#But I think this speaks much about Sidious whole mixed feelings over family and power

[marvelstars]

I believe this arc reveals a little too much about Sidious hand and future plans and I don´t think is quite ic for him to do so, he made Cad Bane kidnap those kids to raise them as sith acolytes but this revealed too much his influence on the clone wars given he keep the babies at Mustafar to raise them but I loved seeing Ahsoka and Anakin team up to rescue them.

[overcaffeinated-creative]

So, since Solus and Anakin had a Thing in some verses, may I propose: an AU with Dark!Solus and Vader?

Okay, this got stupid fucking long. Like, holy hells is this a long post but I’ve outlined like an entire AU with this.

Dark Side AU featuring Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Solus Vetra, and Lumi Kirrin 

 Rating Wise I guess I would call this an M?

+ In this Verse, Solus and Anakin would have been Actual Friends for about 6-ish months before Geonosis. They met during the same detail (watching radars and patrolling Coruscant) and it off. Jokes passed easily between them along with tips and tricks (and bragging) about starfighters and piloting as well. Spars got mixed into that before Spar became code for “Let’s make out.” They still only called themselves “Friends” but there was a lot of tongue and wandering hands involved in being friends.

+ After reuniting with Padme and then surviving Geonosis, their canons kept on the original paths. Anakin got secret married, fought a War, had a baby (he never got to meet), “killed Padme” and then became Darth Vader. Solus defected to Death Watch, married Pre, had her twins, and then suffered the crippling blow of Pre’s death at the hands of Maul.

+ The big difference comes in how things progressed after that. Word got out (via a Saxon who was promptly executed with malice when found out) that Clan Vizsla had two Force Sensitives babies among them. This prompted the Inquisitors, and Sidious, making a request for those children. Having already lost her riduur, Solus offered herself instead.

+ “Why take children who need to mature when you have a fully grown Force Adept ready to carry out your will? One who already turned her back on the Jedi.”

+ Unexpectedly, Lumi offered herself in this madness to help. Where Solus went Lumi was sure to follow. It also balanced out the trade two trained Force Users in place of two infants. Lumi also knew that her having been Mace Windu’s Padawan sweetened the deal even more.

+ So, Darth Vader suddenly had two willing Force Users at his side. Compared to the other former Jedi they held a certain wildness to them. Lumi would delight in the chaos of battle. Her heart thudded while viciously tearing opponents apart. In the Force she would *glow* at getting to go all in.

+ Solus? Solus always put Mandalore and her Clan first. Turns out that made her willingness to hunt down Jedi arrive even easier. The Jedi could rebuild when Sidious plans faltered (and they would because he planned far too grand while alienating too many) but her People would not be touched by this chaos. Outside Force Users never boded well for them.

+ Falling into a new role, Solus ended up as the Moff of the Mandalorian Sector in place of Gar Saxon’s puny governorship. He met an untimely demise from death given former. Lumi became her “bodyguard”.

+ Bo-Katan (Solus’ other riduur) and Fenn (Lumi’s not-boyfriend at the time) did worry over them. Getting mixed up with the Empire was a dangerous game to play. Bo witnessed first hand what happened when her riduur tangled with dar-jetii and did not want Solus to meet the same fate. Fenn doubted the whole thing in general because Lumi had already survived so much. Yet, she continued to put her in the line of fire.

+ For everyone’s safety, Jazari stopped interacting with them at all. She could not bring that kind of chaos to her family’s doorstep and in case it blew up. Well, the Twins would need a home and she would provide for them.

+ Sidious, of course, planned on Solus and Lumi to double cross him. Solus would always be more loyal to Mandalore than him or anyone else. And Lumi was loyal to Solus. But, he let them pretend to play their brilliant games and try to one up the Empire.

+ Solus and Lumi were making moves against the Empire but the thing was, Sidious never exactly how they were doing it. Solus put effort into being overtly crooked to cover her tracks with how covertly she was running things.

+ He also underestimated who would be their biggest weapon or the fact that he handed said weapon to them.

+ See, his idea of “instilling cooperation” in Mandalore involved attaching Solus and Lumi to a lot of Darth Vader’s projects. His oversized, caged wardog would make them think twice of fucking him over. If they so much as twitched the wrong way they would be ended.

+ It was exactly what Solus wanted him to do. With her best friends knowledge of what had happened during Order 66, Solus connected a lot of dots. Getting to spend time with Vader to witness his mannerisms and movements coupled with feeling him within the Force answered her question: This was Anakin Skywalker. But, it was not knowledge she could just out and say without revealing her hand. So, her and Lumi played The Long Game.

+ It took several months for them to grow almost friendly with Vader. Solus and Lumi bantered with one another in front of him. Even bantered with him if they felt like pushing their look. First, they had to give him a reason to trust them and that reason became inclusion. When they did things they included him and respected him. Basically gave “Vader” what Anakin Skywalker wanted.

