#I am very attached to fics where Ahsoka returns to the Jedi

[lauransoverthinking]

Ahhh! Help, I’m back on my shit again!

No O66 AUs where Ahsoka wants to return to the Jedi but is still working through all of the feelings of betrayal, hurt, abandonment.

They love to focus on Ahsoka lashing out, blaming, being angry. Which is fair. I think to say she wouldn’t is disingenuous to her character, especially during this time period. She is flawed (this is another gripe about all fanon characterization - leave your favs flawed, they are better this way).

But what they never do is have someone from the order (who isn’t Anakin) say they understand why she feels this way.

They never tell her they understand why she hurts and doesn’t trust and is angry. It’s always “it’s because she’s young”.

And yeah, that contributes, but whether they had an option or not (they did not - fucking senate, fucking Tarkin, fucking insidious bastard), her family kicks her out and she is almost executed. That is justifiable trauma, and I would argue it would be traumatic for anyone, regardless of age.

I understand Plo apologies on behalf of the council before she leaves, but there is a difference between “we are sorry” and “we see you and your emotions are valid.”

Anyways, this is my way of saying I love when Ahsoka is messy about the Jedi and has to work through those issues, but some of you treat her being upset about her expulsion and near execution the same as my five-year-old throwing a tantrum when I take away a toy.

Attributing it to age and Anakin’s influence is too simple. There are actual issues here, and you can be pro Jedi and pro council and pro Obi-wan and still admit she has a reason to be upset.

[morganas-pendragons]

Long Story Short (I Survived) | Din Djarin

Okay, I apparently write for Din now. This is set after It’s A Long Way Down and will feature the same Grey!Jedi reader, I am done with finals and am intending to write a fic between this one and the first one for Chapter 13! 

i forgot that din took his helmet off in the first fic i wrote for him, so we’re going to call this - another separate instance in which reader could have seen helmet less din  - and change one saber to two 

if you’d like to be added to tags for when I write for din, please let me know! until then... 

@earthtokace / @demigod-dragonrider-schoolidol​ / @kyber-queen / @kaikai1324 / @snippy-tano / @fractiouskat​ / @doctorsteeb​

SPOILERS FOR THE BELIEVER 

Din is staring down at the Imperial console when he feels it creep up upon him. It’s a niggling fear, one that sinks deep down into the pit of his stomach and very nearly disappears - which gives him hope that it’ll just dissipate and die - until realization smacks him right back into reality. 

  “You’ll have to take your helmet off.” 

He’d felt this same emotion when IG-11 had coerced him into taking his helmet off when he’d been injured. It had felt the same, affected him the same, paralyzed him the same. 

Panic. It’s panic. 

The last time he’d done this had been out of necessity, out of fear, and that had been the only reason he’d survived. He’d broken The Creed to save his own life and of those who had been with him when the Moff attacked. Now, staring at this console, the life of his son is at stake if he doesn’t take this helmet off. 

Din whispers into the corners of his frightened mind. I’m scared. 

You had accompanied Mayfeld and Din as the third party (since Boba and Fennec had Cara) and had displayed skill in aiding him with the bands of pirates who had attacked their transport of Rhydonium. His mind was still spinning with the sheer speed in which you had spun those lightsabers. He didn’t think a person could move that fast. 

Around the corner and turned away from Din, you allow yourself to feel the whispers of The Force encircling your mind - the newly acquired bond you’d somehow formed with Din since having seen Ahsoka - and whispered in reply I know. A beat of silence passes before you continue. Remember who you’re doing this for. 

In the moment that Din’s fear threatens to overtake him, you send waves of comfort and assurance through your Bond in the Force - which shouldn’t exist to begin with, it’s not that easy to create bonds with a non-force sensitive -  to coax him into doing what needs to be done. Your eyes are turned. Your focus is on Mayfeld and the dozens of Imperial Officers who surround you. 

As he removes his helmet, Din remembers. He remembers your boundless laughter playing with The Child. He remembers the way his son beams at you, the way he falls asleep on specific words of lullabies because that’s always the precise moment your voice goes just soft enough that he feels as if he needs no more comfort. Din remembers the way you’d watched on in silence, quietly mourning a relationship that had yet to reach its peak, and how breathless you’d appeared - and overjoyed, he still hasn’t recovered from the sudden hug you gave him upon return to the Razor Crest - when he’d brought Grogu back inside after Ahsoka claimed he could not be trained. 

Remember who you’re doing this for.

Maker help anyone who dared to cross him when his child, his son - the one attachment he has not verbally acknowledged yet, but everyone else has, including you - is the one in danger. When you are the one in danger.

Maker help them.

You are not anticipating what comes next. 

This was supposed to be easy. Get in, get the coordinates for the cruiser, and get out. Mayfeld had mentioned to you after Din had entered the mess hall that he’d need to take his helmet off in order to access the terminal, and on instinct you had turned away from the mess to survey the crowd around you. 

Your lightsabers - now meshed together into the staff slung across your back - lay comfortably and within reach as dozens of Imperial troops brush past you and congratulate both you and Mayfeld on being the only transport to bring back the Rhydonium. 

  “Trooper? Hey, trooper!” 

Mayfeld’s hand shoots out before you can protest, and your head is whipping back just enough to ensure that Din hasn’t been found out. “No.” Mayfeld murmurs, shaking his head. “Not yet.” 

You’re not focused on him. You’re focused on the dark hair that frames the very visible head of the same man you’d resigned yourself to falling in love with. 

His helmet is off. 

Dread curls itself in your veins as you and the former Imperial turn to the mess hall. You’ve managed to respect Din’s wishes in refraining from both seeing his face - and using his name, you’re only allowed to do that in private - since you met, but circumstances have ruined the reverential act he would’ve saved for marriage. That was when he’d had removed his helmet to allow you to see him. 

The thing is though.. You’ve always seen him. You don’t need to see his face to know Din Djarin’s heart, and his heart lays with you and that baby. The one he’s fighting to get back. 

  “No, son. What’s your TK number?” 

Lucky for you, you’d been alive during The Clone Wars. You can worm yourself and him out of this situation fairly easily. 

  “This is our Commanding Officer TK-593, and First Officer TK-616, sir.” Mayfeld slaps your back as the two of you enter the mess hall and flank either side of Din. You cannot bring yourself to look at him head on. It would not be fair, not in the midst of the pure fear that’s coursing through his mind. 

I’m right here. You whisper into the heart of the fear that plagues him, fingers idly tracing the inside of his hand as you stare the Imperial Officer down. As expected, Din visibly relaxes at the gentle trace of your fingertips against his palm. We’re surviving. 

  “I am Imperial Combat Assault Transport TK-111, sir.” Mayfeld continues, folding his hands over each other as he stands at relaxed parade rest at Din’s side. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to speak up to him a little bit since his vessel lost pressure in Taanab.” 

This gives you the brilliant idea of conversing with Din in Tusken sign, something he’d been adamant to teach you after your excursion on Tatooine. 

  “She’s our interpreter. We call her Whip.’’

While Mayfeld guides the conversation with the officer, you and Din are easing into talking in Tusken about however many ways this can go wrong, but then he changes the topic to something you’re not quite ready to acknowledge. 

You can look at me, you know. He signs, hands frantic as he tries and fails to find your eyes. You value him - and his heart - far too much to be the first person he knows to have seen his face.

No. You shake your head. I can’t. 

And you don’t. You only look at his side profile for the remainder of that trip, refusing to allow yourself the satisfaction of being the one person he cared about that has seen his face. Seen him. 

Like I said. You don’t need to see Din Djarin’s face to see him. 

*** 

Din is almost positive he’s ready to accept how he feels about you. 

The minute Mayfeld shoots that officer in the chest, you spring into action and whip that staff off your back - disengaging the lock that holds the two lightsabers together - and the world explodes in a flurry of blue as you perform the sword and shield method he’s seen you do flawlessly at least five times now. 

You don’t look at him even after you’re back in Slave One. He and Cara have escorted Mayfeld back to the surface of the planet, and it’s just you and Fett in the cockpit. Despite the clone and bounty hunter being so much older then you, there’s something oddly comforting knowing you’re sitting next to has suffered as much as you have. If not more. 

Long story short, we both survived. 

  “You know, I’ve been with you a grand total of a day and I can already see it in your eyes, Whip.” The nickname Mayfeld had come up with in the facility has already made its rounds on the ship, and Boba feels it’s more then appropriate for the first Jedi he’s met since the kids who put him in the Sarlacc to begin with. Being inside of that thing had mellowed him out. He had accepted his life for what it was now. Oddly enough.. Boba Fett is at peace. “You’re lovesick for the Mandalorian.” 

  “Boba-” 

The older man, one who mirrored what you’d always envisioned the clones - may Maker rest their souls - to look like as they aged, removed his helmet to look at you. “Take it from someone who knows. He gets you. You get him.” Boba turned his gaze back towards the ramp of Slave One where Din was talking in low voices with Cara. “Wish I’d had a jeti like you who saw me despite the armor.” 

He stopped speaking after that.  

Taking a deep breath, you descend from the cockpit just as Slave One takes off again, the coordinates for Moff Gideon’s cruiser inputted into the navi-computer. Fennec and Cara move by you to join Boba in the cockpit which leaves you and Din alone in the cargo bay. 

It’s deadly silent. 

Ner jeti. He whispers. You can hear his thoughts as clear as you hear your own. Why will you not look at me? 

Your eyes slam shut as his fingers curl around your hips. You cannot do this to him, no matter how much you want to - no matter how much you desire to finally kiss those lips you’ve dreamt idly about so many times - because here’s the truth of it: You have suffered, parts of you have died, everything you have ever known has died, you have lost everything and didn’t even try to save those on the other end of those attachments you’d formed... but something, something good, put you right here. Right here in this moment with Din Djarin mere moments before plunging into the subject of your night terrors after months of being tormented by nightmares of your fellow Jedi being tortured by the Empire for simply existing. 

And quite frankly, there’s no one else you’d rather take that plunge with. 

That fact terrifies you. 

  “I can’t look at you, Din.” You whisper. “I can’t look at you because then that would be breaking your Creed for me... and I can’t let you do that when the baby hasn’t even seen your face yet-” 

  “Oh, believe me.” A clunk echoes in the cargo-bay as the beskar falls from his hands. Your heart stops and your breath catches in your throat as you tremble beneath his grasps, eyes still closed as he steps into the curve of your body - chest to your back - and lowers his entire head to your shoulder. “I intend for him to.” 

Din lays a kiss at the nape of your neck. Maker... he’s real. Your head starts spinning as his kiss ascends right to the shell of your ear, in which he then whispers, “Open your eyes, Sarad.” and it’s such an intimate act on the behalf of someone who has not known love until you and the baby showed up that you can’t not open your eyes. 

When you turn around, your world is enveloped in a mirage of onyx. Brown eyes. 

  “Din-” Din chuckles at your obvious reluctance because he is absolutely terrified to let you see him, the real him, vulnerable and waiting and desperate for the same acceptance. 

  “I told you my name way earlier then I ever anticipated I would.” He begins, taking your hands in his own to lay them against his cheeks. It has been so long since he allowed himself to accept touch, to accept that people in the galaxy were still gentle, that he trembles when your warmth seeps into his skin. “After what Bo-Katan told me and what Mayfeld kept saying in the transport... I’ve done alot of thinking recently, and I’m coming to the conclusion that maybe the way I was raised was wrong. There’s nothing wrong with taking the helmet off.” He exhales on a shaky breath and turns his face to kiss the inside of your hand. “But then again.. I’ve always wanted to around you.” 

Your voice is small as you ask, “Why?” 

  “Because you’ve always seen me.” Din replies. “Despite the armor and the helmet, you’ve always seen me for who I was. You saw me as a father for the-” He swallows the knot in his throat and leans inward until you are a hairs breath apart, forehead resting against yours as he pulls your body into his own. “As a father for our child. Not just as a bounty hunter, but as a man. A man I could never see myself as. When you came around, I stopped surviving. I started living.” He snorted sharply through his nose. “I almost forgot what that felt like.. I think you pulled me back right before I forgot entirely.” 

He’s so grateful. It’s hard to live feeling like you’re a ghost. 

Din tests the waters of this desire radiating from you both by applying just the barest amount of pressure of his mouth on yours. As to be expected, your entire body quakes at the contact and it takes all his physical control to not allow his spinning head to make his knees give out and send him falling on the floor. 

Oh.. he could get used to this. Used to this feeling.

He’s felt this before.

Joy. 

  “That’s the thing.” Inward, outward, forward and back again, you slowly allow yourself to succumb to Din’s kiss and grip his face in your hands just a little bit tighter. “I’ve always seen you.” You pull away just enough to force your eyes open, and then you are graced with the face of the man you love. You do. You love him, and you’ve accepted it. Kriffing Boba Fett. “And you know what? I thought I’d died before I met you. I never thought I’d make it here, much less be with you.. and I am so lucky.” There it is then, that breathless smile Din has pressed the sight of twice now into his memories, that presses itself into your aspect as the two of you look at each other. 

  “Why are you lucky?” 

You wink and shrug. ‘’Long story short?” You muse. “It’s a good thing I survived.”

Little to Din’s knowledge as he plunges into the mystery of his growing love for you - his flower, the one who made him bloom - that when he kisses you again, your eyes are wide open the entire time. 

There’s never been quite so beautiful a sight as somebody who’s survived. 

bonus: i am thinking about how beautiful pedro pascal was in this episode 

[labyrinth-runner]

Having a Ball

An Obi-Wan x Reader Winter Tale, also a secret santa present from @starwarssecretsanta​ for @peacefulwizardfox

Word Count: ~3k

Warnings: None

Summary: It’s a fluffy wintery fic with some snowball fights.

Big thanks to @the-mandalorian-clone-lover for letting me bounce this off her.

The air was cool as it went right through your robes. A shiver went down your spine as you wished you had dressed in more layers. Obi-Wan had warned you that the planet was cold, and you remembered it being such when you were younger, but you had figured that you had grown in your training and could block out the cold by now. Such was your mistake.

Being here on this planet gave you the illusion that everything was normal. The world was a blanket of white, untouched in most places. In a word, it was peaceful. It was this serenity that made it one of the Order’s favorite places for brief meditative retreat. However, when you saw the list of people who had signed up for this trip, you were beginning to think that maybe it wouldn’t be as relaxing as it had been advertised.

You were excited for this retreat, though, having heard stories about Master Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker’s antics. Very rarely did you get to see them in action these days, with the war spreading you all out so thin, so you were keen to see the infamous duo get up to some of their shenanigans.

“Let’s set up camp for the night,” Master Windu advised.

Looking around, you noticed that there were no tents. A quizzical look settled into your features until you saw what your lodging was to be. 

The Jedi around you held their arms out, palms facing out, fingers splayed. Their eyes were closed in concentration as they reached out to the world around them. 

Shapes began to take form out of the snow,  ice rising from the ground as a building rose up in front of you. Closing your eyes, you joined them in lifting it up so that the door was accessible.

“Now that that’s done, time for the fun,” Anakin whispered to you as he knelt down to pack a ball of snow in his hands.

