stop you hurting – but I’m not staying!” he amended quickly, as one fine eyebrow arched.

“Worth a try,” she teased.

“You’re incorrigible.” He scooted across to kiss her. “And I have to go before your maid comes in and scolds me.”

She huffed good-naturedly against his mouth. “Fine. If you must.”

“My lady is so gracious.”

He brushed one last kiss over her lips and rolled over to wriggle out from under the covers, careful to avoid opening their space to any chill inrush of air. As he winced along the cold boards retrieving his clothes so haphazardly discarded the night before, she stretched under the blankets and watched him, and when he reached the door still shrugging his jerkin onto his shoulders, he glanced over at her and his smile might have melted the winter around them.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“I love you.”

--

Three hours later, she stood on the headland outside the city on a flat spur of rock that lifted itself above the tide line, protected from the buffet of the wind by layers of leather and quilted samite, and a hood of thick fur that tickled her cheek with every gust. The sky over the sea had darkened with the burgeoning threat of a storm, an occasional flash of lightning behind the charcoal smudge of heavy rain, and it stirred a bitter tang of damp wood and rotting seaweed in the back of her throat.

The journey down from the castle had begun with the usual chaos of the season, the celebration for the turning point of the year that came with shouts and coloured streamers and a turfing out of old things, and with Alistair and Fergus at her side she had led Highever’s population to a cove rimmed with greyish sand and flat, smooth boulders poking out of the shingle in the low tide, topped with limpets and serpent-green seaweed. A single column of rock rose out of the surf among its smaller brethren, its uneven face stained with rust from the ancient iron rings riveted to it at half the height of a human, a landmark that had once been nothing more than one of many eroded sea stacks along the teyrnir’s coast, but which had been pressed into service generations ago for moments just such as these.

As a crowd gathered on the dunes around her to watch, guards in Laurel blue marched to the cage drawn behind their carriage and hauled Howe from the floor before dragging him to where she waited with the others. He was filthy. The people they had passed in the streets had thrown ash over him from the dead fires of the previous year, but the grey streaks over his skin did little to hide the way it sagged, the stains on the cloth and the lank hair, the sores at his wrists and ankles where the cuffs had cut too deep. The guards gripped him by the elbows as Rosslyn stepped forward to address the crowd, and it was only in part to make sure he didn’t try to escape.

“The year past has been hard on us all,” she called to the people, in a voice lacking the wobble it had carried that faint, faraway day on Harrowhill when she ordered the retreat. “We have lost, and we have mourned, but we have also survived to stand in defiance of those who would have trodden us into the mud.” Rapt silence met her words. “We have much to rebuild, but today is a day of celebration, a day of hope, and a day of justice for those who have done us wrong.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and drew the Rose’s Thorn form its sheath.

“Maker spit on you,” Howe snarled as she approached. “I deserved more.”

“I agree.”

One of the guards fisted his hand in Howe’s hair to keep his head still. He struggled nonetheless, but she paid him no mind as she drew the tip of her blade along the crest of each sallow cheek, deep enough for a line of blood to well and mix with the coating of ash, but not deep enough for true disfigurement.

“After today, you will be forgotten, your name never spoken, and your bones left to rot in the depths of the sea,” she told him in an undertone. “You had best hope the cold takes you before the sea drakes catch your scent.”

At that, what little defiance was left in his eyes drained away. He had been present to witness her father dispose of the Orlesian duke who had stolen the Cousland seat and treated the people like amusements, had seen first-hand the old punishment brought into new use, the ritual that was both catharsis and warning for those left standing on the shore. Perhaps Howe had thought she would lack the spleen to use it.

She let her gaze slide past him and turned back to the crowd. Her voice, raised from the stomach as Aldous had taught her, reverberated from the circling dunes so that it had an almost magical power. “Now, as for generations, we send the ashes of our past griefs into the sea, to be cleansed so that the world may be renewed.”

A small wave of her hand, and the guards shoved Howe along the causeway, beyond the stretch of the sand and the maze of boulders to the spire already being licked with the first waves of the incoming tide. One held him in place while the other passed chains through the central ring, then fastened the ends around each of his wrists. He would have enough slack to move, to pace if he wanted, but not so much that he would be able to keep his head above the water – if he kept his head at all. The people watched in silence as the guards returned to stand with the rest of the Cousland escort, and even the storm itself seemed to pause, as if waiting to see what happened next.

