#I could only think of poor Anakin & how he would rather have been dead

[tennessoui]

I'm begging on my hands and knees for more Twilight au, and those are words I never thought I'd say! Anakin being able to resist compulsion, and Obi-Wan seeming instantly obsessed, and poor Shmi! Pretty please 🥺🙏

hey!! sure! here's some more!

(2.5k)

Having a sheriff for a mom sucked a lot when he was a kid growing up in a small town. There was probably nothing Anakin was rebelling against more at eleven, at thirteen, at seventeen than the rule of law his mother represented. 

All things considered, she was pretty good at separating her home life from her worklife. It was Anakin who was bad at respecting the separation, Anakin who couldn’t keep son out of delinquent.  There’s only so many times he could be pulled out of wreckage and bars and buildings with Keep Out No Trespassing signs on them before he got The Sheriff at home and out in public.

He’d hated it growing up and had come to grudgingly respect it later and in fits and starts. His dad dying had, terribly and ironically, helped a lot. His mother had had a stroke just before and then Anakin had been faced with the possibility of being an orphan, and the terror of that had mellowed him out.

Sorta.

He still hates a lot of things about his mother’s job. Especially the fact that she’s the sheriff of a very small town.

And when people talk, she listens.

The thing about small towns is that everyone’s always fucking talking. And other people are always fucking lsitening so they can talk later. One big fucking community, which means when Anakin comes home from his weird doctor’s appointment with Dr. Kenobi, a few hours later because he took a detour biking along the edge of the seaside cliffs just to spit in the good doctor’s metaphorical face, Shmi Skywalker already knows more than Anakin ever planned to tell her.

Like, for instance, “Sheila says that Dr. Kenobi thought it would behoove you to spend some time at the local library volunteering.”

Anakin pauses, backpack half-slung off his shoulders. He hangs his stuff up slowly, careful to keep his tone very light. “Did Sheila say what I told him after he said that?” 

His mom’s silence is very loud.

“I don’t want to do i—”

“I asked the new librarian about it on my way home from the station. She thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Apparently we used to have a program like that in the forties but it died out during the war.”

“Mom, come on—”

“It’ll look good on resumes, saying you created and supported a local reading program.”

“Yeah, but I’m a bit too old to be applying for babysitting positio—”

“It’ll look good for me as well,” Shmi says in her sheriff voice. “Elections are coming up soon. It’ll be good, if my kid was involved in the community.”

Anakin’s glad that his back is still turned to the living room, where his mom is sitting. “Are you gonna run again?” he asks, paying special attention to his tone this time.

“Why wouldn’t I?” his mom replies. “I’ve been sheriff for a decade and a half.”

Anakin lets his eyes fall closed for a second, knowing that his face can’t be seen. This is how they end up half the time: Shmi’s ardent belief that she is invincible, going up against Anakin’s desperate desire for her to be so.

And they just don’t talk about it. As if they’re actually in agreement.

He knows how this is going to shake out.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow?” His mother asks.

Anakin’s eyes remain closed. “I guess so,” he says.

—--------

Mrs. Kenobi—call me Satine—is sort of scary up close. She’s tall. She glides between bookshelves. Anakin’s never met someone who glides before. And she’s so intensely, incredibly, blindingly perfect that Anakin would rather be anywhere but in her vicinity. There’s something incredibly unnerving about the symmetry of her face, the sharpness of her cheekbones. She’s obviously an absolute knock-out, just drop-dead gorgeous, but it makes Anakin’s skin crawl and his heart beat fast, but not in a good way or a normal teenage boy way.

Anakin tries to keep the unease off his face as Satine leads him through a tour of the library, a gentle hand on his forearm. That’s another thing Anakin doesn’t really like. She’s wearing satin gloves. He doesn’t know anyone who wears gloves anymore.

It’s just all a bit…unsettling.

“I put in a few words around the school yesterday afternoon,” Satine tells him. They pass by the mystery section, the fantasy section, and take a hard right into the young adult section. The shelves are smaller here, and Anakin feels rather stupidly gigantic as he and Satine walk through them. “To some parents picking their children up after school. They agreed it would be good exposure to bring them to the library for an hour or so of reading before supper.”

Anakin highly doubts it will be, but Satine hasn’t really asked him.

She sweeps past his figure and pushes open a pair of double doors with a flourish better suited for a Russian tsarina hosting an elaborate ball than a small town librarian showing off a small, cramped, and dusty room filled with padded seats and threadbare rugs.

And then, as if she has been waiting to put the last nail in the proverbial coffin, Satine adds, “A few students from the local high school will be here as well.”

“Sorry,” Anakin says, “are you saying I’m going to be reading to high school students? Can’t they do that themselves?”

After all, Anakin went to high school here. Academics hadn’t been too rigorously challenging, but they’d taught the fucking basics.

Satine raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction. “They’ll be volunteering as well.”

Oh. Right.

“It looks good on their college applications,” Satine waves a hand through the air and the words linger there. Anakin looks out the rather dirty window, jaw clenching. “I’ve already chosen a handful of books I think the young ones will enjoy.”

Anakin, committed to his fate, pads over to the titles placed carefully ontop of a short, stout side table. 

“Peter the Rabbit,” he reads off the top. “Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Prince and the Pauper—look, you’re the librarian here, but don’t you have anything written this century maybe? Harry Potter, even.”

“These are classics,” Satine tells him, her nose raised into the air as if she has encountered something particularly foul-smelling. She turns away, presumably to return to the front desk so she can welcome half the fucking town inside the library so Anakin can read them fucking Anne of Green Gables and become a better person.

“These are fucking boring,” he mutters to himself, flicking the cover of the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz open. Publication date: 1900. “I’d rather be in Kenobi’s office getting lectured at.”

There’s a sharp noise of disapproval from the doorway, and Anakin’s head snaps up to see the tail end of a very heated look from the librarian before the door closes behind her.

He shivers, alone in the emply room, and it takes several long minutes for his heart to settle back into its normal pace. 

—----------

After the fourth kid sneezes, Anakin closes his book with a snap and stands from the very small chair they’ve got him sitting on. “Come on,” he tells the cluster of children he’s been assigned to. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Are you kidnapping us?” One of them, a snot-nosed kid who’d started the sneezing says, rubbing at her cheek beneath her glasses. “Cause mommy says that’s not allowed.”

“I’m not kidnapping you,” Anakin snaps back, barely holding in his natural follow-up to the sentence which is of course, I don’t want to be around any of you in the first place. “Also, just for future reference, you shouldn’t ask if someone’s kidnapping you after you already start following them.”

The girl scowls and reaches up her hand to hold onto Anakin’s. 

For the love of Christ.

“We’re just going to go into the main part of the library,” Anakin tells his children, all six of them. “They have windows out there.”

They have windows out there and they also have parents. Parents who absolutely should be doing other things with their lives and precious hour of extra freetime.

Parents who are clustered instead around the library’s front desk as the town’s newest librarian holds court.

“Is reading time over?” one of the kids asks him, turning his head to look up at Anakin.

Anakin thinks about it. “Do you want reading time to be over?”

The kid thinks about it back. “Yeah,” he decides. “You don’t do the voices good.”

“It’s a boring book,” Anakin tells the kid. “Voices aren’t going to make it better.”

“Voices always make it better,” another kid says. “They make everything better.”

“Oh look,” Anakin says. “Is that your father?”

He gestures vaguely towards the cluster of drooling middle-aged somethings focused on Satine.

The kid peeks around his thigh and then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s Dr. Obi.”

“Dr. Obi!” The kid holding Anakin’s hand says, and she lets go.

Anakin gets a bad feeling about this, a feeling that only doubles when he turns around to see Dr. Kenobi sauntering towards him, hands tucked into the pockets of a long dark jacket that makes him look even more pale than he already is.

He scowls automatically as the man gets closer. “Dr. Obi.”

Dr. Kenobi spares him a look that’s far too amused for Anakin’s pleasure before he crouches down to the level of the kids. “Hello there, young ones,” he says, opening his arms to accept a hug from the traitor of a girl Anakin’s just spent thirty minutes reading to. “Are you eating all your vegetables? Even the brussel sprouts?”

“I like brussel sprouts,” one of the kids reports sounding proud, and that starts a cacophony of opinions about brussel sprouts from all around Anakin.

“Wow! One of mine just absolutely hates them,” Dr. Kenobi says. “She refuses to eat them, so you’re very brave, Michele.” He lets go of the girl and turns his golden-brown gaze up to Anakin. “And what does Mr. Skywalker think?” he asks, raising a hand for Anakin to take. It’s very obvious he’s asking for a hand up and Anakin is obeying before he thinks about it. He snatches his hand free almost too soon, but Dr. Kenobi doesn’t even have the grace to lose his balance and fall over. 

His hand is like ice in Anakin’s, and Anakin stuffs his fingers into the pocket of his jacket automatically a second later.

“Do brussel sprouts help with circulation?” he’s biting out before he can stop himself. “Cause you may need some then.”

Kenobi’s head tilts very slightly to the side as his eyes catch and hold onto Anakin’s. “Oh?” he asks lightly. 

“You’re cold,” is all Anakin mutters in return. He swipes his other hand against the back of his neck. “”S poor circlutation, isn’t it? Something in your diet maybe?” Dr. Kenobi blinks at him and then breaks into a wide smile. “I can assure my diet is very…circulation-mindful,” he says. “Blood health positive.”

Anakin’s mouth thins into a line. He guesses that’s what he gets for trying to give health advice to a doctor, especially a doctor like Kenobi who just so happens to be devastatingly attractive and also smart.

And also an asshole. And also married.

Speaking of which. “Are you here to fend off your wife’s admirers with a scalpel?” Kenobi’s eyebrows raise. “Young ones,” he turns his head away from Anakin, down to the children.

The strangest feeling breaks of Anakin the second Kenobi looks away, almost as if a strange pressure he hadn’t even realized had been building was suddenly dissolved.

The very small beginnings of a headache begin to thrum in his temples.

“Young ones, it’s time to find your parents, isn’t it?” Kenobi says, and like fucking magic, the crowd of six children around Anakin disperse, children swarming away from him towards the group of adults surrounding the front desk.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Anakin blurts out, even though he’d meant to ignore Kenobi now that he doesn’t have to make nice in front of small kids. Not that he was really making nice in the first place. But now he definitely doesn’t have to.

Kenobi gives him a half-smile, eyes heavy-lidded. “It’s a special sort of skill that takes, above all else, much practice.”

Anakin scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Kenobi think he can’t commit himself to something even as mundane as a fucking commanding persona? Does he think he doesn’t have it in him to be–-

Kenobi’s eyebrows go up again. “Has anyone ever told you that you are exceedingly defensive?” 

“You’re extremely nosey,” Anakin snaps back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you have better things to focus on right now anyway?”

He gestures loosely towards Satine, who has started playing with one of the mother’s bracelets as the other woman stands and looks at her rather dumbfounded.

Kenobi follows his gaze and then lets out a huff of laughter. “Satine can take care of herself,” he says, even though it hadn’t really been Satine that Anakin was worried about.

He’s about to open his mouth to say so when Kenobi turns back to him. His eyes are piercing, a dark, captivating sort of gold. 

“Do you find my wife beautiful, Anakin?” he asks.

Anakin blinks. His headache is getting worse, which is probably down to what can only be a trick-question fashioned to look like a grenade lobbed at his feet. “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” he mutters, rubbing absently at his forehead. “What the fuck.”

“An honest answer is a good one,” Kenobi says lightly. “Tell me honestly.”

The words feel pulled from Anakin’s stomach, and he’s opening his mouth before he realizes it. “No,” he says. 

Kenobi’s eyebrows crinkle together. “No?”

Anakin curses his stupid impulse control. “She’s beautiful,” he adds quickly. “Really. But…it makes me uncomfortable.”

Kenobi’s lips purse, and then there’s something like disappointment in his eyes as he examines Anakin. “Ah yes,” he murmurs. “I’ve been told my wife can make countless young men feel rather uncomfortable. It’s normal in men your age, Anakin. Sexual ar—”

“Uncanny,” Anakin blurts out. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t want to listen to  Kenobi trying to lecture him on fucking arousal in the public library. When it’s not even relevant. “She’s so beautiful, it’s uncanny.”

“Uncanny.”

“Yeah, like. Monstrous.”

Kenobi’s mouth falls open, pink lips parted in what looks like honest surprise.

Anakin’s own eyes widen as it hits him that he’s just called Kenobi’s wife a monster to Kenobi’s face.

“Shit,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m going to go.” 

He throws a look at Kenobi, whose eyes are lit with something a lot like interest and then across the library to where Satine’s head is turned, cocked, and eyebrows up high on her forehead, as if she’s just heard everything he’s said.

He decides rather immediately that he’s going to take the backdoor exit.

[vaguely-concerned]

I’m on a Star Wars books roll so here we go with my — unhinged thanks for asking! — thoughts on Dooku: Jedi Lost, specifically the audio play. Short version: I fucking loved this one! For maximum emotional devastation, pair with Master and Apprentice and Padawan the way my stupid ass did and then be sad about it forever I guess that's what I’m going to have to do.

 Long (LONG oopsie) version:

- So. First of all, let’s get the most important thing out of the way on this here old man yaoi website. We all agree dooku and sifo dyas explored each other’s bodies right. Or at least definitely would have if not for the laws of this order etc., potentially. That’s not just me. Good. Thank you. We can now move on 

- Secondly. Well. Guess I’m just going to be inconsolable about Sifo-Dyas forever now. I miss the days in which he was just a throwaway line in AotC spawned by a random misspelling to me, rather than an eternal raw aching wound in my heart

- poor poor ventress just reading through all the proof that dooku absolutely does have it in him to be a good dad I mean master and just — idk got tired of that and went the force lightning route with her. I love the move of having her dead master hang out with her all that time as well (having her slip up and refer to ‘us’ did something to me, god this is so sad. Is he actually there in spirit or is it just her grief dreaming him up because dooku is awful and cold as a cliff  wall and she needs some kind of attachment figure even if she’ll have to reinvent him herself, rebuild him word for word, gesture by gesture. Pain. sorry about your terrible track record with father figures asajj) 

- Lene: (About Averross): He hasn’t changed. 

Dooku: (In the warmest fondest voice you ever heard) And I hope he never does

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MYSELF? MUST I SET MYSELF ON FIRE TO ESCAPE THE PAIN???

Another strong showing for Rael in general, btw. He’s so warm and charming as a presence even though he’s also a little chaos gremlin. (He’s quite similar to how Sifo-Dyas was when he was young in some ways, I can definitely start to see what Dooku responds warmly to in terms of character traits.) 

- the fact that good ol’ sheev showed an interest in rael, dooku and anakin… interesting huh! He’s just got a soft spot for the disaster lineage I suppose, maybe there’s an element there of luring yoda’s most direct lineage into the dirt with him without yoda even noticing for the longest time. Also cackling at the idea that he looked at qui-gon ‘too fucking stubborn and insufferable to fall to the dark side out of sheer spite’ jinn and went ‘...not that one tho’ fhdskjfa. And obi-wan is more like ‘that one blorbo all my little guys seem wild about but I just don’t get it guys’ 

IF rael’s refusal to join dooku at the end of ‘master and apprentice’ is the last word (which I am not convinced of ;___; be safe cowboy jedi we never see in mainline canon so far), then he’s the only one who has dodged palpatine’s attentions. Wonderful if true love that for him

ALSO rael is one of the few people we know to be on (or at least to consider himself on despite what palps might think lol) first name basis with palpatine. Hilarious. I concur with dooku never change rael 

- Sifo-Dyas: That’s insane. 

Dooku, deadpan: Yes.

Sifo-Dyas: The worst plan I’ve ever heard.

Dooku, somehow even more deadpan: Most probably. 

Sifo-Dyas: I’m in. 

Crying… weeping and dying………… what if someone could have helped sifo with his unfortunate prophecy propensity and they hadn’t drifted apart. Clone Wars averted methinks if dooku still ended up leaving the order he would have been too busy having tender gay sex with the love of his life (and only person who can call him out on his shit and have him actually listen) to be a war criminal (I am being extremely facetious of course this is very much a ‘time traveler killing baby hitler’ situation where the underlying forces causing this point in history are way too powerful to avert the catastrophe in one move. but at least palps would probably have had to pick someone else to wreck the galaxy through and sifo-dyas would be kissed & held instead of going slowly mad. A net plus some (I, me) would say) 

- I just wanted to applaud both the writing and the voice acting for the characterization of Dooku in this, from his young self trying so hard to be haughty and self-possessed but also being like, y’know, twelve and a dweeb and easy for Sifo-Dyas to pull into trouble, to the dry wit and warmth he shows with Rael and Qui-Gon or his sister later. It took me a little while to get into the voice acting specifically (the actor makes no attempt at going the full Christopher Lee, which in hindsight was probably wise), but now I love it. It gets a bit goofy in places but you know what, I am a long time lover of audio plays, that’s part of the charm 

- “Master, have I done something wrong?”

My heart is clenching… do you think… that master yoda’s deal with leaving his student to try fucking everything to have some kind of relationship with him until he just breaks down in tears of despair… is the kind of thing that maybe started a little bit of a generational trauma cartwheel through the ages. The point that bb!dooku is arrogant isn’t without merit and he strikes out incredibly ungracefully about it (in fact I would be a lot more worried than yoda seems to be that he decides to try to kill a tree about it, ‘I felt like destroying something beautiful’-style)  but I just don’t think a… fourteen year old? A teen anyway, Is going to learn what you think he learns from this. I simply don’t believe that silent treatmenting kids will teach them emotional intelligence I guess especially if they already struggle with that naturally lol 

(It is exactly the same mistake (in my opinion) that Qui-Gon makes with Obi-Wan, too, just leaving the kid completely alone and forcing them to come to you every which way for comfort or guidance instead of meeting them or reaching out to them. Especially once you see that really Dooku’s prime emotion/big core wound right from the beginning is loneliness. And that doesn’t only come from a feeling of superiority (which to be sure is also a big factor), because he has no idea where he comes from until he meets his sister. I don’t think the jedi as a whole were unsalvageable by any stretch of the imagination, but Yoda specifically… you are on such very thin ice with me at this point you little green fuck. You’re very funny and moving in yoda dark rendezvous and that’s all that’s keeping you in my somewhat good graces.)

- Okay, coming back a bit later I think I’ve found the right words to say this. more precisely dooku has two big issues which you can later see haunting all the way down his lineage — loneliness and control. (and not incidentally the intersecting elements of the two haha.) We see from his relationship to sifo-dyas that he’s not incapable of having close mutual relationships with an equal, but that kind of crashed and burned for reasons neither of them could really help and after that it seems quite telling that he has the easiest time with deeper connection in a teacher-student sort of form. I think his affection is unconditional and real, but you can’t get away from the fact that he also has the most control in that relationship structure by default, he gets to dictate what form it takes to a big extent. He doesn’t trust other people — the underlying idea ‘Only I can do this’ that eventually leads him down the Separatist path is there the whole way. It speaks both to a sense of superiority and an utter lack of faith that other people can or will help him. And then that echoes down through the master-padawan line: 

Qui-Gon with his self-righteousness and utter refusal to compromise leaving him isolated among the jedi (only he is right. Yeah the Force told him so. Don’t worry I’ve got a permit *insert parks and rec I can do whatever I want meme here*), Obi-Wan with his anxiety and perfectionism and incredible sense of shame and responsibility that he should be able to carry the whole world on his shoulders alone and beating himself up for failing, all feeding into not knowing what to do with Anakin and his complete lack of control of himself and his desperation to gain and maintain connection and love (which earns him the title of ‘Dooku’s least favorite family member’ fhdsa his immediate disdain for him is so funny and so in character. Repress and go slowly mad like a normal person anakin the way you’re carrying on is just undignified and that is much worse than being evil)… 

- Rael gently telling Dooku to take on another padawan soon… so sweet, so sad, local cowboy jedi looking out for his dad. Also highlights something about Dooku I think is true: that he does much better and seems to have an easier time holding to the light when he’s responsible for someone else. Again, I do feel like Dooku’s core problem is loneliness, but it seems like raising kids is the one point where that relaxes somewhat. Maybe if Sifo-Dyas had stayed in a better mental place and they kept in touch it could have been different.

- Lene Kostana is SUCH a character! Charismatic and deeply fucked up, when it’s revealed how her and Sifo-Dyas’ relationship remains long after his padawan stage is done I felt a little bit sick, to my surprise. Because that could just be kindness on her part, of course, it’s good that he has someone he trusts to look after him when he can’t himself, but also there’s something… queasy about the way it keeps him continually young, in a way. (Notably he still calls her ‘master’ even as an adult, when they’re working together. Not uncommon in Star Wars, of course, but together with everything else going on vibes-wise… hm.) The inherent unreliable narration of this story really worked for me in this regard especially — do we know that young Dooku was entirely wrong when he sensed the dark side in her? She certainly is willing to go to lengths that are… worrying! in her fascination with sith shit, she tempted children into a dangerous place they didn’t understand and couldn’t know the consequences of and she continually puts sifo-dyas in situations that are implied to be a risk to worsening his condition. Run of the mill incredibly irresponsible at best, sincerely sinister at worst. Did she choose Sifo over Dooku because he’s more vulnerable and shapeable? There is an undercurrent of something icky and emotionally incest-y going on with how she relates to Dooku and Sifo-Dyas in general (right down to the ‘NO, no one can know about this’ intensity after the… evil moss cave. I can’t believe I’m this emotional about a book with an evil moss cave). I don’t think she’s a proper sith in any way and I also believe there is real affection there on all sides, but idk something about the whole thing makes me deeply uneasy. Yoda where the fuck are you your son is out there with his irresponsible mom again they’re looking for dirty needles in haystacks and they’re not even wearing any gloves

- dooku telling sifo-dyas he can come back to haunt him if he likes as a joke… well well well I’m sure that doesn’t ring with some dramatic irony at some point down the line lmao

- honestly looking back at master and apprentice after reading jedi lost makes qui-gon's apparent lack of reaction to dooku leaving seem — let's call it highly suspect haha. rael asks him if he's spoken to dooku after and qui-gon is like 'no. why would I. it's literally fine. anyway this topic is done now'. (and rael seems to just go ‘*older brotherly knowing* uh-huh’) meanwhile he's thinking about dooku *all the time* trying to figure out his role as master to obi-wan, thinking about being a padawan himself, the parts of his life he shared with both dooku and rael. The jedi doth protest too much methinks  

ALSO how much of qui-gon thinking the council was too lenient with rael after he had to kill his padawan is about that actual situation, and how much is a ‘our family still likes my older brother more than me even though he Fucked Up so bad and breaks just as many rules as I do’ sort of deal mixed with his own neuroses about how he’s failing obi-wan (to which rael’s situation symbolizes the worst possible outcome, i.e. the kid dies and it’s basically your fault). Many thoughts. 

- moment of silence for jenza of house serenno. Girl your only sin was being surrounded by asshole male family members and I’m so sorry I think you did all you could with what you had to work with here.

Not… entirely sure how dooku’s claim to the title supersedes hers — is he a year older than her? (she’s eleven when they first meet, he might be twelve or older at that point I don’t remember haha) Does she just give up her place in the inheritance order? Are primogeniture and male heir preference factors in Serenno inheritance law? Not the most important thing honestly it works anyway thematically but could have been clarified quickly!