You raised a brow at him as he wound up and threw it, hitting Obi-Wan square in the face. Snow clung to his beard as he reached up to wipe it off, giving Anakin the dirtiest look as the younger Jedi snickered into his hand.

“Master, you’ve got a little something on your face,” Anakin said innocently.

Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed as a clump of snow rose from the ground and hurled itself at Anakin, who ducked, causing the snow to hit you instead.

The crowd grew silent as you casually reached up and swiped the snow from your eyes to see a blushing Jedi Master sputtering an apology. Calmly, you reached down to pack your own snowball before returning the favor.

“SNOWBALL FIGHT!” Ahsoka yelled as everyone broke off into a free-for-all.

Snowballs whipped back and forth across the white expanse of space as haphazard forts were quickly erected to provide shelter from the cold ammunition being pelted every which way. You dove behind a snow bank, but the snow moved under your weight, sending you tumbling down a hill. The roll continued until you found yourself going from a slight tumble to a sheer drop into a cave. 

Looking up at the space you’d fallen through, you realized you wouldn’t be able to jump up unaided. You let out a sigh, sending a puff of air in front of your face. Turning to look at the cave, you noticed light shining through the icicles, indicating another entrance on the other side of the cave. Faintly, you heard the whistling of the wind through the cavern, and what sounded like your name. Having nothing left to lose, you trudged towards the light, hoping to reach the end quickly and before the sun set.

You weren’t so lucky, finding yourself exiting the cave just as the rich reds and pinks in the sky gave over to the purple indigo of night. “Oh, kriff.”

“The days are definitely shorter here than on Coruscant,” a sharp voice cut through the stillness.

“Master Kenobi?” you called out. 

“Here, darling,” he said as he slid down a slight bend to land in front of you. “You know, everyone’s worried about you.”

“I didn’t mean to make people worry,” you blushed, “I took a tumble and ended up in this cave.”

“I told them that, but they didn’t seem to believe me, or your tracks for that matter,” he said as he fished out a blanket to wrap around you. “Well, it’s too late to go back like this. The temperature will drop soon. We might as well stay here for the night.”

Here? The two of you alone in a cave? Your mind was reeling. You had had a crush on the Jedi Master ever since you were both padawans, but thankfully your missions kept you apart, which helped keep your feelings at bay. However, having to be so close to him like this, especially after he had come to rescue you, was reigniting that spark that you had thought was gone, but had in fact only been dormant for so long.

The two of you went back into your cave and he reached into his pack for his emergency fire kit, building a small fire that was kept at bay by a ring of stones around the small crackling source of heat.

“So, what made you sign up for the retreat?” he asked as he dug around for some rations in his pack.

“I thought it might be a relaxing break from being shot at,” you replied as you took one from him, cracking the ration over the heat.

Obi-Wan chuckled, “Relaxation. There’s something I haven’t done in a while.”

“Anakin seems intent on making it hard for you to do that,” you teased.

“He’s got a good heart,” he replied. “And some of his ideas are brilliant. Just don’t tell him I said as much.”

You giggled, “Your secret is safe with me.”

“If I remember correctly, they always have been,” he said with a small smile.

“Oh?” you asked, feeling your mouth suddenly go dry.

“I know attachments are frowned upon, but I will admit that I always miss your smile when you’re away,” he winked. “It’s infectious.”

“Careful, Master Kenobi, your Jedi charm tricks won’t work on me,” you said, playfully nudging him, but you were blushing.

“Oh they won’t? I remember it being different when we were younger. You were always blushing at everything I said and blaming my accent if my recollection is correct,” he looked into the fire before turning to you for a moment. Softly he asked, “What happened to our friendship?”

“You lost your Master and then we were thrust onto different paths,” you replied, slipping your hand along the rocky bottom of the cave to tentatively touch his hand. When he didn’t pull away, you interlocked your fingers with his. “I always believed ours was a friendship that could pick up from wherever we left off.”

A slight tint settled above his beard, but you wondered if perhaps it was a trick of the light reflecting off the cave walls. “Oh, is that so?”

“I know Master Yoda says that we are all luminous beings, but whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same,” you replied, looking into the fire, “A connection like that runs deep enough to withstand the test of time, wouldn’t you agree?”

Obi-Wan looked at you, really looked at you, and for a moment he was just a man. He wasn’t a Jedi, and neither were you. You were just two souls bound together by so many commonalities that one might not know where he ended and you began. The way the light glinted off your face casted you in an ethereal glow. Luminous being, indeed, he thought as he took you in. Although your words were true, he would never have had the courage to admit them on his own. Instead, he just gave your hand a squeeze.

“We should rest. You sleep first while I take the first watch,” he said, letting go of your hand to wrap his arm around you. 

A slight sigh breezed through your lips, but you let it go, as you had always been trained to do. The physical touch would be enough to reaffirm that perhaps he saw you in the same light as you saw him. Resting your head on his shoulder, you closed your eyes to get comfortable. Soon enough, you found yourself drifting off into a meditative state, not quite ready to commit to actual sleep at this point.

Obi-Wan let out a sigh as he looked out of the mouth of the cave. Every time that he thought he was over his attachments, something would happen to reassure him that perhaps he wasn’t the perfect Jedi that everyone thought him to be. He had mastery over his emotions, but that didn’t mean he was devoid of them. It wasn’t something that he could just lock in a box and forget about. It was a constant battle every day with a beast that would remain conquered for only so long. It was a battle of wills, waiting for him to fatigue and slip up. In truth, sometimes he wanted to slip. He wanted to give in and take the easy way out every once in a while. He wanted to feel everything; to give into temptation on occasion. To love and be loved in a way that consumed, just to feel. But, a part of him feared being burned. Feared making a mistake he couldn’t take back. To give himself to someone so completely would mean that the loss of that person could be enough to ruin him. 

To love anything at all is to be vulnerable. That kind of vulnerability was something a Jedi couldn’t afford, so he put up walls. Walls that even Anakin couldn’t break through, and yet you always had a way of slipping through the cracks. It was almost as if letting those walls down would be acceptable if it were only to let you in.

The sky outside was getting lighter, but it wasn’t sunrise. A smile curled the corners of his lips as he gently shook you awake.

“Darling,” he murmured as you groaned, “Darling, look.”

You blinked your eyes open, trying to focus on your hazy surroundings as your vision swam. “What am I looking at?”

Gently he reached out to tip your chin up towards the sky and you understood.

Wavy lines of color streaked across the sky, lighting up the night. “You know, the ancient texts referred to auroras as being the spirits of a planet dancing in the night.”

“Qui-Gon always said they were the physical representation of a planet’s aura,” he said thoughtfully as he took in your awed expression.

“Regardless, they’re beautiful,” you murmured, “Definitely not a view you can see on Coruscant.”

“Mmm, they are beautiful,” he said as his eyes softened on your face. “I wish I could see it more often.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed him staring at you, sweeping his eyes along your features as if he were trying to memorize you.

“Afraid you’ll forget me?” you asked as you turned towards him.

“I doubt I could ever manage that,” he replied with a small smile.

“Am I forever burned into your memories?” you asked playfully with a bright smile.

His heart skipped a beat as he reached out to brush a strand of hair out of your face, gently sliding the pad of his forefinger along the outline of your face as he did so. Your smile slowly slid off your face as you took in the intent nature of his gaze. His eyes flicked down to your lips before slowly making their way back up to yours. The seas of his eyes were tumultuous, like a churning sea as you stand on a cliff in a storm.

Obi-Wan licked his bottom lip as you reached out to gently cup his cheek. You dragged your thumb through the soft bristles of his beard, feeling your breath catch at how he leaned into your touch. You let your hand slide along his jaw towards his chin as your thumb dragged along his bottom lip, gliding from the dampness left by his tongue. Your eyes settled on his lips, entranced, before lazily looking up at him with a hooded gaze.

The fire was slowly dying in front of you, casting you both in the shadows of the embers. A log on the fire shifted, sending up sparks that playfully danced in his eyes. You swallowed a lump in your throat as you both stood on the edge of this precipice, toeing the crumbling limits, afraid of what might happen should you fall. 

A flutter in your chest caused you to take that step, falling over the edge and dragging him with you. You pulled him in for a kiss, relishing in the way his supple lips pressed firmly into yours. 

His beard tickled your face as his hand slid to cup the nape of your neck. His velvety tongue slipped over your bottom lip, the first demand you imagine he’s ever given, and one you were very happy to acquiesce to. His tongue danced with yours, a tango to a music only the two of you could hear.

He explored you like you were uncharted territory, but in truth, he was also exploring himself. Testing his limits. Determining how far he was wiling to go. It was a journey you would go on with him, but you let him take the lead out of respect. 

You broke from the kiss and rested your foreheads against one another as you panted slightly for air. “Good night, Master Kenobi. I’ll take this next watch.”

“Good night, darling,” he grinned, his chest still heaving slightly from the exertion as he rested his head in your lap.

You let your head fall back as you let out a silent laugh at what just happened. Biting your lip, you shook your head before turning your attention back to him. Gently, you ran your hand through his hair, stroking through the auburn locks as you took in his sweet face of content. Part of you wondered if that was the first time he did something he wanted to, regardless of the consequences, in years. You draped your arm over his chest as you let yourself picture a normal future for the two of you. It was a daydream you hadn’t had in a long time, but one that you took out of its box every once in a while, if only to shake off the cobwebs. 

If you weren’t Jedi, you’d be married. You’d live on a peaceful planet full of serene moments where you could feel the force at work in the galaxy. Maybe you’d have a farm, or maybe you would just live in town. Perhaps you’d befriend the neighbors. Perhaps you’d be in a remote area with no one around for as far as the eye could see. Obi-Wan would tend to the animals, and you would help him build the life he could have had if he wasn’t a Jedi. Perhaps you’d have children running around, a perfect mix of the two of you, or adopted to give them a better life in a loving home. No matter the scenario or the variables, the common denominator was that you’d be happy together.

You watched with passive interest as the sky changed from an inky indigo to the same shades as your dying fire until the sun had risen in the sky again. Gently, you nudged Obi-Wan awake.

“Obi, it’s time to go home,” you murmured.

He stretched languidly before collecting his belongings. You did the same before heading out of the cave and into the bright morning light. 

“We can follow my tracks to get back to camp,” he said as he held his hand out to you. “Shall we?”

With a smile, you placed your hand in his and together you traversed the snowy hills until you were back to camp. You caught sight of the others breaking down camp.

Anakin was the first to spot you, eyes falling on your conjoined hands. You quickly dropped Obi-Wan’s hand when you noticed where the Jedi Knight was staring.

“Bout time you two showed up. We had to do all the work breaking down camp without you,” Anakin teased. “It’s not very Jedi-like to shirk your duties.”

“I’ll remember that, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said with a wag of his finger.

“We’re glad the two of you are safe,” Ahsoka said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

“Yeah, would’ve hated leaving you here,” Anakin grinned.

Mace gave Anakin a withering look, “No one is getting left behind.” You could have sworn you heard him mumble ‘unfortunately,’ before he turned to Obi-Wan to add, “The next time you decide to wander off, take Skywalker with you.”

Obi-Wan shot Anakin a look that said, ‘what did you do?’

Anakin just shrugged, placing his hands up in a placating manner.

“Load up, everyone. It’s time to go home. I hope this trip was as enlightening as you all thought it would be,” Mace said before heading towards the ship.

You shared a smile with Obi-Wan Kenobi at Master Windu’s words before adjusting your pack on your shoulder and following the others onto the ship.

Enlightening, indeed.

[bedlamsbard]

I got a couple of different asks about Luke and Ahsoka in other side AU 10, so I guess I will just make it a regular post after all so I can answer all of them at once.

@slecnaztemnot: 

Okay i just read your latest other side chapter and I wanted to ask about Ahsoka and Luke dynamics. I wonder what exactly where their heretics disagreemts about the jedi doctrine? while i can guess some of the stuff like attachements i guess i mostly see ahsoka as nonjedi and therefore someone who should not be attached to doctrine about attachements (haha) so i am wondering how you see her. i would actually love your take on how their first meetings went. continued in next ask, 1/2

1/2 continuation since most people write them as Ashoka immediately spilling the beans about the whole Vader situation to Luke and yours Ahsoka didn't. So I am curious what do you think Ahsoka feels about it. I got of course lot of it from the fic itself so i am mostly asking about how did you base your interpretation, if that makes sense and what led you to the narrative choices to portray their relationship in such way.

@comentter:

I'm most interested in what Luke and Ahsoka know about each other. Luke doesn't know much about Ahsoka obviously, but does he have any idea why she seems to hate him? He must be desperate lol. And how much does Ahsoka know about what happened on the DS2? And how much does Kanan know about these events? What was Hera able to tell him and what else did Luke and Ahsoka tell him? I always figure that everyone but Luke and a few people he told (like Leia) think the Emperor and Vader from the DS2 explosion.

I now have this image in my head of Ahsoka spending time with Rex and her laughing as Rex does something like tell a joke or a specific gesture. Then Luke walks by, does the exact same thing and Ahsoka is like "Of course, you'd do this stupid thing, you idiot!" :D

I think shortly before I started writing this sequence I had seen some cute art of Luke and Ahsoka hugging, which is a pretty common art trope and which has never sat quite right with me.  I also have the tendency to want to do the opposite of common fanon, which I can’t leave out either.  I also wanted to logic out what the hell was going on with Ahsoka’s charaterization in her Mando episode on a Watsonian level rather than a Doylist one (which I did a few weeks ago), even if other side takes place well before Mando and doesn’t intersect with it in any meaningful way.

When it came to the Luke and Ahsoka relationship (or lack thereof), it came down to three questions for me:

Who knows what?

What do they know?

When do they know it?

I made the decision early on in the chapter to leave Leia out of this relationship entirely, since the new canon seems to at this point in time (within a year of RotJ) be keeping it relatively quiet that she and Luke are siblings, and it’s not something that Hera would have a reason to know.  (Note also that this entire sequence is told from Hera’s POV, which plays into the “who knows what when” angle.)

As per Rebels S4 (not the epilogue, because Mando’s thrown that out the window), Ahsoka knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, Sith Lord

Darth Vader was directly or indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the deaths of any Jedi who survived the Purge (”you and your Inquisitors saw to that”)

Padme Amidala is dead

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead (Obi-Wan was not dead, but she has no way to know this)

no Darksider can return to the Light side

At the end of RotJ (not taking into account anything that happened in the comics or ancillary novels, which I’m not up to date on), Luke knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker

everyone Anakin ever knew is dead, mostly because of him

Vader returned to being Anakin Skywalker at the end of his life

(Leia presumably also knows all of this, perhaps with a few more details based on things her parents might have told her, but her feelings about Darth Vader are: Bad, Do Not Want, to be glib about it.)