“What now?” Alistair asked in her ear. Officially, he had come as the king’s representative, to see justice done, but his presence at her back steadied her even if the method of execution wasn’t to his liking.

“We wait.”

The water rose slowly. It undulated in and away, creeping to cover the rocks until only little bobbing patches of seaweed marked their place and then they too disappeared, while crests of white foam lapped at first the shingle then the sand, then at Howe’s ankles where he stood chained to the spire. This was the point, the dread of the inexorable ending. Even from so far away, she could see the nervous darts of his head as his eyes scanned the water, his start as the first spines broke the surface. On his other side, a narrow draconic head smooth with grey-blue scales lifted from the waves with a plume of spray from its nostrils, its head turning this way and that to regard him with large, yellow eyes, before it slipped back under the next crest and disappeared. More shadows stirred under the water, each movement becoming another half-glimpsed fin or a lightning flash of scales, attracted by the smell of blood and Howe’s splashing as he backed against the stone.

The water reached halfway up his thigh when the first sea drake hauled itself onto the causeway. Even half-submerged, it was still huge, with a thick neck and powerful shoulders, a sloped back armoured with interlocking scales that narrowed and paled down its flanks. Webbed black spines ran in a ridge down its back to a broad, paddle-shaped tail, and up to a pair of vestigial horns that crested its head like a crown. Rosslyn had only been small when she had first seen one through her mother’s glass, sunning itself on the pebbled shore of a rocky islet, but even so many years later her awe of such a creature had not diminished. Howe kicked water at it and shouted as it stalked towards him on short, stately legs, and with the air of an affronted cat the spines flared along its back, its hiss a thing of primeval menace as it dived into the swell of an incoming wave. Before Howe could celebrate his triumph, however, another drake surfaced on his other side and made a feinting snap at his knees. He drove off that one, too, but others were already closing in.

“And we just watch?” Alistair asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “How long do we stay here?”

“Until it is finished,” Fergus answered.

“This is how things are done,” Rosslyn told him, her eyes fixed on the far, struggling point. “You were right that we can’t match the suffering he caused, but it isn’t about killing him.” Her expression softened into doubt, and she turned to him. “You don’t have to stay.”

The crash of a wave drowned out Howe’s yelled curse, but not the chorus of inhuman cries that followed it. Alistair’s jaw clenched at the sound, but he reached for her hand anyway.

“I promised I would,” he said.

She had told him what was planned, waited with held breath for him to make her choose between his righteousness and justice for her people, but he had merely nodded, and followed her lead, and now the last of her worry washed away in a sigh of relief. A scream behind her brought her gaze back to Howe. The water reached almost to his chest. For a moment she saw only a patch of darkness spreading like oil over the water, and then stillness, and streams of sinuous forms moving against the current. And then the water frothed pink. Howe shrieked. His arms jerked to try and get away, the chains sparking against the rock, until with one final shudder his body fell limp, and the only movement then came from the squabble of the sea drakes over their feast.

Through it all, Rosslyn watched stony-faced, forced herself not to look away. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it. For a moment, the emotion stirring beneath her ribs went unrecognised, like a call in the darkness, until her breathing eased and she realised the slow spread of peace through her limbs. The encroaching storm and the rising water swallowed up the scene before her. It would take days for the bones to be picked clean, and somehow that was enough, final enough, that a weight she had not realised she had been carrying lifted from her shoulders, and when she turned her head to face Fergus, he met her gaze with the same tired look in his eyes. When they had stood together on the steps of Castle Cousland nearly a year before, her head had been full of the stories of battle, valiant triumphs and victories over fearful opponents, but few had mentioned what came after, the emptiness when there was nobody left to fight, and nobody waiting at home to welcome the hero’s return.

She had forgotten Alistair’s hand in hers until he squeezed it lightly to get her attention. People were already starting to leave. Watching them, the slow, steady amble back to hearth and home and family to light the fires for the coming year, she sagged and let her head fall on his shoulder, accepting the quiet flow of his strength with nothing more than a sigh. Her mind drifted back over the past few weeks, to their argument and the question he had asked her. They had spent so much time together since then, sharing meals and sneaking out of each other’s beds in the mornings, small moments that would have been unthinkable to the girl who had thundered out of the barbican gates in the middle of the night at the head of an army.

“It’s getting late,” Alistair murmured as the first drops of rain pattered the rock around them.

“It’s done,” she agreed. “We should go.”