- interesting to see that the council’s restrictive policy against engaging with prophecies had a surprisingly big impact on how things went down. Kostana has a lot of responsibility in Sifo’s fate for insisting he keep it secret, but there is genuine fear for what might become of him if the rest of the order finds out he’s got 24/7 futurevision hovering over him threateningly… listen it’s not like the poor guy can help getting the future constantly pumped into his brain at nightmare resolutions, I think maybe if there had been more willingness to at least engage curiously with the concept of prophecy and how it works, even if you don’t put your faith in the particulars of what the prophecies say, this wouldn’t have had to be such a shitty isolated secretive life for him. hearing him slowly fall apart over the years considering how bright and lovely he started out... oof is all I can say 

- when dooku was a good jedi he was such a good jedi!!! The scene where they’re saving the kids from the collapsing hospital, every time he teaches his students anything…the impulse of someone has to do something about this! that made him so good at saving lives turning dark with the tarnish of frustration and rage over the years… nooooooooo problematic grandpa why did it have to be like this :(

- …do you think infant jedi can sense what’s going on around them in the Force. Because it makes a very sad kind of sense if dooku on some level remembers bodily or in the Force that he was not only abandoned but rejected in disgust as one of the first things he discovered in the world. Oh boy. With all the ways attachment relationships can go wonky in the first few years in real life I don’t even want to consider how much more wrong it can go when the baby is fucking psychic lol

- vaguely related: the way dooku seems to find the very idea of being truly reliant on anyone, emotionally or otherwise, personally offensive, terrifying and humiliating lol. Yoda saves him from being crushed by rubble and he is outraged because that means he can’t save himself (and his newfound sister) without anyone’s help like he thought for one glorious moment he could. The fantasy of perfect emotional self-sufficiency, doing away with all the messiness and risk of interpersonal relationships and cutting off the possibility of really being abandoned again. It’ll get ya every time. This is also a thing you see reflected in his lineage — they’re all quite inward-turning that way until you get to anakin, to different extents and with varying presentations but it is there I think. Qui-Gon turns to the Force, Obi-Wan to perfectionism and shame and rumination, Rael to the bottle and depression and hedonistic apathy, but they all struggle hugely with letting anyone in to help them. Dooku’s line are all much more comfortable being the helpers rather than the helpees, as it were.  

- “Thank you for everything, Lene. Tell Rael and Qui-Gon — tell them… tell them the Force will be with them, always”

Emotional terrorism against me specifically and personally. You asshole you just excused yourself from the non-attachment rules there’s literally nothing in the world except you to stop you from reaching out and telling your children you love them yOURSELF why are you like this

- the recurring theme of dooku seeing something beautiful (the tree in the temple, the tirra’taka as a child and an adult) and ending up lashing out to destroy it… but the tree was old and mighty and he was young and new and couldn’t truly harm it, so he was saved from his own impulsivity. And then when he sees the tirra’taka as an adult he loves it immediately. And in the end he still mangles and destroys it. He didn’t mean to, but he did. He woke it up and hurt it just by existing as a child and then he had to kill it as a mercy because he was too powerful at that point for anything to buffer his mistakes. The parallel with the bird he loved that he also couldn’t protect. He starts out with an aching loneliness somewhere at the core of him through no real fault of his own but by the end it is entirely his own fault that it’s worse, because he starts wrecking everything he loves in an almost absent-minded but definitely intentional way, like it’s a nightmare he’s listening to through the door as it happens in the next room over. He really IS the ‘I just felt like destroying something beautiful’ central of the jedi.

at the end qui-gon is dead and through dooku’s own influence, however indirectly. Rael has had to turn away from him. Sifo-Dyas is dead on Dooku’s own orders and so is his sister, he might as well have done it with his own hands. (though I think it’s very interesting that in each case he didn’t do it with his own hands, he consistently uses a middleman.) He lives within the coldness of his sterile empty castle and horrifically mistreats the one person he might have found something like connection with the way he did with his students before (Ventress), deliberately trapping her in a similar state of utter desolate isolation and telling her, essentially, ‘We’re like this as people and nothing can be done to change it. We can’t escape, we’re already doomed, stop trying, it’s too late. You are just like me (and if you aren't already I'll make you like me)’. And that’s the closest thing he gets to love anymore. When he accused Ky of using her ‘as a salve for his own loneliness’ and you’re like well well well mr projection man how’s that working out for you. He is completely, shatteringly alone and he is so entirely as a consequence of his own actions and he's too far gone to understand or care. I’m howling you useless fucking FOOL dooku  

- dooku 🤝 john gaius

“Hm. I have observed that there are in fact many flaws in our society and the government is deeply corrupt. So if I kill a few billion people here and there in order to fix it, is that not basically okay when you really think about it” 

Dooku making salient points about the political and ethical failures of the Republic and then, just when you think he’s onto something, he goes and makes The wildest fucking decisions about what to do about it. Sure. dark magic and genocide are probably the only ways out of this you’re so right bro. If we make enough minuses to add together surely we’ll end up in plus sooner or later

- *head in my hands once more* I can’t believe I am genuinely emotionally invested in someone called Count Dooku with the looks of a knockoff dracula and ultimate moral character to match right now this is terrible. hey. hey dooks. what you have to go and fuck everything up so bad for huh I’m so incredibly sad now

there is something to be said about how getting to see glimpses of what dooku looked like in the light makes it so much more heartwrenching that he never came back. he could have, a thousand times. and every time he chose not to.

[whump-adjacent]

Well this killed me...

“Coming back, what I was most excited by was the idea of exploring the character of Darth Vader at this point in the timeline. When we meet him in the series, he’s struggling with his past in a way that he needs to reconcile. He needs to kill Obi-Wan to kill that part of himself and become the Sith that he knows he needs to be.” 

Hayden Christensen, A Jedi Returns, 2022

Welp. I’m a mess 😫

At first I thought “what’s he talking about - Anakin isn’t struggling to reconcile his past, he’s a shell of a man with no capacity to connect with his past life or Obi-Wan. But then I realised what Hayden was saying. 

That Vader, needing to completely destroy the tender, heroic Anakin in order to become this entirely monstrous creature, has to eliminate the one remaining link with his past, a link that he knows could have the power to revive Anakin; his Master, friend, and father figure Obi-Wan.

Vader must kill Obi-Wan because Obi-Wan being alive means that Anakin could be saved 😔💔

[slaygentford]

i know ur just silly detroit posting but. hm. what IS ur opinion on multiple story lines in fiction. like what could have made it work? ignore if u want lol just enjoy ur input 💜

oh hi best friend welcome to 2018. the issue with dbh isn't that there are three stories which converge, the issue is that he was like hey what if we made Markus Martin Luther king Jesus jr? so here are MY 0:) ideas to answer the question "what could have made it work" which is basically Markus is simply Jesus. bc I honestly think the Connor and kara stories are solid if a little below their potential. but to make it work Markus would have to be totally different. ergo

good version:

Markus is simply Jesus. he even has a dark night of the soul/temptation in the desert/garden of gethsemane (thinking when he goes to see carl's grave) (this is good-ending based). in this way we could simply do the fucking bible. for example Markus decides to heal his jericho disciples (perhaps he can do this with a touch and it's a miracle would be cool) AND then when they go to free the androids at cyberlife instead of pressing x to black power fist symbol you can turn over some tables in the agora. and instead of this being a declaration of war that leads directly to the bad ending it just causes a manhunt for Markus WHICH !!!! twink Pontius pilate would spearhead in a more concentrated and direct way. if you dont turn over the tables in the agora (whatever that looks like) and keep it 100% peaceful the more CONCENTRATED manhunt should happen anyway. but they key word is MANHUNT, the focus is Markus Robot Jesus.

Markus goes around converting people without doing the Obama wave but rather by healing the sick and helping the poor and whatever. more of a one on one connection instead of army recruitment. it takes more time and effort to wake androids up.

north who is literally already a former sex worker and literally already canon Mary Magdalene remains the more revolution-minded one and at one point you do have to agree with her methods/defend yourselves in order to get the good ending. the love story is more nuanced and involves some act of service similar to the foot washing which is surprising bc of how tough she is

Markus could get CAPTURED!!!!!!!!!!!!! by twink Pontius pilate duh. I think there's a cool version where Markus is questioned by hank and Connor and there's a decision to let him go or not based on how youve been playing Connor and hank

religious imagery ie lights and shadows falling on Markus like a halo/if simon dies it's reminiscent of st Sebastian/markus might catch a bullet with his hand = blue blood stigmata

Markus should be martyred in the "true" ending. knock knock hello hes robot jesus. either that or I really like that thing with simon/north giving him their heart. or it would be cool if he was martyred and then his heart became a reliquary or something. but that would be really satisfying to me honestly. esp cuz he already did the dead for 3 days thing in the actual game and that's one of my favorite parts

I can't remember if ra9 is ever like meaningfully explained in a different run but everyone should be like wow ra9 is Markus but it turns out ra9 is no one and intelligent life simply inherently believes in The Higher Power of Love in the universe and Markus is simply a good person who happens to embody good values

ambiguous version: I think Markus can start an all out crusade from the jump or go into it at any point. and then I think not necessarily everyone dies but it does bring about an apocalypse in the worst version that leads to a new world having to be built after mass destruction. but instead of the moral being peaceful protest is the only answer it's more nuanced and there IS hope at the end for some peace

bad version: power hungry Markus where he is Anakin Skywalker antichrist and we get grotesque android builds that are like the beasts and whatever. full book of revelation. pale horse rk900. a-bomb wipes out humanity but not androids baby! this could be triggered by Markus choosing revenge after simon/north is hit by a bullet meant for markus persnaps.

again I think the way the stories converge is sick and I think Connor and kara are pretty solid though not up to their full potential I can't remember if I already said that. the point is more hubcap halos and less of whatever the fuck all of that was

[swbumblebee]

“I think Young Ani is being bullied”

Plo leaned back on the sofa, cradling his wine and listening to the comforting sounds of his friend and confidant hunting for mask-friendly nibbles in the kitchen.

“What?” came the response from the other room, followed shortly by a clang and a curse.

Plo chuckled and shook his head, despite the seriousness of his thoughts.

Mace Windu reappeared with a triumphant noise, cradling his own glass of something that looked lighter than their usual rich fare (“it’s a Taungsday Plo, lets be sensible”) and a small bowl of soft fruits.

Plo nodded gratefully as he took the fruit and his friend sank onto the sofa next to him. They hadn’t managed to meet up as usual last week, and Plo had missed their (often rather gloomy, admittedly) decompression sessions, chatting late into the night on Galaxy shattering matters, leaning on each other for support.

It was odd to think of how distant they were from each other the first time around in that other time; friends, certainly, but they’d really never spent much time together. Another surprising benefit their predicament, he supposed.

Mace cleared his throat, looking expectantly at Plo.

“I am always glad to see you, my friend, and I missed our meeting last week.” He said, characteristically matter-of-fact “but I got the feeling you need to discuss something specific.”

Plo nodded, rather pleased at the admission he hadn’t been the only one.

“Yes I’m afraid so.” He thought for a moment, grateful for the lack of prompting, and decided to start from the beginning.

“I meet Anakin after his biology class on a Primeday and we go to the archives for reading practice.” He explained, Mace nodding along in understanding. “I know you do the same on a Centaxday” he acknowledged. “But I think he’s having trouble with his classmates” Plo said unhappily.

“How so?” Mace’s face had fallen a little, but he remained his usual measured self.

“He is obviously upset and tense, his presence unsettled and turbulent in a way it never normally is.” Plo paused. “It reminded me of Skywalker Last Time.”

Mace’s face definitely darkened at that. Repetitions of Last Time were to be avoided at all costs, but he said nothing.

Plo sighed.

“A couple of times I have caught a few tears as he left the classroom.” Plo finished. It had broken his heart. The Master had to perform a spectacularly silly play in their reading session to get their usual smiley boy back.

Mace sighed.

“I suppose he has not shared what’s happening?”

Plo shook his head, taking a drink of his wine through his modified mask.

“He refuses to talk about it, and I am reluctant to push. However, something is definitely going on in that class and we need to do something about it.” Plo said emphatically. This inaction was almost painful, he wanted desperately to get the boy to open up but pressuring him was not the way to go about it.

“Of course, of course.” Mace agreed, sending tendrils of support over the Force as well. “I suppose Obi-Wan is unaware?”

Plo nodded

“He must be, or I cannot imagine he would allow it to continue” he acknowledged. He knew with dead certainly Master Kenobi wouldn’t have stood for it, certainly, and even though Master Kenobi was years away and Knight Kenobi was a twenty-two-year-old struggling to adjust, he couldn’t imagine his friend in this time would be that different.

Mace seemed to be picking his words carefully, taking a drink. Plo could almost see his clever friend’s cogs turning and the slight anger in the Force turning to determination.

“We need not burden young Obi-Wan just yet.” The Korun Master decided. Between his own learning and development, as well as his Padawan’s, and the pair’s various issues, they both knew the new Knight was handling an almost insurmountable workload.  

“I believe” he continued breezily “it is time for me to get back onto the teaching rotation, it’s been such a long time since I’ve taught a younglings class. Perhaps I’ll sign myself up for Biology.” He suggested lightly.

Plo smiled.

“Oh of course, it is so important to keep one’s hand in. I will join you. Splitting the term classes between us will relieve the poor being currently teaching it to perhaps get some rest.”

Mace snorted

“Or some extra training in teaching a class of ten-year-olds how to behave like civilised Jedi.”

They toasted to a foolproof plan.

---

It was the very next morning when Plo managed to make it way to the creche administration offices to offer his and Mace’s services.

The reaction of the being on duty was somewhat confusing. Whilst Plo knew he was perhaps not known for his teaching ability, he had to admit he was anticipating the offer from two senior council members to be taken with some excitement.

What he got was a vaguely awkward look.

“Oh Master Plo, that’s so kind of you” They nervously shuffled their papers behind the reception desk. “However, Knight Kenobi was here last night, and he requested to take over that particular class for the rest of the term.” They fidgeted for a moment as Plo stared. “I’m sorry Master Plo, he was quite emphatic” they sniffed. “Perhaps there is another class you would like to help with?”

Plo allowed himself a slow smile as he left the office with a polite goodbye.

Of course. His smile grew as he shook his head and took out his communicator. When would they learn that Obi-Wan Kenobi was nobody’s fool?

---

That following Primeday Plo arrived as the class let out and he grinned broadly at the sight that greeted him. He could hear Obi-Wan continuing to talk to students inside, and there was young Padawan Skywalker, right in the middle of a throng of other children as they spilled out into the corridor.

“Did you really?”

“Your master is so cool?!”

“Can you teach me to drive a pod racer?”

Plo allowed his fondness to curl around Anakin in the Force, laughing and nodding at something one of his peers had said, blue eyes shining happily.

Well, Force knows what in the Galaxy Obi-Wan did, but the Jedi who would one day be the greatest diplomat in the order had been at work, it seemed.

[norcumii]

for the ask meme: Rex/Obi or pairing/characters of choice - Werewolf/vampire AU / Sick/injured / Stranded Due to Inclement Weather / Huddling for warmth

For this trope mashup meme.

This was CLEARLY influenced by seananmcguire's Newsflesh series, which was the last zombie related media I interacted with, and I regret NOTHING.

(Meanwhile, much worldbuilding was done by Dogmatix, who I was foolish enough to let near the plunnies again ^_^)

*****

The problem with zombies, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but muse, was that they stopped thinking. Oh, there was some low-level intelligence left in there, but it was mostly focused on consuming the living. Not tactics, for the most part, not unless the bastards were very fresh or in large enough groups, but that also meant that when some brilliant asshole declared “oh, the zombies wouldn’t/couldn’t ever do that,” no one consulted the zombies.

Thus, an early morning patrol in an area that “never saw more than one or two zombies” turned into a clusterfuck retreat. Though ‘patrol’ was rather a gross overstatement for just the two of them taking an idle walk because some days, Rex was too jittery for sleep and too damn self-sacrificing to admit that he missed early morning runs.

There was always enough fog coming in from the river that they should have been fine.

There also shouldn’t have been an entire pack of at least a dozen, dozen and a half zombies in the area. Where the fuckers had even come from was an unpleasant mystery.

“Rex?” Obi-Wan murmured into the man’s ear. “Are you with me?” he asked as if he couldn’t make out the glacially slow beat of his heart.

Rex groaned, head lolling to nestle further in the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck. He mumbled something that was probably a curse, which left Obi-Wan in the unenviable position of having to close his eyes and take his own steadying breath. Yes, on the one hand he did have an unfairly attractive boyfriend draped across his lap, straddling his hips and feeling like he was several seconds away from some serious necking.

On the other, they were also treed a good thirty feet above a pack of damned zombies, which had already tried seriously munching on Rex, and ‘necking’ could have serious consequences when one of them was an actual vampire.

Speaking of. Obi-Wan shifted in the cautious little jig in an attempt to nudge Rex more to the left. If he could just free up his arm enough, then he could move around while not tossing them off the tree stand or dislodging the thick emergency poncho that was the only thing keeping Rex from turning into a charred crisp. It was not sized for two, but there hadn’t been time to be more careful and drape it over just Rex instead of just plonking it down over the two of them.

“If you refuse to leave base again without your entire damned armor because of this, I’m going to be very put out,” Obi-Wan informed him, getting another incoherent unhappy noise. The armor was good at keeping the soldiers bite free – not that they needed to worry about the zombification business, but it still hurt them and fed the damn undead. It was also effective at keeping the soldiers touch starved and isolated in ways Obi-Wan had difficulty standing.

Another careful shift, and he could just barely dig out one of the small, squishy packs he kept in his jacket for emergencies.

Since his luck was shit, as soon as he pulled it free, the bastard caught on a loose thread, and with his claws he didn’t dare grab too hard for it, and down it tumbled. One of the zombies lunged, snapping at it, and blood exploded all across the remains of the bastard’s face.

Not being too intelligent, the rest of the pack turned on it immediately. Obi-Wan tried to tune out the disgusting carnage, being much more careful on his second attempt. He didn’t have many packets to spare. This one, he managed to juggle up in front of Rex’s face, jostling it a little. “Here. Drink,” he ordered, hoping that would be sufficient. He hated trying to insert the little sippy straws – Anakin had loved juice pouches back as a child, and they’d had similar fiendish straws. Anakin had learned how to insert the little bastards without a problem, but he always asked Obi-Wan to do it for him – because Obi-Wan had never quite managed to master the process, and Anakin was a damned brat.

Bad enough when it was juice.

One way or another, Rex was conscious enough to shift and bite down on the plastic packet. It was always a wonder to watch the soldiers’ regenerative powers at work. As the level of mostly artificial plasma lowered, color drained back into Rex’s face, the nasty burns along truly unfair cheekbones fading as muscle and skin reknit. He could smell the distressing blood-and-raw-meat stench fading, and only then did he start to relax.

When things had started to go to hell around the globe, the powers that be had huddled together around their failing infrastructure and went looking for fantastical solutions to unnatural problems. Obi-Wan could only imagine the levels of exhaustion and terror that had led someone to the conclusion that vampires might be immune to the infections that spread the zombie virus. The sheer potential of that going horribly wrong was at least one movie franchise long, if not several, yet somehow they’d dedicated enough science to make artificial vampires. Oh, technically it wasn’t vampirism, but ‘drank blood, super fast and strong, sunburn to death within minutes, resting vitals dropping down far enough to pass as dead’ was close enough for everyone but petty bureaucrats and pedantic assholes.

Even at the time, Obi-Wan had cynically noted how that meant both a short leash, and a strong vested interest in keeping as many people from going zombie as possible. He’d also noted the infuriating demographics of those who were selected for and survived the process of becoming vampires.

He tried not to think on that much nowadays, because the heightened blood pressure and carnage bothered Rex.

The packet slurped dry in a way that always raised Obi-Wan’s hackles, then Rex blinked up at him a few times in confusion. “You’re fuzzy,” Rex accused.

“That’s called a beard, dear,” Obi-Wan drawled in his most obnoxious tone, pretending he didn’t also have fur sprouting most places, nor the partial muzzle of a transformation enough to give him speed and jumping ability enough to get to one of the safe perches they’d set up weeks ago.

The Powers That Be might have created vampires, but they had also somehow missed the small but stubborn population of entirely naturally occurring werewolves (and affiliated were-creatures) around the world. Some, like Obi-Wan and his pack, were doing their damndest to both keep a low profile and help the poor bastards trying to protect the last of humanity.

Some, like Obi-Wan, might have become unwisely open to certain non-lycanthropes due to unfortunate feelings – not that Obi-Wan was ever about to complain about that.

Either his sarcastic tone or the guttural noises of thwarted zombies sank in, because Rex stiffened and glared down. “Fuck!” he hissed, thighs clenching in a way that Obi-Wan both very much did and very much did not appreciate. His eyes damn well crossed at the wiggle that followed – he could only guess that Rex was going for a weapon that he didn’t have.

“Stop that!” he snarled, letting the wolf out a little more. He needed the muscle and mass to keep Rex in place, longer paws digging into the tree trunk for a slightly more secure hold that was notgroping his idiot boyfriend.

His idiot boyfriend leveled a flat, unimpressed look at him. “Really?” Rex grumped. His eyes flicked down, then back up. “Right now?”

“So sorry, but some of us don’t need to ingest extra blood to get it up, and under less fraught circumstances this might be my idea of a good time.” He tried for a drawl, but it was much more strained than he meant. Oh well, it wasn’t like Rex didn’t know he could be ridiculous. And it really wasn’t intentional.

“Less fraught meaning less zombies?”

“And less daylight.” Obi-Wan didn’t mean for his tone to turn sharp, either, but it did even as he very carefully wrapped his arms tighter around Rex. He made certain not to disturb the poncho, but he, at least, wanted the reassurance. He still wasn’t over the terror of having to go mostly wolf to grab Rex from the pack he was trying to slow down, nor the horror of slinging him over a shoulder to go pelting through the trees. Madcap desperation to find a tree stand before a foggy dawn was not his idea of fun. “Your life is worth a hell of a lot more than an inconvenient hard on.”

Rex huffed a laugh, leaning in to rest his cheek against Obi-Wan’s. “Stop being charming.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to happen approximately never. So sorry.”

For a moment, it was just them – two idiots cuddled together, healthy and alive on a genuinely beautiful, bright Spring morning.

Then a terrible gurgling noise broke the moment, and Rex glanced down at the pack still mingling around the tree, groaning their displeasure at not remembering how to climb. “Was that a zombie?” he asked, as if he damn well didn’t know the truth.

“Shapeshifting burns calories,” Obi-Wan reminded him primly. “As does marathon sprints lugging around idiots like potato sacks.”

“That explains the bruises on my stomach,” he muttered, shifting about to rummage in one of Obi-Wan’s pockets. “Jerky?”

“Please.” All in all, now that matters were calmer, Obi-Wan almost hoped that a rescue would take its sweet time. This was almost nice – all things considered.

~end

[greenygreenland]

Tired: Omega x Platonic! Slicer! Reader

-Hi I’m back from the dead

-i write for females, keep that in mind (sorry, it's what I'm comfortable with, so I hope you understand!)

-but really, I write in 2nd POV, so you can't tell for the most part

REQUESTED

Summary: You're a former bounty hunter who's also a slicer for the GAAR. You meet Omega by chance.

Tired. That was the only thing that could describe your mental state. Being assigned to mission after mission was no fun, especially when it was solo. You were a civvie slicer, one who the GAAR hired by chance due to your reputation.

By reputation, that meant ex-mercenary-who-so-happened-to-have-a-knack-or two-for-technology. The clones were nice to you though. For the most part, they didn't care about your previous occupation because it wasn't the first time anyone's hired Bounty Hunters for the GAAR.

The low hum of the ship helped to ease your building worries. You wondered what the boys of Clone Force 99 were up to. It was no secret that you were part of the complete package. No one knew how you and them got along when you were a civvie. Being outsiders themselves, they hated anyone who wasn’t part of their group. But not you. You were different. Kind. Caring. Understanding.