Now, there’s one other factor here, which is Rex.  Rex knew Anakin and knew Ahsoka and was in the Rebel Alliance -- we know that he was on Yavin IV prior to Luke’s arrival and we know that he fought in the Battle of Endor. (And turns up in a couple of scattered art panels from the comics.)  If we want to take his brief appearance in Galaxy of Adventures with Han Solo’s strike force as canon, then he may have also known Han and probably Luke -- certainly his ears would have pricked up at the name “Skywalker.”  (Okay, there’s one other factor, which is R2-D2, but Artoo never tells anyone anything despite knowing...everything. Or most things, anyway.)  Rex doesn’t seem to know that Anakin became Darth Vader (I believe there’s an interview somewhere where Dave or Pablo or someone says that a meeting between Rex and Vader would be “awkward,” but there’s no canonical reason to believe that he knew about the Anakin/Vader connection), but he probably found out at some point that the 501st was the battalion involved in the assault on the Jedi Temple.  He also, as of Rebels S3-4, assumes that Vader killed Ahsoka -- presumably Ezra would have told him as much as he could.  (And Ezra does know that Vader is Anakin, so he may have told Rex that as well.)  Rex also knows that Anakin Skywalker was having an affair with Padme Amidala, but presumably didn’t know about (a) the marriage or (b) the pregnancy, because how would he know?

Then we come to Ahsoka’s return and unfortunately the current canon gives us no time point for when it actually happened: presumably Ahsoka did not or could not return to the greater galaxy at the point she “left”, during the fight on Malachor (3 BBY), because as of Rebels S3-4 everyone still believes she’s dead.  Maybe she’s still stuck on Malachor without a way to get off, who knows; maybe after S4 Ezra grabbed her into the World Between Worlds she decided to stay on Malachor until she ~caught up with the main timeline, which...you then have to believe that Ahsoka is going to deliberately remove herself from the war, which I can get to, but is not something I’m totally comfortable with.  Or she pops out in the timeline at the same time that Ezra returns to the main timeline and is able to more or less immediately return to the main timeline narrative, plus or minus a few weeks.  (There are, after all, still a couple of Advanced TIE fighters parked in the Sith temple, even if they were potentially damaged in the temple collapse.  Ahsoka could have repaired them or used the comms systems to call for a pick-up -- this is, btw, what happens in Crown.)  We don’t know when the S2 finale scene/S4 WBW scene of Ahsoka walking back into the temple actually takes place in the timeline; it doesn’t have to be at the exact same time as the rest of the S2 finale sequence (since obvs Vader dragging himself out, Maul flying off, and the Rebels crew looking sad doesn’t all take place at the exact same time).

Other side AU is deliberately vague about when Ahsoka returns from the World Between Worlds/Malachor/to the Rebel Alliance; it’s not stated in the story, but I made the assumption that she came back shortly after the (non-epilogue) end of the Rebels finale, but was still deeply messed up from her Malachor revelations.  (Also, like, Sidious, I guess, but she was probably so messed up about Anakin/Vader that Sidious being around barely registered.)  Since she never seems to have held a formal position in the Rebel Alliance, I assumed that after she returned and let everyone know she was still alive, she then immediately took off to try and figure out what the hell happened with Anakin at the end of the Clone Wars, since she saw him like a week before he snapped and at the time he seemed fine.

The problem is that almost everyone involved is dead.

Now, at this point (shortly before Scarif and ANH), a few people are still alive who then die shortly, but whom Ahsoka may have no reason to believe were involved.  Bail Organa, for example, is still around, but aside from him being Padme’s friend Ahsoka doesn’t have a reason to know that Bail was there when Padme died -- and since they were in contact for the nineteen years preceding there’s no reason for her to assume now that he was keeping something for her.  Back in the comics (before I stopped reading them), Vader did some digging to figure out what was going on with Padme and his child; Ahsoka probably would have done the same digging (without having to torture anyone), but without necessarily knowing that Padme was pregnant.  Knowing the date of Padme’s death (same as the Republic, essentially), she may have had a previous assumption that Padme was assassinated on Palpatine’s orders, but knowing that Vader is Anakin probably moves that assumption closer to the truth, that Anakin was somehow involved in Padme’s death one way or another.  Sooner or later Ahsoka will turn up the fact that Padme was pregnant, come to the obvious conclusion that Anakin was the father, and possibly find out the same thing that Vader does in the comics -- that the child was born before Padme died.  (But also probably not that Padme was carrying twins, but even if she found that out, it wouldn’t make a difference.)

While Ahsoka is doing her digging (and there really isn’t much information out there to find), the events of Rogue One and ANH happen, and Ahsoka comes back to the Rebel Alliance to find out which of her friends are still alive.  (Maybe Rex is with her at this point, who knows.)

Everyone in the Rebel Alliance is talking about some young hotshot named Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker who has a very familiar lightsaber, who claims his father was Anakin Skywalker, and who had some kind of relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who turned up on the Death Star, fought Darth Vader, and died.

Ahsoka has just spent the past few months trying to figure out what happened with Anakin, and as best she can reassemble the facts it mostly comes down to “Anakin did something dumb for Padme, that something dumb was ‘turn to the Dark Side and kill literally everyone,’ and then Padme died, the Republic was overturned, and the Jedi Order was wiped out.”  Ahsoka presumably walks into a room, hears the name Luke Skywalker -- maybe sees him -- and is all at once face to face with the living evidence of just how badly Anakin fucked up.

This is just too much for Ahsoka to deal with at the moment, so she takes off again, and spends the next five years brushing in and out of the Rebel Alliance doing odd missions that can really only be done by a trained Force-user.  Rex, who seems to have a more stable position in the Alliance, is always going to side with Ahsoka over anyone else; if she tells him not to tell Luke that she knew Anakin, he won’t.  (And for that matter, he may have somewhat fraught feelings about Luke himself.)  She may have the odd interaction with Luke -- who has heard that there’s another Jedi in the Alliance and wants to be friends/get real training -- but Ahsoka just does not want any part of this. It’s irrational! She knows it’s irrational! But this is the living evidence of Anakin’s failure, Anakin who last she saw him TRIED TO KILL HER, who was at least partially responsible for the deaths of everyone she ever knew.  (And honestly, finding out that Vader topped it all off by killing Obi-Wan is not going to help.)

Ahsoka may also be feeling a certain amount of survivor’s guilt: if Ezra had not pulled her out of the Malachor temple at that exact moment, she came pretty close to bringing the temple down on both herself and Vader, and may have succeeded in killing him.  She did not do so, and who knows how many people died because of that in the years between Malachor and Yavin?  (Just because Tarkin was the one who gave the order doesn’t mean that Ahsoka may at least partially blame Alderaan’s destruction on Vader, if she knew he was on the Death Star then.) She knows he killed Obi-Wan.

The Yoda lineage is very good at going “yikes, I am going off to live alone and beat myself up over my failure for years” and Ahsoka is very much an example of that lineage.

She and Luke have a relationship of “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, do you want to talk?” and “I have to leave immediately,” maybe with the odd “please stop using that lightsaber grip it is physically painful for me to watch, do it like this instead, okay, bye.”  Luke probably told all of two other people about what happened with Vader on the Death Star, Leia and Han; he has no reason to tell anyone else about it because it won’t matter to them.  Why would he tell Ahsoka, whom he has no relationship with?  He doesn’t know that Ahsoka knew Anakin Skywalker and would only know if one of four people told him: Ahsoka herself (no), Rex (no), R2-D2 (maybe), or Admiral Ackbar (would never have occurred to Luke to ask, might have occurred to Ackbar to say).  (We also don’t know that Mon Mothma knew Ahsoka very well, or at all, for that matter; they never interacted in TCW.)

As for her swinging harder into overt Jedi-ness by Mando after her blatant “I am no Jedi” of Rebels, it reads to me as a response to the Anakin/Vader revelation (especially the attachment thing).  She had made certain assumptions in the TCW period (see her saving Rex in the TCW finale) and prior to Rebels; Kanan’s method of Jediness was something she could accept in the time period and in those circumstances; the Anakin/Vader revelation shattered all of that, followed immediately as it was by Kanan apparently going full Jedi self-sacrifice despite his attachments.  (Her reaction to Ezra being a trauma response about two very different circumstances.)  All of a sudden what she thought might have been mutable based on the circumstances became something that had to be adhered to in case of dangerous results, which she had just had brought home to her in extremely bad circumstances.

I made a crack somewhere about Mando’s central tension being between “being Mandalorian” and “being doing Mandalorianness”; I think in the post-OT period with Ahsoka and Luke we’re seeing something similar with “being Jedi” and “being doing Jediness.”  Even if Ahsoka isn’t actively claiming the title Jedi anymore (because what does that accomplish in most contexts?), she’s leaning far more into the tenets of the Jedi Order -- which Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

Thus the doctrinal dispute.

Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Order.  That’s what she knows, that’s how she knows how to be a Jedi; for her being a Jedi is being part of the Jedi Order, whether or not the actions associated with performing Jediness are being actively practiced.  Luke doesn’t have that context.  For Luke, being a Jedi is...being doing Jediness.  (This is super awkward phrasing.)  Performing the actions of a Jedi.  Luke has a few holocrons, but I’m guessing that a lot of what is on those holocrons makes the assumption that whoever is opening with them has the context of being a part of the Jedi Order and doesn’t explain really basic stuff about the Order or what that means.  Luke’s Jedi Order is not going to be the Republic Jedi Order made anew; it’s going to be something that has a resemblance to it and is based on a similar view of the Force, even arguably its heir, but is just not going to be the same thing.  It can’t be.  Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Kanan, of course, is coming into all of this from a similar context as Ahsoka: he grew up in the Jedi Order, it’s what he knows, it’s who he is.  Except Kanan never walked away from the Order, so while Ahsoka had been disconnected from her Jediness at the time of the Purge, he never lost his -- part of Ahsoka’s tension from TCW S7-Rebels was “I can’t be a Jedi because the Order is gone” and Kanan’s was “can I be a Jedi without the Jedi Order?”  (Ezra is a whole ‘nother thing but is somewhat outside the scope of this.)  The Jedi Order never factors in Luke’s Jediness at all.  (There’s some lineage doctrinal dispute here as well -- the Yoda lineage seems to be very closely connected to the Order as the font of Jediness, the Windu-Billaba lineage somewhat less so.  The Yoda lineage is like...the hardcore conservatives of the Jedi Order, though, and are probably not typical.)

Poor Kanan came back from the dead, after a week in another universe (which had its own problems; he’s been trying to very gently convince his counterpart that even after being an Inquisitor for months he can still be a Jedi), into Luke trying to build a new Jedi Order from scratch, Ahsoka firmly believing it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and not wanting to be in the same room as Luke at all (not to mention that she really did not believe that they should have gone for “hey, let’s send Hera Syndulla to another universe” as even being an option), and both of them having essentially incompatible notions of being a Jedi at each other -- this is probably the most time Luke and Ahsoka ever spent in each other’s presence.  They’ve probably never articulated their problems at each other, just assumed that the other knew them.  And Kanan has his own “how to be a Jedi” approach, which is from a very different than either Ahsoka or Luke because despite originating from the same context as Ahsoka, he had a very different path to get to his present position.

As for what Kanan knows -- uh, pretty much only what Hera knew, and Hera knew very little?  She was friendly with Luke and Leia, but didn’t have much interaction with them -- she states that she had a tendency to avoid Luke because even if she would never say it to Luke’s face, she silently believes that if any Jedi should have been in the Rebel Alliance, it should have been Kanan and Ezra and not this relative newcomer.  If the Death Star 2 news about Vader and Palps was never common knowledge, then Hera wouldn’t have known it.  Kanan’s in a position of having to play catch-up, but also having a completely different priority (finding Ezra).  He sat through this meeting where after they’d finished grilling him on “you were in ANOTHER UNIVERSE and also you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD?” they politely sniped at each other with a bunch of context he didn’t have and flat out decided that wow, he did not want to deal with this at all, whatsoever.

(This is also not stated in the story, but Luke and Ahsoka also disagreed about whether Jacen should be trained or not: Luke said, yeah, of course, when he’s a little older! and Ahsoka said nope, he’ll be fine, it will go away. Hera was just very “...I will deal with this later” about it since it wasn’t an urgent issue.)

[kopykunoichi]

The Legacy of Star Wars: An Open Letter to the Writers and Creators of A Galaxy Far, Far Away

“Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you. Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!” ~ Cassian Andor

I saw a great meme once that played off that quote, meant to depict an older fan describing to a newer fan how they had been invested in the story of Star Wars from childhood. I could relate. Though I am not old enough to have seen the original Star Wars movies in theater, they were a significant part of my childhood. I remember renting the original theatrical VHS from our local video store all the time when I was little. Then we bought the digitally remastered Special Edition VHS Box Set and I spent the next decade wearing them out! We would have popcorn and Star Wars marathons all the time. My friends and I would always pretend we were in the story. My swingset was the Millennium Falcon. I was that 11-year-old girl who would argue with my friends over who was hotter - Luke or Han. (The correct answer is Han, of course!) My mother would read the Expanded Universe novels to me in the afternoons and we would talk about the characters. All my spending money went to Jedi Apprentice books and 6 inch action figures. In short, I loved Star Wars. 

I was 13 when The Phantom Menace hit theaters, and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to get to see new stories from my favorite fictional universe play out on the big screen. Though I struggled a bit with some of the acting, the story was absolutely amazing to me. Star Wars felt all the more real to me with the amazing graphics and intense action sequences - not to mention the layers of politics and the complexity of the story. I watched Revenge of the Sith several times in theaters, and though it broke my heart to see Anakin’s fall, I never considered it to be a sad ending overall, when taken as a whole with the original trilogy. 

When the Clone Wars aired in 2008, I was ecstatic. Here was an Anakin I could actually get into (sorry, Hayden). I loved him. I adored Ahsoka. I wanted to marry Rex. The character development and the plot deepened my attachment to that era, and made me question everything I had previously taken for granted as good and bad. The whole system was flawed - the Republic and the Jedi. It wasn’t just a matter of mistakes being made and the wool being pulled over their eyes, there was deep rooted corruption in the side that I once felt was “good”. The light side and the dark side were not as black and white as I thought. I found myself strongly disliking some of the “good guys” and deeply sympathizing with some downright detestable people (I don’t know how you got me to care for Maul, Filoni - but well done). While the series had not yet ended, we knew where it was going. But still, we had already lived through the pain of Order 66, and we knew that the story would eventually culminate in a victory at the end of Return of the Jedi.

I couldn’t believe our luck when the first installment of the sequel trilogy hit the theaters in 2015. It had some of the feelings of a reboot, but I was beyond thrilled to have a series of Star Wars movies that I could now share with my children, as my parents had shared them with me. Though it was hard to say goodbye to the first love of my life, Han Solo - I just knew that Ben would be redeemed and Han’s sacrifice would be worth it...

2016 brought us Rogue One. We knew how that one was going to end too, but we still ate it up. I fell in love with a whole new set of characters, only to see each and every one of them die in the end. Talk about tragedy. But Leia’s line about hope reminded us that five minutes later, a whiny little farm boy was about to have his whole life upended in the best sort of way...so it was okay. Sort of.

Four years of Rebels ended in 2018, and it was so, so lovely - but it hurt so, so much. My perfect, beautiful space family had been torn apart with Kanan’s death. Ezra was missing. Rex was a 29-year-old man who should have been in his prime, but was instead struggling with the wear and tear of a 60-year-old body. Ahsoka was separated from him - AGAIN - and then she left with Sabine to look for Ezra. The ending still held the promise of the fight to come with the Empire, but the majority of our characters were left in a place of grief and brokenness.