The journey back to the castle passed in silence, and more silence met them beyond the barbican. Aside from the complement of volunteers filling the duty roster, most of the guard and the servants had taken the day to visit friends or relatives after the services in the chantry. As Rosslyn descended from the carriage, her thoughts drifted to Morrence, who had found her home a wreckage of the one she knew, and who had gone with Leliana to spend time with Gideon and his brothers.

“You’re back!” Amell cried from the top of the stairs, her voice nearly blown away by the wind. “Lord Fergus needs his treatment.”

“Can it wait?” Fergus asked. “I want to walk in the gardens.”

“Your Lordship, the weather –”

“Dearest little sister, how about we take a turn together?” he interrupted.

Something in his tone reminded Rosslyn of their mother when she was determined to get her way, but she had inherited the Seawolf’s steel, too. “Are you warm enough?”

“What, under the four blankets you’ve already piled on top of my five layers?”

“I feared you wouldn’t be able to walk if I added any more,” she told him with a wry quirk of her brow.

“I’m fine,” he huffed. “You fuss worse than Nan ever did.”

Alistair delicately cleared his throat. “I’ll be in the library.”

She squeezed his fingers, mourning that she had to let them go. “I’ll see you soon.”

For an instant, his gaze lingered on her mouth, but with their company he let her go unkissed, and they parted, he up the keep steps into the warmth of the castle, and she after her brother, who was already halfway to the door in the curtain wall that led down to the uppermost terrace of the gardens. The stairs in the pass were free of ice, but the narrow corridor channelled the wind into a freezing knife that cut at any flesh not safely hidden under winter layers. The gravel paths beyond wandered as they always had between beds now devoid of their summer verdancy, as if no horrors had befallen the castle at all, with only the ragged line of the clipped rosemary hedges betraying the months of neglect.

Fergus’ cane tapped a steady rhythm along the path, keeping time with the pace of Rosslyn’s thoughts as she fidgeted with the silence. She let him lead her, distracting herself with the work that would need to be done, and hoping the sky would leave off opening long enough for her brother to say whatever was clearly on his mind.

“That was a good speech you gave today,” he said eventually, poking at a weed that had sprung up between the stones. “Are you going to take your own advice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Moving forward,” he answered. “Building a life.”

He turned off the formal walk to a path that clung to the base of the keep wall, and her step faltered. She knew where they were going.

“The war isn’t over yet.” She picked a stray bit of leaf from her glove. “There are still things to do.”

He stopped, turned. “You have a man who loves you – a good man, who’s worthy of you, as far as I can tell. Putting that off helps no one.”

“Putting what off, exactly?”

For the space of a breath, he held the challenge in her gaze, battling her will to be obstinate in the face of his prying, until he grumbled something unintelligible and lifted his eyes skyward. Whether he was cursing her or the weather was difficult to tell.

“You’ve become quite grouchy in your old age,” she remarked as they continued along the path.

An elegant glasshouse waited at the end of it, set against the northern wall of the keep and best placed for the sun and the views as the terraced levels of the garden gave way to sheer basalt cliffs. Many of the glass panes between the wrought-iron frames had broken, and dead leaves piled inside the door, but with nothing to burn or to break, the interior had been left mostly untouched. The servants must have kept the plants watered for there to still be so much greenery, but Rosslyn doubted many of Howe’s soldiers had ventured far enough into the gardens to even discover Oriana’s solar, the gift she had found waiting for her when she stepped off that final ship from Antiva.

Of course Fergus would want to spend time in this place, on this day. He was already wandering through the space, his hands brushing the leaves of the orange trees his wife had planted as the rain finally unleashed itself upon them. It clattered on the glass like a volley of ballista bolts, globs of gritty sleet that turned into a water race towards the gutter and spilled over the broken bits in the roof. He ignored the roar as the front passed over them and settled into a steadier drone against their shelter, busy instead with an overturned chair that he dusted off with the tail end of one of his blankets.

“He asked you, didn’t he?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not talking about this with you. I had enough of you all prying into my personal life years before I ever met Alistair, and it’s not going to change now. It’s between me and him. And I can’t believe you would be so hypocritical! You nearly ran away to Antiva when Mother mentioned –” Her mouth snapped shut, but too late to avoid the grief pinching at the corners of her brother’s eyes.