That thought made you frown. You missed the boys. They had been gone for at least seven rotations without comming you once. The fact that they promised didn't help their cause either. Were they okay? Maybe one of them got hurt, or worse, killed? Maker forbid such a thing.

"They better come back to me in one piece, or I'll have them begging on their knees for forgiveness..."

Beep, beep, beep!

You jolted upright, swinging your legs out form under you as you hurriedly fumbled for the holoprojector. You tapped a button and the cockpit flooded with a soft, blue light. "Tech!" you cried. "It's been seven rotations! Why haven't you commed me?" He removed his helmet with a sheepish shrug. "We've been busy of course. And it's seven rotations and fifteen hours, meaning--"

"Yeah, yeah." you cut in with a sigh. "I don't like the idea of not coming with you guys on missions. I know you're just as capable--more if you want me to be honest--but that doesn't mean I can't worry."

There was a rustle behind Tech and he looked over his shoulder. Hunter came into view, an apologetic look in his eyes. "Sorry we didn't comm you. With all that's gone down, I wouldn't say we've had the time." You flopped down in your chair helplessly. "I know, it's just..."

Hunter smiled warmly. "Don't worry about us (Y/n)." Tech pushed up his glasses and nodded in agreement. "If there's anyone who we should be worrying about, it's you. You go on solo missions six out of nine times. We have each other but you only have yourself."

"Wow, I feel so much better Tech." You sarcastically muttered. "Speaking of mission, I'm on my next one."

Hunter knitted his brows. "Where?"

"Skako Minor."

"Skako Minor?" they echoed. You nodded. "Something strange is going on there. According to Rex, the Seppie battle plans have been drawn exactly like the ones he used to do with Echo--that’s one of his men." You recalled the face of that fallen soldier. He was always so sweet to you, giving a wave whenever you passed and smiling as brightly as he could. To say you missed the poor boy was an understatement.

"Isn't Skako Minor under the Techno Union?" inquired a coiled voice. Crosshair made his way into the frame and unceremoniously squeezed himself between his brothers. "You better not be going alone." You waved it off. "Even if I did, it’s fine. I can take care of myself.”

“Like the time you nearly fried yourself with a loose wire on that rock in the Outer Rim? Yeah, I don’t think so.” You averted your gaze to the side in embarrassment. No one needed to remind you of that rookie mistake. You could have gotten yourself killed. The watts were off the chart there. “That was one time. I’m a master at this stuff, don't worry. And besides, Cody, Rex, Jesse, and Kix are with me." Cross's brows shot up. "You're working with regs?"

"Don't worry, they're seasoned soldiers from the 501st.” That was the truth, and you meant it. Working under Rex for months made it clear to you. During that time, he taught you a thing or two about mechanics. “General Skywalker’s men are more than capable. So is Cody."

Cross looked doubtful, and you couldn't blame him. This was enemy territory you were sneaking into. It didn’t matter who you had on your side, because anyone could make a mistake.

A deep laugh echoed from over Cross’s shoulder. Wrecker set down his gonk droid, Lula in the other hand. “You guys need to have faith in (Y/n),” he reminded with a grin. “She’s smarter than me, and she’s always kept up with us. Is there anything she can’t do?” Tech pushed his glasses up with a challenging look. “Uh, actually--”

“Just be careful.” Hunter concluded. “We want to see you back in one piece.” You nodded in understanding. “Copy that, Sarge.” He smiled, and it was filled with unsaid words of care. Cross sent you a nod, eyes all mushy and soft while Tech knitted his brows together worriedly. Wrecker grinned, and it was so bright that it could have blinded you.

“Same goes to you Batchers,” you stated seriously. “Come back to me in one piece, or I’ll come over there and kill you myself.” Tech looked like he wanted to comment on that, but he sensed the shift in mood and kept his mouth shut. You memorised their faces as best as you could. It would be a while until you saw them next.

The hologram flickered out and the soft glow of blue hues disappeared. The cold, dim lighting of the ship fell over you. “Well that’s that.” you muttered with a weak smile. Rex patted your shoulder comfortingly. “They really care about you.”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t always like that. I used to be a stranger too.”

The rest of the ride was spent with the occasional joke from Jesse. He made you laugh, and it helped to soothe your worries. But then the ship landed, and you were thrust into a battle zone. You were thankful Anakin made you wear heavier armour today. If he hadn’t, then you probably would have been vaporized on the spot.

“We need cover!” shouted Rex. That was a no-brainer. Being out in the open at the bottom of a ravine was not in the least tactical. “SBDs!” you called. “Twelve o’clock!”

Jesse raced past you. “Get down!” He threw an EMP. It wasn’t as effective as you hoped it would be. If the Bad Batch were here, this situation would have been completely different. You were on your own. There was no cover, save for the piles of smoking durasteel and the very armour strapped to your vulnerable limbs.

You were in a head-on battle.

“I guess we don’t have much of a choice.” You charged forward, tossing a few EMPs as you blasted away. The best you could do was nail them in the head and hope for the best. Jesse was right beside you, with Cody, Kix, and Rex following suit.

“I didn’t think you would be this daring!” called Jesse. You blasted a few droids and kicked another in the head. It fell with a clank and you smothered it in a healthy dose of blaster fire. “I wasn’t about to be bested by a couple of rust buckets!” you retorted with shake of your head. “Come on, we need to get to that tower.”

You made quick work of the droids. You were no Jango Fett, but you managed with the help of the Regs. Cody congratulated your work and motioned for the squad to continue on. “It’s obvious the enemy knows we’re here. I have my doubts on sneaking in, but perhaps we can manage...”

Past the commando droids, through the front door, then up the lift and a little further down a couple halls. Before the mission, Rex had pulled you aside to speak in private. He thought Echo was alive and that whatever was sending out those Seppie battle plans had to be him. But you weren’t about to get your hopes up. Not when so many of your friends long marched far, far away.

You stopped by a door and plugged in your datapad. “I need to slice open the door. I’m not about to challenge fate here with a charge.” Jesse nodded in understanding. “I’d rather come back with all my legs and arms, thank you very much.” He turned to keep guard as Cody stood close to your side. “Is this the control room?”

“Yes.” The door swished open and you disconnected your ‘pad from the panel. “I’ll slice the computer and retrieve the information we need. Rex, I need you for this portion.” He nodded in understanding and followed suit. You connected your datapad to the communications table. A hologram appeared, where dates and names passed by in the blink of an eye.

“You said this might be Echo.” you quietly stated. Rex nodded. “I can’t be sure, but there isn’t another explanation.” You watched as the information scrolled past at the speed of light. There wasn’t anything of use so far. Only old reports, check-ins and...

The scrolling froze. A file opened up, filling the room with a voice you wouldn’t ever forget. It was scratchy and lifeless, but you were sure it had to be the man who went KIA so long ago. “That’s...”

“Echo’s alive.” Rex affirmed. “It--it has to be him.”

“We’ve got company!” called Jesse.

You transferred the file and stuffed your ‘pad in a safe spot for keeping. “In case anything happens, I’m transferring the data over to you.” you stated. “I wouldn’t want to lose any of this.” The two of you rushed out of the room in a frenzy. Blaster fire sounded above, whizzing way over your head as you sprinted down the hall. The lift wasn’t far, only a couple metres. You just had to run a little more and--

BOOM!

Had a droid thrown a charge? You turned to Rex, eyes wide as he turned to face you. With all of the strength you could muster, you shoved him out of the way. Another BOOM!. You turned just in time to see the flash of brilliant reds and oranges.

The force threw you into the transparisteel windows, which spider-webbed out in long cracks. You were suddenly flying out of the four story building. Shards cut past your face and through your sleeves, tearing away at flesh and fabric without an ounce of mercy. If only you had a doshing jetpack.

“(Y/N)!”

You didn’t scream, but Maker did it kriffing hurt. There was a sickening crack, another blinding flash of sharp pain. You held back a cry.

Just be careful. We want you back in one piece.

Your vision faded in and out. Black blurred the galaxy as you knew it.

I'm sorry, boys.

You fell into the painful jaws of darkness.

-----

The first thing that hit your nose was the sterile smell of bacta. Your eyes fluttered open and you found yourself staring at the blank ceiling of the medbay. The incessant beeping of the heart monitor caught you off guard. How hard did you fall? Much less, what did you break?

A head of dirty blonde hair peeked over the edge of your bed. Her eyes, wide with curiosity made you knit your brows together. She was young, much younger than any girl here should be. You were about to sit up, but the girl frantically straightened.

"You're not supposed to be getting up." She gently pushed you back down. "You have a lot more than a few broken bones." That was when the pain began to settle. You stilled under the thin medbay sheets. "I need to comm someone."

"Now?" the girl incredulously inquired. "You're hurt, you have to rest first." But that was the least of your problems. Where was Rex? Had he completed the mission? How long were you out? Were Jesse, Kix, and Cody alright? You winced and the girl frowned.

"If it makes you feel better, there were a few people who came to visit."

That didn't make you feel better. It meant they saw you like this, in the most vulnerable state you could ever be in. "Who are you?"

The girl pointed at herself like she'd never been asked that before. "Me?" You nodded. "I'm Omega." She smiled and it was a little shy and toothy. "You've been asleep for a while. I thought you weren't going to wake up for another day." You tensed and pursed your lips together. "How long?"

"A week, I think." Omega said. "But it's okay! You're recovering steadily." That wasn't the issue. Recovering steadily wasn't good enough because you were missing out on a mission you needed to complete. If Echo really was alive, then you had to save him. It was the least you could do after he put his life on the line for you so many times before.

"I have to..." You pushed your aching body up. "I have to go."

"No!" Omega forced you back down. "Even if you could walk, you can't fight."

"But I have to..." The look on Omega's face made you pause. She was so small, and in that little body of hers, she stored up a good amount of worry for you. How could you say no to that? A sigh escaped your lips and you begrudgingly relaxed onto the bed.

Omega's shoulders slumped in relief. "I'll get a your holoprojector." You raised a brow with a watchful eye as she scurried away. She rummaged through a lone cabinet in the corner of the room. Your clothes sat there, belt, holsters, blasters and all. Omega pulled out your holoprojector, closed the cabinets, and handed it to you.

"I washed your clothes too if you're wondering," she said with a small smile. "But don't think about going anywhere! You can't walk with broken legs."

A pit formed in your stomach. You can't walk with broken legs. That wouldn't be true if you had seen the blast. If you had ran faster. Maybe you wouldn't have ended up like this, a mess of bandages, casts, and bacta patches. If only you had seen it coming.

"Hey, (Y/n)?" You didn't question how Omega knew your name. Whoever she was, she had to be a someone to wear Kaminoan jewellery anyway. "What is it?" Your voice was quiet, sad almost. Omega played with a loose thread on her sleeve. "That was very brave of you." She stepped closer to the bed and pulled up a chair. "Captain Rex came by this morning. He told me that you saved him from that blast."

You shifted to meet her gaze as best as you could. The holoprojector weighed your hand down like a ten kilo weight. "I just...reacted. Nothing special to congratulate." Omega shook her head. "No, that's everything. If it were me, I don't think I'd be able to do that."

A pull in your gut told you she meant what she said. Your eyes softened. You didn't meet her gaze. Maybe that was because you couldn't. It was a hard enough fact accepting that you were injured, adding on that you were going soft didn't help your cause.

Omega took it as her signal to give you some privacy and exited the room. The doors swished shut behind her, leaving you in a much needed silence. You tapped the projector. It opened up, bathing the snow white room in soft blue hues.

"Rex." you greeted. "I apologize for my absence." His brows were knitted, eyes all sad and cloudy. He tried to keep a straight face, but you knew better. Of course you did. He was your best friend since the moment you joined the GAAR. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "I should be asking that to you. Are you alright? That fall was..." He paused and it was like he was choking back tears. "I-I'm sorry. If I had just been more careful, then you wouldn't be..."

"Rex, I'm fine."

"You can't walk." he muttered. "And you can't do much on your own. I took away your independence, this is all my fault." You knitted your brows together. His words made your heart ache, and the very thought of what he faced on his own without you didn't help. Your lips pulled into a frown deeper than Kamino's oceans. "That's not all, is it Rex?"

He clenched a fist as if it would help cease his rolling emotions. "E-Echo...if you had seen him. I'm just glad you weren't there."

"Is he alive?"

"Yes."

"Well where is he?" You had to fight the urge to sit up in anticipation. He was alive. That sweet, loving boy who taught you about protocols and manuals. As boring as it was, all those regulations embedded into your mind saved you more than you'd like to admit. He and Fives always snuck up on you whenever they came back from missions, or commed you in the middle of the night.

They both kept you up at night, but you never minded. Now one of those boys who had marched so far away had the chance of coming home.

"Where is Echo?" you inquired. Rex's eyes fell to the floor. "He's...Watt Tambor made him more machine than man. I-I can't..."

The doors swished open.

"...If only we had..." You shook your head. "Rex, there wasn't anything we could do. It was a miracle you found him in the first place."

The doors closed with a low hiss.

"Found who?"

Your eyes widened and you ripped your gaze away from the projection. A set of worn, tired eyes met yours. He looked different from the bottom up. His new armor, black and red with a familiar 99 on it. His smile, though a bit dampened, remained the same. He made his way over to you and took a seat by your bedside.

"Echo?"

"That's me."

You tried a smile, and it was all watery and shaky. "Oh, you've changed." He chuckled. "So have you. I heard about what happened. That was brave of you." No, it wasn't brave. You did it on instinct, without an ounce of hesitation. "It wasn't brave, I just..."

"Who else is crazy enough to jump in front of an explosion without katarn-class armour?"

You could name a few people. Fives, for example. "Whatever. I just--I'm glad you're alive."

He smiled and it was a little broken. "Me too."

---

Before you knew it, you were up and running again. There was no time to walk because you were needed on a mission today. It was completely solo, but thankfully, a simple retrieval mission with little to no chances of a casualty.

You settled in the cockpit, taking in the familiar scents and smells of the well oiled machinery. Mechanics wasn't your strong suit, but you never minded dabbling in it every now and then. Today, there wasn't time to brush up on your beautiful ship. You had a job to do.

The jump to hyperspace was as smooth as ever. There were no creaks, no fumbling through space, and no bursts of smoke. But that was when you heard a crash from the storage room. Last tine you checked, the door had been sealed shut while the weapons and supplies stowed away as they should be.

Had you forgotten to tie them down? A long sigh escaped your lips. "What a pain."

"So is my backside." piped a chipper voice. Your eyes widened. There was no way you heard that voice correctly. Sure, it was young. You knew a few other people with a young voice. Sure, it sounded girly. You knew a couple other female coworkers.

"Sorry I snuck onboard," the voice added. "I promise, I was going to leave, but then you left and--" You swerved the chair around to face Omega head on. She smiled sheepishly, as if it would fix all the problems in the whole galaxy. Maybe it would have if the whole galaxy were as kind as you.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't turn this ship around and bring you back." you stated. Omega fiddled with the hem of her sleeves like it was the most interesting thing on the ship. "You’re short on time?" You resisted the urge to say something snippy in response. The look of uncertainty on Omega’s little face made you feel just the tiniest bit worried.

Maybe that was because uncertainty could get people killed on the battlefield.

"Omega," you placed a hand to your temple, "do you understand what you've gotten yourself into?" This was bad, really bad. Sure, the mission wasn’t as dangerous as it should have been, but intel was like the weather forecast. It was never correct. Taking Omega along with you wasn’t a good idea in any universe, and like Malachor you’d let her into the crossfire.

“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sorry. “I didn’t mean to sneak aboard.” She definitely meant to sneak aboard. “I just wanted to do something more than...” She let out a short sigh, as if it explained what she couldn’t put into words. “Being on Kamino all the time is so boring. I want to get out and see the galaxy with my own eyes.”

She threw her arms towards the bright blue of hyperspace. You didn’t miss the look of wonder in her eyes, bright as a sun. “There’s more to life than rain and the ocean and the same people I see every single day!”

You couldn’t argue. Omega was right. Even during your recovery, the frustration of not being on your ship doing anything but sitting settled into you every day. You hated being cooped up in one place more than anything. Poor Omega had to put up with it her whole life, it was nearly unfathomable to understand what she felt.

A sharp sigh escaped your lips. “Fine, you can come. But my only condition is that you stay on the ship.”

Omega did not stay on the ship. More than anything, she was curious. She had no clue what dirt was, what kind of plants were carnivorous and deadly, or how to steer clear of all the battle droids.

You raised your blaster and fired at the rust buckets. “This is exactly why I said you should have stayed on the ship! Can you even fire a blaster?” Omega knitted her brows together and eyes the deece at your hip. More than anything, she was curious. Beyond that? Determined.

“No,” Omega replied, “but I’ll try.” She pulled the deece from your hip and peeked over the top of your hiding spot. The long, durasteel crate was just barely holding up. If you were a Jedi, then you’d say it had to be a miracle only the Force knew about.

The deece wasn’t a perfect fit in Omega’s small hands, but it did the job. She aimed at the droids, eyes focused and hands firmly on the weapon. She fired. Once. Twice. Three times. "Did I hit anything?” You fired your blaster a couple times and glared through the smoky haze.

A collection of bolts and durasteel scraps lay in a pile and you couldn’t help but be proud. Either Omega was a natural or she was incredibly strong with luck. Whichever it was, it helped you through the mission, and before you knew it, you were back on the ship with a data stick and an unharmed Omega.

“See, nothing bad happened!” she exclaimed with a grin. You took the blaster from her hands and strapped it back to your hip. “That was luck, I tell you.” Omega rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t! You saw--I was like, pow pow, and you went and hit that guy right in the face!”

“That was because he called me a filthy bounty hunter.” you said, a small smile creeping up your lips. “I can’t say I took too kindly to his harsh words.” Omega let out a laugh and you joined her. 

Tired. That was the first thing that came to mind when you thought of your mental state. Yet with Omega by your side, smiling, and carefree despite all the action, you couldn’t help but feel the electrifying sense of thrill. 

“Say, Omega? If you want to come back, maybe we can figure out how to get you off that rainy excuse of a planet more often.” you said with a small smile. She beamed, throwing her arms around you with a vigorous nod. “Yes! I’d love that!”

“Me too, kid. We just have to figure out how to convince whoever looks after you.”

BONUS:

A tall kaminoan towered over you with her beady eyes. Omega sheepishly played with her sleeves as you stared down the kaminoan. Stupid long necks. Nala Se blinked. “So this is where you have been, Omega.” That soft, cold voice of hers warmed at the sight of the girl. “Haven’t I told you not to run off? I see you’ve gone somewhere far today.”

Omega frowned shamefully. “Maybe...” Nale Se motioned for her to come to her. “If you would like, you may stay with (Y/n) again--if you are out of harms way that is.” She turned to you and you froze, eyes wide. “Wait, what?”

“I am giving you permission to have Omega under your care, as long as she is out of harms way.” You glanced at Omega, who glanced at you and then Nala Se with the biggest grin on her face. “Really?”

“Yes.” Nala Se smiled. “‘Really’.”

[shatouto]

hi yes this is another installment in the raised-as-sith anakin x jedi obi-wan au i co-write with @obiwanobi. we’ve been putting what we got so far on ao3 for archiving/organizing purposes so before you read this pls check it out first if you haven’t bc there is some semblance of continuity, thank you :’) (this installment on ao3)

content note: past psychological and physical abuse, messy healing, please proceed with care

you love him dearly

You stand alone in a great dark hall. There’s no sound but your pulse jolting in bouts inside your ears. Like the footsteps of a scared bantha. And you feel like a scared bantha. You haven’t felt like this in a long time. You used to be worth less than a bantha, with your weak hands and your small body. All you were ever able to do was get yourself and your mom hurt. You felt so bad, so very bad, so bad that you were willing to beg your mom to let you go, when this man came and swept you up. This man who called you the Chosen One. This man who you now call...

“Master,” you say, and waits for your Master to acknowledge you.

Sometimes you think it’s strange, to trade one master for another. But this Master, your Master, is a different sort. Your Master taught you how to hate the right people, in the right way; gave you a crystal and let you forge your own lightsabers. Your Master told you you were special. No, no, it doesn’t matter that you were a slave, you are special, my boy. You know you are different, do you not? That you learn faster than children your age; that your reflexes are sharper, your intuition stronger. You see things before people do, know things before people see, and do things before people know. The future and the past are sometimes indistinguishable in your dreams. Clever child, golden child, you are certainly worth more than a bantha; oh, you are worth more than the population on that sandy speck combined. You are the Chosen One! You are destined for greatness.

You were weak and small and nothing. You deserve so much more, so much more. A pity that the universe has never given you and will never give you what you truly deserve. None of that is your fault, my poor boy; they are simply too blind and puny to appreciate your capacity and recognize your power. But worry not: Your Master will give it to you. Your Master is here to help you. You love him dearly, because you are nothing without him, because the universe is stupid and cruel and you hate it for making you feel like nothing. Your Master, on the other hand, must love you dearly, or else he would not have told you all about how special you are. Would not have trained you to be so strong. Would not have given you the respectable name of…

“Darth Vader.”

The greeting sounds more like a warning, because you deserve it. “I—I’m sorry. I wasn’t strong enough.” Even your voice comes out too small.

“Little need to apologize in words, my apprentice,” says your Master. “You know what must be done. You must learn your lesson.”

You love him, you love him, you love him. You love your Master, you chant in your heart, as you hang your head and tuck your tongue back and wait like the good apprentice you are.

The first blow is always the hardest. You convulse, feeling as if a thousand red-hot needles are exploding from within your sinews. Blinding pain crackles through your body, and you scream yourself…

Awake.

Anakin sits up in his sleeping bag, panting. He thinks he heard the tail end of a scream, his own, but it’s all silent now. He’s alone in the dark, the healed stump of his right arm tingling under the prosthetic cap. He searches his psyche for the tatters of a bond between him and the late Sith Lord; there's nothing left. Darth Sidious is truly dead. Two strides away from him, Obi-Wan Kenobi sleeps soundly in his bed.

His eyes soften. The sight of Obi-Wan soothes him, reminding him of where he is in time and in space. It has been a few months since he killed his Sith Master. He is in the Jedi Temple, in quarters belonging to Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padawan Ahsoka Tano. Nobody knows he is here.

Anakin turns away as one would turn away from a too-bright light. You can’t look at the sun for too long or it’ll burn your eyes; especially if you are used to darkness. He breathes in, and out, and shakily pulls off the cover of the sleeping bag. His new metal fingertips nearly tear through the fabric.

“Anakin?”

Anakin doesn’t flinch, but his stomach flips. Obi-Wan’s silhouette slowly sits up in bed, tousled and softly rumpled and Anakin feels frighteningly tender in the chest. He keeps his head down, not wanting to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes right now.

“Anakin, is everything alright?”

Anakin mumbles out something vaguely affirmative, and pushes himself to his feet. “Fresher,” he says, hurrying away. He doesn’t return to the bedroom afterwards, but goes straight to the kitchenette and begins to prepare a rather large breakfast. He knows Obi-Wan doesn’t go back to sleep either. He wills himself to ignore the circles under Obi-Wan’s eyes, come morning.

—

“Anakin, I have been thinking,” Obi-Wan begins, as he takes their empty plates to the kitchen, where a dishwashing droid stands await. “You don’t happen to have a habit of meditating, do you?”

Anakin almost tenses up at meditating, but he only lets out a huff of breath and opens the droid’s compartment doors. He’s glad Ahsoka is away for the night, staying in her friend’s quarters or some such. If she joins in with Obi-Wan it’ll only be harder for him to reject the request. Because that’s clearly a request, no matter how fancily Obi-Wan phrases his question.