2019 brought an end to the sequel trilogy. Once again, we had characters who pulled at our heartstrings, and an interesting struggle between “light” and “dark” that reminded me of the complexities introduced in The Clone Wars. It became more apparent than ever that balance in the Force did not mean the light triumphing over the dark, but instead a harmony between the two. At least, that’s what I thought. Until I watched every person I loved from the original trilogy die, Palpatine come back (and die) again, and the same exact ending of Return of the Jedi played out before me - except not as happy. Why? Because Anakin’s legacy had been reduced to ashes - his rise, fall, redemption, and sacrifice rendered null and void. The last Skywalker was redeemed and promptly killed, just like his grandfather. But because Rey Palpatine decided that she identified as Rey Skywalker, it was supposed to be okay. She then went to go hang out (or live?) alone on Tatooine because that’s where it all started. I was dumbfounded. This was the satisfying, hopeful, ending we were promised? How? 

Believe it or not, I’m not here to trash the sequels - I enjoyed them very much - right up until the last 20 minutes. But in that space of time, the entire legacy of the Skywalker family went up in smoke, and the legacy of Star Wars along with it. Since Return of the Jedi, there have been no happy endings to a Star Wars movie trilogy or TV show. And with the ending of The Rise of Skywalker, that one happy ending we did have was ripped from us as well. Star Wars is now a never ending series of tragic endings. The lessons we are left with: Don’t fall in love in Star Wars, it will end badly. Your actions ultimately result in failure. As soon as you turn good, you die. There is no balance in the Force, just a pendulum swinging back and forth for all time. 

Then The Clone Wars finally got her last season. I didn’t think Order 66 could have hurt worse, but Filoni set out to prove us all wrong...and succeeded. I’m still not over it. And once more, the bitterness I felt over the ending to the sequels (which had begun to subside) flared up all over again. What was it all for? All that pain. All that sacrifice. No happy endings. 

I still love Star Wars. Nothing can take that away from me. No amount of bad writing can change that. And there are still plenty of good writers and creators working on Star Wars content. But good writers spinning tales of tragedy and endless pain negates the power of good writing. The Star Wars of my childhood is not the Star Wars of today. We wore out those VHS tapes because we loved the stories and the people. But my kids are not going to wear out DVDs where everyone they love dies or ends up alone. They aren’t going to queue up those digital movies and series over and over - because who wants to subject themselves to that kind of torture?

Just about the only safe space for Star Wars fans right now is fanfiction archives where the people who love the characters are busy writing fix-it fics to squeeze some sort of satisfying ending out of the canon content. The Mandalorian is literally our last hope for a Star Wars story that has the potential to end well. I swear, if Din Djarin ends up dead or alone at the end of this series, I’m going to lose it. The overwhelming sentiment of the Star Wars fanbase - from original trilogy fanboys to Tumblr blogging Reylos, and everyone in between - is that of dissatisfaction with canon content (with the exception of The Mandalorian). So much so, that many fans are just saying “screw it” and churning out a myriad of fanfiction AUs because there is no way to salvage what has been written. Half of Tumblr is in therapy after The Rise of Skywalker ending and the last episode of Clone Wars - but they weren’t exactly stable to begin with. The other forums and social media platforms are not much better, though.

It’s not just about the quality of writing - because Filoni and co. have done exceptional work with The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Mandalorian. It’s the tragedy, guys. We can’t take it anymore. Is this really what we want the Star Wars legacy to be? Sadness? Despair? It’s a story about war - people are going to die. I get that. Victory comes at a price, but the cost can’t be worse than the victory. I want to sit down with my kids and watch Star Wars over and over again. The Mandalorian has given us a taste of that - but I’m almost afraid of where it will go. We’ve been burned so many times, I’m beginning to know what Anakin felt like on Mustafar - writhing in agony and screaming “I hate you” to someone he once loved. 

I remember happier days when Luke and Leia and Han were laughing and smiling with their friends while Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin looked on. I want that back. Filoni. Favreau. Creators. Writers. Producers. Directors. You are our only hope for canon content. Use The Mandalorian wisely. Use Din’s story to bless other characters. Here’s some ideas:

Let Din have a happy ending! Preferably with someone he loves and respects at his side (like Cara). 

Let Cara become a Mandalorian - and put Paz Vizsla in charge of her training (we need to see them spar).

Let what’s left of the Tribe establish a new Mandalorian colony - and let Sabine Wren lead it. And give her that Darksaber back - she earned it. 

Let Ezra come back from regions unknown with a deeper understanding of the Force, and have him train the child in the new colony. 

Forget the Jedi and Sith, let’s start a medical training center/hospital run by Force users who can help heal people when modern medicine fails! 

Ahsoka can use her talents for that too. 

Find the rest of the child’s race and bring any of their Force sensitives onboard. 

Let Boba Fett and Din have their epic showdown, but then use a sample of Boba’s unaltered DNA and some mystical Force healing to restore Rex’s body to what a 43-year-old should be (and then he can marry Ahsoka so we can have the Clone/Jedi couple we always wanted...thanks to you, Filoni).

Let the Mandalorians partner with the New Republic in the Outer Rim as law enforcement instead of bounty hunters, so they can get their reputation back. 

They can train new recruits and pilots, just like Fenn Rau trained clones. 

Let them keep their autonomy and traditions, while helping keep the New Republic honest.

Let them be a force for good in the galaxy, for once. 

The Mandalorian could serve as the vessel to give a lot of characters with unresolved or tragic storylines some closure and better endings. If not The Mandalorian, then other new shows. My 6-year-old daughter wants nothing more than to be Ahsoka Tano. My 3-year-old son asks me to watch The Mandalorian every day. My 18-month-old daughter walks around in her brother’s Mandalorian helmet babbling “Way”. Please let me share the Star Wars legacy that I grew up loving with them. Let me show them the happy endings I enjoyed. Let me show them that even in the midst of conflict, not every life has to be ruined. Let me show them a Star Wars story with a satisfying ending. Hope. Redemption. Love. That’s what Star Wars means to me. 

May the Force be With You (and your pens),

Rebekah, A Star Wars Fan

[nny11writes]

True Sith

Pouring one out for the fic that will probably never be, RIP true sith ‘Soka.

Obi-Wan glanced over at Anakin, pressing the order to wait down their training bond. They didn’t know who or what this woman is, and it would be foolish to blindly attack. Darkness or not, the woman was still talking.

He strained to hear every word, between the soft rasping, rattling timber of her voice she stood with her back to them.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

“If you want us to carry a message, you should speak up.” Anakin snapped in irritation. His unlit saber flicking back and forth in agitation.

She laughed. The sound was high pitched, nearly wheezing. The Force swelled with warning.

“It is not the strength of one’s voice which matters Skywalker,” she turned her head, the barest hints of her features showing, “but the strength of one’s words.”

In the shifting twilight she seemed ghostly. Gray and black and burnish gold, wrapped in deep charcoal robes. Her gleaming white staff clicked softly against the stone floor as she turned to face them fully. Though her hood hid her face in shadows, there was enough light to see her toothy grin.

All the hairs on his neck stood on end. Sith. This woman had to be Sith.

“Perhaps you have forgotten that particular lesson,” her boots didn’t make a sound as she began to walk towards them. It was disconcerting to realize her staff made a soft clicking sound with every step.

Obi-Wan felt ice water in his veins, bands wrapping tightly around his chest as she finally drew near enough to see. The off white marks on her face so familiar. Too familiar. So very, very wrong against her deep set golden eyes.

Anakin jerked back as if he’d been physically struck, his end of the training bond slamming closed as his lightsaber ignited with a snap hiss.

She laughed, looking at him the way one might gaze indulgently at a small child. A soft wave of her hand pushed the plasma back and down. “Now, now. There’s no need for that surely? No. No need at all.”

“What sorcery is this?” Anakin snarled, fury darkening his features.

“My, you are so quick to fear. So much quicker to anger. Have your masters never warned you where that path leads?” Her head tilted slightly, her smile never slipping, “Or perhaps you just ignored them. If that is your chosen path I would be happy to teach you.”

Obi-Wan moved, not thinking of anything besides putting himself between Anakin and danger. His mind churning with too many thoughts to follow.

“Oh well,” she said, shrugging, “if it is not to be, then so be it. All is as the Force wills it.”

It was a knife to his heart when the Force rang with the truth and certainty of her words.

“Stop avoiding my questions! Who are you?” Anakin growled.

“Are you sure you want to know?” her grin somehow grew wider, crows feet blooming at the corners of her eyes. “Knowledge, once given, can never be taken back.”

“Anakin-”

“I can handle anything you say witch.”

Stars, stop! He pleaded down their bond, pounded at the shields, screaming raw in their personal space.

“Very well. There is no sorcery here. My name is Ahsoka Tano, although my proper title is Darth Yal, Lord of the Sith. I found a little portal you see, on Malachor.” Her eyes glowed orange and red before flashing to gold once more. “A world between worlds. I had no intention of leaving my own but I could hear something calling. A plea for help. So here I am.”

Anakin stopped just behind Obi-Wan’s shoulder, respecting and accepting the protection afforded. “You are not my Padawan.”

Yal laughed, wheezing as her head tilted backwards. “I believe we established this did we not? Your Padawan, really, I’m old enough to be your grandmother! Besides, I was never fond of you little Anakin. Your mother, now there was the last true Skywalker.”

It was out of his hands, and Obi-Wan was frozen between his own indecision and the gentle guidance of the Force. He stood still as a statue as Anakin’s rage poured over him, around him.

“Leave my mother out of this.”

“Shmi Skywalker was a great woman Ani, I would be remiss to ignore her existence.” Yal’s face became smooth as glass, all traces of humor gone. “I will never cut my Master out of my life, especially not for the boy who murdered her.”

Anakin was howling, flying at her. Each swing of his lightsaber calmly caught and countered, until a blast of lightning sent him to his knees. The weight lifted from him and Obi-Wan scowled as he realized he’d frozen thanks to some sort of trap she’d planted. He could feel the darkness sliding off his body like water rolling from his skin. He took his place, defending Anakin and waited. She did not attack, merely watching him curiously.

“Tell me Kenobi, what demands did you place on him in this world?” She walked slowly, but smoothly forcing Obi-Wan to pivot with her. “In mine you had him prove his loyalty by becoming a kin killer. Harsh, but effective to keep Vader in place. What did you ask here I wonder? Did you make him leave her behind as well? No attachments is the Jedi way after all.”

He hadn’t meant to, he hadn’t believed they were visions.

“Would it not be a better use of our time to return to your message Lady Yal? I believe we are all worn thin by this encounter.” Obi-Wan said, trying to side step those old wounds.

Her smile was small and vicious. “Tell the Council that I plan on killing Sidious. He will hear of it from there I’m sure. I’d like that little worm to wriggle Master Kenobi.”

“And pray tell, what do you plan after his death?” Obi-Wan poked down the bond with Anakin, finding him still unresponsive.

“Don’t be greedy Kenobi!” She snapped eyes flashing and deepening the shadows on her face. “Have I not just told you the man behind your war will die? I am giving the Jedi a gift.”

Her eyes flicked down to Anakin, who finally started to stir. Stumbling as he tried to get to his feet.

“Skywalker, understand this genuinely pains me. I hate you boy, I hate everything about you. But should you fall, or jump, who am I to judge? If you fall...I can teach you how to control it.” Some sort of shield dropped and Obi-Wan flinched at the darkness, swirling and biting which howled around her. The way it bent at just the last second around and through her. “Otherwise it will control you. Think about it.”

“I will never join you!” Anakin slurred, glaring at her through watery eyes.

“So you say.”

[gffa]

Sometimes you just want a nice, long novel-length (or thereabouts) STAR WARS fic to sink into, maybe you’re going on a long car ride or maybe you’re visiting family without regular internet or maybe you just want some kissing to happen in that novel-length fic! I mean, canon is amazing and wonderful, but sometimes you want to pick up something and have the undercurrents finally rise to the surface, so here are some of my favorite Obikin and Obianidala novel length fics! (Last Updated: 2017.05.17) ✦ wicked thing by imaginarykat, obi-wan/anakin & ventress & dooku & ahsoka & cast, 97.3k wip    There are rumours of yet another Sith Lord hiding among the Separatists. The Council sends Anakin to investigate. Anakin has a bad feeling about this. ✦ Ouroboros by bedlamsbard, obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, time travel, 458k wip    Considering that he had picked up what was probably a Sith artifact, promptly passed out in the middle of a war zone, and apparently woken up twenty years in the future with Obi-Wan having taken up residence in his head, Anakin thought he was entitled to have a few questions. ✦ Seed by bell (bellaboo), obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme, NSFW, 44k    When Anakin falls prey to a lethal poison, Obi-Wan has no choice but use all his resources to heal him– no matter how reluctant he is in administering the antidote. ✦ Soldier, Poet, King by Glare, obi-wan/anakin & qui-gon & dooku & mace & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, time travel, 101.5k wip    Second chances are very rarely given, but the Force smiles upon two of its favorite children and returns them to a time before their actions have met their consequences. ✦ Negotiation by Glare, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & bail & cast, NSFW, modern au, serial killer au, dark themes, dark!obi-wan, 73.7k wip    Over a year ago, Coruscant Police Detective Anakin Skywalker vanished without a trace while hunting the prolific serial killer known within the media as “The Negotiator”. ✦ flowers for a ghost by QueenWithABeeThrone, obi-wan/anakin & cast, modern au (sort of), 42.2k    Anakin Skywalker’s had a rough go of it, from being imprisoned to losing his hand to remembering an entire past life. He’s only looking for a place to stay the night when he comes to Obi-wan’s doorstep. ✦ The World Undone by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & maul & cast, nsfw, sith!obi-wan, 143.3k    Anakin Skywalker, proud symbol of the strength and purity of the Jedi Order, is the target of a strange and handsome Sith named Obi-Wan, whose only goal seems to be pulling Skywalker down into the dark with him. ✦ you knock me out, i fall apart by blackalien, obi-wan/anakin/padme & han/luke/leia & ahsoka & cast, 64.8k wip    ( aka: the one where anakin was a sith lord for literally an hour, everyone is alive, and they’re actually happy ) ✦ World Come Undone by crazyundeadfairy, obi-wan/anakin (maybe?) & luke, 68.3k wip    Unexpected things happen when ObiWan takes Luke to Tatooine. ✦ Futurus (-a -um) by cadesama, obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, time travel, 60.8k wip    Cracked hyperdrive? No problem. Just hold it together with the Force. Time travel? Well. That could be a bigger problem. ✦ Clarity by anecdotalist, obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme & cast, 73.7k wip    Anakin’s jealousy leads to the start of something new between him and Obi-Wan and a lot of frank discussions about things they should have talked about but didn’t in canon. ✦ White Rabbits by Butterfly, obi-wan/anakin & luke & leia & han & cast, NSFW, time travel, 102.5k wip    Through the Force, everything is connected. Anakin and Obi-Wan find this out first-hand. ✦ The Reality of Change by midnight_vision, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka, time travel, 185.1k    Padmé dies on Mustafar and wakes up in the past, about a year before everything falls apart. She’s determined to make sure none of it happens again, and with some help, she tries to expose Palpatine for what he really is. But even if Anakin and the Republic can be saved, that doesn’t mean life will be easy. ✦ Sigh No More by edenwolfie, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & luke & leia & cast, 158.2k wip    Anakin makes slightly better choices, Obi-Wan is a Mess™ and Padmé deserves none of this. AU from Mustafar onward with liberal manipulation of canon to culminate in some angsty, fluffy, domestic fix-it because we all deserve better. full details + recs under the cut!