“Don’t deny yourself happiness out of pity for me,” he cautioned. “I lost everything except you, don’t – don’t add to that. You deserve the same joy I had. There’s –” He blinked and looked up at the rain. “There’s nothing like it, and we Couslands don’t do well when denied our passions. We mope, and you’re awful when you mope.”

Unsure of how to reply, she turned away from him and out to the raging sea. It was all well for her brother to sit and hand out advice like one of Canavan’s battle lectures but he had had nothing to lose in pursuit of Oriana; he would still have been himself. She wanted the future she saw with Alistair, that image of them curled up together in the library with the sunlight streaming through the window, but in the darkness when the nightmares woke her and only the sound of his breathing kept her panic at bay, the fear of losing him – of the husk she might become without him – became a visceral, living thing that threatened to engulf her whole. She couldn’t take the step, couldn’t make it real.

She deflected for something simpler. “What about you?”

“I’ll do my duty, as Father would have wanted,” he answered, stabbing his cane through a leaf. “And if that prince of yours ever forgets how good he has it, I’ll have to step in and remind him. Forcefully. With a sword.”

At that, she smiled. “You’re so annoying.”

“It makes up for all the years you tagged along after me, trying to keep up,” he shot back, and even stuck out his tongue.

“We used to drive Nan mad.”

“It’s a shame she worked out our scheme for stealing biscuits from the kitchen.” He sighed. “Go on in and see His Highness, before he comes out looking and thinking you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole or something. I – I want to stay here for a while.”

Alone, he didn’t say.

“And your healing session?” she asked.

“I’ll manage without it.”

The dutiful part of her worried, wanted to argue, but she remembered Deerswall, and the solitude she had looked for in the grove away from the eyes of all looking to her to lead. So she nodded, and drew her weather layers more tightly around her shoulders for the walk back to the keep.

“Don’t stay out too long,” she said, and stepped out into the rain.

[raja-myna]

yesterday is long since lost

FINALLY got this thing done!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25070434

Anakin – and he is Anakin, even if that name feels a little bit like putting on a shirt he had thought he had outgrown – knows that he’s messing up. When he first realized what had happened, that he really had come back, he had been grateful that his body had collapsed under the weight of his future memories, leaving his subconscious mind to slowly make the connections and let him wake up again. He had thought he was prepared for it, when he shook off the last of the sleepy haze. The phrase ‘rude awakening’ turned out to fit almost too well.

The two weeks that it had taken for his body and mind to acclimatize to each other proves itself to be so far from enough. He’s jittery, uncomfortable in his own body (and it’s his body again, more flesh than metal, inescapable marks of betrayal (but whose was it really? Not Obi-Wan’s, he knows now, and that thought cuts impossibly deeper than ever) erased) with its lack of aches and pains, and reflexes that no longer match flesh limbs.

Rex knows something is up, but military discipline keeps him from asking, at least for now. Ahsoka knows something’s up, but she’s still too relieved that he’s okay (and hah, if only she knew) to push.

He thanks the Force that Obi-Wan isn’t here, because even though they’d made some sort of peace at Anakin’s funeral pyre and after that, he doesn’t know how he would react to seeing his former Master with them both alive again. Obi-Wan also likely wouldn’t hesitate to call him out on his poodoo. Oh, he’d be diplomatic, and he likely wouldn’t push if Anakin reacted badly, but Anakin still isn’t sure he could take that.

When they had been dead there hadn’t been much to do but make peace. Now, alive and with the Clone Wars barely halfway through, Anakin is realizing that a lot of their peace had come from the fact that nothing they could have done would have affected anything in the end. That calm understanding that had come with being one with the Force is gone as well, and Anakin’s love for and rage at his old Master are dueling for prominence. His guilt wants to land on the side of his love, but his anger has always run hot. He fears seeing Obi-Wan, for he truly cannot tell whether he’ll be angry, snappish and rude, or if he’ll want to fall to his knees and cry.

There’s enough of Anakin wanting to cry as it is.

It had been hard, seeing Ahsoka, seeing Rex when he first woke up and truly getting hit with how he had failed them. But they had been the lucky ones, in that awful future. They had gotten away.

Seeing Coric in the medbay, seeing Kix… that had been worse. Kix had been gone before Anakin Fell and Order 66 was executed, they hadn’t even found a body. Coric had died two years later, two years of living not unlike a battle droid covered in flesh, with only the barest glimpses of the man he really was underneath the weight of orders and grief he wasn’t allowed to understand.

Grief that none of the clones were allowed to understand.