I hate it teeters on the tip of his tongue, but Anakin just answers: “No, I don’t.” Obi-Wan likes meditation, as all Jedi do. It would feel bad, be bad, to say he hates something Obi-Wan likes.

Obi-Wan hums. Dishes clink as he sets them in one by one. “Would you be so opposed to it, then?”

Anakin pulls his shields higher so that none of the screaming No no no I hate it in his mind is going to bleed through to Obi-Wan in the Force. He makes the mistake of turning to look at Obi-Wan, because he can’t help it, and he's met with a hopeful smile and gentle, crinkled eyes. He can't bear to see that smile fall. “...Guess not,” he mutters.

“I would keep you company, if that’s fine,” Obi-Wan continues on merrily, like the good-natured Jedi he is. “I mean to invite you to join me for meditation before bedtime, in fact. Is that alright?”

Anakin stares down at his mismatched hands. If there is one thing he hates more than meditating, it’s meditating with someone watching. He tries very hard not to grit his teeth.

“Of course, you don’t have to,” Obi-Wan adds, fingers briefly brushing Anakin’s flesh wrist. The sensation shoots right into Anakin’s heart. That settles it; it’s not even a question. Obi-Wan will be disappointed if he doesn’t.

“It’s alright,” Anakin says, shutting the droid’s compartment door. The timer beeps, unhelpfully helping him count down to the dreaded session.

—

“So this is meditation?” Anakin blurts.

Obi-Wan sits cross-legged on his bed, in his soft robes and sleeping pants. He opens his eyes in a quizzical gaze as Anakin remains standing. Anakin curls his hands into fists and tries not to fiddle with the hem of his tunic. Obi-Wan frowns, unfurls from his position and comes up so near that Anakin wants to hold his breath. He smells like the cotton flower-scented fabric softener, like crisp, warm laundry - he smells like hard-earned safety. “You don’t need to lie to me, Anakin,” he says, a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “I will instruct you from the beginning if you need me to, and I promise to help you with any difficulty. Now tell me: Have you meditated before?”

Obi-Wan says so, but Anakin is not about to tell him about the Sphere; about the long hours spent in that terrible spheroid room with enough space for you to wish you could move from your spot, but the walls were too smooth and curved for you to scale; about how silent it was in there save for his Master’s voice in his mind. Anakin is not about to tell this Jedi about the splatter of blood in the Sphere where he once bashed his head against until he passed out because he could not take it. How Sidious had punished him for it afterwards. How he never dared to do it again.

“...No,” Anakin says. “Show me.”

Obi-Wan nods; his hand slips down his shoulder and runs gently down his arm. Anakin blinks. Obi-Wan's touch always feels so… nice. Unhurried and mellow and never really demanding anything back. “I see. Take a seat beside me. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

Anakin crosses his legs as Obi-Wan does. Nervousness winds his core tight, makes his back rigid and ramrod straight. Obi-Wan is near him, both in physical presence and in the Force, his signature pulsing with the light of sunrays through butterfly wings.

“Relax, Anakin. Loosen your muscles”—his warm hand traces across Anakin’s back from shoulder to shoulder, then down his spine—“and your jaws.” His fingertips brush the hinge of Anakin’s jaws just as he says so. Anakin nearly shivers. It takes him longer than he thought it would, to truly follow those orders.

“...There we go,” Obi-Wan says. He draws back, and Anakin should be glad that the distracting touch is gone, but he feels disappointed instead. “Now breathe in deep. Ah, wait. Do it again, breathe in, deeper, and try to hold it. Yes, like that…”

They spend the next quarter hour or so wrestling with his breathing pattern, keeping it both deep and steady. Anakin goes from counting the beats to counting the breaths to finally not needing to count at all. And then when he thinks he’s gotten the hang of it…

“Let go? You mean I shouldn’t focus on my breathing anymore?” he asks, puzzled, bordering on frustrated. “But you just told me to be mindful of it.”

“Yes, correct, Anakin.” Obi-Wan sounds unfazed. “Be mindful of the rhythm, and keep it up. You’ve done well so far. Now you must turn your focus inwards, and meet the Force within you.”

Anakin’s eyes slide open for a split second and then fall shut again. He doesn’t understand, but he could just try. This isn’t any difficulty that he needs to bother his instructor with. He nods, and begins again. He begins with his breathing. In, and out. Slow, and steady. And now he must not think about the breaths anymore. Now he must...

The Force within him is a well of ink. Ink that glisten from black to crimson like the blood on his hand. Ink that sloshes and laps against the walls and the echoes turn into screams. A bright white fracture crackles from one corner of his vision to the other. Centipede-like arches of incandescence skitter under his skin. Drip, drip, the blood, no, the ink, it drips and it trails and it tickles his skin. There’s the familiar taste of copper at the back of his tongue, flavors just waiting to burst. Cruel laughter echoes from the bottom of the inky well, and somewhere in the thick darkness there is the outline of a woman’s silhouette, of small but strong shoulders and—

Something warm brushes his psyche.

Warm, but too close. Anakin snatches that tendril without a thought and delves counter-current through Force-realm. He forces himself to the other side, even as something shatters around him. He knows the drill. *Your self-preservation can only come at the cost of others', my boy.* Colors begin to flash, gentle and muted, bearing the fuzzy quality of memories. Sunlight flickers, filigree wings flutter, landing on durasteel grounds. He feels tears on his face and tears in his throat and his forehead is pressed close to someone else’s, someone he loves so dearly—no, not him, someone that the person to whom this mind belongs loves so dearly.

“...proud of you. Carry on, Obi-Wan. Live brightly.”

“Yes, Master.”

There's no silence more thorough than a heartbeat evening out into nothingness. There's no solitude more poignant than the company of a vanishing light. Saying goodbye is never an easy feat, even for a Jedi, and the anger and sorrow he felt—

“Anakin! Stop!”

Anakin jolts awake. A thick, ferric drop trails from his nose, warm on his lips. He opens his eyes and finds Obi-Wan beneath him, wide-eyed. His hands are pressing Obi-Wan’s shoulders into the mattress. Obi-Wan, who was teaching him to meditate, who brushed his mental shields in the process of instruction. Obi-Wan, his teacher. And if all of those images belonged to Obi-Wan…

He just broke into Obi-Wan’s mind.

Anakin scrambles back. The ink, no, the blood, now drips down his chin. It tickles. His teeth clatter as shivers rake up inside him. He clenches his jaws and stares at the ground. The sheets rustle.

“I think that’s quite enough for tonight.” Obi-Wan doesn’t sound angry, just somewhat breathless. Even concerned. Anakin doesn’t believe it. “Anakin, you’re bleeding. Do you need—”

“No.” Anakin staggers to his feet and backs away. Nothing worse than asking for more and becoming even more of a burden because everything he takes is a debt and he will pay for it. His Master always made sure he paid. “No. I’ll—I’ll clean up. I’m sorry. I’ll clean up.”

He stands there just long enough for Obi-Wan to respond - with anything, words, blows, anything. In the end, Obi-Wan only says, “Alright. Please, take care.” Anakin’s eyes flick up to find a grimace. He turns away and all but runs to the fresher, more dismayed than relieved.

Because if the punishment doesn’t come right away, that only means he’s going to have to wait.

[animemangasoul]

You Are Wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi

Summery: Qui-Gon lives and Mace gets a new Padawan.

In which Qui-Gon repudiates Obi-Wan and Mace isn't about to let the kid leave the order without a fight.

Chapter: 1/10

"No luck?"

Mace sighed.

Walking through the door only to come face to face with his former Padawan sprawled across his couch especially after the trying day he's had only served to make his shoulders tighten further. "What are you doing here Depa?" he asked doing his best to keep the exhaustion out of his voice.

His fellow council member raised a single eyebrow in reply.

Mace sighed again, hand running over his face and pulling at his chin. "No," he finally answered. "No luck." And if voicing his failings didn't already sour his mood, seeing the flash of disappointment in Depa's eyes drove it home.

"There is nothing wrong with Obi-Wan," she huffed. Her annoyance bleeding into the force as she observed him go about preparing his own afternoon meal along with hers now that she'd decided to make herself at home in his apartment.

"I know," he said, bringing out cups and plates while he waited for their dinner to heat up; not even contemplating asking Depa for assistance as he well knew by this point he could never make her set a foot inside the kitchen after that 'incident'. "But with his prior records and Qui-Gon,"--the Chalactan woman snorted in disgust and Mace paused to send her a warning glare. "having repudiated him," he continued doing his best to clam down on his own anger when the words leave his mouth. "Not many are willing to take a second look."

Walking over to sit by the dinner table Depa sighed; the force muted with her sadness. "It's a cruel faith being stripped of your future because one man has decided to upend all traditions because he thinks himself some kind of force whisperer," she dragged the last words out rather mockingly inciting a snort from Mace which then resulted in him trying and failing to give her another stern glare.

Annoyed as he was with the other man, insulting him was not a productive endeavor. Still, he couldn't fault his former Padawan for her bitterness towards his old friend. Qui-Gon certainly did parade around as if he was the only man blessed with the true gift of the force. "Hopefully young Kenobi still has a future as a Jedi," he said, setting down their plates. "I just need to find one Master who is willing to take him on. He only needs a year or two before he is ready for his Trials."

Depa hummed in agreement but the force swivelling around her was still leaking uncertainty if only a little. Clapping his former student on the shoulder, Mace let encouragement wash over her as he sat down. "Do not worry yourself," he said letting go when he the tension finally eased out of her body.

Companiable silence falls between them after that, the worry for Obi-Wan still lingering in the air but for now, both willing to put it aside to share the little time they rarely get to spend together to its fullest. It's only after the table is cleared and Depa has found her way back to his couch that she speaks on the topic again.

"How is he by the way?"

Staring forlorn at the dirty dishes and missing the good old days when he could make little Depa wash up as part of her training while he excused himself for a short nap, Mace shook his head and made his way over to the opposite coach, leaving the dishes for tomorrow. "He's doing well," he said, folding his legs under him. "All things considered. He's healing."

Depa pursed her mouth. "He's the Sith-killer and we can't even give him an automatic knighting because--" She bit her tongue before the words slipped out, but Mace knew very well what she was going to say.

'Because Qui-Gon is still alive.'

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had both survived the battle of Naboo. Survived the Sith. And while Obi-Wan had accomplished a feat no other, saved his master and come out alive; baring the heavy injuries sustained both men, by saving Qui-Gon Jinn the young man had unknowingly sealed his own faith.

Not that Mace wasn't immensely grateful his old friend had gotten away with his life. But--

With Qui-Gon alive, Obi-Wan could not be Knighted without taking the Trials and to everyone's horror the boy's Master was not willing to wait for him to be ready for them.

No, Qui-Gon had made it quite clear how little he thought of his student's well being when he so cruelly disregarded him in front of the Council, repudiated him and thrown him away in hopes of training young Anakin Skywalker. Mace stomach coiled in disgust just thinking of that day. That moment….. With Qui-Gon standing in the middle of the room, an uncertain Anakin next to him and a distinct lack of Obi-Wan by his side. Qui-Gon had declared for all to hear that he would be training Skywalker and if that could only come to be with Kenobi out of the way, so be it.

Obi-Wan hadn't even been there to defend himself. Submerged in a bacta tank as he was, fighting for his very life and---

Clenching his fists, it's all Mace can do to carefully release his anger into the force and close his eyes against the onslaught of memories. Obi-Wan's clear eyes staring up at him from a hospital bed in abject disbelief, having woken up to a broken bond and a hair distinctly lacking a familiar braid.

The fact Qui-Gon hadn't even had the respect, the heart to tell the poor boy face to face. That he had unbraided his hair while Obi-Wan was still….. That he hadn't explained anything. He…. Mace was a Jedi,

"He…. repudiated….me?”

Mace hadn't known what to say. Standing there in the Halls of Healing, staring down at the too sickly, too skinny, too haunted man in the hospital bed. Mace hadn't known what to say.

What could one say in the face of absolute devastation?

So he had just stood there, seconds ticking by, eyes unable to break away from the dull blue-gray ones of young Obi-Wan Kenobi. Unable to speak, unable to console, unable to utter the words he knew would shatter whatever remained of the fragile sense of self-worth the kid had left.

Finally, as the auburn haired man swallowed thickly, looking away, Mace regained his speech.

Sitting down heavily in the chair stationed by the bed, he'd folded his hands under his chin and lowered his voice into an almost gentle hum. "Yes, he did. In front of the council, a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh."

That single word crumbled something in Mace he hadn't known he ever had.

Kenobi looked so small. Thin fingers clutching at the white covers, bottom lip red from being gnawed bloody, hair damp from recently having been brought out of the bacta tank and eyes swimming with such hopelessness it left the Korun man's heart with dull sense of ache he didn't quite know how to deal with.

Mace Windu was a Jedi. Controlling and releasing his emotions into the force was by now a habit as easy to him as breathing.

Nothing got under his skin, nothing pained him for long. He was focused, he was disciplined and by all accounts he was never brought to the edge of absolute fury. But looking into those gray-blue eyes. Seeing young Kenobi trying so hard to keep himself from crying. Watching the young man chest heave in futile attempt not to collapse in on himself. The destruction of a bright light, of a hopeful child ruthlessly turned into a broken young man at the hands of someone who should have known better---

Mace was a Jedi and his emotions did not rule him.

They did not. And yet, and yet….

So he pressed his fingers against his knees, nails biting into the skin beneath his clothes and he looked Obi-Wan Kenobi dead in the eyes and firmly; without pity, laid out the decree of the council. Explained what precarious position the kid found himself in; all the while being oh so careful not to let his voice catch on the lump choking him from within.

Now that Kenobi had been repudiated he was no longer a Padawan and if the council had followed the Jedi Code to the letter, he should have been expelled or relocated to the ServiceCop or the AgroCorp the minute Qui-Gon had disowned him, but this wasn't an ordinary situation and Kenobi, well, Kenobi was anything but an ordinary Jedi.

So, "with your unique circumstances," Mace had said, hand resting by the kid's knee just in case the proximity dispelled the harshness of Obi-Wan's new reality or even brought the kid some semblance of comfort. "the council has concluded that you will be given six weeks to find a new Master to complete your training and 'if' that Master is deemed acceptable by the council." Mace did his best to emphasize the 'if' for it meant any young Knight trying to do Obi-Wan a favor while having nothing of their own to actually teach him were automatically ruled out; force knew the kid had plenty of friends who would step up to the task (just the thought of recently Knighted Quinlan Vos boldly declaring himself Obi-Wan's new Master gave Mace a headache. If the sheer embarrassment didn't kill Kenobi, Quinlan's teachings surely would.) "Then your apprenticeship will be transferred to them until you're deemed ready for your Trails."

Obi-Wan had nodded, fingers tracing unknown patters on the cover. "I assume you have already spoken to a fair number of potential Masters?"

There is a certain ease to his voice, the raspiness behind it the only thing giving away how hard the kid was trying to cover up the burnt edges of his anguish. Even after Mace had seen with his own two eyes how Kenobi; as soon as the visible grief of his former Master's betrayal had run its course, gathered himself up. Taking a deep breath and then as if it was an artform storing away his emotions, carefully and meticulously behind unreadable eyes until a hurt child once again transformed back into a composed young man.

It was…… concerning the ease with which Kenobi could look as if his entire world hadn't just been shattered into pieces.

"I have." he had said in answer; swallowing down the bitterness of his own failure and watching as Obi-Wan's fingers darted across the knuckles of his outstretched hand (that Mace had yet to move) almost as if unconsciously seeking out comfort; only for the young man to then realize what he'd done making him flinch away. Mace nearly scowled in distress 'What had Qui-Gon done to this child?!'. "Unfortunately I have yet to find a Master willing to take on a Padawan your age," he managed to finish.

"Ironic isn't it?" Obi-Wan muttered, self deprecating amusement dancing in his eyes. It took Mace a second to grasp the context behind the words but when he did, a sardonic smirk pulled at his lips.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

For it was. To be rejected for a child too old to become a Padawan, only to turn around and find yourself the one who is now too old to be anyone's Padawan. Ironic indeed.

And so very awful.

They had talked about nothing of note after that. Obi-Wan content in pretending nothing outside the four walls of his room existed and Mace wanting to indulge him, just this once.

Still, even though he regaled the kid with stories, particularly of that one time Master Yoda had kidnapped him to lure five other Masters away from a council meeting, his brain was still running through potentially willing Masters for the child he was so unwilling to give up on just yet.

"I would take him if I could."

Depa's words managed to bring him back to the present with an abruptness he wasn't ready for.

He blinked, once, twice. Then sighed deeply as he closed his eyes. "I know."

Depa shifted across from him. "His time is nearly up."

Mace tensed. "He still has two more weeks left."

Now it's her who uttered "I know."

A suffocating silence once again wrapped itself around them. This one hinging on uncertainty, worry and concern. Emotions that swiftly were released into the force and yet lingered in the room like an unspoken blemish. Finally Depa spoke. Her words nothing but a whisper but holding all the strength of an ocean slamming against the shores of Mace's stability.

"You could take him."

It's not a question, not quite a suggestion either. It's more like…… a promise.

Mace startled, eyes flying open. "What?" He had expected much from her, maybe a suggestion of one of Kenobi's little Knight friends taking him on, which he would have soundly rejected but not this. This was unexpected to say the least.

Depa only shrugged away his incredulity. "You could take him as your Padawan learner. He would only need a year or two at most like you said and Kenobi is mild tempered, level-headed and a quick study, you would get along great." She said it all with such casualness and certainty Mace couldn't help but stare.

Crossing her arms and folding her knees under her in a mirror image of him, Depa lifted a single eyebrow. "You cannot tell me you have not considered this?"

Mace bit back a wince. "Of course I have. Unfortunately that doesn't."

Depa cut him off. "Why not?"

If there was anyone who feared him less than Depa; excluding their green troll of a Grandmaster, Mace had yet to meet them. And now watching as she stared him down, Mace was torn between pride and indignity. "You know why." He gritted out, mindful to keep his voice even. "I'm Master of the Order. I will not have the time to train him properly. My duties are on Coruscant. Young Obi-Wan will need someone to go on missions with him, look out for him and I'm afraid I cannot do that."

If he'd thought his words would discourage his former student, he was wrong. Now she looked even more resolute than before he'd made his argument.

"May I remind you Obi-Wan is Senior Padawan. He does not require someone to hold his hand every step of the way." Here a ghost of a smile grace her lips. "He is only a year or so away from his Trials, Mace. He is supposed to take solo missions by now. You just need to oversee the remaining of his training, help him polish a couple of things and he'll be ready." Her eyes flickered with something too fast to detect. "Please Mace, at least think about it."

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. "Obi-Wan deserves someone who can devote their time on him," he said yet the idea running through his mind with possibilities.

Kenobi deserved better than what Mace could provide. Especially after Qui-Gon. Especially after the countless setbacks, traumas and horrors the kid had been through. He didn't deserve a Master who wouldn't always be there even if the kid only needed minimal help at this point. "I may not be what he needs?"

Now Depa was glaring at him. "Maybe it's about time people stopped assuming what is best for Obi-Wan and started giving him the chance to choose what he thinks is best for him? And maybe it's about time he received the knowledge that he is actually wanted for once in his life?!" The last words are said with such vehemence Mace is momentarily stunned.

Quickly as the anger came it vanished, leaving behind a sheepish smile and mildly apologetic eyes. But Depa did not take her words back.

Mace couldn't find it in himself to scold her. After all, wasn't that the root of Obi-Wan's issues? How everyone kept assuming what was best for him, never once listening to what he wanted?

Would it be wrong for Mace then to lay his cards on the table. To ask? The kid did not have to accept; although Mace would be disappointed if he didn't. But to ask, he could do that, couldn't he? Let the kid know that he wished to train him, had always seen the potential in him. Might have taken him on from the very beginning if Depa hadn't still been his Padawan. That he would see him to Knighthood if Kenobi let him. What would be the harm in that?

"When he's released from the Halls of Healing where will he go?"

The abrupt change in topic makes the Korun man blink up at his for Padawan in confusion.

"Without a Master," she continued eyes glinting with something. "He will be relocated to the Initiate dorms will he not?"

Mace was already shaking his head before the question had fully left her lips. "No."

"No?"

He nodded. "He will move in with me until a Master chooses to claimed him as a Padawan."

Now the glint in Depa's eyes are all but twinkling like stars but why…..

Mace own eyes widen in realization.

Oh

He hadn't thought much of it. Having just assumed Obi-Wan would stay with him until a Master stepped forward to accept him. Hadn't even contemplated putting the traumatized young man with the Initiates. In a way, he had already made his choice days ago, hadn't he? And of course Depa had see right through him to a part he hadn't even been aware off.

If he was a lesser man, Mace might have flushed red with embarrassment having essentially claimed Kenobi as his own Padawan without knowing. But he was Mace Windu, Master of the Order, so all he let himself get away with was a huff and a slight twitch of his mouth. "Looks like my mind has already decided what my head has yet to conclude."

Depa answering smile is teasing. "Seems so."

The relief that hits him at those words is almost staggering. Knocking into his chest and nearly toppling him back against the headrest.

He'd been worried, angry, concerned and at his wits end these past couple of weeks. Knowing he was letting Obi-Wan down every day he was politely rejected by another Master who'd seen Obi-Wan's records, heard of his repudiation and refused to take a chance on him. Knowing Qui-Gon repudiating him had essentially sealed the young man's faith. Feeling disgusted by the false rumours of Kenobi's insubordination, and having to go see him every evening watching the light flicker out of his eyes as each shred of hope he had of being a Knight was torn away from him.

In the end it was all so very simple wasn't it.

The minute the kid had looked at him with those eyes, Mace had known.

He would never let him go without a fight. Not Kenobi. Never Kenobi.

It didn't matter how busy his schedule was he would make time for Obi-Wan if he accepted him. No longer would he stand by and watch those hunched shoulders trailing after the rigged figure of one Qui-Gon Jinn. No longer would he stand by and let the kid be used to wash away someone else's darkness.

Obi-Wan Kenobi would be his Padawan.

Overwhelmed by the sheer sense of calmness that washed over him, Mace momentarily closed his eyes and breathed. Releasing all the emotions clinging to him into the force. Worry, anger, fear, concern, care and most of all pure, unwavering protectiveness.

If he had something to say about it, and he did. Qui-Gon would never step a foot near the kid ever again.

"Do you think he will take to Vaapad as quickly as you did?" He asked as his composure fell into place and his eyes sought out his former student.

The startled laugh that burst out of Depa made a sharp smile twist at the corner of his mouth.

"Maybe Soresu is more is speed," she lightly jabbed back.

Tilting his head; playful for those who knew to spot the miniscule changes in his expression, Mace glared. "Don't you even think about interfering Kenobi's lightsaber studies behind my back."

Depa looked amused. "Wouldn't dream of it."  But then the mirth vanished and gave way to contentment. "It would be nice," she said. "Finally having a Padawan sibling."

Mace found himself smiling, gentler this time. "It would."

They share a smile before Depa is on her feet, making her way to the door. "Best to inform Obi-Wan of your decision as soon as possible," she called over her shoulder. "He'll be out of the Halls in three days time."

Mace stared and stared. And then, stared some more.

"This was your plan all along, wasn't it?" he said out loud, not quite believing she managed to manipulate him so thoroughly . "You came here today to coax me into accepting Kenobi as my apprentice."

Depa doesn't look back at him, but she doesn't have to. The Force danced around her with mirth and shades of guilt for having deceived him. The Korun man could only let himself shake his head, heart tugging with pride at how much his little spitfire had grown while also frowning in realization. "Depa." he said firmly, but his former Padawan was already palming open the door.

"Don't be like that Master," she said turning back to give him a final look, the familiar title she only used sparingly coming out of her mouth with overflowing warmth and fondness. "We both know I only guided you to the decision you wanted to make all along."