✦ wicked thing by imaginarykat, obi-wan/anakin & ventress & dooku & ahsoka & cast, 97.3k wip    There are rumours of yet another Sith Lord hiding among the Separatists. The Council sends Anakin to investigate. Anakin has a bad feeling about this.    I’ve done several recs for this fic, which are collated on this post, but am writing a new one to encompass the entire fic rather than piecemeal, so those that are new to this fic will have a better one to hopefully encourage them to read it! This is another fic I’ve been reading pretty much since the beginning and would immediately read it as soon as a new chapter dropped and will have a tough time writing a coherent rec for it–there’s a reason it’s so massively popular in the fandom, because the writing is absolute joy to read, that it’s almost 100k of Anakin’s point of view where he’s a completely #Relatable emotional mess, in that sort of hilarious and utterly engaging way. It combines that with the just as delightful Soft Sith aesthetic/dynamic that is so, so much fun with these characters and writes an Obi-Wan Kenobi who is charming and charismatic, but so much more dangerous, where he’s so much more selfish and all that insight and precision and lethality to him are turned to much more dangerous avenues.    The fic sparked a ton of trends in fandom (especially helping to popularize Soft Sith!Obi-Wan, for which I am forever grateful) and, once you start reading, it’s easy to see why, there’s just something to this fic that is really special, it’s an Obi-Wan/Anakin fic, but the kind that I would recommend to anyone who is one the fence about them, the kind of fic that draws new fans into the pairing, the kind of fic that may not be their canon selves, but keeps enough of their dynamic and is just plain ridiculously hot and delicious, that it hits all the right buttons for the ship. There is still Anakin being so tremendously strong in the Force, but such an utter disaster in his personal life. There’s Obi-Wan who makes things seem easy, but has worked incredibly hard to get where he is. There’s Anakin being absolutely and completely turned around and confused and not knowing which way is up, really wanting someone to follow, and Obi-Wan who may not tell him everything, who may be kind of manipulative, but there’s such a solid foundation of genuine care there. All of this is balanced together so well and then written with a plot and an incredibly deft hand, so that every single scene sparkles and draws the reader in. It’s that Obikin fic that I will go, “Here, read this if you’re thinking about getting into the pairing.” because I think it does the groundwork for showing what a fun pairing they can be, while also just being a scream of a fic. ✦ Ouroboros by bedlamsbard, obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, time travel, 458k wip    Considering that he had picked up what was probably a Sith artifact, promptly passed out in the middle of a war zone, and apparently woken up twenty years in the future with Obi-Wan having taken up residence in his head, Anakin thought he was entitled to have a few questions.    Wake the Storm: So, I pretty much sunk into this fic and didn’t come out again until I’d read the whole thing, I just absolutely couldn’t put it down! My only caveat is that, while the build-ups and suspense are stellar, you just kind of have to roll with that the fic is not as strong at reveals. The way the fic is structured, there’s a lot of “omg when will Character A find out about Character b????” that don’t necessarily happen or happen late in the fic or aren’t pieced together when they should be or aren’t dwelled on for long. I don’t think this is a huge detriment, so long as you know what you’re getting ahead of time, though, because what the fic is about (Anakin skipping around the timeline and other universes, dragging Obi-Wan along with him) is absolutely fantastic. The writing is incredibly engaging, it’s the kind where I find this far more readable than a lot of professionally published books, that the plot structure and pacing of the scenes is all rock solid for me. (Tbh, probably the only reason any caveats occur to me at all is because the fic as a whole is so well written.)    The characterization is lovely and gets at the heart of what I wanted–where Anakin experiences the destruction and tragedy that happens, his horror at it solidified by the time he finds out his connection to it, as well as his interaction with Obi-Wan is strengthened up because of what Obi-Wan has been through and how he’s seeing Anakin again and how much time he’s had to think over the events of Anakin’s future. The plot is interesting and the fic spends time with each world but doesn’t linger and there has clearly been thought given to setting all of it up, but it blends into the story perfectly, like… you know those fics you can pick up and just read and read and read because they’re so engaging and written with such good pacing that you don’t want to put it down, that even when it shifts gears, you find yourself rolling right along with it because you want to know what happens next? That’s what this fic did for me, I was so curious about where it was going next and how this was all going to affect them.    While this story itself is gen, you can tell that the story is heading towards Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padme, so it spends time building Obi-Wan/Anakin back up and shifting it to romantic instead of platonic, that it doesn’t happen here at all, but you can feel how desperately Anakin loves Obi-Wan and how Obi-Wan has been given the time to really reflect on feelings and attachment and on Anakin in general, so that I believe it. Plus, I’m a sucker for all the little touches, like Anakin sleeping on Obi-Wan or the way he touches Anakin after he goes through a tough time, it got me right in the feelings place, to go along with the intriguing greater story. I am now going to proceed to dive right into the monster sequel fic and probably roll around in my feelings some more.    Queen’s Gambit: I haven’t yet finished Queen’s Gambit, but I’m including it on this list because I enjoyed the first fic a lot and I think I can safely recommend the sequel already. ♥ ✦ Seed by bell (bellaboo), obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme, NSFW, 44k    When Anakin falls prey to a lethal poison, Obi-Wan has no choice but use all his resources to heal him– no matter how reluctant he is in administering the antidote.    I love how this fic started out as an excuse for fuck-or-die blowjobs, but then went and developed feelings and an actual plot. That is my favorite kind of thing! But what really gets me about this fic is that everything is so carefully considered and given so much thought, that the miscommunication between Obi-Wan and Anakin takes so long to resolve (but without being dragged out too long just for the sake of drama or padding the fic) is central to the story and such care is given to show how these two characters misunderstand each other and why they clash and things so often go off kilter with them. The entire point of showcasing that miscommunication is to nudge the characters into a situation where they have to face it and actually work to resolve it. This is not a smooth path, especially not with feelings being brought to the surface, that both characters have to work through.    Obi-Wan meditates and tries not to burden Anakin with his feelings and balance being a Jedi with what the heart of the man wants, which works so well because Obi-Wan has never been about denial of feelings, but instead about letting them go, about accepting them and releasing them because he has another path that he’s chosen to walk. So what happens when he finds that these surfaced feelings are stronger than he intended and he doesn’t want to let them go? The fic works hard to bring him to a fork in the road where he has to choose one path or the other, that both are important roads for him, and the choice is legitimately difficult. It takes care to show that Obi-Wan isn’t perfect, he doesn’t always understand Anakin, he’s human and Anakin gets to him, but also that Obi-Wan is someone who knows himself very well and is emotionally stable, that the difficulty is in the choice, not the knowledge.    By contrast, Anakin is just an emotional mess who doesn’t understand Obi-Wan, but also doesn’t really understand how to process anything, that he’s all instinct and reaction, but that doesn’t make his feelings any less real or there. This is a fic that is about Anakin struggling to understand Obi-Wan, struggling to understand his own feelings, struggling to not make all the worst choices–there’s a moment later in the fic where he could make an absolutely disasterous choice and keep an important secret from Obi-Wan, but he’s struggled through so much (and become so much more trusting, because his relationship with Obi-Wan is closer) that he makes a better choice. The fic is just as much about dragging Anakin into making better choices, tiny bit by tiny bit. And about how Anakin is just never going to be an independent person, he’s always going to be dependent on those he loves, and that Obi-Wan has to come around to understanding this and accepting it about him.    It’s also a fic that may not be centrally about her, but Padme has a very real and very present role in the fic. Anakin’s love for her is just as valid as his love for Obi-Wan, that he thinks of her while she’s not there, that he’s terrified of losing her, that the conversation he has with her about Obi-Wan is painful and difficult because he leads with his heart, that actions that might be manipulative in others (like wanting to be with two people and have them approve of him being with both) are just who Anakin is. He’s still selfish and probably entirely hypocritical (he would never share either of them the way he wants to share himself), but it’s never done with artifice, he clings to both of them because he’s so insecure and needy, he’s desperate to keep both of them, he’s an absolute mess, and the fic never denies that. It doesn’t deny that this is painful for everyone involved, because it’s not easy for Padme to share her husband, it’s not easy for Obi-Wan to feel like an intruder on someone else’s relationship, and it’s not easy for Anakin to know that he’s asking for so much, but terrified of losing either one of them. I love that this fic holds Obi-Wan and Anakin apart because Obi-Wan is very much “if you’re going to do something, do it right” and he holds firm on that, he draws a boundary and keeps it there, that he’ll reassure Anakin in other ways (the element of Anakin asking for Obi-Wan’s total honesty when Obi-Wan won’t budge on starting a relationship until they’ve worked the problems out was so satisfying for this!), but he won’t cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed, like, yes, that is Obi-Wan’s character and exactly what Anakin needs from him in this relationship, just as Padme doesn’t react happily to the news that Anakin’s in love with Obi-Wan, but she has such emotional openness and care that she provides the warmth and acceptance that Anakin needs, the two of them filling in the different jagged edgegs of Anakin’s character.    Which is what I mean about this fic giving such thought and care to each scene and character, that I can pull all of it apart and it holds up to that scrutiny for me, that it may not be the longest fic I’ve ever read, but it’s certainly one that knows the characters it’s writing and what it wants to do with them and what motivates them. It’s a fic that starts out as cracky, but then uses it as a character exploration and is just really damned satisfying to me for it! ✦ Soldier, Poet, King by Glare, obi-wan/anakin & qui-gon & dooku & mace & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, time travel, 101.5k wip    Second chances are very rarely given, but the Force smiles upon two of its favorite children and returns them to a time before their actions have met their consequences.    I’ve done several recs for this fic, which are collated on this post, but I’m sticking with an earlier rec that won’t give too much away, but still hopefully tells you why you should read one of my favorite fics: I cannot tell you how in love with this fic I am, how much I love what it’s doing on both a plot level and an id-pleasing level. The fic first got me with these little moments of Ben (older Sith!Obi-Wan) and the way he would crowd into Anakin’s space, the way he would touch Anakin, the way he would run a hand down Anakin’s back or shove him up against the wall when he was getting out of control, there was this quiet but powerful intimacy between them, both dangerous and something very genuine there. It’s so incredibly good, the way Anakin curls up against Ben’s side or wriggles onto his lap, the way he so very much wants affection from his once-again-Master, the way Ben knows this after all they’ve been through together and the lives they’ve lived and this second chance, the way he absolutely is manipulative and much more iron-handed than he was before, but some part of Anakin feeds on that. It’s so well written and there’s such charm and sparkle to the writing, it’s that sweet spot between just exactly what my id wants and the more rational part of me that is impressed with the world-building and plotting and character motivations, that I legitimately respect the fic. It’s such a great example of what Obi-Wan would be like if freed from the restraints he puts on himself as a Jedi–he has power, sure, but it’s also such intelligence and insight, such lethality and being predatory in all the right moments, the way you really, really understand how Obi-Wan is dangerous when he puts all of his skills to less noble purposes.   And the plot is good, it’s a great cast of different versions of the characters, the older versions having been dumped back in time and are running around to fix things in their own way, including a time out to go free the slaves on Tatooine and, of course, have more run-ins with the Jedi. I love that there are light saber battles, I love that they’re not just idling around, they’re doing stuff, moving the pieces around from the shadows, in addition to their complicated relationship developing further. I am H O O K E D on this fic and it’s honestly one of the most satisfying I’ve read in the fandom yet, it’s one of those that I pretty much drop everything else to go read when there’s a new chapter, it’s one that I’m torn between tripping over myself to read everything as fast as I can because I want more and forcing myself to go slower becaus I want to savor it, it’s one of those that I never want to end, but also I want all of it to be able to read everything right now. ✦ Negotiation by Glare, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & bail & cast, NSFW, modern au, serial killer au, dark themes, dark!obi-wan, 73.7k wip    Over a year ago, Coruscant Police Detective Anakin Skywalker vanished without a trace while hunting the prolific serial killer known within the media as “The Negotiator”.    I’ve done several recs for this fic, but am writing a new one to encompass the entire fic rather than piecemeal, so those that are new to this fic will have a better one to hopefully encourage them to read it! I feel like I hardly know where to start with this one, because it’s another that I’ve been reading as each chapter comes out and I think it might be my favorite of the author’s work. It’s a fic that initially caught my attention, despite the seemingly incompatible concept of the character, but what got me is that this isn’t canon Obi-Wan, but he shares so much of the traits of him, like what Obi-Wan would be without his unbreakable morals and faith from the movies and the show, that if you changed those things about him, you would get this fascinating look at the way he uses that charm and gentlemanly manner and incredibly insight to do such terrible things, to focus on the person he loves (Anakin) more than anyone.    And that’s the other thing that gets me, the way their relationship is played, that it takes so long for Anakin to come around is to the fic’s credit, that it’s not dragged out beyond what it should have been, that instead it needed that space to show the way he was stripped of his defiance bit by bit, just tiny step by tiny step. That this is never portrayed as healthy or anything other than Stockholm Syndrome, the fic is very aware of what it’s doing, but there’s a dark charisma to it, that I find myself rooting for it, even when it’s clear that it’s a terrible thing. The fic is very good at balancing those two things–the fascination with that dark yet beautiful dynamic, obsessive love that can still be genuine in its own way, even as it’s awful. It’s charming, even as you don’t forget that Anakin has been conditioned into this, you still see the layers being peeled away from him to get at something that’s underneath that, something that says a lot about who Anakin Skywalker is.    It’s a modern AU, it’s a serial killer!Obi-Wan AU, it’s a story about Anakin being manipulated into dependence on him, it’s a lot of things that I might normally not be that keen on, but between the fic visibly embracing those things while still keeping so many echoes of their original selves, while hitting all those elements that made so many of us fans of Hannibal, that it’s honestly one of my favorites in the fandom. ✦ flowers for a ghost by QueenWithABeeThrone, obi-wan/anakin & cast, modern au (sort of), 42.2k    Anakin Skywalker’s had a rough go of it, from being imprisoned to losing his hand to remembering an entire past life. He’s only looking for a place to stay the night when he comes to Obi-wan’s doorstep.    I’ll note ahead of time that I haven’t finished this fic yet, but I’m far enough in that I want to include it! It’s the first part of a long sort-of-modern-AU where the characters are reincarnated into current day Earth and are all kind of giant messes, especially Anakin, and this is the story of him trying to recover from just how much he’s been damaged along the way. Not only is there his previous life as Darth Vader to contend with that haunts him, but also the terrible things that have happened to him in this life, the further terrible choices that he’s made that landed him here and weigh him down. It’s a fic that’s a very long, slow process (and very much a slow burn between Obi-Wan and Anakin) because there’s so much for Anakin to wade through and so little progress he can make at any given time. There’s so much about this fic that’s bittersweet and haunting and lovely in a really heartbreaking way–it’s moving towards the better, step by step, but it’s a long road and it’s fragile and brittle the whole way there.    But, ahhh, the relationship and the utter need Anakin has for Obi-Wan and how this situation is both id-pleasing (accidental Force bond, yessssss, give me that always!) and all about doing the slow, almost daily life of recovery, both for Anakin himself as a person and for his relationship with Obi-Wan. There’s a sneaking plot here as well, there’s a lot of characters they run into, there’s an expansive world unfolding here, but at it’s heart it’s a fic about Anakin’s recovery and trying to piece himself back together–trying to find the will to want to piece himself back together, after everything. And the length of it is necessary (even as I scream at them to just kiss already) to show that that’s something that’s not easy or quick. This is a lovely read and I’m adoring it so much. ✦ The World Undone by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & maul & cast, nsfw, sith!obi-wan, 143.3k    Anakin Skywalker, proud symbol of the strength and purity of the Jedi Order, is the target of a strange and handsome Sith named Obi-Wan, whose only goal seems to be pulling Skywalker down into the dark with him.    I’ll note ahead of time that I haven’t finished this fic yet, this rec is based on the first 2/3rds of the fic, but I’m far enough in that I want to include it! Oh, I hardly know where to start with this fic! I admit that it took me a bit to get into, for personal reasons (I usually turn right around at fic where someone other than Obi-Wan trained Anakin if it isn’t a complete disaster, I’m not a big fan of Maul’s character/thought Dooku or Sidious would have been in his role), but those aren’t really criticisms, they’re just things that popped up on my own personal radar. I mention this because, if someone’s tastes are like mine, I want to encourage continuing with this one because once the story kicked into gear for me, I just got swept away in it, I kept reading and reading because I wanted to know where it was going. Once Obi-Wan and Anakin started interacting regularly, once the attraction between them was unable to be ignored (even if it took awhile for some resolution!), and once the main mystery of the story got underway (which I would say was about halfway through when I read this fic), it became a really well-plotted and paced story.    The fic does so many things that I really love about it, right down to the language has shades of something like poetry but the author makes it work, it never had me doing that, “wtf does that even mean” feeling, but instead… oh, like when they finally have time to be together, when they have just enough space to breathe for it and there’s a line that really struck me: Obi-Wan only drove in harder and faster, a shooting star in free-fall along its own doomed line toward earth until it flashed and burnt itself out in its own flare of beautiful white heat inside the velvet night of Anakin’s body. What might have been too flowery in another fic, I really loved this line, I love that it was highlighted their relationship, how passionate this Obi-Wan was about Anakin, how desperate Anakin is to clutch at something, to have Obi-Wan in him, as a steadying presence and to fill him up, that that’s both a culmination of the long attraction between them and shows how their relationship works here. Because this isn’t canon, but it still has so many elements of it, the way they care about other people (especially Anakin and Ahsoka’s relationship has several meaningful scenes, it’s very much an important part of Anakin’s character), but they revolve around each other, Anakin still needs Obi-Wan like that.    The reveals take awhile to happen, but they’re worth waiting for, because they’re satisfying and so interesting, the slow pealing back of the layers and hints, until we finally get proper flashbacks and you understand how the characters came to where they were. The author knows how to pace a story, how to write something long without feeling like it was dragged out, that it takes its time, but it’s not padded to hell and back, and that kind of solidity is incredibly appreciated. It’s one of those fics that just feels… smooth and solid, one of those that’s satisfying to have such a long fic that knows where it’s going and you can feel that even from the beginning, whether or not it grows some here and there or expands in a few unexpected places, it keeps on topic and is paced just right for me. And, of course, I enjoy so much the way Obi-Wan and Anakin are slowly coming together here, that it’s a long path for them to take, but each step forward is sure-footed and will get there. ✦ you knock me out, i fall apart by blackalien, obi-wan/anakin/padme & han/luke/leia & ahsoka & cast, 64.8k wip    ( aka: the one where anakin was a sith lord for literally an hour, everyone is alive, and they’re actually happy )    This fic was my happy place for two days straight while I read it, because it’s everything I was hoping to get from it–it’s a collection of non-linear scenes spanning from ROTS to probably twenty years into the future, showing the snippets of their lives, the family they all build together, while balancing something so incredibly charming with the occasional moments of absolute heartbreak. Primarily, this fic is definitely about making a happy family AU, whether it’s Anakin keeping the people he loves close or eventually he and Padme convince Obi-Wan to join them or giving Ahsoka a family to come home to or getting to see the twins grow up, but it’s also about how Anakin is never going to be entirely emotionally stable and about how Ahsoka bears the scars from being too young in the war and about how Obi-Wan is so solitary for so long and about how it’s not always easy to grow up a Skywalker for either Luke or Leia.    