(Vader had seen Bly. He had seen Shocker. He had seen Cody.)

(He had seen all those who had eaten their blasters as the chips died, never actually intended to survive past usage – just like the clones themselves.)

Vader hadn’t cared, or at least tried to tell himself that he didn’t. Anakin does care. And Force, but it hurts.

The first day Anakin just avoids everyone, using Kix’s orders of rest as an excuse. Facing everyone is… something no amount of preparation could help him with, a punch to the gut and a knock to the head that leaves him reeling. The effort it takes to not simply flee for his quarters actually leaves him winded when he finally reaches the corridor, enters the room, closes the door behind himself and locks himself in.

There’s something wrong with him. Anakin is not reacting the way he should – the way he ought to, having seen so many ghosts in so short a time. His mind is a mess.

Meditation does not come easy.

He forces himself into it, in an attempt to reconcile the different parts of himself. He is Anakin, jedi general, student, teacher, husband, lover, twenty years old and so arrogant. He is Vader, sith apprentice, failure, world-weary, beaten down, a monster shackled to a madman… a father, in the end.

He is Ani, slave boy, who cares so much and loves so deeply but doesn’t know how to handle it, never learned how to grow it, only hoard.

(If you love something, let it go.)

(He let Luke go, in the end. Let his son choose his own path and…)

I am a jedi, like my father before me.

Sleep doesn’t come at all.

Vader has spent literal decades hating his past, weak self, disgusted with the man who couldn’t even save the single most important person left in his life, who had lost everyone else along the line. Past-(present-?)Anakin is horrified by what he became, by what his future self allowed himself to be twisted into. Ani doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand how it could have even happened.

It’s a good thing self-hatred is nothing new to him, he thinks, because that is the common point that finally allows him to reconcile the different facets of himself.

That’s kind of sad.

It’s also awfully appropriate, in a twisted sense.

 The second day he tries to play at normalcy and heads to the bridge. Ahsoka tracks him down when he’s alone during a quiet moment and hugs him until he stops trying to make her let go. Her relief broadcasts in the Force and their bond alike. Anakin… lets himself hold her, and heal, just a bit. Then Kix finds them and sends him back to bed. It’s enough to make Ahsoka laugh and think everything’s back to normal. Anakin lets her believe it.

He heads back to his bunk, and since Kix is a suspicious one, wise to the ways of his jedi, Anakin has company the entire way.

“Forty-eight hours of rest,” says Kix dryly, “and a visit to medical. Neither of these has been completed, and you’re still obviously tired. Get some more sleep, sir, or I can’t clear you.”

“How about just the visit to medical?” Anakin tries to bargain.

“Sir, I know disasters tend to strike like clockwork around here, but please. Nothing will happen if you just get some more rest.”

And despite Kix all but punching fate in the face and yelling ‘come get me’, nothing does happen. Anakin meditates some more and actually manages to grab a nap as well.

When he wakes up it’s shipboard afternoon. He heads down to the hangar, and instead of attempting to work on the Twilight like he planned to, he finds himself drawn into a discussion with three of the troopers (Lyn died on Umbara, Bell was lost on Mandalore, while Flipper had marched on the temple and not died until after more than five years of atrocities in the name of the Empire).

He failed them. The thought hovers in his mind even as he gets more involved in the debate. He failed them like he failed all his men, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan. Like he failed his mother. Like he failed Padmé. Like he almost failed Luke, like he did fail him several times.

The storm of emotions is like a vibroblade to the gut and Anakin claws desperately at it, keeping it from showing either on his face or in the Force. He almost pulls away again, until Bell’s words cut through him like shards of glass.

“-but not this time!”

Bell punctuates his words by punching the air. They’re talking about marksmanship contests now, but Anakin cannot fully restrain how deeply it hits him. His expression must twitch, because Bell turns to him, eyes wide with feigned upset.

“You think I can’t, General?”

Flipper nudges him. “The General simply knows better than to put his credits up on the word of such an… unreliable source.” The grin is contagious, and Anakin finds himself smiling as well, grounding himself in their gentle teasing and free-flowing affection.

His failures feel further away and, desperate to keep that feeling, he does what he always did best – jump without looking. “Well, maybe I can help make it less unreliable.”

“Sir?”

Anakin’s mouth really ran away with him this time, but something tells him that this is good. A comfortable warmth that sits in his gut, the Force whispering in his ear, Bell’s disbelieving – but growing – excitement. “You’re off duty. I have some spare time. There are several training halls available.”