+ Sidious underestimated that bit because clearly he gave Anakin the Power he wanted.

+ Next, came Solus gently broaching the topic of cybernetics with Vader. But, that could not be something said outright. She let him overhear things instead. She would tell Lumi about injuries some of her soldiers sustained (not unlike Vader’s) and how she treated them. It gave him a little trail of breadcrumbs to discover just how needlessly Sidious left him in pain.

+ When he finally started to banter back and train full on with them things shifted. Solus nor Lumi called him Anakin but they did reach the understanding they had shared a Past before. Both would speak with disdain aimed at the Jedi Order (neither really fabricating flaws) to strengthen their mutual bridge of the past.

+ By accident, Solus did open up about what losing Pre was like. She had loved him almost more than anything in this Galaxy or the next. Finding out he died because she was not there to protect him broke her. It was the Truth. This, Truth, however, was also one that Vader had lived.

+ Sidious still let them play their game. He knew they were stoking and putting out rebellions in Mandalore. Solus was a great spy and tactician but he was better. She would lose to him in the end. They all would.

+ Later on, Solus did explain exactly what was done wrong with healing Vader’s body. She sat next to his hulking form to point out where the mistakes were made. The glaring design flaws, the points where comfort was skipped in favor of pain, and more. Her little side comment of, “Physical Pain can fuel a brief rage. It brings the Dark Side more within reach. But, that’s nothing compared to a deep-seated emotional pain that you can draw from. That one provides infinite power.”

+ During these years, Solus and Lumi did venture back and forth to Mandalore. Bo-Katan and Ursa spent the most time with the twins. It hurt but it was better that way. If she died they would not have to mourn her as deeply. And if she lived, then they would have a Mandalore worth growing up in. The childhood she so sorely lacked.

+ Both had discussed with their partners (and had more or less secured some layer of understanding) that seduction could come into play against their enemies. Emotional Manipulation was Emotional Manipulation. It also gave them the chance to fall in with one another again. Because Solus and Lumi would forever be Solus and Lumi.

+ Seducing Vader did happen to shock of all three involved. It started as an emotional affair more or less. Lumi and, especially Solus, provided him the companionship he craved. They offered an intimacy he had been denied for years and it was willing.

+ The physical push to their affair came after a hard won victory. Raiding the Sith Temple had been easy enough. The same could be said with acquiring multiple Jedi artifacts. All of the work came with them putting various tidbits of knowledge together to get a complete picture.

+ It turned out that there was a way to free him from his metal prison. See, the Sith had a very well hidden and high reward means of moving the conscious of one body to another. Overtaking the consciousness of an already occupied body was hard. However, a clone, created specifically for this purpose, would lessen the difficulty of the process. And they happen to know a whole planet of cloners who would easily accept encouragement to help out their cause.

+ Before this victory, Solus and Lumi remained considerate of the types of affection they displayed. Their rule of thumb was nothing that Vader could not be involved in. It was limited to hand holding and quick pecks more or less. Kissing his visor not exactly the same but it was the best they could do.

+ Things went different after the victory though. They moved from quick pecks to full on making out. When they went to stop themselves Vader told them to continue. Turns out what he can’t physically feel on his skin he could feel within the Force or experience through his other senses more of less.

+ Further experimentation revealed that even through leatheris gloves cybernetics have some sensations, especially pressure, and they’re both rather experimental and up for anything twice.

+ (There were promises later about how they would celebrate with his flesh body)

+ Vader, much like the flesh person he was named Anakin, retained many of his strengths and flaws. Namely, he still trusted Sidious too damn much. To combat that Solus and Lumi worked really hard to convince him acquiring a new body would be great surprise to hold on to because they were really out of options. If Vader blew it then they would have fuck all to work with.

+ In the interim of collecting a new body for their unexpected lover and their next discovery (a.k.a. The final nail in Sidious’ coffin) Solus caught up with Maul. Torture is too loving of a word for what she did to him.

+ Solus had years of realizing she had to make two years with one of the loves of her life last for the centuries she would probably live. He took her Manda’lor, her riduur, the father of her children before they could ever knew him. He also displayed no honor in his fight and picked the opponent he knew he would win against. Because she would have destroyed him.

+ Lumi gets in on the torture because she is so done with everything that’s happening. The Dark Side, the Jedi, everything and everyone took and took and took from them. To see the cackling mad failed Sith gave her a target to pin some blame too.

+ Maul lived many weeks on Mustafar in one of the lowest cells. Solus toyed him over and over again. Drug him to the edge of death then brought him back again and again. She suffered and so would he. More than that, he would break. He thought it impossible but she had faith in her skills.

+ In the mornings, she attended to her work with Lumi or Vader or whoever was sent to deal with. Afternoons, when she was around, were devoted to toying with the overgrown pest. While the evenings were spent with her lovers.