The fic is really good about making those moments genuinely serious, it’s not really a cracky fic and the serious moments are genuinely serious, and it’s… I think of it as being like The Clone Wars show, only trending in a positive direction instead of negative, where sometimes it’s heartbreaking, sometimes it’s ridiculously charming, and sometimes it’s just straight up cute fluff, but all of it is well done. And I cannot convey enough of that sense of charm, that kind of sharpness to the happy AU that makes it so good to read, the kind that makes it straight into my fannish heart, rather than just me seeking out fluff because I need it to soothe me. This one captures my feelings and my imagination, it’s ridiculously engaging and one of those fics of my heart. ✦ World Come Undone by crazyundeadfairy, obi-wan/anakin (maybe?) & luke, 68.3k wip    Unexpected things happen when ObiWan takes Luke to Tatooine.    Oh, lord, this fic. I cannot tell you how hard this fic grabbed me and would not let go until I finished it! There are a couple of caveats: The first two chapters are fairly slow, a lot of monologuing over things actually happening, but once Luke starts talking, it kicks into gear and doesn’t let go. It’s also a WIP and hasn’t been updated in a few years, but the author has gone years between updates before, so you never know, but more importantly! You get so much of the good stuff in what’s already here! So, while I would have loved to have had the rest of the fic, I’m genuinely content with what we had here as well, because let me tell you about my feelings on Obi-Wan raising Luke, who is this amazingly sweet little moppet that I was instantly in love with, as well as Anakin eventually finds out and tries to steal Luke away but gets in his own way too much and finds himself trapped in a situation that he’s not sure how to get out of.    I was initially skimming ahead to just read the confrontation between Obi-Wan and Anakin when they saw each other again, just to see if the fic picked up, and found myself getting sucked in because the fic does a great job with each scene making me want to read the next and the next and the next, so I had to go back to my original place and then I just hungrily read the entire thing because Anakin wants to take Luke and kill Obi-Wan, but he can’t because he wants Luke to love him and that won’t happen if Luke knows he killed the only father he’s ever known, yet Anakin still burns that Obi-Wan has taken Luke, despite that Obi-Wan has always talked about Anakin to Luke, always told him stories, and Luke can already feel that there’s still love there, no matter how much anger and hate is held onto, sometimes on both sides, after all that’s happened.    It’s one of those fics where they’re forced to be semi-civil to each other again, but underneath is all this emotional tension and hurt that made my fannish heart absolutely ache while reading it, yet was delicious candy at the same time because it hit my id perfectly. Getting well-written fic that does justice to the iddy concept it has is such a rare treat in fandom and I love this fic for doing that for me! It’s one of those situations that I would dream up without trying to properly justify it in my head just because I wanted it, but the fic actually sold me on it and doesn’t shortchange that Anakin is full of rage and hates Obi-Wan, even as you feel how much of it is borne out of still loving him.    Obi-Wan is fantastic, he’s so steady and solid, but that doesn’t mean he’s passive or without his own anger on Anakin’s actions, even as he’s still willing to try to help him again. And Anakin feels so right to me, that he’s not there yet, he’s not doing any of this for the right reasons, his love for Luke is still selfish and obsessive, but there’s hope in him and you can see the sparks of maybe something still good in there. And I’m labeling this as Obi-Wan/Anakin because the author has written slash fic for them before and the relationship is very central to the story, even if there’s no kissing, and Anakin’s relationship with Padme is very important and I just really, really was hit spot on by this fic, okay. So good. ✦ Futurus (-a -um) by cadesama, obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, time travel, 60.8k wip    Cracked hyperdrive? No problem. Just hold it together with the Force. Time travel? Well. That could be a bigger problem.    This is a fic I read very, very early on in my time in Star Wars fandom, so I can’t say how it would hold up for me if I tried to go back and read it, but it will always be one of those fics that’s dear to me because it helped tip me from shipping just Anidala into also shipping Obikin and Obianidala. And so I’m leaving the rec as I originally wrote it, as I think it does a good job of conveying my reaction to the fic!    I have two caveats about this fic before I begin: It’s a WIP that hasn’t been updated in about a year, so I’m not sure if it will be. But it gets enough satisfying stuff in so even though it ends on a cliffhanger, I found it absolutely worth reading! And that it’s very fast in the beginning, there’s not much time to build up suspense before the reveals are already happening. This isn’t a fic I wound up reading for the suspense or reveals by the time I got into the thick of it, this is a fic that’s about the building relationship between Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme. Previous to this fic, I’d never shipped anything but Anakin/Padme, so their relationship being strong here, being absolutely important to Anakin’s pov, while the shifting nature of his relationship with Obi-Wan is slowly changing, works for me, it eased me in at just the right pacing and made me actually really, really want it.    What the fic does the most beautifully for me, though, is how Anakin is so beloved and so special and so brilliant, but he’s also an obnoxious pain in the ass, the way Padme and Obi-Wan both love him dearly, but he’s also a dumbass, oh, that worked for me because that’s exactly it, that’s how they relate to him. The plot part of the story was interesting as well, I definitely want to know where things are going, how this will affect history, and I love love love that the PT characters were the ones thrown forward into the OT’s time, that’s where my heart really is, and this fic just completely and totally charmed the hell out of me! I especially appreciate that it gently eased me into shipping this OT3 in a way that worked for me and got me to be able to actually see it. ✦ Clarity by anecdotalist, obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme & cast, 73.7k wip    Anakin’s jealousy leads to the start of something new between him and Obi-Wan and a lot of frank discussions about things they should have talked about but didn’t in canon.    This is one of those fics that I’m going to write a terrible rec for, which is frustrating because I very thoroughly enjoyed it and it’s one of those that’s… one of those solid reads in that it’s satisfying and having 60k+ of it to tear through was a delight because I really got to sink into it and it has so much… idk, it’s not quite breathing room, because it’s not really slice-of-life, there’s events happening and things moving towards Big Events, but at the same time, I feel like there is breathing room for the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship to develop, especially as it doesn’t crowd out Anakin’s relationship with Padme. It’s definitely focused on the Obikin side of things, much of the point of the fic is Obi-Wan settling into his feelings and the new direction his life is taking, that it’s… I love that it’s not this big, huge, overtly emotional thing, because that’s not who Obi-Wan is, it’s much more still-waters-run-deep that works for me, like this is someone who may struggle with feelings, but he knows how to get to where he needs, and there’s this really just… warm and comfortable air between him and Anakin for so much of the fic.    I think maybe that’s my favorite part, now that I’m trying to put this into words, that even when there’s shit happening elsewhere, when the plot stuff ramps things up in later chapters, there’s still a warm connection between Obi-Wan and Anakin, I trust that they love each other and they know they want to be together, that Obi-Wan knows himself and Anakin is still kind of a mess, he’s just got almost no self-control, and thus Obi-Wan tempers him and puts him back when he needs it. The three of them (Padme as well) have this… they don’t necessarily fit together perfectly, but there’s the sense that they’re working on it, that Obi-Wan and Padme fill in the various edges of Anakin’s character, how the three of them just fit together, it really is supremely satisfying. And there are loads of little touches (I love that Bant gets several good scenes! I love that Obi-Wan’s path is departing from the Jedi, but not in a judgmental sort of way! I love the way Obi-Wan and Anakin meditate together! I loved Obi-Wan being in the room with Palpatine and Anakin, so Anakin follows Obi-Wan’s lead instead and it subtly changes so many things!) and I love that this is a fic that’s about gently turning Anakin’s relationships to the better, that I felt good reading this, even as I’m eyeing future chapters with trepidation. ✦ Sun Kissed by Vee017, obi-wan/anakin & mace & yoda & cast, nsfw, dark themes, past sexual abuse, 81.7k wip    Being on a world that supports slavery is one thing. Buying a slave and bringing him into Republic space is entirely another.    I admit, I usually turn right around at fics like this, I’m not big on AUs where Obi-Wan didn’t become a Jedi or where Anakin was never found and instead became a sex slave, but I liked the author’s other fics and I was terribly curious about this one, so I picked it up and found myself just sort of quietly falling in love. When I read the summary, I had a lot of expectations about the tropes, based on previous experience with this kind of fic, but this one surprised me where there’s something really almost gentle about the way it writes the characters and their relationship, how it’s been almost 80k and there are definitely feelings and being in love, but they weren’t really in the right place for a relationship yet. The fic does a lovely job of establishing Anakin’s healing process and their daily lives, that it uses this time not to just drag things out, but to clear away the things that need to be cleared away first, that Anakin has to truly be ready, not just wanting more with Obi-Wan, but truly being ready to go there, and this fic gently keeps them on that path.    And that’s what really makes me enjoy this fic, that it’s well written in a way that’s easy to read, but also well written in a way that builds something here, that I can legitimately enjoy beyond just iddy kink reasons. I’d have read this story with or without the tropes! And it’s hard to believe that it’s as long as it is, because it was just so easy to pick up and read and read and read, there’s something so smooth about the pacing and writing style, something that pulls me along without me even realizing it! And I love that there’s enough resolution by this point that I think the WIP factor doesn’t matter too much–though, it’s been in progress for ten years now, it still gets slowly updated, so I don’t doubt that it’ll continue to be so.    It’s a fic that I went into expecting it to be one of those early 00s types of fics that were cheesy and appealed to my id for the OTT kink, but instead found a fic that was much more gentle than expected, that took its time and wasn’t about dragging out the angst forever, but instead that healing took time and that the majority of the fic was actually pretty calm and laid back, the most exciting parts (previous to the most recent chapters) were Anakin’s frustration with himself to not be over his past more quickly, that he still had nightmares sometimes. Sure, once things start heating up, there’s more action and plot going on, but at its heart this is still a fic about being a slow burn relationship and it hasn’t strayed from that–I have no doubt that it’ll get there, but I love that it’s taking its time to do so, because the journey there is the important part. ✦ Second Chances by Driverpicksthemooseic (Ratkinzluver33), obi-wan/anakin & han/luke & ahsoka & leia & cast, de-aged fic, 121.3k    Leia wasn’t convinced inviting evil incarnate to join them in fighting the Empire was exactly one of Obi-Wan’s brightest ideas.    This is a delightful cracky fic where, mid-ANH, the Force decides to de-age Obi-Wan and Anakin by about twenty years and then Anakin decides to defect to the Alliance and be a scary over-protective helicopter parent when he finds out Luke and Leia are his kids and also oh yeah falls totally in love with Obi-Wan. And then more characters from The Clone Wars and Rebels are pulled in, the plot goes off in its own direction, and it’s this fun, easy to read fic that I just sailed through! It’s very long, but it’s focused on a fairly large cast of characters (though not so large that you can’t keep track, especially since they’re all characters you’re invested in already) that’s about the greater web of connections between the SW characters. I picked it up for the Obi-Wan/Anakin ship, which is actually a relatively small part of the overall story, it’s really more a group fic about how Vader defecting to the Alliance changes a lot of things, and it’s about Anakin angsting a whole lot about trying to balance himself and his emotions and not always doing a stellar job of it, it’s about the people he’s hurt along the way and how some are able to be won over, but others take a much longer time.    I read practically the whole thing in a single day, that’s how easy it was to sail through, and it’s one of those delightfully tropey fics where I’m just so here for de-aging fic (why is there not more in fandom?? I want it!!) and it was nice to have a longfic to sink my teeth into again! It’s one of those stories that really hits a person’s id if you’re into this kind of thing and I am definitely in fandom to read about helicopter parent Anakin Skywalker who’s practically the same physical age as his kids. :D :D :D ✦ White Rabbits by Butterfly, obi-wan/anakin & luke & leia & han & cast, NSFW, time travel, 102.5k wip    Through the Force, everything is connected. Anakin and Obi-Wan find this out first-hand. I do have a couple of caveats about the fic–it hasn’t been updated in close to a year (but it’s also been in progress for over 10 years, so the author does keep coming back) and the beginning of the fic (probably about the first third at least?) is very much the plot moving the characters rather than the characters moving the plot, that they don’t really react to things in a way that feels organic to their own motivations, but rather where the scene wants them to go. And I do have some trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Anakin wouldn’t be all over his kids, even as the fic gently nudges him away from them because of jealousy and then fear for Padme’s life. I mention these things because I want to encourage readers beyond them (as I always do with recs) because it’s a story that I read over the course of a couple of days and the writing is really smooth and just so nicely sailed along and it very much has a plot and does a really lovely job of balancing the five rotating character povs (Obi-Wan, Anakin, Luke, Leia, and Han), of throwing this tangle of characters together and keeping up with group scenes. The fic’s plot is absolutely intriguing and the author is taking their time with it without feeling like it was dragged out, it’s almost sort of hard to believe that it’s a fic that’s over 100k because it was just so easy to keep reading and never felt bogged down or padded out just to up the word count.    And once the fic settles into the story, as Obi-Wan and Anakin discover more and more about this future, as they’re thrown into a situation where Anakin has to face what he’s capable of (once he hears about Vader) and how the fic sort of… balances between trying to reconcile that/fix it and also just sort of avoiding it by going I WON’T DO THAT I WILL AVOID IT, which is actually a pretty perfectly Anakin Skywalker reaction. The author also knows how to write UST while still giving some resolution, that Obi-Wan and Anakin are very attracted to each other and it’s being thrown into this mind-boggling situation where Anakin desperately needs someone to help and support him, he desperately needs someone to cling onto, that seeing this future where the Jedi are gone and this horribleness is possible, that finally breaks that last hurdle and jams them together. I love that Padme may not be here, but Anakin’s love for her never is dialed down a notch, that so much of why he wants to go back is to save her, that he still loves her just as furiously and obsessively as ever, even as he loves Obi-Wan as well. And the sex scenes were lovely, the way Anakin is desperate to grind himself against Obi-Wan is lovely, as well as the brief moments where Obi-Wan’s hands slide lower down his back, not quite ghosting over the prize there, but the implication of the future, that one day he may open Anakin up and push into him is there, and just the right amount of promise of it.    But also! The later chapters are starting to get into just what all is in this world, what’s left that they might still remember, that they’re still working to uncover just what happened, both to them and to this world that may be their future. And I do love that it’s Leia who pushes for them not to change things, because they worked damn hard for this future, because they fought and bled for it, because she won’t give up this hope or gamble it away on something that might be better or might be worse, that who she is, everything that’s made her Leia Organa, could disappear, it makes perfect sense that she would try to convince them to stay, and it allows the fic the time and room to explore these characters from the past in this future. It’s a fic that’s definitely a WIP and may take a long time to update again, but I greatly enjoyed what was here and it was just so very easy to sink into and I appreciated having that over the past week! Plus several Obikin kissing scenes yes thank you! ✦ The Reality of Change by midnight_vision, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka, time travel, 185.1k    Padmé dies on Mustafar and wakes up in the past, about a year before everything falls apart. She’s determined to make sure none of it happens again, and with some help, she tries to expose Palpatine for what he really is. But even if Anakin and the Republic can be saved, that doesn’t mean life will be easy.    At the time of this post, I’ve only read about half of this fic, but it fits theme and I wanted to include it! But it’s definitely a rec based on half the fic so far: I could have sworn I’d done a rec for this fic before, but I cannot find it anywhere in my files, so I’m going to assume I haven’t actually and do one fresh. I am always here for Obianidala fic and I’m always here for time travel fic, so I picked this one up and tore through pretty much all of it over the course of a few days! I do have a couple of caveats about it, the biggest being that the Jedi are used as antagonists, even against established canon (like, they’ve specifically said they don’t keep people against their will, that they wouldn’t force Anakin to stay), which can be jarring sometimes, so you gotta roll with the premise of them being villains, but when the fic is all about the domestic trio learning to figure out their relationship, the fic is at its strongest and it’s just really heart-warming and delightful. It’s a long fic, so it’s a bit of a slow burn, not in that there’s lack of resolution, but in that there’s no hurry to get there before everyone is ready, instead it’s a much more natural pace that I really enjoyed.    I love that it’s a Padme time travel fic as well, because I very rarely see one about her, especially because she doesn’t know everything that happened and it gives her a chance to work through what happened between her and Anakin on Mustafar, that she has to work through all that fear and mistrust, because this Anakin hasn’t done those things, but she has to process that they did happen, that it could have happened, and that’s something that takes quite awhile to get over. There’s also some lovely Padme & Ahsoka friendship scenes, there’s a whole lot of Padme telling people what she knows, there’s a lot of Anakin having to deal with feeling kept out of the loop, that he’s still got anger issues and isn’t emotionally stable, but Obi-Wan and Padme have better tools this time around, there’s a good amount of Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship building, and there’s a lot of satisfying fixing of the timeline, including killing Palpatine plot!    The fic is at its best when it’s about the breathing room the Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padme trio has or when they’re interacting with Ahsoka, when the story is going towards fixing things, that’s when my heart is happiest and I just really had a lot of fun reading this, especially since it was lengthy and I loved being able to tear into it and read read read for so many pages! ✦ Sigh No More by edenwolfie, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & luke & leia & cast, 158.2k wip    Anakin makes slightly better choices, Obi-Wan is a Mess™ and Padmé deserves none of this. AU from Mustafar onward with liberal manipulation of canon to culminate in some angsty, fluffy, domestic fix-it because we all deserve better.    I believe I’ve recommended this fic at least once before? But now that it’s up to 22 chapters, I’ve caught up on the fic and it was time to write a fresh rec for it. I do have a few things you need to just roll with the fic for–that the characters go hide out on Tatooine instead of fighting back, that Obi-Wan is often more indecisive than he would be, that Anakin’s emotional problems tend to go away more easily than I think they would. But the point of the fic is to write a really long, really revel-in-it story about the domesticity of these characters on Tatooine, to just wholly embrace digging into the slice of life stuff in this remote, isolated area where it’s just the three of them + the twins + Ahsoka. It’s a story that has the room to breathe with the characters, that it’s not about dragging things out, but instead that the whole point of the story is that slow, incrimental moving forward with the relationship(s). It’s a story that I pick up when I want something where the characters are (for the most part) taken away from galatic level action and instead are given something like a peaceful life (as much as one can get post-ROTS, of course) and I just want to roll around in something that’s hopeful and kind.    The length is nice as well, because it really gets across that this is a story that’s meant to be a slow burn and a slow build even once things finally do catch fire. As mentioned, I don’t feel like it’s dragging things out, but instead that the slow process is the whole point, that it’s about building their relationships, their life here, step by step. It’s domesticity and slice-of-life and really reveling in it to the fic’s heart’s content. But also omg I admit I’m definitely here for the sex scene, because Anakin and Padme are adorable, Obi-Wan and Anakin had a very pretty frottage scene earlier, but then chapter 22 was exactly what I wanted–where they finally have the time and both are in the right place for something more intense, something deeper. And, boy, does Anakin find that he enjoys being held down, that he has Obi-Wan’s attention all on him, that he likes the way he feels when he’s pressed down onto the bed and held there, when he’s filled up with Obi-Wan, who opens him up with such care and affection, until there’s no other noise in his head, that all the anxieties and fears and insecurities are pushed out, as Obi-Wan pushes into him. I’m really not kidding that I will read that a thousand times because Anakin needs it a thousand times and Obi-Wan being able to give that to Anakin is so good for him as well. There’s also a lot of cute stuff with Ahsoka coming and going, watching the twins grow up, and more! But I can’t lie, I’m here for Anakin Skywalker, my precious child, getting the happy life I always wanted for him.