Not this time. He failed them all then, but not this time.

It is with a strange sort of budding contentment that he puts Bell and several other clones through their paces in a training hall. He’s doing something, changing something, and it’s such a tiny difference but it’s a difference. Anakin can’t do a lot from here, not yet, but this – being with the men, helping them – is something he can do.

For the first time since he woke up, Anakin feels like he’s doing something right.

Nearly an hour after they began, Anakin catches sight of Rex by the door. The expression on his face is one part amusement, one part ‘I know what you’re doing’ and about five parts exasperation. It’s familiar despite the years, comforting, and Anakin laughs before he can even register the urge to.

The next moment he freezes because – how long has it been? He catches himself almost immediately and excuses himself from the practice session. They can continue without him anyway.

By the door, Rex’s amusement sharpens into instant hyper-awareness. Anakin starts running through the excuses he’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary.

Rex’s care for his jedi is something Anakin has been in turns awed, perplexed and humbled by. Now, his worry is just as humbling, but it is also troublesome. In the end, Anakin finds himself released to medbay only because Rex too is still shaky after his coma. None of them are fully back to normal, so Anakin’s issues are easier to hide.

They won’t always be, but Anakin will get better at hiding, too.

He runs into Ahsoka again in the hallway and she immediately attaches herself to his side. The last time he had seen her in that other time flashes in his mind – tall, strong, grieving – and he rests his hand on her montrals, his tiny, beloved padawan who the galaxy has barely even started to break yet.

She’s here.

She is here and he hasn’t lost her, not to his own madness nor her iron-clad conviction that he’s gone forever.

The poisonous thinking that came with the Dark Side is still haunting him, and for a moment he wants to drag her even closer, make sure she could never leave – and then the thought leaves him sick, his hand drops down to squeeze her shoulder and then he lets go.

She follows him to the medbay, where Kix clears Anakin. The clone is clearly reluctant, going by the grumbling, but Anakin is free to return to duty. As such, he is free to check out exactly when it is he has returned to.

The answer… staggers him. It’s the early days of the war, that much had already been obvious in the many presences that had been long gone, but… so many of the bad things haven’t happened yet, so many things he can change, disasters he can undo, lives he can save –

Sidious.

And even though he knows he can’t just rush in, the scene plays out in Anakin’s mind. Since he’d learned about Luke, Vader had ever entertained the thought of killing his Master. And even before that, before Padmé and Obi-Wan and Mustafar, Sidious’ survival had never counted in Anakin’s plans. More than once he had tortured himself with what-ifs… and now he has the chance to make them come true.

Still, striding up to the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and attempting to cut him down, for all that it would be satisfying, would more likely end with Anakin fleeing from the Coruscant Security Forces with his task still not accomplished more than anything else.

It’s nothing but wishful thinking and Anakin waves it away.

A quick talk with Yularen confirms that they’re heading back to Coruscant. They’re still six days out, at current velocity, something Yularen relays with an apologetic look, since Anakin tends to be eager to get planetside. In this case though, it means there’s only six days to prepare for seeing the temple again, seeing Padmé, seeing – Force, seeing the younglings.

“Master?”

Ahsoka’s voice pulls him out of those dark musings.

“Yeah, Snips?” The nickname rolls off his tongue with reflexive ease, and it is not until it already lingers in the air that he realizes how much it grounds him.

“Is everything all right?”

He could lie. She would see through it, and either let it be or keep digging until she thought she had found out every little detail.

“No.” Ahsoka stops dead and he turns to look back at her, her big eyes even wider than usual at his uncharacteristic honesty concerning his own state. “But it’s getting better.” How can it not?

“…If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

The ringing silence that follows is belied by Ahsoka’s slow reach for him through their bond, and Anakin’s hesitant reach back, to meet her halfway. Ahsoka smiles at the contact and runs ahead. They’ve ended up by the mess hall and, though it’s still relatively early, there’s more than enough people moving around, grabbing an early meal.

“Glad to see you’re doing well, General!”

Anakin looks up to see Echo. The young ARC trooper has raised a hand to wave a greeting, precariously balancing his rations tray with only one hand. Smile tugging at his lips, Anakin raises his own hand in response. Another fate he would hopefully be able to change. Echo didn’t deserve what had happened to him.

Realization comes a second too late.