She was right. Still,

"I don't like to be manipulated Padawan mine."

She only smiled. Mischief in her eyes and a single dimple creasing her left cheek before she was gone, vanishing out the door.

Mace was left sitting alone in his living room. A mirroring smile painting his lips and chest for the first time since Naboo filled with nothing but anticipated flicker of hope.

To go from being repudiated one day to being the Padawan of Mace Windu, Master of the Order few weeks later….. Kenobi would have hell of a time trying to compute the insanity of the news coming his way tomorrow.

Mace hoped Obi-Wan Kenobi he slept well tonight for both their sakes.

The next couple of weeks would be….. Hectic to say the least.

The end

Believe it or not the idea that Depa's preferred form is Soresu is half the reason why I wrote this fic. Just her taking Obi as her unofficial baby brother and helping him on his path to becoming a Master at Soresu makes me all giddy, so here you have it.

Chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

[zargsnake]

Knightkiller: Anakin and Obi-Wan’s First Adventure

Chapter 8: Priorities

Word Count: 2565 Links: Chapter 1, Table of Contents

*   *   *

Anakin hears the cheers for Obi-Wan turn sour, and he soon figures out why. It is no fault of his master's, who fights beautifully -- but there is a transparent dome-shield around the arena, and whenever someone in the angry, heavily-armed audience shoots at it, ripples of white electric shocks cross the dome and obscure the fight. Anakin is relieved that the audience is booing each other, not his master, though he worries that Obi-Wan will think they're booing at him.

Obi-Wan looks over his shoulder, trying to locate Anakin in the audience, and a blade suddenly whizzes by his neck. His reflexes protect him and he jerks out of the way, but a moment later he feels hot blood on his skin. He hadn't moved quickly enough -- the blade cut him sharp and swift. It hurts a lot more than he expected. It could have easily killed him.

He was so focused on finding Anakin in this crowd that he forgot Anakin's own words to him, his warnings about this opponent. Obi-Wan hadn't taken Anakin seriously about Tiango. Of course it was sad about Anakin’s “cool” gladiator friend, but Obi-Wan defeated a Sith lord not long ago. The experience buoyed his confidence to a fault. This Tiango -- not a Sith, not even a professional, just an ex-science experiment, just a Yooro -- landed a blow on him -- a pretty good one, too.

Obi-Wan rapidly teaches himself a lesson. Connecting with Anakin doesn't mean knowing exactly where he is. It means listening to him. Believing him. That's what teachers do. It's what friends do.

This isn't the Outer Rim, but these people are. This is Anakin's haunt. Obi-Wan will train it out of him, will make him a man of the Core. But for now, Anakin is the expert here, and his words must be Obi-Wan's textbook.

With his heart opened wide for Anakin, and his guard up because of Anakin's warning, Obi-Wan realizes he will have to hunker down in defense for a while. Tiango's assault is brutal and inhumanly quick, though Obi-Wan remembers that Yoroos do get exhausted -- eventually. What Obi-Wan lacks in comparative strength, he makes up for in endurance -- patience and energy, the long game, care -- these are Obi-Wan's secret weapons.

Anakin watches Obi-Wan deflect the same moves that once ruthlessly whittled down Crix Spartak, the gladiator who he had loved. The memory of that death match sends chills up his spine. He is certain that some of these blows must hit his master. Part of him is certain that Obi-Wan is doomed, too. Anakin had believed Crix would win, and he had been wrong. It is asking too much to have hope again, against the same, utterly evil man.

Though Obi-Wan has great endurance, his vibroblade does not. Out of habit, he treats it as roughly as if it were a laser weapon, depending on it for deflection, as a shield. Tiango's barrage strikes the metal and bends it back and forth into a zigzag, then into a knot. Obi-Wan is slowly disarmed as his blade becomes less and less tenable as a weapon. He has no choice; he has no other shield. The biggest bother is his own hand: the damn vibroblade is aptly named -- it quivers like a leaf in the wind, wearing out his wrist and weakening his fingers.

The crowd cheers enthusiastically for the graceful Jedi, chanting, "Kenobi! Kenobi!" Anakin does not join in. Obi-Wan could almost be dancing with his expert moves, but Anakin is not in the mood to learn from him. He gazes in hopeless terror at the duel. He watches bullets, lasers and slingshotted electrostones bounce off the dome, as well as gifts, toys and even people’s underwear. All such wild debris from this crazed crowd trying to reach out to their beloved or hated athlete, his poor, wonderful master.

The fastest or biggest bullets send fuzzy waves across the dome, but the dome quickly repairs itself. Anakin follows the arc of the dome, calculating the sources of its projection points from subtle distortions in the waves.

He moves the layers of fur in his stolen disguise to peek at the recharging screen on his hidden acid-blaster: 52%. No other weapons are making a dent in the dome. But no other weapons are quite like this one, and no one else seems to have figured out where to shoot. Could he crack the dome? What would he do then?

Anakin looks away from Obi-Wan for a second and scans his narrowed eyes over the happy rabble. He does not understand them. Are they seeing what he's seeing? They all shout and cheer, laughing and clapping, as if Obi-Wan is triumphant, as if he is playing. He looks back at his master. He sees that Obi-Wan is in great pain. Dying, even. How can the information from his senses, and the conclusions from his feelings, be so different from everyone else's?

Is he connecting, mentally, to his master -- using his supposed Jedi powers to see things for how they truly are? Is he seeing the truth, better than they are, because he is a Jedi, a Jedi Padawan? Is the Force giving him a special message -- because he, unlike the rabble, is a Jedi -- because he, unlike everyone, is the answer to a prophecy -- because he is closer to Obi-Wan than anyone else is?

Or ... is he, Anakin, wrong? Is everyone else right? Is his sight blinded by irrational fear, brought about by his utter dependence on this man? Did Obi-Wan really stumble, just now? No one else seems to have seen it.

Is he, Anakin, perhaps, confusing the past for the present? Crix for Obi-Wan? Death for life?

Is it all in his head? Or is it real?

   *   *   *

Below the arena, Zlinky has memorized the map from the computer. With Jane, she trespasses through the employee quarters. They reach a large, important-looking office which Zlinky guesses is Knightkiller's.

She hears voices inside and shouts at the door, “Hey boss! There's fried fluunies in Rec Room 3!”

She backs off as the door opens and two people exit. Zlinky creeps inside and Jane blusters along behind her. Too soon, they hear the people coming back and Zlinky shoves Jane under the slick metallic desk; the robot is so big that two of the desk legs lift a few inches from the ground. There isn't much room left for Zlinky; she has to nestle right up against Jane's bazooka. A belt of detonators falls across Zlinky's lap.

She peeks over the edge of the desk and sees the people more closely. They look more decorated than the other guards, with sashes and medals, as if there was some kind of made-up military ranking among Knightkiller's cronies, a worthless army dedicated solely to this evil entertainment. 

“These fluunies are great,” says one crony.

“I’ve had better,” says the other.

The hidden Padawan hears the gross sounds of chewing, and then the rather more alarming sound of Jane powering up her neutralizers. Zlinky quiets her and gestures for her to stop. Stealth has worked so far; it would be best to avoid violence, especially since these two seem important.

“I can't wait to run the missing Jedi kids through with this,” says the first one, as he ignites a lightsaber.

Zlinky stops gesturing, but Jane has already powered down.

“The Jedi kids must still be on the ship. No one's been allowed to leave and no shuttle pods have activated.”

“You think Jedi could survive in space?”

“No. Only the boss can do that. You saw them in those Coruscanti space suits, idiot.”

“Oh right.”

The second crony ignites another lightsaber. Even without looking, Zlinky recognizes the sound as her own. She feels something very powerful and uncomfortable. Taken aback, she identifies it as jealousy, one of the very worst emotions. Afraid of her own feelings, she is frozen, unable to act, unable to know if she is behaving rationally, according to the light side, or irrationally, which will lead her off the narrow path into darkness.

“They're real nice suits. I called dibs on the man-size one for me and the little one for my daughter.”

“Yeah...the gigantic one and the lady-size one are pretty useless.”

“I'll take the lady one for my kid to grow into.”

Zlinky thinks, I'm twelve! I’m not a lady! Though I am much taller than Anakin. So they say Anakin is missing, too? That means he's not dead! If only I was strong enough to detect his presence!

Jane pokes Zlinky and gestures to her blasters. Zlinky shakes her head.

We can't kill him! He's a dad!

They hear the two men walking closer and closer. One of them accidentally hits something with the lightsaber; the girls hear them cursing and smell melting plastic.

Zlinky feels time running out. This hiding spot is bad. She ran in here without a plan. She knows her decision-making is impeded by fear, jealousy, and access to a murder-droid, but she must decide something.

Zlinky quickly examines the settings on Jane's weapons. All these numbers and charts are too confusing to parse right now. She dials one dial back, but it only causes some numbers to rise and others to fall. She puts it back where it was, though the numbers are still not the same. The last time Jane shot someone, it wasn't fatal. At least not immediately.

The girl feels tears pressuring her eyes and throat. She doesn't want to hurt anyone. She has learned through stories and lessons that the darkness within is far worse than the darkness without. She is more frightened of doing wrong than she is of dying. There is no death. But there is evil.

She can't get out of her head a discussion she overheard from some of the older Padawans. This group of twenty- and thirty-somethings is the pride of the whole Temple. Everyone adores them -- the strongest, most beautiful, best students in school. Once they are knighted, then they leave the young people’s social circle to rub shoulders with the teachers, and have no time for their old friends -- but before they are knighted, they rule the school from the inside, and everyone lets them get away with a little more fun than knights are allowed. In those last years of Padawanship, they are the most free a Jedi can be.

Just last month, when Zlinky fetched the group snacks from the mess hall in order to bask in their presence, she found them in a very strange state. When one of them returns from a mission, the others crowd around to hear the stories and see the new scars. The latest conquering hero, a human named Sara Chid-wun, did not have a physical scar. But she had such an aura of bitterness around her that the whole group was affected, including the young interloper Zlinky.

Sara explained how she and her Master Kayji were caught in various difficult situations, and each time Kayji had neglected to act, so each time Sara had been forced to act herself, often with violence. It felt like a test that she continuously failed. And yet, ultimately, they succeeded in their mission. Sara claimed that Kayji would not address her concerns with anything beyond platitudes.

The whole experience led Sara to, hesitantly, conclude that Masters often take advantage of their students. Masters refuse to move, and claim they are trusting in the Force, or allowing evil to collapse in on itself, or some such excuse, while in reality they are leaving the sensible but nasty work to the impure, young Padawan tagging along.

The group discussed each example, and more from their own adventures, each trying to explain away their masters’ -- sometimes -- confusing actions, each unwilling to support Sara’s conclusion -- including, of course, Sara herself. But the group found that, if they were being honest, she might be right. Sometimes. So they had moved on to finding the moral lesson in this seemingly cruel behavior -- something about knightly violence being worse than non-knightly violence, something about power and purity.

And maybe they came to a satisfying explanation among themselves; Sara herself seemed as cheerful as normal the next time Zlinky saw her. But Zlinky hadn't felt comfortable sitting in on their important big-kid conversation any longer, so she had left at the darkest part of it.

Tila has never forced Zlinky's hand before. Zlinky has never had to kill anyone before. But now the master is indeed the one sitting out, while the student is the one doing the work.

Is it okay to stray off the path when you are only a Padawan? Is it, in fact, expected, and necessary? Must she walk in the gray area beside the light, until she is a master herself, and can savor the light all the time, and never have to do any more wrong? When she is knighted, then she can delegate that dark stuff to someone else, someone young and obedient?

The thought occurs to Zlinky that she is not the one who would do the killing -- that would be Jane. But she knows that is a flaky excuse. Jane is her responsibility. Just as she is Tila's. The blood is on all their hands.

Zlinky turns to Jane and nods. Jane immediately stands up and neutralizes the guards. Zlinky pokes her head over the desk, sees the smoking bodies, and fears the worst.

“Are they dead?”

“ɪ ᴅᴏᴜʙᴛ ɪᴛ. ꜱʏꜱᴛᴇᴍꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ʜᴀʀᴅʟʏ ᴀᴛ ꜰᴜʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘᴀᴄɪᴛʏ.“

“I'm pretty sure your full capacity is overkill.”

She tiptoes over to the guard's bodies. One seems to be breathing. The other, she can't tell.

She can't alert anyone to the danger, and she doesn't trust the medical facilities here anyway. But she has nothing to give them, to help them. She puts her hand on the soft, sandy hair of the one whose life is unclear to her, the one who has a little daughter.

“May the Force be with you.”

Her voice is a shaky whisper, but she's never meant those words so much as she means them now.

Please, please, live.

She pulls the lightsaber from his hand and turns it off, and does the same with the other guard. She finds three more lightsabers on their belts. She recognizes hers and her master’s; two of them must be Anakin’s and his master’s; the last one could be Glagret’s, a.k.a. Knightkiller’s. It's green, and of the same old fashion as her master’s. She is surprised and glad that it isn't red. But maybe Knightkiller carries her red one on her person. Or maybe, just maybe, the Sith are not at all involved. She prays that they aren't.

Zlinky and Jane hide the bodies behind the desk and lock the door behind them. Zlinky turns away from the door and does not look back.

They were gonna kill me. They still will kill me, if they figure it out. I have to act in self-defense. And I have to save the other three Jedi. These people may be people, but they are low-lives, murderers, and lawbreakers. It wasn't my choice that they got in my way.

Chapter 9: Crix Spartak

[sellyoursoulforagoodfic]

Request: Jango Fett x Jedi!Reader

Request by @sweeetteaa​: So have had this idea for a while now, but I suck at writing so hear me out: Jango Fett x reader, but the reader is a Jedi who goes to investigate Kamino with Obi-Wan and when she meets Jango - it’s love at first sight. And of course sassy Boba also loves her.

Jango Fett x reader

Word Count: 1825

Note: Obi-wan is on Kamino a LOT longer than he is in the movie because reasons

There were times when you thoroughly enjoyed your long-standing friendship with Obi-wan Kenobi. For example, any time he’d come to you ranting about whatever ridiculous situation Anakin had gotten them into; you almost always got a hearty laugh out of those instances.

This, however, was not one of those times.

Right now, you were rueing the day you’d decided to spar with this particular human because he’d dragged you along on his hunt for an apparently not-so-imaginary planet where you were currently getting an astoundingly confusing tour to show off an army of (admittedly quite attractive) clones made for the Republic.

You leveled your friend with a glare behind the tour guide's back and mouthed a harsh, “What the fuck?”

He just shrugged helplessly. His face smoothed back over into calm interest the instant the Kaminoan turned to glance at him. It never ceased to amaze you when he displayed that renowned ‘Negotiator’ facade.

Always one to be hands-on rather than to be lectured at, you spoke up, “You said they were highly trained for battle, yes?”

“Of course,” she replied breezily.

“Would it be possible for me to sit in on one of their drills? I’m somewhat of a tactician myself; I’d like to see how they perform in action. You and Obi-wan can keep viewing the process in the meantime.”

“Brilliant idea!” Obi-wan agreed, obviously seeing your plan of gathering more information.

The Kaminoan nodded. “Your timing is most convenient,” she informed you. “There is a simulation scheduled a few minutes from now. We have an overhead observation bay from which you can watch alongside their instructor.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

~

By the time you arrived, the simulation was already underway, and the clone that appeared to be the instructor judging from the under-armor blacks he was wearing barely spared you a glance while you were introduced. Not that you could blame his disinterest, his brothers down below were putting on quite the show. Still, you would like to glean at least a little information from the clones themselves about this place, and there needed to be a conversation happening for that so . . .

“Your sniper there needs to learn that his priority shouldn’t be the heavy troopers first.”

A handful of scars on the instructor’s face were exposed to you when he turned to smirk in your direction were surprising; you’d assumed such injuries would have been healed flawlessly in this facility. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. There was a curious rush of Force that rushed through you when he raised an amused eyebrow at you. “Oh? Who should he be focusing on then?”

“If he wants the rest of his team to survive, he’d target the stealth team making their way around the edges of the room.”

His brown eyes widened fractionally in mild surprise. “A Jetii that cares about the safety of soldiers? An unusual find. Who are you again?”

“Y/N. Another Jedi and I are here to check on the status of the army.” You made sure to make your voice wobble in a false tell.

One he seemed to buy based off the way that his smirk grew into a lopsided grin that made your heart inexplicably race. “You’re a terrible liar.”

You weren’t, but it played to your advantage to make him think you couldn’t lie for shit. Your Master, Mace Windu, had always encouraged your underhanded methods of gaining information even when the other Jedi frowned on them. ‘Use every advantage,’ he’d always say. The strange emotions that were racing around your mind because of this strange man, though, did concern you, but you shoved that to the side for later examination. You allowed a defeated-sounding sigh escape your lips as you let your body sag. “So I’ve been told.”

“So let me guess: something tipped you off about Kamino and you came looking?”

Well, he was certainly more intuitive than you would have guessed given that he was right and all. Not just a pretty face. “Busted.”

“So a tactician, piss-poor liar, and a curious adventurer. You are quite strange for a Jetii.”

“And you seem to think you know a lot about Jedi for someone who’s never left this planet.”

The second the words left your mouth, his dark eyes lit up, and you knew you’d made a mistake in your read of the man. It very abruptly all fell into place. He didn’t have those scars because of any fault in the healing here in the facility; he’d earned them in the field away from proper medical care. His knowledge wasn’t learned from some other instructor; it was learned first-hand. And his prejudice wasn’t taught institutionally; it was born from some darkness in his past.

“You’re not a clone, are you?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m the original.”

Your heart skipped a beat at the sound of his quiet chuckle, and you’d be damned if you didn’t crack a small smile yourself in response. Vow of attachments aside, you couldn’t help but already be fond of this strange man you’d just met. “So what’s your name then, Mr. Original?”

“Jango Fett.”

That name rang a bell or six. “The Mandalorian bounty hunter?” The one with the famous loathing of Jedi because they slaughtered his people?

“My reputation precedes me?”

“As well as your hatred for my kind, making you a curious choice for the progenitor of an army meant to work beside us to protect the Republic.”

“Money is money, sweetheart, and I’m learning that there might be a few Jetii that aren’t all bad.”

“A few?”

“Well . . . one or two . . . that I’d like to get to know better over a friendly dinner?”

“I suppose that could be arranged. We need to talk about how you’re training you snipers to be blind, anyway.”

~

As it turned out, dinner was in Jango’s apartment along with his clone/son Boba who you found out rather quickly you adored. The initial greeting had been rough, but he quickly warmed to you when you showed him the blaster you kept hidden within your robes for emergencies. He’d been telling some tale for the last few minutes about some trip he and his father had gone on, and his excitement was practically tangible.

“So anyways, Dad is busy trying to tie the guy up, and I spotted a no-good Jetii--”

“Boba!” his father interjected.

“What? It’s not like she’s a normal Jetii. She carries a blaster and agreed to go on a date with you.”

Your eyes widened dramatically, “This isn’t--”

“Son, this isn’t--” Jango cut himself off as the two of you talked over each other in your haste to deny the attraction you’d both been feeling all night.

“I’m a kid, Dad. I’m not stupid.”

“Boba--” This time you were cut off by a knock at the door.

The boy was already on his feet as he shouted, “I’ll get it!”

In the quiet that followed, Jango admitted, “He wasn’t wrong to assume that, you know.”

“I know,” you replied honestly, “but I took the vows, and we just met . . .”

“Dad! It’s for you!”

“Coming!” His eyes never left yours as he stood. “If you ever decide to leave that order of hypocrites . . .” The offer was clear.

“I know who to call,” you promised.

In the span of a single breath, you went from gazing at him longingly to being stunned still at the feeling of his lips on yours to staring at his retreating back in still-frozen surprise. And then everything devolved into a whirl of passive-aggressive accusatory comments, Obi-wan’s pitying gaze, and a chase that left you pondering, well, everything as you and your best friend chased the man that so easily swayed your mind away from your rigid vow of no attachments. 

“Obi-wan?” you called quietly over the comms that connected your two fighters. The two of you were tracking Jango’s ship, and you had a blackhole of anxiety gnawing its way through your stomach.

“I’m guessing this is something about that date I interrupted?”

“It wasn’t a date,” you argued automatically, but even you could hear how convincing you weren’t, “but yes.”

“It’s really getting to you that he is our assassin, isn’t it?” Your silence spoke libraries about your answer. “I’m sorry, darling.” Surprisingly, he didn’t kick into a lecture about the Code like he would have with Anakin, which you greatly appreciated. 

“Do you remember the old myths about the Force?”

“I suppose you have a specific one in mind?”

“The one about how everyone has someone out there connected to them by the Force.”

There was a heavy pause. “Do you believe this Jango Fett is your soulmate, Y/N?” Ever straight to the point was the renowned Obi-wan Kenobi.

You bit your lip, trying to fight back the tears that were currently making your eyes sting. That myth was the only way you could explain the feelings you had when looking at Jango, the way the Force seemed to dance between the two of you when he kissed you. “Yes.”

This time it was Obi-wan’s silence that was telling. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

~

After everyone was onboard a ship that was flying away from Geonosis, you locked yourself in your room with only Obi-wan allowed to enter so you could mourn in peace. All at once the galaxy was at war, your soulmate (for that’s what he must have been for you to have been brought to your knees by his death the second his head was severed even though you were too far to have seen it with your own eyes) was dead, and you were surrounded by his clones like they were living ghosts. You were a wreck, to put it mildly, and you could not let Anakin see you like this and get it into his head that such attachments were acceptable even if this was a special circumstance.

Already, you’d been weeping for hours while collapsed in the middle of the floor. And that was precisely the position Obi-wan found you when he finally returned from giving his report to the Council. In an instant, you were swept into a tight hug.

“Is there anything I can do?”

You shook your head minutely. “I can’t do this, Obi,” your voice shook. “I can’t fight with his ghosts by my side only to watch them die under my command in a war that no one wants.”

“You have my support no matter what you choose,” he promised quietly, “as long as you keep in touch.”

A shaky breath left your lips as some of the tension left your body. You hadn’t realized it, but part of you had been terrified that you would lose your best friend in this chaos. “Thank you.”

“What will you do?”

“Boba was there.”

“The little clone?”

“His son . . . sort of. He’s just a child that lost his father. I can’t just leave him.”

“I’d expect nothing less from you.”

[nny11writes]

You’re recent fic killed me!- could we have rex comforting ahsoka after a mission goes wrong? Maybe obi-wan and anakin are injured bc of a miscommunication by her

Alright, have some additional Declarations! 

This should still make sense without having read the full fic, but it certainly provides more background to this moment. And, also, Anakin is referring to that chapter I’ve been wishy washy about posting where the two of them FINALLY talk a bit and start figuring out how to communicate better. He is a good man doing his damn best, but Anakin is all about extremes.

“Alright kid, time to stop sulking.” Rex sighed heavily as he leaned against the bulkhead. It wasn’t like he knew where Ahsoka was hiding specifically but he’d narrowed it down to this room in particular. Stars, he hoped she wasn’t in the vents, they’d have to find the lankiest of them and force the poor sod up in after her.

His comm blinked on silently and looking down he could see Ahsoka sent him a message.

Not.

His whole body felt too heavy for a moment before he spoke aloud for her benefit. “No. No, I know you aren’t.”

He didn’t get another message and she didn’t climb down though.

Rex had to remember to thank Cody some time for the heads up on togruta. Obi-Wan had apparently gone half insane researching before that all blew up in his face, but the knowledge that she would be very quiet and make herself very small and might even hide away was the only thing that had stopped him from panicking when she was still missing. They were technically on shore leave and could do whatever they wished, sure, and Anakin had apparently told her to just take some time to stabilize.