[eirianerisdar]

more obitine p l e a s e i want them to be happy (or at least not dead i'll take not dead)

Summary: This was supposed to be written a month ago, as a continuation of the Satine Lives AU that I wrote for a three-sentence fic prompt, but since I’ve been terribly busy, here we go. Set right after the end of ROTS (just corrected a typo there, I’d accidentally written ROTJ before), with everything the same except Satine’s continued existence.

(Also because, you know, anything in connection to Luke Kryze will always be awesome)

Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Satine Kryze, Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano (mentioned), Captain Rex (Mentioned)

Chapters: 1/1

I’ve cross posted this to ff.net!

The Question, Twenty Years Late

The war is over.

Satine stands alone on the palace balcony, and watches the afternoon sunlight glance off the glass towers of Sundari.

The people of Mandalore go about their ways in peace; Ahsoka, Rex, and their men have seen to that. Their last act as general and captain was to break the Siege of Mandalore, and return the system to Satine’s governance.

And then, in the midst of their post-battle laughter, came the order.

Satine remembers the minutes after the first declaration of order sixty-six with mind-numbing clarity.

There was confusion as the troopers not under Ahsoka’s direct command turned blasters towards her, and Ahsoka’s men reflexively raised theirs in return; there was blasterfire, and agonised screaming, one voice but from the mouths many men, brother, brother, why are you doing this-

Satine had wondered, later on, when Ahsoka and Rex and their surviving men have been rushed onto her fastest ship and sent blasting off into unknown space - whether her dream of two krayt dragons, brothers, tearing each other to pieces on black sand was truly simply a dream.

It had seemed too real.

Below Satine’s trembling feet, the palace walls are decorated with frescoes of dying Jedi, crushed under Mandalorian soldiers’ boots in millenia of war. And beyond this biodome, beyond Sundari, Mandalore is covered with dust ground from a billion soldiers’ bones.

The war is over, but at what cost?

Soon, Satine knows, the newly-self-declared emperor will send fresh troops to Mandalore, and ask for her sworn fealty.

It will fill her lips with gall to swear it; but she will have to. To do otherwise would be to condemn her people to extinction.

Her hands clench white and bloodless around the durasteel railing, and she fights the urge to lose her very insubstantial lunch over the balcony side.

Obi-Wan was on Utapau when it happened.

The holonet had been very vocal about his death.

She had not felt anything when she saw. She knew, in a way, that ten thousand Jedi had perished. That statistic, she could comprehend.

She could not, and cannot, comprehend Obi-Wan’s death.

The balcony doors slide open behind her, with hiss of compressed air. It sounds like the gasping breaths of a dying planet.

Satine closes her eyes against the afternoon sunlight, treacherous moisture prickling at her eyelashes, and waits for her attendant to announce the arrival of an Imperial Senate messenger, who will rip Mandalore from her like a child from her side.

But then, suddenly:

“Hello, there.”

Shock. Disbelief.

Satine turns in place.

Joy.

Utter, complete, rage-filled urge to slap the red-gold beard off that smirking face.

She stalks towards him, hands still clenched into fists, moisture that had welled in her eyes for another reason entirely suddenly breaking free into a torrent of furious tears. She might be snarling. She doesn’t care.

“Obi-Wan, you-”

He lifts calm, tired eyes to meet her tear-streaked gaze and says, with a little catch of humorous grief in his voice, “Shh, my dear, you’ll wake the baby.”

The-

Satine slides sharply to a stop, and stares at the little bundle in the crook of Obi-Wan’s arm.

“This is Luke,” Obi-Wan says, with that same strange lilt in his words. “My- my nephew.”

That raises many questions, but she does not voice them. Satine raises a finger, and brushes it along a pink cheek soft in slumber.

“Satine.” There is something new in Obi-Wan’s voice, now.

She looks at him, and reaches out gently to lower his hood. There is ash in his hair, and black sand speckled in his beard. His tunics, she notices for the first time, are scorched and worn. Her hands skitter over his cheekbones, his chin.

Obi-Wan smiles at her, a shadow of the cocksure grin that had stolen her heart across a campfire, almost two decades ago now, in the year of Mandalore’s civil war. “I’m not sure how to do this, and I’m probably doing it wrong,” he begins. “I know I’m supposed to have a ring, at least. I don’t. I’ve come to your doorstep with nothing but a scarred lightsaber and a baby.” His lips twitch, sardonically, as if realising the ridiculousness of that statement. “But if you’ll have me?”

That last sentence washes over Satine’s ears without entering them for a moment.

“You’re asking,” she says. It isn’t really a question.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan replies, gaze steady. “I’d kneel, but I’m holding Luke, so it would be somewhat awkward.”

“I…” Satine’s hands are frozen on Obi-Wan’s face.

“I once said I would have left the Order, had you said the word,” Obi-Wan murmurs, slipping a hand out from under Luke’s weight to clasp her hand where it rests on his cheekbone. “I know now why you did not - and I am asking a burden of you, to do this. I am asking you to raise a child not your own, and to marry a man who is a death sentence walking, for all the Empire’s intent. Forgive me for asking, but I think I have to.”

He falls silent with the air of a man awaiting either his pardon or his exile.

“What of attachment?” Satine says, softly.

“We were fools. Attachment, in the end, is simply valuing something above our service to the Force; it was something I did not teach, nor understood well enough, until now. And in the end, it brought about this horror.” There is shame there, in those whispered words; sorrow, and grief.

Satine traces Obi-Wan’s face with a perceptive gaze; there are lines there she had not noticed before, like the faint lines that edge her face in the mirror each morning, now.

But there is also a smooth, unmarked face, sleeping quietly between them.

Satine leans forward, and presses her lips to his cheek.

“Yes,” she says.

He makes a sound, something between a hiccup and a sob. Joy, and grief. The next moment, he has pulled her into an awkward embrace, one arm around her and the other holding the child, their child now, between them. She reaches out instinctively to support Luke’s head.