Echo slides down on the bench by Anakin and Ahsoka, and Fives sneaks up only half a step behind him. Ahsoka immediately vaults over the table and seats herself opposite Echo.

“Going to join us, General?” asks Fives. Anakin almost chokes. For an instant, Fives has all Anakin’s attention, but just as quick, Anakin turns away.

“Sorry.” he says choppily. “Sorry, I- I have something- I need to- I’m sorry. Later?”

He whirls around and practically flees the hall.

Fives. Oh, Force, Fives.

Anakin hears a hesitant “Is… something wrong?” from Echo, but escapes before he can hear Ahsoka’s response. Yes, something’s wrong. Something he’d managed to avoid thinking of entirely, but that he now can’t escape.

You died for the knowledge that might have saved everything and I didn’t believe you.

Fives had been – is – one of his men and that alone would be enough guilt to drown in but… that isn’t all.

Anakin firmly blocks the thoughts from his mind, refusing to wander down that old path of what-if. He had entertained enough of them, after Fives’… death. Even more after Echo had been found. So much more, in stolen moments with Padmé and occasionally Sabé or Rabé as well, staying up late nights with more alcohol than was probably advisable.

Force.

Three hallways down, Anakin finally stops, leans against the wall, and covers his face with his hands. He slowly sinks down, ending up sitting and pulling his knees close so he can hide in them instead of in his palms.

Smooth, Anakin. The internal reprimand takes on Obi-Wan’s voice, which is almost a step too far. Anakin’s eyes sting.

Eventually Anakin manages to gather himself enough that he can paste the mask back on. He can’t quite push the thoughts back into the box where he hadn’t even known that he’d stored them, however, and from that point on he can’t decide whether to run from Fives out of shame or never let him out of sight again. Over the coming days the result of the impulses leaves Anakin looking like a shy adolescent from a holo-drama, constantly keeping track of Fives, but ducking around corners, hiding behind bulkheads, and on one occasion, making a Force-assisted leap up a staircase (accidentally sparking a game of tag with Ahsoka, but he managed to make it look deliberate, so he counts it as a win) to avoid the clone.

Whatever explanation Ahsoka had given the two ARC troopers must have been unsatisfying however, because suddenly it seems like Fives is everywhere. Anakin tries to distract himself, mingling with the troops, burying himself in the Twilight, catching upon the present, but whenever he senses Fives just a little too close, he’s running again.

Anakin fears he will keep running for a long time.

[twilightofthe]

For the fanfic writer ask meme: E, N & W. Thanks 🙂.

Thanks for the ask, anon! (sorry for responding so late aaaa)  Questions from this writing ask game

E: What character do you identify with most?  Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

C-3PO, I too am loud, over-talkative, anxious, like linguistics, and tend to bother people.  Lol but for real?  Ok, I know I’ve made this joke before, but minus the evil and the murder, I really do relate to Anakin in a way, like I’ve got this entire [post] on why I think he’s ADHD like I am, and his anxiety and general tendency to be a disaster socially resonates with me too, like, I get that.  I’m also a massive drama queen who’s really smart about like one or two particular things so yea.  I’d say overall tho, I’m probably the most like Luke, a little whiny and awkward, a little dramatic, little reckless, love my friends and family a LOT, want to explore.  As to fics that capture similar qualities, I’d definitely say Pas de Deux, the way I write Anakin in it has a LOT of my anxiety and my worst headspace involved and wrapped up in his character, I very much projected a bit while writing it.

N: Any fic ideas brewing that you’d care to share?

Ohhhh honey you’ve got a storm coming….  besides the obvious other two books in walk the (family) line, I’ve got an entire list on a separate document of different stories I want to write, ideas including:

A oneshot fic I’m actually kinda working on right now.  It’s another modern!AU Obikin romcom and I won’t spoil it, but it involves parkour, R2 the parrot, Obi Wan may or may not be James Bond, and Anakin accidentally becomes Twitter famous

An epistolary style fic set during Obi Wan’s time on Tatooine where nine year old Leia finds the emergency comm Bail has to contact him, and both the lonely, kind of awkward young princess and the tired old hermit who should know better but is also lonely and misses both of her parents dearly set up a penpal relationship.  End goal is to establish a relationship that gives Leia a proper reason to name her son “Ben”.