“She’ll come back when she’s ready, and she’ll be ready sooner than you think.” Anakin had said with the strangest cross between a determined frown and a watery smile.

“Huh, who are you and what did you do with my General?” Rex had chuckled half confused before Anakin laughed.

“Yeah, well, we talked a bit after the whole…” Anakin waved his hands vaguely, but somehow Rex was sure he meant Grievous and Goldie. “Boundaries.”

Unsure what else he could do, Rex cracked another terrible joke. “Well, look at you. Rather big of you sir, I think you might be maturing.”

Anakin stuck his tongue out at him and really that said all he needed to about that.

But that conversation had been nearly three rotations ago, and Rex had a sinking feeling that Skywalker was doing his best without knowing what Ahsoka actually needed. Not that he thought he really knew either, honestly no one could know except for Ahsoka what she really needed. The first set of casualties under orders were always the hardest.

He stared at his comm until the backlight powered down before trying again, “Come on then little un, you know no one’s upset with you, so why are you hiding? Give me a good reason and I swear I’ll leave you and the K rations I snuck here alone.”

It took another long minute before his comm lit up again.

Fine.

He winced but did his best to put his new mental shielding in place. He didn’t want her assuming his upset was with her after all. There was some soft rustling that bounced around the storage bay and then Ahsoka dropped from the ceiling scaring him half to death. At any other time she would’ve been laughing at him, and the fact that she instead just walked over to him with her head down before curling up on the floor was…

Rex slowly slid down next to her and held out the ration and hydration cylinder for her. It took a small prompting with his free hand before she took them and mostly picked at them. He rather she have the fuel and option to consume it than not. 

“Would it be better if I wrote with you?” Rex asked, lifting his wrist with the comm.

There was a pause before she shook her head, and finally, blessedly, finally took a bite of food. Far as he knew the first food she’d had in over a full rotation.

“Alright.” He slowly, carefully put his arm around her shoulders, waiting for anything to cue him into stopping. “Is it okay if I stay here with you for a bit?”

A shrug, but at least she pulled out her comm again.

Okay.

“Then I think I’ll take a sit for a bit, yeah?” He squeezed her as gently as possible, and almost pulled away when she shuddered only for her hand to desperately catch his wrist and pull him against her more firmly. Message received Commander. “You know, General Kenobi called today and was asking after you. You want the updates sir?”

She started shaking in lieu of writing so he squeezed her tightly again. There were a few painful sounding gasps before she weakly asked, “Is he okay?”

Her raspy, absolutely wrecked voice was the best thing he’d ever heard.

“Kenobi reported that he was fighting fit, and Cody reported that he was released with light exercise restrictions for a week before actually being ready to slash some clankers.” He paused as she gave a small half huff, half sniffle. He’d take it. “But yeah, he’s perfectly fine.”

Ahsoka nodded before taking another, smaller bite of the ration bar. He could feel her lek twitch under his arm and quickly scanned her to make sure she wasn’t about to vomit all over herself. Probably the only thing that could make her feel even worse at the moment. But instead she simply put the ration away in a belt pouch and typed into her comm.

Men?

“Will be right in no time. Sinker is out of bacta as well and already back on the front.” He’d hoped she’d perk up at that, but instead she almost melted down. “Hey, that’s a good thing!”

There was another series of pitiful sounding gasps, but this time she didn’t speak instead she leaned further into him and reached for his wrist again.

“You don’t have to speak if you’re not up for it.” Rex whispered, knowing she’d hear him just fine and more concerned that she was going to force herself into something that would make her feel worse.

He’d had a batchmate like that, CT-8532, didn’t make it far enough to get his own name, but Three Two had always been more sensitive than them. A lot of the time it had benefited them as a squad, after all, Three Two could hear electricity so he could often tell if there was a pack of droids around the corner or not. But sometimes when he got too angry he’d go from screaming and crying to dead silent. And each time the trainers forced him to speak, it only made it worse. 

He’d made it off Kamino only to die with the rest of his squad on Geonosis.

What he’d give to listen to Three Two humming absentmindedly again…

“I know it’s already been said, but it wasn’t your fault. Orders were unclear and you did your best.”

Ahsoka went still and air hissed from between her teeth, and it broke his damn heart to hear.

“They were. They completely skipped vital info that-”

Ahsoka shook her head violently before ripping her hand away to type on her comm.

Obvious. 

Should’ve known.

Rex held in another sigh and made sure his shields were hiding his frustration before speaking. “No, it was incomplete orders sir. They sent you incomplete orders and incomplete information. Just because you can see the connections now, doesn’t mean it was obvious.”

Ahsoka curled up, hands going to cover her montrals as she went quiet again. 

He took the hint and shut his mouth, and instead sat with her quietly until he realized she’d fallen asleep at some point. Probably hadn’t been sleeping much, he’d wager money on it if he was allowed to have any. As carefully as he could, he scooped up his Commander and carried her quickly to her quarters. Doing his best to avoid and dodge anyone else to save her a little face. But once he’d gotten her into bed and gotten her a glass of water, he still sat down on the floor by her bunk.

She only woke a few times, but each time he reached up and squeezed her hand tightly, and each time she went back to sleep.

And that was a start. That was a good start.

[intrepidmare]

MARE'S RECAPS ~ THE MANDALORIAN: CHAPTER 9 "THE MARSHALL"

Oh wow! It's been a while since I've done something like this. Last year, I caught up with season 1 about 2 days before the finale, so I didn't have the opportunity to write reviews/recaps. This season, though, I'm going to 😀 so here it is the first one! 

For the folks that haven't seen the premiere and don't want spoilers, scroll past this, fast and furious, because it's full of them. If you want to blacklist tags to avoid spoilers from me, I suggest that you add #mando spoilers, #the mandalorian season 2 spoilers, and #mare's mando recaps to the list.

I've seen the episode a few times (yeah, I'm that obsessed with the show) so some of my reactions are more visceral than others since I was too excited the few first times I watched it and I missed a lot of details (another reason to rewatch the episode more than once). This recap is loooooong, which is an indication of how amazing it was.

So this my final warning to those avoiding spoilers. Stop reading, right now. The rest of you… enjoy and let me know if you share some of my opinions. I'm always open to chat 😊

Chapter 9 ~ The Marshall

So it begins! It's so exciting!

I knew that Mando and baby Yoda walking in the street at night was going to be the opening scene. I started to think about it after watching the second trailer, and I'm glad that I was right.

It turns out that the red-eyed creatures were not jawas as I saw some people saying.

Baby Yoda was not happy with the little excursion to the fighting arena. Not walking on the streets nor inside watching the fight. I still laughed when he locked himself up in the pram, even if I've watched the trailer like a gazillion times by now and I knew he was going to do it.

And talking about the baby, he's getting more vocal I think. He's making a few new noises, whimpering more, which I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. That he complains more means that he feels safe with his buir and isn't afraid of retaliation for it as he probably was with others in the past and the reason he didn't cry much in season 1. But it breaks my heart that he is stressed. And that child is anxious, I can tell you that much.

The fight with Gor Koresh's thugs was awesome! The gamorrean flying to squash Mando and failing had me cracking up. And omg! Din'd moves! Using his helmet as a weapon and throwing his vibroblade. And leaving Gor Koresh to be eaten! Man of his word, he didn't kill the guy.

On a side note, I would've never guessed it was John Leguizamo who gave voice to Koresh until I saw the credits. Of all the actors who could play the part, I never thought of him.

Umm, I'm curious about the time Mando has spent in Tatooine, which according to him it's been a lot and it makes sense since he knows so much about the Tuskens, their language and culture. I'm guessing he spent a while among them. He had to learn all that somehow. 

When I speculated that Mando was going back to Tatooine after watching the trailers, I said that I was going to riot if he didn't visit his favorite mechanic. Thankfully, I didn't need to worry. I loved Peli in episode 5 of season 1 and I loved her even more now remarking on Din's dislike of droids and trying to keep the baby for herself. Not to mention she complaining about not getting good help these days 🤣

And I ADORE the (improvised?) Birikad Din got for the baby. Of course, the baby is safer in the pram, right (guessing that's why he used it when he met Gor Koresh), but there's something sweet watching him carrying his son so close to him.

And I tell you, Mando has been spending credits lately in baby stuff. I mean, he got a new pram (which I initially thought it was the original that he had somehow retrieved from the garbage in Nevarro, but no, it's not the same, and neither it's the one that Kuiil made) and he also got the bag/birikad thing, which looks brand-new. I wonder what else he bought.

Watching the droids doing maintenance of the Razor Crest makes me think it's all for nothing, knowing that in a few episodes (it might be even in the next one) Mando is going to crash the ship. More than once perhaps.

😆 The baby still loves speed! I think riding on the speeder bike was the only moment that he truly enjoyed in this episode. Look at that happy face 

When they arrived at Mos Pelgo and Din went into the cantina, leaving the baby outside, I was like: Din! That's not responsible. How can you leave your son out in the inclement sun, alone! Then baby Yoda peeked in and I went: never mind. I take back what I said.

Oooh. Cobb Vanth! I love him! For a moment, I thought it could actually be Boba but it seemed illogical and that's what Mr. Feloni and Mr. Favreau wanted us to think. I was correct.

My gawd! Din's shock when Vanth took the helmet off. I just knew he would freak out the moment Cobb asked for drinks and I said to drink they need to remove their helmets and Mando is going to lose it when this guy does. And the standoff! Was so good! "Take it off or I will" is going to become a quite popular phrase in fics from now on, not in the same context, but yeah…

The krayt dragon… oh shit! Or rather Dank farrik! We can't see Mando's face or expression but I can imagine which one was when he saw the dragon eating the bantha the first time.

Oh my goodness. The baby hiding in the pot! Too adorable! 

I know every hardcore SW fan lost it watching Vanth modified speeder because is a callback to the Phantom Menace and Anakin but my first thought was: is he compensating for something? Sorry, I couldn't help it 

The dog-lizard creatures were kinda scary at first but then became adorable. Almost as much as baby Yoda getting out of hiding

Baby Yoda doesn't like dog-lizards things. He looked afraid to be eaten I think. Poor little guy.

And look at that! Din showing such growth! To think he was the one incensing others in negotiation 😆 this is a total callback to the jawas in Arvala-7. And I gotta tell you, Din freaking loves his flamethrower. He doesn't waste the opportunity to use it.

The krayt dragon eating the Tusken raider instead of the bantha was quite of a plot twist 😆

When they were planning the attack on the dragon, Cobb Vanth's face when Din told him that the bones and pebbles were to scale, and then when he had volunteered the villagers to help… priceless! 

I like the fact of banding together with others for a greater good, relying on others to accomplish something is going to continue being the theme of this season. It started last season but I think it's going to be stronger this time around along all of the episodes.

😳😲😳😲 this thing vomits acid?! What. The. FUCK?!!!

Cobb: I don't think it's dead

Mando: me neither

Me, at the same time as Din: yeah, nope it's not dead

Oh yeah! Teaming up with jetpacks!

When they showed the bantha with the remaining explosives my first thought was why didn't they use all those before?! That's why they didn't kill it!! Of course, it was just an excuse to grant Din a more grand win in the end, but you know, it's stupid not to use everything you have to kill the monster on the first try. Just saying

Wait, what? Din! What are you going to do? No! Taking care of the child is your responsibility, not Cobb Vanth's! I hate this plan of yours, Din Djarin!! Whichever it is!

Oh! Nice callback to the flaw on that jetpack. But makes me wonder, do all the rising Phoenixes have the same flaw? Cuz unless Din knows Boba in person and that it's his armor with that particular flaw, it means it's a common problem for all and I don't like it.

Get away, Din! Get away, Din!! FLY AWAY!! AAAAAAAHHHHHH! NOOOOOO! 

There he is! Damn, Mando! Don't scare me like that! Altho, it was a nice move.

Okay, but now I want someone to explain something to me. If the dragon's acid melted people at contact before, how the hell is Din so whole? I mean, sure for argument' sake let's say his beskar armor provides some protection, but he's not entirely covered in it. His cape and undersuit seem just fine, albeit sticky. Where's the logic in that?

The tuskens getting the pearl reminded me of the jawas and the mudhorn's egg, chanting zukka, zukka (or however egg is spelled in Jawa).

That's quite a piece of meat. The baby is going to be happy eating off it for days🤣

😮😮😳😳 BOBA FETT!!!!! Yesssssss!!

Okay, I've seen other people's thoughts and some think that Boba was after Cobb Vanth because he had the armor, but I don't know. If that was true then why he hadn't gone to Mos Pelgo and got it? It seems to me that it's more likely that Boba is following Din somehow because it's the second time in as many Mando's visits to the planet that they sort of cross paths. Could they know each other? Have some score to settle? It's possible. Din has spent much time on Tatooine -his words, not mine- so it wouldn't be so out of consideration that they actually know each other. That if Mando knows Boba is (fake?) Mando, I don't know. Probably not, but who knows?

Extra thoughts

I gotta say that Ludwig Göransson is killing it with the score music! Oh. My. God! So so so so good! I could tell from the trailers that it was going to be awesome this season but it astounded me in chapter 9. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous! My favorite piece is when they're going to the dragon's cave to kill it. The orchestral sound of the already familiar music blew my mind!

[evabellasworld]

Storm of the Republic

Chapter 7

AO3 Link | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

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Summary:  When Tup murdered General Tiplar during a battle, Anakin Skywalker and Captain Rex dispatched Ahsoka, Fives, and Yara to solve the mystery that was plaguing the Clone Army. Meanwhile, Senator Padme Amidala contacted Commander Fox, Commander Tori, Riyo Chuchi, and Dipper to help her continue investigating the death of Palpatine, suspecting that Dooku was behind the evil plot. But when Dooku send an ISB agent to stop them, the team had to race against time to search for the truth, which could alter the course of the galaxy.

————————————————————————————

With Tup bound in a medical case, Fives and Yara escorted him into the ship, along with the medics that were sent for him. The medics were dispatched from base, and they received orders from Cinta Kaarim to pick up their patient from Ringo Vinda.

They weren’t clones, rather; they were volunteers who worked for the Republic in the beginning of the war. During the Battle of Coruscant, the medics assisted with the injured soldiers and Jedi by treating them and evacuating them off the planet.

Those who were lucky continued their services for the Republic remnants’ army. Those who did not escape Coruscant were imprisoned or killed. To the Empire, there is no in-between.

Fives gazed at Tup, who had a breathing machine beside him. His forehead felt warm as his under eyes were darker, showing his health was slowly deteriorating. He heard a groan from his brother, prompting him to hold his shoulder.

“It’s gonna be fine, I promise,” he soothed him. “They’ll fix you up real good. We’ll be having a drink in no time, eh?”

“Good soldiers follow orders,” Tup stammered. “Good soldiers follow orders.”

“You are a good soldier, Tup,” Fives said, with a bleak tone. He wasn’t sure whether he heard him, but at least he said what needed to be said.

“It’s time to go,” the volunteer informed him.

As the ship took off, he sat beside Yara, who looked at him with droopy eyebrows. “Do you think Tup will make it?”

“He’s a fighter, Yara, I know it. Tup’s been through a lot worse than this. He will make it through this one too.”

“I hope so,” Yara nodded, with a small voice. “I’ve already planned to down a mickey after this.”

Fives chuckled. “I see you already made plans for yourself, eh?”

“Well, a drink would calm you down in a situation like this. Besides, I’m sure you’ll do the same as well, am I right?”

“Touché,” he snapped his finger as he leaned against his seat, expecting the ship to jump into hyperspace. Once Tup is feeling better, Fives and Yara will share a bottle of mickey in their barracks together.

Though Captain Rex would lecture them the next day, at least the three of them will have the time of their life for the entire night. It’s not the same as 79’s, where there was music and people, but at least they can find enjoyment with little things they have.

Yara crossed her arms and legs as she rested her eyes for a while, hoping to catch up on her sleep. For odd reasons, she always finds it difficult to doze off at night, and as a result, she gets nagged at her poor sleeping habits.

She had the same problem when she was still a cadet, where the trainers would have to resort to pouring a bucket of sea water just to make her jump from her bed. Fives used to tease her for her sleeping habit, and it hasn’t died out since. Hopefully, I wake up when this ship lands at base.

“We are tracking clean,” the pilot spoke through the intercoms. “Calculating the hyperspace jump in five, four…”

Before they could continue the countdown, the radar on the panel beeped rapidly. “Wait! Wait!” their co-pilot shouted. “Scanners show incoming craft. Abort jump!”

As the pilot did what they were told, an Imperial light cruiser appeared out of nowhere, blasting towards their direction. Fives heard the commotion and grabbed the helmet, pinching Yara by the elbows. “Wake up,” he startled her. “We’ve got company!”

Yara groaned as she rubbed her eyes open, feeling her head spinning. “This better be good,” she complained. “I was having such a pleasant dream.”

“You can tell me about your dreams later,” he handed her helmet. “Right now, the Empire is trying to break in.”

She put on her helmet and took a brief glance at Tup, making the connections in her head. “Well, I think I figured out why.”

“Tell me about it,” he snarked as they both heard buzz droids crawling around the ship, giving her the chills. Yara hated buzz droids with all her passion, and she would do anything to destroy them with her bare hands.

“Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot panicked through the comms. “They must have circled around behind us. We’re being overwhelmed.”

Listening to the agonising screams, Yara flung her arms around Fives, picturing the gory torture they went through.

“Dude, they’re just droids,” he assured her, shoving her arms away. “We can take them down easily.”

“They just killed our pilot,” she reminded him. “And they also disabled our ship too, which means we’re stranded in space.”

“We’ll hold the line,” Fives ordered the medics onboard. “Stay behind us and protect our patient.”

The medic acknowledged his orders as both the ARC Troopers put on an oxygen tank and held their grip on their blasters. The anti-gravity of the ship was activated, making them float above the ground. Yara felt like throwing up, but she had to hold it in for Tup’s sake.

As the buzz droids crawled closer towards them, the duo blasted the droids into pieces, without missing a mark at all. Fives snickered to himself as he held a piece of buzz droid and showed it to his sister, leaving her annoyed.

“Okay, I get it, it was easy,” she slapped his hand. “Well done, Fives.”

Before he could think of a comeback, he saw a group of commando droids entering from the back of the ship, rendering him speechless. “Hold my blaster,” Yara bossed him, as she lunged herself towards one of the commando droids, pulling its head.

“What a show off,” Fives shook his head as he blasted them in the eye, destroying them in an instant. “You might need this though.”

Tossing back her pistols, Yara gave him a small salute as she knocked down another one with her elbows, before giving a headshot. “Yara, 2, Fives, 1,” she updated their kill counts.

“Oh, I’m not letting you win this one,” he accepted the challenge, as he blasted both the droids all at once, making her sigh. She took down two droids in front of her and another two above the ceiling, proving her worth towards her brother.

“Yara, 6, Fives, 3.”

He chortled at her bold claims as he turned around and gunned down 3 commando droids, and dismantled another one with his arms before shooting the last one on the ground. “Looks like I won this round,” smiled Fives.

“You cheated,” she pouted. “I had the upper hand first.”

“Yara, 6, Fives, 8.”

“Whatever, I was cooler. You were just lucky, that’s all.”

Some things never change, Fives reminisced about the past, where they used to compete in every game they played with Echo, before he died in the citadel. If only he was still here with us. He would have beaten the both of us with a few shots.

He stretched himself and placed his twin pistols in his holsters, when Yara hit his shoulders out of nowhere. “Fives, where’s Tup? He was here a few minutes ago.”

“Well, he was just here,” he answered, when he realised that all the medics were dead, with Tup missing from the casing. “Shit, where did he go? How did this happen?”

Yara frantically climbed the cockpit and noticed the Imperial cruiser in front of them, leading her to form a logical conclusion. “I believe our brother is over there.”

“Shit, what do we do?” Fives panicked. “If the Empire takes him, then he’s screwed. We’re all screwed.”

“If the Empire took him, then it’s clear they were behind all of this,” she said, connecting the wires from the panel. “Come on, we need to get General Skywalker and Captain Rex to help us.”

I hope they understand it isn’t our fault; he scratched the back of his head, aware that they fucked up everything.

[aces-to-apples]

Written for Day 5: Fluff of Codywan Week 2020 @codywanweek

Here on AO3

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Category: Multi Relationship: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: CC-2224 | Cody, CT-7567 | Rex, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker Additional Tags: Background Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker, Implied/Referenced Future Rexsoka, GFY

For best results please look at this Rex and this Cody before reading.

“tribute”

Another one of the local little chompers marched towards the dais with all the solemnity and determination of a verd’ika plucking their first set of whites off the assembly line. Cody met Rex’s eye and they both very carefully avoided grinning at the sight. Not only could it be bad for their relationship with said locals, it wouldn’t do to let their Jedi think they were, in fact, having a good time up there.

When the kid came to a halt a ‘respectful’ distance away, Cody nodded for them to approach and bent his head to receive the kid’s blessing and subsequent gift. He watched Rex do the same.

The celebration had been going for hours, by that point, and they’d amassed a pile of shiny little wearable trinkets to give any sovereign of Naboo a run for their credits and enough blessings to make them holier than most deities. It’d been a relief, at the start of the night, to hear that—aside from the ceremonial outfits they’d been bullied into wearing—he and Rex were free to redistribute the gifts as they saw fit. Something about sharing luck, or good vibes, or what have you.

Said ceremonial outfits, on the other hand, they were obliged to keep and maintain with honor.

Obi-Wan had smoothed over any offense they’d given with their lacklustre reaction to the news but Rex’s general had been less than subtle in his delight at their new possessions. Tano, at least, had just told them they looked nice and kept her own mocking to a bare minimum.

And it wasn’t that they were grateful, Cody had reflected at the start of the celebration, when he and Rex had stepped out under the light of the moons to deafening cheers, but. It wasn’t quite their style, no matter how well the two of them pulled off the intricate, and admittedly beautiful, get-ups.

Rex, by dint of his Torrent paintjob, had been immediately deemed the locals’ Goddess of War come again and draped accordingly in layers of blue fabric. Some of it was dark and blaster-resistant and some of it pale and so sheer as to be almost nonexistent. Bands of silver, often studded with precious blue stones, were wrapped around his wrists, forearms, biceps, and throat, and a silver cap affixed with yet more jewels and a pale blue veil had been placed on his head with much reverence.

After a great deal of muttered debate, they determined that Cody must be their war deity’s twin, the Goddess of Beauty. Not an insult by any means…

The traditional garb he’d been presented with, by contrast, was deep red with a long flowing cape and headdress of heavy twisted fabric. It came with its own set of jewelry, as well, shining gold and polished red stones, bulky and eye-catching around his wrists and throat and slim and delicate around his forearms and biceps. Something about the placement was culturally significant, but hells if Cody was going to ask what.

They’d already lost the battle against: 1) staying for several days to rest and recuperate, 2) accepting the titles of living incarnations of their local deities and all the celebration that entailed, and 3) keeping both the get-ups and the gifts for themselves.

No way was Cody going to invite more conversation about their cultural practices. He could win against droids and bounty-hunters and half-baked Sith, but apparently, he couldn’t convince a bunch of over-awed, Mid Rim locals that he and Rex weren’t tools of War and Beauty.

Tools of the Republic, sure, but nothing divine.

The leader of the city they’d liberated had just smiled gently and reassured them that belief on their part was not necessary, only acceptance of their gratitude. Which came with lots of shiny metal, sparkly rocks, and a pair of gowns that they had to either accept or throw into a sacrificial fire and publicly reject.

Obi-Wan had stepped in at that point.

He’d assured everyone that they had no interest in disrespecting their culture and asked for a debrief about the ceremony.