“Satine,” Obi-Wan says. It is all he needs to say.

The Empire will be sending visitors, Satine knows; today, tomorrow, in a week, in years and decades to come - but for the present moment, this is their joy, and it is complete.

END

@qwertyuiop678 here you are.

My Fanfic masterlist

My ff.net profile

[delicatefury]

I’m doing a belated Evil Author Day

Because of work and family I missed it on February 15th, but I’ve got a few days off pretty much in a row, so I’m doing it now instead.

So what’s Evil Author Day? I give you a list of all my various WIPs, headcanons, plot-bunnies, and original works. You, from that list, give me a request for what you want to see written/expanded upon/explained, etc. I will then attempt to fill said request.

Why is it evil? There’s no promise of a follow-up. It’s read at your own risk. That’s right. There are no guarantees here. The scene I write may never make it into the finished work. I may never write a follow up. It may linger there in writer’s block hell for all time.

But still, it may also inspire me to write even more (or return to an au you’re interested in). So please, ask away!

Here’s the list of Star Wars fics and original works for you to choose from:

I tried to make them pretty. Fairly certain I failed.

Star Wars

The Dark Path Lit by Sun and Stars - if you’re following me and don’t know what this is... why are you following me? Go! Read it! It’s on AO3 and it’s Time Travel with Obi-Wan and the OT trio and it’s angsty and fluffy and adventure-y and it’s set in the clone wars and it’s most of what I write about so I’m frankly impressed that you don’t know what it is.

The Other Time Travel AU - I know people love this, but I’ve got very little written for it. Which makes it perfect evil author day fodder. The Other Time Travel AU (which I am not working on/which I am apparently working on) is another Time Travel story. This time featuring post-council chamber scene, pre-return-to-Naboo Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Anakin meeting up with Master Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka from the Clone Wars. Cue Anakin getting his head out of his ass (think of how many times he unfavorably compared Obi-Wan to QGJ when they fought), Ahsoka giving Qui-Gon the evil eye (”Who treats their padawan that way? Especially Obi-Wan?”), and a panicking Padawan Kenobi who is terrified at the prospect of what he’s supposed to accomplish in 10 years time. 

Hello Again (name is WIP) - when Anakin Skywalker is born, Obi-Wan Kenobi is flooded with dreams-memories-visions of a life already lived. One where the order falls (terrifying on it’s own), but where he’s also a Jedi Master, teacher of the fabled “Chosen One”, top negotiator, Council member, and High General. Only 15 and barely accepted back to the Jedi Order, he’s not sure if these are symptoms or signs. Honestly, given his track record up to this point, it’s possible he’s merely gone insane. Unwilling to risk his fragile place in the order, and convinced they may be just delusions of grandeur, Obi-Wan determines to keep this to himself and search for proof one way or the other. For the next three years, his confidence wanes, his saber ability falters as he finds himself conflicted between what Qui-Gon is teaching him and what his (maybe real, maybe delusional) future experience tells him. After the Mandalore mission, hope has returned. 1. Even if he coincidentally imagined a year-long mission in his delusion, there’s no way he could have coincidentally made up a woman like her. 2. Satine, convinced of Obi-Wan’s visions (and caring enough about him to promise to help regardless) has agreed to look into Anakin’s existence on Tatooine for his peace of mind. However, a newly arrived crecheling is determined to find his “very sad, very important person” who he has told Yoda, with all the strength and conviction of prophecy, is also “The Best Jedi Ever!”

The gaggle of other time travel au’s

TDPL but Anakin with Obi-Wan - a lot the same but a lot more snarking, a more confused Ahsoka, a lot of guilt, a lot of Leia passive (and overtly) aggressively making Anakin’s life a living hell, Artoo hovering protectively between twins and father, and a lot more throwing canon right out the window. Probably Obikin.

TDPL but Anakin instead of Obi-Wan - a lot more panicking. A very concerned Obi-Wan being brought up to speed (”but Father, it’s Ben. You have to trust him. Please?”). Watching Obi-Wan being slowly wound around the twins’ fingers. Confused Padme. Both droids being brought back. Ahsoka just kinda going along for the ride because of course her new master has children from the future. Why not? It’s not like anything else about her apprenticeship is normal.

JA meets Clone Wars. Bandomeer!Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, with a few other temple initiates/junior padawans are swiped up by a Sith artifact. Anakin and Ahsoka do not know what to do with tiny, heart-broken Obi-Wan while Master Kenobi realizes that Qui-Gon was an ass to him as a child.

Alternate Paths - In one world the Master died, in another the apprentice. This difference greatly impacts the way the chosen one is raised. But there’s no way to tell how much it changes things. Until the two Chosen Ones swap places. Now Obi-Wan has to get his Anakin back, while Qui-Gon is baffled at his student’s newfound obsession with his lost padawan.

Another Qui-Gon lives! AU - he does, but the Council is not impressed with Qui-Gon’s track record with padawan’s. Sure, Obi-Wan turned out fine, better than fine, but can you really trust a man who, in order to free himself to take on a more talented student, dismisses the first Jedi to kill a Sith in a millennia as simply “capable” to train “The Chosen One”? Yeah, not risking it. So Anakin goes to the creche to await a better option, Obi-Wan goes on with his knighthood, and the Force is going to make these two become Master-and-Student no matter what it takes.

Original Works (I’m trusting you people):

Cold Iron - A steampunk, weird west faerie tale. Matthias is a lot of things. He’s the eldest child of five. He’s a talented mechanist. He’s a likely candidate to be a Champion of Light. He’s also a changeling child. A fae prince cursed (or blessed) with a soul, the two halves of his life are quickly coming to a head when his younger brother steps into a fae circle and is whisked away. Does he follow his newly formed conscience, his ties to his human family, or the power and loyalty of his court and fae siblings?

The Troll’s Wife - slow-burn romantic tale. When her town’s good fortune attracts goblin attention, “blessed child” Helen is offered up as a bride to secure the good favor of the Underland Court’s intermediary, a nameless troll. Gradually, the two come to care for each other, and when their union bears fruit, her “Eerie little husband” makes a deal of his own. He’ll return to the Underland Court in exchange for his wife and child surviving childbirth. Half a year later, Helen wakes up homeless, husbandless, childless. Failing to see the “blessing” of her missing family, Helen journeys to the kingdom of the fair folk, determined to win back her husband and child and to keep them once and for all.

Wild Song (placeholder name) - Last year’s NaNo. The life songs are leaving Griet. Rivers are turning sluggish, wildlife is fleeing, and the rich soil of heartland farms is turning into a dustbowl, slowly expanding to the kingdom’s borders. In this disaster, an unlikely duo escape from a private “facility” where the powers of channelers and maestros are investigated. Uriah is a caravaner, a member of a specialized clan who travel from village to village, helping to concentrate the green growing Song for planting and harvesting seasons during biannual festivals. Eli is his elderly, mute companion to whom he owes a lifedebt for helping him escape. But hidden in Eli’s past and his mysterious connection to the song may just be the key to Griet’s salvation.

Demon’s and Curses (placeholder name)  -  A native of modern Lighdvar, Sephie thought that she understood the rules of Skraan: 1. Don’t use your true name. 2. Don’t get too attached to the people. 3. Don’t ever give demons any quarter. The first rule was because you never knew who was an agent of Skraan, and you kept the happenings of this world separate from those of Lighdvar. The second was because time passes too differently between the worlds. It was nice that months-long campaigns only took days, but if you stayed at home for two weeks straight, you were suddenly dealing with a new generation of freedom fighters. The third was, welll…led by the evil Ishtari, demons were invading the human kingdoms, enslaving their people, and hunting down every Sorcerer and Druid, humanity’s best bet. It was up to travelers like Sephie to act as the Lighvarian Sorcerer’s agents in Skraan and to purge the demons from the land. Good plan, until the portal home opened in the middle of a climactic battle with Ishtari himself. Trapped back in Lighdvar for the time being, with a Demon Lord in tow, Sephie finds her understanding of the war in Skraan challenged on every front.

[foreverrj]

Star Wars Episode 9:Restored Hope: Part 1 (Chpt.5)( Fan Fic to finish right)

Act 2-D (previous parts 1-4 below)

The First Order has occupied the City of Edit. They are doing a militarized search for Rey, Jacen, Temiri, and Ahsoka. Rey, Jacen, and Temiri, they are hiding in alleyways and behind corners to evade capture.

They hide in an ally Jacen, radios Ahsoka on the communicator and says with a slight whisper “ Ahsoka are you ok? She radios back hiding  away from troops “ Yes I’m fine trying to get off the temple grounds.” Jacen replies “We are in the city heading west to the ship.” She then says “ I’m on my way.” Jacen turns to Rey in a whisper “ Why did you park the ship so far from the temple?” Rey answers “It’s a famous ship, I didn’t unwanted attention.” He replies “ A lot of good that did.” She looks at Temiri he shrugs his shoulders.

They hide jump and dodge their way to a shipyard. They see the Millennium Falcon being guarded by a couple of stormtroopers. Temiri and Jacen grab their lightsabers ready to defend, Rey extends her hand to them and she says “ No more bloodshed today. I got this don’t worry about it, just follow my lead.” She walks over to them confidently Jacen and Temiri follow.

The troopers step forward and stop them. One of the Troopers says “This area is closed off show us your credentials. We’re on standby for fugitives so credentials now.” Jacen and Temiri look at each skeptically, Rey waves her hand and says “ These are not the fugitives you’re looking for.” The other trooper raises his gun at them. The main trooper ask “ What was that, credentials please or face the consequences. Rey waves her hand and says “ These are not the fugitives you’re looking for.” The other trooper arms his gun as it makes an electric charging sound. Jacen facepalms himself. The main trooper asks “ Why are you waving your hand like that?! He raises his blaster and aims “ Get on your knees now”. 

Jacen steps forward and says “Now, now this is a misunderstanding.” He waves his hand and says “ These are not the fugitives you're looking for.” The troopers at the same time repeat “ These are not the fugitives were looking for.” Jacen waves his hand again and says “ You want to put the blaster down walk away and rethink your life.” The troopers put the blaster on the floor. At the same time, they say “ We want to rethink our life.” The troopers walk away from the Falcon. Jacen, Temiri, and Rey run on the ship. then they run into the cockpit.

 Rey begins to sit the main chair, Jacen says to her “ Oh no, I got it, Something is off with you.” She replies “ I’m fine it’s my ship.” Jacen then says “ No it’s not and your not fine. My mother is Hera Syndulla the pilot of the Ghost that fought during the rebellion. She taught me how to fly, now get back.” Jacen gets the main chair, Rey moves over to the co-pilot chair. Jacen gives the communicator to Temiri and says to him “ Call Ahsoka tell her we made it to the shipyard and for her to come on. Temiri radios Ahsoka “ Ahsoka come in where is your location?” She replies “I’m coming, not far.” Ahsoka comes into the shipyard being chased by stormtroopers firing their blasters at her.

Ahsoka radios In “ Open the door, open the door.”  She makes it to the Falcon, The door opens Temiri is there to greet her. She makes into the cockpit.  Ahsoka says “ I have what we need. Let's go.” The millennium falcon lifts off the shipyard while the First Order fires.  Tie fighters follow after them just moments later.

Rey and Temiri go to the turrent stations of the Falcon and being firing at the Tie fighters. Jacen is piloting and maneuvering the Falcon, he asks Ahsoka “ What are we going to do, to get out of this? There is an army looking for us and blockade and armada with ship tracking. Seems we’re out of luck.” Ahsoka replies “ Trust the force, not what you see.”

Rey hears Luke voice whisper to her “Turn the power off, hide behind a destroyer.” Rey radios to Jacen “ Jump to space, turn off the ship's power and we hide on the star destroyer.” He replies “Sounds good let’s do it.” Rey and Temiri blast away the last of the Tie fighters and the Millenium Falcon quickly flies to a Star Destroyer that is flying off the planet. They turn off the power and magnetize the ship to stick to it as it ascends to space.

Rey and Temiri return the cockpit with Jacen and Ahsoka. Jacen says “ We are alive for now but we are on an enemy ship how are we going to get out of this?” Ahsoka says “ We leave when they release the trash which is every few cycles and then we follow the compass.” Jacen then ask “Oh yeah, Where too?” She answers “ It will take us to the weapon that will stop the coming threat.” 

Rey says “ No we have to get the students that were taken. I made a promise, All of these people came to find me for a bigger purpose. I won’t let that fall on nothing.” Ahsoka says “ I understand but the fate of the galaxy depends on this. We have very little time. And one thing I know is the force. If the Force wills it, it will be.” “ Rey then says “ I know but I can’t have it that way, I must do my part to be used by the force.” Jacen says Rey “ How can you be used you? You have all this confliction in you where the force doesn’t flow.” Then Rey replies “Your right, but maybe saving them will set my path straight.”

 Ahsoka says “ My dear I want you to be the best you on your path with the force but we can’t make this about you, we must follow the compass or the force or our connection won’t matter.” Rey then says “The return of the Jedi and New order for peace that does matter and they belong to that order and I am going to save them with or without you.”

Jacen says to Rey “ You’re in no place of saving anyone on your own, They’re my students too.” Ahsoka says “ Jacen.” He says “I’m sorry Ahsoka this is about the order and how we will save and restore it. If we figure how to get off this Destroyer without dying and find them we’ll go.” Ahsoka says “I know where they are going.” Rey ask “Where?” Ahsoka says “ Veldobah.”  Jacen says “Alright, That is the First Orders base of Operations. If we sabotage the destroyer they will take it there for maintenance and we will get to them.”

Jacen and Temiri are in space suits at a bay door of the Falcon preparing to jump to the outside of the Star Destroyer.

Ahsoka counts on their radio “ 3,2,1.” The door opens and they are immediately sucked into space. They are rushing in the vacuum of space using the force to guide them to the outside of the destroyer.

They end up landing on the outside of the ship. Jacen uses his lightsaber cutting an opening in the ship. Temiri uses the force to move the debris gently.

The alarms go off the system repeats “Warning breach.” Jacen and Temiri get on the ship and hide. The blast doors close that section off. Troopers come to investigate. Temiri and Jacen take their uniforms.

They walk the corridors trying looking for a systems outpost.

They make it to a control room. And begin shutting the systems.

The ship immediately stops in mid-space. And the gravity stops and everyone floats for a moment and the emergency lights come on leaving the ship dark. Jacen looks and Temiri and says “That's not good enough.” They use their Lightsabers and cut and slash the control panel. They run off.  They find a spot and stand guard posing as troopers while the actual ones scramble.

The captain of the destroyer radios into the maintenance team and ask “What seems to be the problem.” The maintenance officer replies “ Have damage to the system console, it looks like we have been sabotaged, sir. We are unable to fix it.” The captain replies “ I will call for an immediate pick up all others look for intruders.

Another star destroyer comes above the stranded destroyer and releases cables with magnetized bottoms and connects to the top of the ship. It beings to pull it and they enter into hyperspace.

Kylo Ren sits in the medical bay of his ship being surrounded by the Knights of Ren. He is getting a robotic hand attached him by a medical droid.