A semi-crackfic where the Jedi Council gets some sort of Clue From The Force™ about the identity of the Secret Sith Lord, that clue being that the Sith Lord is: a politician with close ties to Anakin Skywalker, and also had very specific motives to send Darth Maul to Naboo.  Alllll the wrong conclusions are drawn from that, and the next day, Padmé Amidala is arrested for treason.  Obi Wan is the only Council member who’s like “y’all she’s innocent, it’s clearly the fucking Chancellor”, Sidious tries to manipulate the situation to remove the only two people in his way at once, and poor Anakin spends the entire fic in a state of “UH HI YEAH WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON”  Shenanigans ensue

A 5+1 times they kissed Obikin alternate canon shortfic, because I’m hopeless and want to write shmoop.

A Sadmé (Satine/Padme) Ocean’s 8 AU that came about entirely over me yelling over Cate Blanchett and wanting to write a heist fic starring all of the SW Prequels/TCW ladies being total badasses

This absolutely BONKERS Rebels AU fic where S4 Ezra accidentally pulls both Ahsoka AND Kanan into the World Between Worlds during the Vader fight in S2.  Vader recognizes what happened and promptly kidnaps S2 Ezra who’s there by himself— as well as Maul who’s established a bond with Ezra over the Sith holocron —in hopes of discovering the secret of time travel.  While S2 Ezra has to somehow survive the Crazy Murder Roadtrip with Maul and Vader, now S4 Ezra, Kanan, and Ahsoka have to race to A: Find and rescue S2 Ezra before one of the Sith kill him— and therefore also kill S4 Ezra, B: Make sure Maul and Vader’s tentative alliance doesn’t lead to them finding Obi Wan for obvious reasons, and C: Make sure neither Maul nor especially Vader find the Lothal Temple World Between Worlds entrance and risk unleashing either into a past they both desperately want to change

A fic detailing different little neuroses and traits and attitudes passed down through the Yoda-Dooku-Jinn-Kenobi-Skywalker-Tano line.

Cross generational shortfic focusing on the desert children— Anakin, Luke, and Rey — and their first experiences with water and rain

A ficlet where Yoda somehow gets babified and basically just all of the Jedi Order having to deal with the cuteness overload that is Baby Yoda.

A post-TROS political drama where Leia’s Force Ghost realizes that once again, a new government is gonna need to be built in the aftermath of the First Order’s nonsense and that there are almost no good remaining politicians in the galaxy.  Finn is unfortunate enough to know how command works, how to take charge, how to deal with FO remnants, and is Force Sensitive enough to see ghosts, so Leia takes it upon herself to mold Finn into the next leader of the GFFA.  Would focus on rebuilding, family legacy, be very very Jedistormpilot, and so on.  I feel like I’m not really invested enough in the ST but I reeeeally want to see this idea in fic form, so I might end up giving this idea away at some point.

This one fic that’s been going through my head for YEARS but have always felt scared of actually writing because I know right now that it’s gonna get LONG, like over 200k (lol and look what’s happening with Mutuals ahahAHAHA—) where Anakin flat out dies.  Just, during TCW season 5, he fights Dooku and in the process of killing him, goes down with him and dies.  Padmé will have just became about a month pregnant at this time, and part of the fic will focus on her and Obi Wan and Ahsoka dealing with the aftermath of Anakin’s death, as Sidious is forced to jumpstart his plans and execute Order 66 early now that he’s not waiting on Anakin anymore.  The other part of the fic will focus on Anakin’s ghost, unable to communicate with Obi Wan or Ahsoka and having to watch them and Padmé and the surviving Jedi form the Rebellion themselves and his children being born and growing up without him, even though Luke and Leia will end up being the only ones who can see him.  It’ll go right up through the 20 years of the Empire and have a gigantic cast and I just don’t know if I can do it.

Now, I hate to say it, but I need to let it be known that these are still MY IDEAS, and I have not given anyone permission to use them, so please do not be that person.  Do not steal these ideas for yourself.  I will be VERY upset if someone does.  If you really like an idea, DM me and ask, but I don’t plan to give any of them away at the moment.

W: What is your favorite pairing to write?  Favorite pairing to read?

Hmm, to write?  That’s tough!  There’s so many different complex relationships in Star Wars that I’ve really found myself enjoying exploring, and it’s hard to find a particular one that I like best.  I’m open to at least sampling most pairings for reading, but my favorite has to be Obikin.  It just makes me happy!!!!! :D

Thanks again for asking, and y’all should tell me in the notes if any of the fic ideas sound like something you’d read!!!!!