Wear the outfits, sit on the thrones, and let people fawn over them at least a little bit, had basically been the long and short of it. But, hey, they were comfortably cushioned, well-fed, and kept hydrated throughout the whole thing, so it could have been worse. Sharp-toothed little ankle-biters shyly kissing their foreheads and handing them shiny bits and bobs before scampering off weren’t much of a hardship.

“How’re you fellas doing?” Skywalker asked, strolling up to the dais with a grin that had yet to falter all night. “Getting into the spirit of the thing? Really feeling the divinity flow through you?”

Plenty vode had wandered over to check on them over the course of the night, mostly to heckle, but the Jedi had visited just as frequently. And for similar reasons, too.

The way Rex’s general had been eyeing him all night, Cody was almost worried for Rex’s safety. He’d heard plenty of complaints from Obi-Wan about Skywalker’s willingness to eat damn near anything; who was to say that he hadn’t acquired a taste for Mandalorian-adjacent flesh and wouldn’t gobble poor Rex up in just a few bites.

He was pretty sure Commander Tano was having some kind of intermittent crisis over at their table as well.

It was his responsibility, as both Marshal Commander and ori’vod, to bring his concerns to his superior officer and then ruthlessly mock all three of them. After Skywalker eventually got tired of making Rex blush and wandered away whistling a jaunty tune to a very raunchy cantina song, that was.

“So does that ‘angel’ of his know the two of you have started sharing blankets since your last stop-over on Coruscant or should I start planning your funeral now?” Cody said archly, watching his vod’ika visibly consider punching him. “I’ll be sure to wear this and lie about how smart and good-looking you are, like a proper vod.”

Rex pressed a hand over his eyes and groaned. “Angel knows,” he admitted, darting an unsubtle glance at his general’s shebs. “What I am afraid of, though, is that next time we stop over on Coruscant she’s gonna have a whole new wardrobe just like this one and it will just happen to be in my size.”

“Well, hey, get a full-coverage veil and you’re probably good to step out with them,” Cody said with false sympathy, gleefully imagining the uproar that would cause. “Just make sure they’re made out of that fabric that’s designed to ruin holos. Pakod.”

The ol’ boy made a sound like a malfunctioning mouse-droid.

“Is it too much to believe that I’d like to spend whatever leave I get wearing as few clothes as possible?” he wailed, quietly, with a desperation that made Cody think this was an argument he and the senator had gotten into before. With this revelation in mind, he snapped a few holos of his own while Rex was distracted and vowed to get them to the senator if Skywalker’s brain cell was too lonely to manage it. “Isn’t it enough that I have this already?”

“Oh, dear me,” a low voice said from behind Cody’s left ear, “I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to have two attractive, attentive lovers who wish to shower you with tokens of their affection. Truly, Captain, your misery must be exquisite.”

Cody turned his head to press a sloppy kiss to Obi-Wan’s cheek in gratitude for the pitiful sound his words had drawn out of his favorite brother.

“General,” Rex whined pathetically, “they keep getting me plants. Alive ones, dead ones, prickly ones, poisonous ones. My quarters are being taken over by non-sentient invaders.”

Obi-Wan made a little noise of patently fake sympathy. “My old master’s quarters were like that as well,” he commiserated, pressing a kiss to the sensitive skin behind Cody’s ear. The noise of the locals around them changed in pitch, but Cody’d had enough to drink over the course of the evening to not feel worried by the change. If he was lucky, Obi-Wan would be shoved into a pretty outfit like this next. “It drove me mad that he never formally answered, let alone turned down, any of the suits. Just let the poor, smitten beings keep sending him gifts. So uncivilized.”

“Speaking of uncivilized,” Cody said, wondering if he could get away with pulling Obi-Wan down onto his lap.

Rex rolled his eyes. “If I don’t get to canoodle in public with my Jedi then you don’t get to with yours,” he huffed, leaning over to push Obi-Wan a few inches away. “Leave room for the Force, sirs.”

“‘Leave room for the Force’?” Obi-Wan repeated, nonplussed, while Cody found himself hung up on, “Canoodle?”

No longer quite so flustered, Rex shrugged. “Skywalker talks like a scandalized opera singer, sometimes, and Ahsoka says that when she catches the lads giving each other a tune-up. How’s the kid doing, by the way?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan said ruefully, “she’s seventeen and in the middle of a war and puberty. Thus far, I believe she’s coped by placing you all in the ‘dear friends and family whom deserve her utmost respect’ category of her mind, rather than allowing herself to see you as attractive young men. Tonight seems to be causing some kind of breakdown in that line of thinking.”

Cody turned to give Rex his full attention and clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheers, vod’ika, keep it up and you might have a full set soon!”

In response, Rex covered his face with both hands and groaned again.

“Remind me to send the good captain some appropriate literature about age of consent laws, would you, dear?” Obi-Wan murmured into his ear. He most assuredly was not leaving room for the Force between them. “Until then, I believe you mentioned being uncivilized?”

Cody made a mental note to remind him as requested before standing up, bowing at the local assembly, and following Obi-Wan wherever he led.

[pulpwriterx]

BEN SOLO ALL THESE YEARS

Rey decided to stay on Tattoine.

The desert, after all, was her home.

Poe went back into the spice business, and even branched out to include good booze and cigarillos.

Finn joined him in yo ho, you ho,  a pirate's life for me.

And in their business?

They needed a good scavenger.

A year or  so went by.

Finn and Poe bought themselves a posh bachelor pad in Anchorhead, but Rey preferred solitude.

She knew that that both of them would have been willing to give her a shoulder to cry on, and the benefit of a man's company.

But after the way Ben died in her arms, Rey wasn’t ready to hold a man, again.

The old Skywalker farm didn’t look like it, but it was a nice place to live.

It had been Ben’s home, after all. 

He had left the outside looking run down and desolate, like no one lived there, but past the blighted door in the dusty courtayrd, it was a different story.

Typical Ben.

When you took off his mask, he had another mask on beneath that, and beneath that was a big story, a tall tale, and a pack of ever-evolving half-truths and outright lies.

He had restored the old farm, on the inside, and underneath, where the farming equipment and tanks had been, he kept a smuggler’s treasure trove.

Tunnels filled with all kinds of swag, from booze and cigarillos to old Rebel Alliance and Imperial Uniforms, and less innocent cargo like crates of blasters and pallets of coaxium.

There was also five years of food and supplies, and one of the tanks had even been converted into a vault. It was full of credits, black molded chests of Imperial gold coins, money from all over the Galaxy.

Ben had left the farm, and all it’s contents to Rey Skywalker.

He had also left the Millenium Falcon to Rey, but she hadn’t the heart to fly the ship she loved so much.

With both Ben and Han Solo dead, neither with a final resting place?

The ship was like their tomb.

The Falcon, and Ben’s secret refuge, with it’s hidden treasures; they were all, in some strange way, his legacy.

When Rey wasn’t whizzing around the stars with her friends, she led a peaceful, solitary life as the guardian of the legacy of the family that gave all for the peace that finally broke out in the Galaxy.

Besides, she wasn’t wholly alone.

Poe always let BB8 go with her, to keep tabs on her, and Threepio and Artoo were glad to finally get to go home.

It was a special place for her.

In the two years between when she and Ben killed Snoke, and when they killed the Emperor?

They used to meet at the Skywalker Farm.

Their bonds remained unbroken, even after she had rejected his offer to join him,  and they had grown closer, not just through the talks, and the laughing, and the stories, most of which were lies.

Yelling.

Pointing fingers.

Sneering.

Cursing.

Stamping feet.

Breaking things.

Throwing shit about.

Lightsaber duels.

Even the bad times, even the shit times were precious to her, now.

Rey would sit, quietly, watching the twin suns, and think about the past.

Like the time they had a horrible fight through their bond, and called each other vicious names, and threw things at each other, and smashed up their own gear, in a rage.

But then Ben had said.

“I need to see you in person, Rey.”

“Why? What can we do in person that we can’t do through our little talks?”

“We can make love. Don’t you want to? I do.”

“There is nothing like love between us, Kylo Ren!”

Ben had given her the Solo shrug.

“Then we can fuck. I'd rather fuck. I was just trying to be chivalrous.”

And somewhere in their laughter, they had agreed to meet at the Skywalker farm, on Tattoine.

Rey had no idea that Ben had a home, and it became their refuge.

Rey would lie there, in Ben's big, brass bed, and close her eyes and think about when he was there, beside her.

Those stolen days and nights where they would laugh, and fight, and screw, and cuddle under the fur blanket in the cold desert night and plan for a future they both knew would never happen.

Sometimes, she could almost feel his big body, lying there beside her, and she could smell his scent.

Hear his voice.

Feel the way her little body had moved under his big, strong hands.

Of course she would also lie there and think about their lovemaking and take care of her business.

She could have had Finn, or Poe, but Ben was like an animal, like a man in the state of nature; he had been born without shame, and he had unchained a passion in her that Rey had never known she possessed.

Not that she had been a prude, but her interest in men, and her occasional dealings with them had been, well, ordinary.

Now who the hell would she find to satisfy the unchained, shameless desire that Kylo Ren Ben Solo had awakened in her?

Rey often cried, bitter tears.

But that was life.

Love is death, life is pain, and somehow you muddle through.

***

In the second year since Ben died, Rey was walking down a busy street in Anchorhead when she saw Chewie.

They hugged, and Rey was truly happy.

She took him to Poe and Finn's and they tried to get information out of him, but Chewie would only say he was working.

As he left, he asked Rey a very honest question.

“Are you happy?”

“I am content, Chewie. I have friends, work, a place to live, enough money, and I have peace.”

“But are you happy?”

“No. Happiness died with Ben. A lot of things died for me, with Ben. Love. Hope. Any interest I had in men, poor Poe, and poor Finn. But I still have life. And I can still enjoying being content with it.”

***

A few nights later, Rey had a dream about Ben.

It was a wild, sweaty, deeply pornographic wet dream that she woke up from in the throes of the kind of an orgasm women could only have in their dreams.

Or, if they were lucky, with bad men like Ben Solo.

She sat up, throwing the blanket off.

“Rey.”

Rey's heart sang an aria.

“Ben! You found your way back? When will I be able to see you?”

But there was no reply.

Leading her to believe, alas, it had only been a beautiful dream.

***

When he had come to Oneness with the Force, Ben Solo found trouble in Paradise.

Master Yoda thought he was ready for the next step.

Master Obi Wan argued that he was too young, and had resolved none of the conflict that had brought him to ruin.

Master Anakin was more direct.

“Though a man, he is still a child. And his life has been suffering and tragedy. He is young, he has found love, and we should not cheat him of the life he has fought so hard to win. Send him back. Let him be Ben Solo, and live his life. He has many years to find the New Path.”

Ben tried to speak, to say what he wanted,  but found he could not.

“Young though he is, yes, but what life for him? Redeemed from Kylo Ren in our eyes. But what of the material world? If return he does, atone he must. But a bullseye on his back there will be!” Yoda insisted.

“That is a problem, Anakin.” Obi –Wan agreed.

“Then we will send my grandson back without healing his body. It will be broken. He will atone with his suffering.  We will send him to a distant planet to make his recovery, alone. Dependant on the charity of strangers he once oppressed.  Then let him make his way to more familiar planets, back to his identity and his home.” Anakin suggested.

“That sounds reasonable. We will give my namesake a test. But, Kylo Ren is dead. Ben Solo should not have to pay for his crimes. Then we will make it so the memory of his mask is preserved in the minds of all. But not his face. “ Obi-Wan suggested.

The others agreed.

“Speak now you may, young Skywalker. Until you find your way back, Skywalker shall you be called. Well? Back do you wish to go?” Yoda asked.

“Yes, Master Yoda. Back I wish to go.”

“Humor you have. Need it, you will.”

“But will I have to endure doctors? Needles?”

“Fear in your face, I see? Tortured you were, young Skywalker? Then your fear you must overcome.  Back you still wish to go?”

“Yes, Master Yoda. I will face my fear.”

“And Ben? No cheating? If your women, strong in the Force as they are, happen to find you? Or your family? We won’t keep them away. But if you call to them? You forfeit this chance.” Anakin told him.

“Wrong that is! In his sleep, will young Skywalker’s soul cry for help! No. Also must we use the Force to interrupt his bond. Until his test is finished. Though he will call? No answer will we allow to come.” Yoda decided.

“I agree. Only by doing the evil that Kylo Ren might have done will you forfeit your chance. Good luck, Ben.” Obi-Wan said

“I have always been with you, my grandson. If you need my strength during your trial? I will answer your call.” Anakin assured Ben

Then, Ben  fell into something like sleep.

***

He had a horrible dream, of waking up bloody and bruised on collapsing Exegol, limping or crawling out of the cave he was in, and then escaping in the still flyable remains of a crashed X-Wing

He woke up in a bacta tank, and panic seized him.

He started banging on the glass walls, screaming through the breather in his mouth.

The noise brought a Rodian in a white coat.

“Hey! Hey Dan, the big guy is awake! By the Force, he looks terrified.”

A guy his age with a moustache rushed into the room.

“Then let’s get him out. It’s OK, big fella. You’re safe. You’re in a Resistance hospital. There’s no more First Order. Nobody’s going to hurt you, here. Hurry up, Needo, help me, before he cracks the tank!”

The machine Ben was suspended from pulled him out, and he ripped all the wires off of his body, and crashed to the ground.

“No! No doctors! Get away from me!” he shouted.

Reduced to crawling away.

But there was nowhere to go.

“Its OK. There’s no torture droids here. You don’t have to get any injections. We're not going to bring you to the point of death, then put you in a bacta tank to fix you up, and then do it again.”

“You know about that?”

“The Empire did it to me the first time. I have a scar like the one on your other leg. But mine is only a few inches long. You must have really suffered.” The grey haired man said.

“I did. Where am I? Who are you? How much longer will this plexi-cast be on?”

The Rodian came with a long orange smock with the Resistance symbol on it, folded on a wheelchair.

“I’m Dan Antilles. I’m your doctor. You crash landed here, on Hoth. And you need another three weeks with that cast. Let me help you up. Now you might want to put this smock on, big fella. This is the size we usually use for Wookies.”

The Rodian helped Ben put the smock on.

It had long sleeves and it was fleecy and soft on the inside.

“I know you want crutches, but the break in your femur was bad. So, if you like being in the shape you’re in, and you want that leg to hold you up, later? Wheelchair. Nobody has to push you if you’d rather wheel yourself.”

Ben sat in the wheelchair, lifting his leg onto the platform for it.

“I can wheel myself.” He said.

“Good. I’ll show you around the place, and back to your bed.”

“Do you have a name, Big Guy?’

“Ben. Ben Skywalker.”

“Are you a Skywalker from Tattoine or a Skywalker from Arkanis?”

“Both. My grandfather was from Arkanis. His father died, and his mother became an indentured servant on Tattoine. We’re free, now, though.”

“Yeah, my family are from Corellia, but most of by father’s war buddies were from the Outer Rim. Tattoine, mostly. OK, Ben. It’s good to have you back. You scared us a little; we thought you might leave.”

“Me too.”

 ***

Snow.

Watching it snow.

Lying propped up on pillows, leaning against the wall, last cot on the ward.

A cot with a big “W” on it.

For Wookiee.

Techanically, Ben was a Wookiee, when Chewie became his godfather, he was adopted into Chewie’s clan.

Ben was thinking about Kashyyyk, actually, while watching it snow.

Thinking about how he might still be welcome, with Uncle Chewie.

Trying to get his spoon under the cast, to scratch his leg.

Watching it snow.

Blanket up to his chin, one knee up.

“...so, what happened was, there was like, a reason why Ben Solo killed Kylo Ren. More than just, you know, the war. Ben Solo and Kylo Ren, they were at the Jedi Temple together. They were friends. But they had a lightsaber fight over either the Force or a girl. I hear different things. And that's’ why Kylo Ren wore the mask because Ben Solo cut his nose off and scarred up his face...”

“Zak, can you stop talking about men? Why do you think I have my blanket pulled up?”

“You thinking about your nurse?”

“Can you stop talking to me? Forget it.”

“Sorry, Ben.”

“It’s not your fault, Zak. It’s this place.”

He looked out the window again.

Snow.

Snow.

Snow.

“I think about your nurse, too. She’s a big girl. She has to be six feet tall. And, like 200. But it’s in all the right places. And she’s a Twi’lek.” Zak said

“I’d like to jump into that girl and drown. Why isn’t she your nurse?” Ben asked

Zak shrugged.

Ben heaved himself off his cot and into his wheelchair.

“Well, I think I’ll go try to take a piss without pissing all over myself.”

“Good luck, man.”

***

The days bled into each other.

Ben finally looked inside the chest, under his bed, on the ward.

In the chest was his lost lightsaber, the blaster Uncle Lando had given him, his blaster belt, his lucky Sabacc dice, a couple of pair of coveralls, his boots, an X-Wing helmet, a money belt for under your clothes that had 500 credits in it, and a mess kit.

The X-Wing helmet had a number on it.

His Uncle’s.

“Humor you have. Need it, you will.” Ben muttered.

The plexi cast on his left leg came all the way up to his balls, and his leg always itched like it was on fire.

Meanwhile, no one asked him if he was related to  the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker.

When two weeks, and then two more passed and no celebrated persons came to claim him, people assumed that he was some distant relation.

They didn’t release him until after the cast came off, in another week.

Nobody had come for him, and he didn’t call for anyone, so he just left on his own, on a transport with hundreds of other displaced men and women with nowhere special to go.

***

The tiniest hint of a fly in the Force Ghosts’ ointment came around the time that Ben was leaving the Resistance Hospital.

General Leia-Organa Solo, also Senator Leia Organa-Solo, returned to her office on Coruscant as Senate staffers were packing up her things.

One boy almost dropped a picture of her, and Han, and Ben, and Leia caught it.

“Don’t look so frightened. I’m not a ghost.”

“But you’re dead, Senator?”

“I’m a Skywalker. We don’t just die, like other people. We have many deaths and many births, and live many lives inbetween? Less philosophically? I have too much to do to die just now. Maybe in another forty years, or so.”

The next day, after her first appearance in the Second Republic Senate, to announce that she was running for Prime Minister, Leia had an unscheduled visit in her office from Wedge Antilles.

“This had better be really important, Wedge.”

“I think it is. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I was talking to my son, last night. He saw your broadcast and it made him think of a patient of his. A man his own age that hasn’t been far from his mind. A big guy, about two meters, nearly six and a half feet tall. Long dark hair. Dark eyes. Had lots of battle scars. This kid landed a burning X-Wing on Hoth, came out of it with his flight suit in shreds, dragging a broken leg, raving about Exegol, killing them all, and finally being a free man. Spent three weeks in a Bacta tank, recovering from a whole slew of injuries, and another three weeks in a cast up to his nuts. The patient said his name was Ben Skywalker, that his father was a Corellian starpilot and his grandfather was a Skywalker from Arkanis who grew up on Tattoine. As soon as the cast came off, Ben Skywalker got on a transport with a bunch of other kids with nowhere to go and no one to see, and left the planet. And it wasn’t until Dan saw your broadcast that he made the connection, and called me about it. Does that sound like anybody you know, Leia?”

“It does. I’ve been sitting here all day, full of blind, stupid hope. Thinking that if I’m alive, then Ben might be, too. Waiting for that call.”

“Who the hell else would it be?”

“I don’t know, Wedge. But it sounds like he’s running.”

“You need help chasing him?”

“All I can get. We need to find this Ben Skywalker. But if he is my Ben? What the hell do we do, then? Poe Dameron and Rey spread it all over the Galaxy that Ben Solo fought and killed Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren, and then he died and became One With the Force. And the smart little bastard wore a mask, most of the time.”

“Let it go, Leia. Any way you slice the pie? Kylo Ren is dead. If Ben Solo isn’t? Give him a chance. He killed Snoke. And the Knights of Ren.  He saved Rey. He saved you. And he helped Rey kill Palpatine. I think he deserves it.”

“Well, Chewie will be happy. I’ll talk to him, first.”

***

As soon as the transport landed, Ben began his wandering.

At first he figured it as a kind of  penance, for his many crimes.

He stopped wearing shoes, or cutting his hair and beard, and all he wore was a black hooded robe, closed with a belt from which hung a metal bowl and cup, a holstered knife, and his lightsaber.

At first Ben just begged, and wandered, changing his robes for coveralls and working on freighters for his passage from planet to planet.

But as time went on, he slipped into a lonely madness.

He took to standing on streetcorners and preaching about the evils of the old world.

“Stop and look at me! I am the mistakes of the past! My mother’s brother tried to murder me, and I murdered my father in turn! With these hands! These hands! This creature you see before you was once a man! Envied by Men, desired by Women! Who desires this creature, now? Who envies this wretch, now? Who?”

By this time a small crowd would have gathered around the very tall, very gaunt man, with wild eyes and a booming deep voice inside a nest of black hair and black beard.

“It was not the Force that did this to me! No, it was the order than we tried, for centuries to put on it. Dividing it, and ourselves into Dark and Light. Jedi and Sith. Empire and Republic. First Order and Resistance. It was this blasphemy against the balance and unity of the Force that brought our Galaxy into three generations of interplanetary war! And this Second New Republic is built on the truth! The truth there is no Dark, or Light. Jedi, or Sith. Only the Force, United. As it lives in all of us, and everything! As we find the balance, within ourselves, in accordance with our form and our nature. But I know there are those that preach the old heresies. When you hear them, think upon me!”

That’s when he would unbuckle his belt and take off his robe, showing them all his scarred, gaunt, filthy body.

Ben had even made the scar of the wound that Rey healed in the ruins iof the Death Star appear in his flesh.

“Stop and look at me! I am the mistakes of the past! My mother’s brother tried to murder me, and I murdered my father in turn! With these hands! These hands! This creature you see before you was once a man! Envied by men, desired by Women! Who desires this creature, now? Who envies this wretch, now? Who? Look on me and know it is time for old things to go. You must let the past die! Kill it, if you have to! Look upon me, and remember my words.”

Sometimes they would throw money in his bowl, sometimes throw things at him.

He hoped that a crowd would martyr him, but no one ever took him seriously enough to kill him.

He slept in alleys and doorways, stowed away on ships, and felt less than human.

Ben’s will to live left him as his madness spiralled out of control. He hardly ate and hardly slept, and his starving body devoured fifty pounds of his flesh, leaving him wiry, rawboned and gaunt.

He hardly felt human, or even humanoid, anymore, because  he was hairy, and smelly, and filthy, and he scavenged through garbage to eat,  like some wild animal.

At the end of a year, he ended up on Tattoine, intending to make a grand end to it.

He would give his sermon, throw off his robes and slit his wrists and his throat with a dirty piece of glass from the street.

But another vagrant warned him that the city fathers of Anchorhead had recently hired a former First Order officer as their chief of police, and although the new Chief understood smugglers were the lifeblood of Anchorhead, he was cracking down on street crime, con men, muggers, preachers, pushers, unregistered whores, and so on.

Ben quietly wished his former comrade well, and gave up the ghost.

But life clung, annoyingly to his skeletal frame.

He lay in the same doorway for three days, and three nights, and on the third night he knew that he was near death.

“Ben.”

He saw  a bluish light in the cold, dark desert night, and rolled his eyes upward.

The face he looked into was very much like his own.

If not for the fair hair and light eyes, it might have been his face.

Ben knew his rescuer, immediately.

“Grandfather. Have you come to take me home?”

“No, Ben. I have come to comfort you, in your suffering. I understand suffering. I understand the peace that comes from enduring suffering, and triumphing over it. But I want you to live. You have suffered enough. I release you from the restraints that we have put on your bond with Rey Skywalker. Call for help. I will wait with you, until she comes. Rey will take you home.”