+ Her obsession with Maul and how she toyed with him traveled back to Sidious. He took it as confirmation both her and Lumi had slipped over the edge with no hopes of returning. The Dark Side had eaten away at their minds giving him mastery over them as well.

+ Unlucky for him a number of things went off at once that became the beginning of the end. Maybe if he had spent less time full of his ego and more time watching the little pieces move then he may have guessed what was going down.

+ First came Solus pulling off her deepest intention of breaking Maul: learning the location of the Dark Saber. It was never his to take, no matter what he claimed, so it belonged to her. If she did honor his claim with his cowardly version of Kyr’tsad…well she had to beat him to capture him and it passed to her.

+ Next came the actual retrieval of the Dark Saber from Dathomir. With it came a slew of Sith Artifacts, Nightsister regalia, and also the knowledge that a particularly powerful holocron could be found on Malachor.

+ Setting her sights on Malachor with Lumi they nabbed the holocron. During a deep dive of reading the contents they learned another very important thing: Sith practiced an art that allowed someone to convert one’s life force into fuel for a different person. However, it would kill them.

+ Returning to their second home on Mustafar, they began a second deep dive into Vader’s medical records. It quickly became apparent that he should have died. Burns of that caliber combined with the loss of limbs and everything else left Solus certain that not even the blessing of the Force could have saved him. But…a wrinkled Sith Lord with delusions of grandeur could help.

+ Before presenting their findings they made one final hunt for information: the death of Padme Amidala. Which turned into a lot of digging and searching to find anything nearing truths. But, they found enough to draw conclusions. Anakin did not kill Padme but Sidious did.

+ New body ready (with the help of several detained Kaminoans kept in an undisclosed location) they helped Vader make the transfer to his new body. Both blocked out their concerns because they needed this to happen. Yes, it had started as revenge against Sidious but now it was something more. They loved Vader and he deserved reparations for what Sidious had done to him.

+ Once he’d safely adapted his Clone Body next came the truths spilling out one after another. They told him how they thought Padme had died with proof of how a Sith could channel life from one to another. Solus broke down the exact flaws in the suit and his medical procedures he received. Where he was intentionally fucked over to better serve Sidious’ grand plans. Her final point being that he intention trapped him within a metal body, dependant upon a life support system that could be destroyed by the Force Lightning Vader was barred from using.

+ Lumi added in that the asshole may have even thought himself strong enough to conquer his mind (the one he so carefully corrupted to the Dark Side) in hopes of gaining his body in the beginning. A cherry on top of everything else that happened.

+ Darth Sidious never stood a chance. Vader he could control and that had always been his intention. But, a flesh and blood Anakin Skywalker? He had no hopes of surviving that. As Solus had mentioned to him years before: Emotional Pain causes a rage Physical Pain will never match.

+ Lumi and Solus laughed as Sidious died. Solus was capable of a power the likes of which he never understood and possessed a mind he had underestimated.

+ From there, the Empire does fall quickly into shambles. Solus is granted full control of Mandalore with all soldiers of the Empire to be removed immediately. She quickly turns over control of Mandalore to Bo-Katan. As checkered as her past had become she held true to the belief that “I am meant to guide the Dark Saber but never truly wield it.”

+ Anakin trying to lead anything was Interesting. Lumi made not so subtle suggestions of exactly what the could do for Ryloth and planets ruled by the Hutts. Solus winced while trying to explaining politics to Anakin “The General Disaster” Skywalker and Lumi. Granted, Lumi was fully prepared to return to Mandalore and watch this chaos from afar.

+ Lumi was the one who suggested trying to patch things up with friends of the past i.e. Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, or even Obi-Wan Kenobi. Basically anyone who could help positively influence Anakin into a subtle transition of power.

+ It really took hold when it came with the suggestion that he very much still had time to become a fantastic father. He would just have to work on some things. But, the best one would be starting with setting the Galaxy right again by handing power back to the People.

+ Relationship wise they kind of maintained their own little Thing. Solus and Lumi knew they were never fully step into what the Jedi Order considered the Light again. But, they were fine with that. They’d never been very good Jedi anyway.

+ Solus returned to spending the bulk of her time with Bo-Katan and her children happily handling Clan Vetra things as well as offering her political savvy as needed. When Anakin had adjusted well enough she even began to bring the Twins around “Ani’ba’vodu”.

+ Lumi finally got the relationship with Fenn she had waited for. It took a lot of time and work to get a point where they felt comfortable but it did happen.

+ Anakin was free to seek out whatever relationship he so wished. They loved him with an ultimately true, honest love. But, they would help him seek out other relationships if he so choose. It would be unfair to demand he twist himself to fit entirely into the relationships and lives they were returning too.

+ Anakin Skywalker was finally free and deserved to truly experience it.