***

“Rey. Rey, I need you.”

Rey sat up in the dark, and knew this was no dream.

She saw and heard Ben; she saw him through their bond.

But what she saw and heard was horrible.

His face was drawn and filthy, and the hand that reached to her looked skeletal.

He was swathed in a filthy robe, lying in a dirty doorway, in a back street of Anchorhead.

“I see you, Ben. I hear you.”

“Help me, Rey. I want to come home.”

Rey jumped out of bed and threw on her clothes.

“I’m coming, Ben. Wait for me. Don’t leave me, again!”

*** 

Rey stopped her speeder by the dirty doorway and was surprised to see the tall, broad-shouldered hulking Force ghost of Anakin Skywalker.

Gently, he picked up his broken, emaciated grandson, and carried him to the speeder.

“Master Anakin!” Rey gasped.

She watched him wrap Ben in the blanket she had brought, and gently lay him in the back seat of the speeder

“Take my grandson home. And don’t let him out of your sight until he’s well, again.”

“But I don’t know anything about healing! I don’t know who to call! I don’t know what to do! Someone has to help us!”

“There’s an old man living in my friend Ben Kenobi’s old shack. He claims to be a Jedi Healer. I will go there, now, and send him along to the Skywalker Farm. I am sure that he will be able to help you.”

Anakin Skywalker walked off towards the moonlit desert, and dissappeared into a little whirly of wind-driven sand..

***

Rey sped home, in a hurry.

Threepio helped her to carry what was left of Ben Solo into the house.

“Shouldn’t Master Ben have a doctor?”

“No, Threepio! No doctor! No medical droid! No bacta tank! No needle!”

Ben was terrified, but it was the first time he had spoken.

Rey was glad that he was alive enough to speak

“Alright, Master Ben. No doctor. Master Rey, what about the man in the kitchen.”

“He’s not a doctor. Master Ben hates doctors. Don’t talk about doctors! Help me get Master Ben into the bathroom, and tell that man to start doing...whatever it is he’s going to do. Have Artoo heat up some batha broth for Master Ben. Then you and Artoo go back to the shed. It’s too much for you.”

Rey slammed the door on the dithering droid, and went through the bedroom and back into the bathroom.

Ben had managed  to get his robe off and get into the bathtub.

He was covered in bruises and scratches, and you could see his ribs and his hipbones.

What was visible of his face out of the rat’s nest of tangled hair and beard was suffused with all the misery the human race had ever endured.

Rey turned the water on.

“Let me die, Rey. Now that I’m home. I don’t want to live.”

“I want you to live, Ben. This is my miracle, not yours.”

“Grandfather wants me to live. Do you? Really?”

“Yes, Ben, I do! I love you!”

“Then maybe I will live a little longer.”

He lay quietly in the warm water as she scrubbed the dirt off of him, and didn’t protest even though she had to wash his hair and comb the tangles and rats out with oil  several times, and then wash it, again.

It was either that or shave his head.

One of the Skywalkers had left his straight razor there, and Rey had polished it and sharpened it; why she wasn’t sure, but now she carefully shaved the filthy, matted beard away from Ben's gaunt face.

“Don’t shave it all. Kylo Ren didn’t wear a beard.” Ben told her.

It was the only thing he said, but his sad eyes watched her movements.

She helped him get out of the tub, and dried him.

“Thank you.” Ben said.

Ben leaned heavily on her as they made there way into the bedroom; he was still much larger and heavier than her.

But Rey didn’t complain.

She propped him up with pillows, and fed him sips of milk and sips of broth.

“Glass.” He said.

She handed him the glass of milk, and he gulped it down.

“Don’t, Ben, you'll get sick!”

He reached for the bowl, and sniffed it, like a dog, then put it back down.

“No. Meat.”

“You’ll get sick!”

Ben slammed his fist angrily on the nightstand.

“I’M DYING! MEAT, GODDAMN IT, GIVE ME MEAT!”

Bellowing  like an angry Wookiee.

A Wookiee.

Chewbacca was Ben's godfather; he had been adopted into Chewie’s tribe, and had a Wookie name.

Kallaurra.

Angry Wild Warrior.

But she didn’t know where Chewie was and Han and Leia were dead.

“Alright, Ben. Your Uncle Chewie taught me how to make a Wookiee stew. I’ll fix you some meat.”

Rey went out into the kitchen.

She felt helpless and alone.

I don’t know him. I don’t know him, at all.

Rey closed her eyes.

And she called to Master Leia.

As usual, there was no response.

Then she called to Master Luke.

“I’m right here. I told Ben Kenobi, and Master Yoda. Make sure Ben is with Rey. Father agreed with me. They didn’t listen.”

Rey opened her eyes.

Master Luke was sitting at the table.

“No matter where I go? I always seem to end up, right back here. On Tattoine. Now I’m here in the same house.”

“You’re the JedI Healer? When did you come back?”

“Right after I thought I died on Ahch-To. I got the same treatment Ben did. It wasn’t my time. I wasn’t ready. Next thing I knew, I was alive and well, and back on Tattoine. In Ben Kenobi’s hut.”

“I wish I would have known you were so close by.”

“I wish I would have told you.”

“Master Luke, did you ever take care of someone in Ben’s condition?”

“I don’t know what Ben’s condition is.”

Rey explained.

“I have seen men as sick as Ben, and I’ve tried to heal them. Some get better, Rey, and some don’t. They have to want to live. But I’ll do everything I can for Ben. Before I founded the new Jedi Temple,  I studied Jedi healing. I wanted to save lives to atone for the hundreds of thousands I had taken. And I have taken care of Ben when he’s sick.  And I also know how to get him to take medicine. You make something he likes and put it in his food.”

“But we don’t have any medicine.”

“I brought some.”

Master Luke reached into his pocket and got a white cylinder, which he put in Rey’s hands.

She opened it.

It was full of capsules.

“What are they?”

“No. The green capsules are vitamin pills. The orange ones are bacta. Just pop them open and put them in the stew I’m going to show you how to make. It’s a Wookiee recipe that Ben likes. Chewie showed me how to make it.”

Master Luke made a stew with bantha broth, vegetables, a whole nerf tenderloin, and potatoes.

He showed her also how much of the pills to put in.

“Don’t let him gobble it. Feed him a spoonful or two, and wait a half hour, to see if it makes Ben sick. If not. Let him eat the whole bowl. Don’t give him any more tonight. If he’s not sick, tonight, he can have three of these big serving bowls, tomorrow. It’s not too much. Ben’s almost the size of a Wookie, so he eats like one. If his stomach is still alright, tomorrow, then he had have some bread, too. And don’t give him anything to drink but blue milk. If his stomach gets upset, crack one of these purple capsules into some blue milk, and get him to drink it. Make some more of the stew after this pot runs out. After a week, Ben should be able to eat normally. Don’t expect him to gain weight all at once. And don’t overfeed him. The bacta and vitamins should make him well in about a week. But it might take a couple of months before he gains his weight back.”

“REY! WHERE THE HELL IS MY FOOD! MEAT! DYING!” Ben roared.

“Is that a good sign?” Rey asked.

“I think so.  Don’t tell Ben I was here. We’re still not on speaking terms.  I’ll come back to check on him, another day. Oh, and one more thing. As soon as he feels better, he’s going to want to make up for the time you two were apart. That’s not going to happen for him, with his body in the state it’s in. Tell him to be patient. When he’s healed and gained some weight? I’m sure everything will straighten right out.”

“I wish Ben had a Jedi healer to stay with him, tonight.”

“He has one. You are a Jedi. And you have healed him, before. But be careful, Rey. Ben’s life force is at a low ebb, and he’s very sick. You can try to ease his pain, but don’t try to heal him, entirely. It would drain too much life out of you.”

Master Luke got up.

“This is the no fun part, Rey. Ben needs you, now.”

“I don’t mind at all, Master Luke. Ben is alive. I still feel better than I have for a long time. I have hope.”

“That’s good, Rey.”

Luke stood up, as if to go

“Uncle Luke? I know you’re there. I feel your presence.” Ben called out

They both froze.

“I’m sick, Uncle Luke. Are you a Force Ghost, or are you the Jedi Healer that Grandfather was going to get to come here and help me?”

“I’m the old hermit down the road, Ben. Do you want me to come to your room? I know we didn’t part on good terms. But Rey’s nervous about being alone with you, tonight.”

“Would you mind staying with me, Uncle Luke? Everybody else is dead.”

“I don’t mind at all, Ben. I’ll stay here as long as you want me to. I remember where my room is.”

 ***

As Master Luke had suspected, Ben wanted to gobble the food.

His instinct to live and his hunger had overwhelmed his will to destroy himself.

“No, Ben.” Master Luke said.

More patiently than Rey would have, as he moved the bowl away.

Ben tried to grab at it.

“No means no. Don’t get grabby with me.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“You can’t gobble the food up, Ben. You’ll be sick, and that might kill you!” Rey told Ben.

It was a very long half hour.

Ben kept trying to get the bowl, and Master Luke gave it to her and she had to move away from the bed.

He cried.

“Don’t cry, Ben. If you feel alright, you can have the whole bowl, soon. And another glass of blue milk.” Rey assured him.

“I’m hungry! I’m fucking hungry, and I’m  too weak to get out of bed and take it! Where’s my mother, Uncle Luke? Why won’t she talk to me?” he sobbed.

“Your mother is...always with you, Ben. And you’ll get better. Rey and  I will make sure.”

The half-hour passed and Luke gave Ben the whole bowl of food, and a glass of blue milk.

“Eat slowly, kid. You start gobbling, and I’ll take the bowl away.”

As he ate, slowly, for once, Ben told them what he had done for the past year.

“Why?” Rey asked.

“Rey! Don’t ask why. Ben is suffering. He doesn’t need a reason.” Luke told her.

“I have one. I was asleep in a bunkhouse, with a bunch of other men on this freighter. And I realized that killing Snoke, and his troopers, and all his toadying fucking followers I killed on my way to slaughter the Emperor didn’t make up for killing my father. Sure, Snoke influenced me. Told me to do it. But I had a choice. And I chose to kill him. I killed my father. Whenever anyone would say that to me, that killed my father? I would just think, no, Snoke made me do it. But I did it. I did. I killed my father. I loved him more than anybody in the world, even though he was kind of a shitty father, and sometimes I hated him for it. And I killed him. In such a way that he doesn’t even have a grave. When I realized all of that? It broke my mind.”

Ben snapped the wooden spoon in half.

“Just like that.”

He handed Rey the bowl and the empty glass.

Luke took the spoon, and put both halves in his hand, and closed his palm.

When he opened it, the spoon wasn’t broken.

“Your mind will heal, Ben. Just like this And before this year is out? You will see Han and Leia again. I don’t know how. But I know you will.”

“I did see Dad. He forgave me. I just can’t forgive me.”

“Ben, you saved me. You saved the Galaxy. Without you I could never have defeated the Emperor. You’re a hero. Han is proud of you. So is Master Leia. Stop torturing yourself.” Rey begged.

“Ben, you said it was time to let old things go.You’re not taking your own advice.  This is how the Sith broke you. You don’t have to break yourself. You’re free. You won.” Luke told him.

“I’m tired. I think I need to go to sleep. I had better try to get to the bathroom, first. Rey already has to take care of me like I’m a baby. I don’t want to piss the bed like one.”

Ben managed to totter into the bathroom.

Rey wanted to hover over him, but she knew he was humiliated that she was seeing him like this, at all.

She waited.

He made his way slowly back to the bed and lay down.

“I’m going to go, now Ben.To my old room.  I’ll be back when you wake up  to see how you are.” Luke told him.

He put his hand on Ben’s forehead.

“Sleep, now. And have good dreams.”

Ben fell asleep.

Rey walked back to the door with her Master.

“Will he die in his sleep, Master Luke?”

“No. Sleep will heal him. We’ll let him sleep as long as he wants to. I think I’ll go say hello to my droids. Let them know that they’ll be coming with me, when I go home. I could use the company. And you have Ben, now.”

“They’re your droids, Master Luke.”

Master Luke opened the door and walked out into the courtyard, and beyond.

She watched him, retreating into the setting suns, heading for the old shed.

He wanted to help Ben, but also?

He was glad to be home, in spite of himself.

Rey understood.

***

She went back to the bedroom.

Rey got undressed and got into bed with Ben.

She pulled up all the covers, so he would be warm.

He woke up, for a moment.

“I haven’t slept in a bed since I left that freighter. And I haven’t slept in my bed, here, for what seems like an age. I think I might sleep for a long time.”

“As long as you need to, Ben. I’ll be here.”

Rey stayed awake until he was asleep, and for a hour afterward, making sure he was just asleep.

But then she fell asleep, too.

 ***

Ben slept all through the way through another day, until the morning after that day.

Rey kept checking on him, and so did Master Luke,  but he moved around in his sleep, and he snored, and once he got up and drank some water, so she knew he was just sleeping.

That morning he walked stiffly into the kitchen, dressed in a baggy cream tunic and brown trousers.

He had a cloth belt wrapped many times around the waist so that the clothes, although they were the right lengths for him, didn’t fall off him.

“Ben, those are my father’s clothes.”

“I know. They were still here, when I came here. I wear them, all the time. The desert preserves things.”

He had bathed, and dressed but he hadn’t shaved.

“I’m growing a goatee. To distinguish Ben Solo from Kylo Ren.”

“Everyone knows that Ben Solo killed Kylo Ren. Nobody’s going to come after you, Ben. You’re a free man. You earned it.” Master Luke told him.

There was a weird sense of calm, and dignity about Ben that she’d never seen in him, before.

He thanked her politely when she gave him the serving bowl of stew with the serving spoon.

Rey had gone out and bought the most fine, expensive loaf of rich, black, seeded bread that she could find, and put it on the table.

Ben snatched up the heel, and turned it over in his hands, and then he put it under his nose and sniffed it.

“I don’t remember the last time I had bread that wasn’t stale. Or mouldy.”

He ate the slice of bread, slowly.

Rey wanted to cry.

There were tears in Master Luke’s eyes.

But she didn’t want Ben to become hysterical.

So she carried on eating her cereal and blue milk.

“Have another piece. With your stew.” She encouraged him.

“Chewie used to make this for me. When I was a kid, and I’d get sick. It’s a Wookie recipe.”

“I know. He taught me how to make it.” Master Luke told Ben.

After he ate, Ben got up and walked out onto the hot sand, barefoot.

Rey supposed he was used to it, by now.

But he came back.

“I have to get used to boots again. I still have mine.”

 ***

Ben didn’t like to stay inside, too long.

He got restless.

And when he slept at night, it was like he was dead.

After a week, Luke was right, he was much better and he had gained some weight.

Before Master Luke went home, he brought Obi-Wan, to talk to Ben while Luke was giving him a final once-over.

Their Master returned and brought Obi-Wan with him.

He spoke with Ben while Luke was examining him.

“Were you seeking a vision, Ben? Or were you trying to be a vision?” Obi-Wan asked.

“I was trying to be a vision. I wanted to spread the word about the New Path. And the Force United. And to warn people not to go back to the old ways. I wanted to use my body to show them. So I made all the old wounds and scars reappear.”

“You’re on the right path, Ben. But you must not use suffering to make your point. Yours or that of others.” Obi-Wan told him.

Ben nodded.

Master Luke pronounced him much better.

He took Artoo and Threepio and went home.

After that, Rey and Ben were on their own.

Ben quickly started getting his body to do what he wanted, again.

He took long walks in the desert.

After two weeks, he was running, in nothing but a pair of shorts, running over the burning sand, barefoot and mostly naked.

But he stopped being antsy when he was in the house.

***

Rey had to go buy some food, and Ben wanted to drive her speeder to Anchorhead.

When they got to the store where she bought the bread, and the old baker saw Ben, he came out from behind the counter.

“I can’t believe it! Young man, what’s your name”

“Ben Skywalker.”

“Was your grandaddy Anakin Skywalker? Son of Shmi Skywalker and Kylo Skywalker, who died a warrior on Arkanis, and that started all the trouble his family got into?”

“That’s me.”

“I knew your granddaddy, then. We were both slaves, here. The Jedi took him away to become one of them. But he wanted to be a pilot. Me, I got sold to a baker. Now I’m a free man and this is my shop. But Ani used to come here to visit his mother. You look so much like him. Is he still living?”

“No. But he became a pilot. And a Jedi. He died a Jedi, at the end of Clone Wars and became one with the Force.”

“I suppose that’s what he wanted. But it still makes me glad I became a baker. Did you go to that Jedi Temple? Out on Yavin-4?”

“I did. But it wasn’t for me. Too may rules. So I left, and stuck with what I love. The stars.”

“So, you’re a starpilot too? Good for you, son. Ani would have liked that.”

“I’m sure he does.”

***

Time passed them by.

Ben continued to fight his way back from the brink of death.

He fought so hard, and regained his physique and his strength so quickly that Rey began to suspect he was healing himself, using the Force

Ben had always been strong in the Force, but he had become both more accomplished and more powerful than before. There was a new light in Ben's dark, ancient eyes, and a new kind of power animated him.

The Force was with Ben, but in a form Rey had never encountered.

But, neither she nor Ben were thinking on that, or the New Path of the Force United that they were, arguably supposed to be making a way for.

No, the weightiest problem at the Skywalker farm was much less cosmic.

Most people did not know that Rey and Kylo Ren had been star-crossed lovers.

And no one knew that it wasn’t just one last kiss that Ben Solo bestowed upon Rey before he died.

That was the elephant in the bedroom.

“Rey?’

She was asleep.

“What, Ben? Have you been awake all night?”

“I can’t sleep. What if I killed it?”

“Killed what?”

“My cock.”

“I’m sure you’d be fine with another woman.”

Ben hadn’t heard that.

“How could I just let it go, like that? Fuck, I haven’t even jerked off for six months! I don’t even remember the last time I got hard. I killed it. I lost my mind, destroyed my body, and killed my cock. And I’m ugly again, and I disgust you.”

“Ben, you are not ugly. You have never been ugly. That’s all in your mind. Go to sleep.”

“Then why are you so cold, all the sudden?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you. You were like a human skeleton.”

“I’m fine, now.”

“Go to sleep, Ben.”

Ben swore.

He got out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

He jerked the bathroom door open, angrily so that the knob smacked into the hole it had already made in the wall. 

“Fuck it! I'm going to go into the bathroom and try to get it up for somebody I know who cares about how upset I am, and wants to try to make me a man, again! Me!”

But then?

He had a better idea.

And he got back into bed with Rey.

“Wait! I know what this is about. You think the last time we fucked, it killed me. That you killed me. Now, you're afraid if you touch me again, I’ll just die. Right?”

“Ben, I…you did die.”

“I was going to die anyway. I figured I might as well die hard.”

Rey couldn’t help laughing.

A little.

“Besides, how many times have you tried to kill me? As many times as I told you I was going to fuck you whether you liked it, or not. Funny how it always seems to turn me on when you try to kill me. And when I act like I’m going to fuck you whether you like it or not? You always like it. The first fight we ever had? I wish I knew that you almost cutting my face off with a lightsaber was foreplay. If I had? Instead of offering to show you the ways of the force, I would have told you that if you came with me, I was going to tie you to a table, again, and slide my tongue up your sweet Rebel cunt.”

In several years of very dirty talk, and horrible arguments and insults, that was both the dirtiest and the most horribly insulting thing Ben ever said to her.

She slapped him in the face, and he laughed.

“Don’t you dare, Ben Solo!”

“What? Don’t try that high and mighty shit on me. I’m the guy who fucks you. I know what you like. And you know, you never asked me what truths I brought back from the other side.”

He pulled the covers off the bed, and grabbed Rey by the ankles and pushed her legs open.

“Never gave a minute's thought to the Force United. Or the new path. But I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. I’m not gonna ask you if you want me to teach it to you. Because I know what you want from me.”

Ben put Rey’s legs around his shoulders.

“I’m just going to slide my tongue up your sweet Rebel cunt. I know you like that.”

If Ben's intent was to inflame them both?

It worked.

He rose to the occasion, and Rey felt anything but cold.

She was still in the throes of the orgasm he gave her as he was sitting up at the bottom of the bed, saying:

“Hard as beaker fucking steel. It worked!”

Yes.

It had.

“Ben, you horrible bastard, I’ve wanted you so much for so long!” she told him.

“Yeah. I know.” he told her.

***

All around the Skywalker farm you could hear the sound of a woman, screaming

And a man’s savage, guttural voice.

“Do you feel it now? Do you feel the raw power of the Dark Side?”

The woman’s screams grew louder and the man uttered a deep, dark, Satanic laugh.

He pinned her to the bed with his big, powerful body, and she locked her arms and legs around him screaming every time he thrust into her.

Faster.

Deeper.

Harder.

“Can you feel my power? The power of the Force United? Is this the way you want to get fucked, little scavenger? Fast and dirty and hard?”

More screams ripped from the woman’s throat.

“Yes! Yes! I feel your power. Your power! More!” the woman sobbed.

“My power? Who’s power? Say it! Fucking say it!” the man ordered, snarling through gritted teeth.

“Ben Solo! Oh, gods, gods, Ben fucking Solo!”

The woman screamed for joy, the man gave voice to another guttural laugh, and it resolved into a roar like the sound an angry Wookie makes before he tears your arms out and beats you to death with them.

Then, it was quiet, again.

***

Rather prudishly, Rey pulled the covers up to her neck.

In contrast, Ben lay on top of them, naked, his arms behind his head, his eyes closed, a happy,  untroubled smile on his face.

“That was worth fucking waiting. You are one hot little piece of ass, Little Rebel Girl. You had better come out from under those covers. I’m not done with you.”

“Can’t I go back to sleep, now?”

“Why?’

“Ben, you don’t understand. You were born without shame. I’m embarrassed. People don’t…I…I mean, I enjoy making love as much as, well, any woman, but…you have no idea what I am on about, do you?”

He turned on the light.

“Rey, I understand your ‘Who? Poor little me?’ act is what’s kept you alive through all these years, and it keeps people out of your hair. But don’t play it on me. I know better. I’m also the guy who fights with you. At your side and as your opponent, remember? So you can mince around Tattoine, acting like you are the little scavenger, a little war widow, just getting by, spending her life in elegiac genteel exile. Living with the memory of her lost love. But we both know it’s bantha shit.”

“Oh, really? And how would you know, Ben?”

“Rey, you slapped my face in a room full of smoking corpses and pools of blood and told me to quit fucking talking and kiss you. Then you wanted me to fuck you, on Snoke’s throne. You hardly gave me time to get rid of the mess and drape the curtains over the throne!  I mean, there I was, on my knees, with one foot resting on a dead man, and you’re pulling my hair and calling me a Sith bastard and telling me you’re going to come in my mouth, so I had better lick it up. Then, when I got up? You would have thought I poured honey all over my cock the way you went after it. You broke the zipper on my pants, getting it out. I had to hold your nose so you’d open your mouth so I could pull my cock out, because I thought if I came in your mouth before I fucked you, you’d cut me in half. I mean, I could hardly believe my luck.  I felt like the luckiest man in the Galaxy. Who knew you were the kind of girl who loved to give head and liked it doggie style on the throne of the Supreme Leader? I thought I might have been in love with you before that day. After? I was done. You had me. For the first time in my life, I was crazy in love.”

Rey bit her lip, to keep in a laugh, a scream of outrage, or both.

“I was carried away in the moment.” she sniffed

“This went on for longer than a moment. Hell, the first time I told you I could take what I wanted, you looked at me like, oh, Daddy, let’s fight first, and I might kill you later, but take me now, I’m all yours.”

“So what if I was immediately attracted to you? A lot of women have been!”

“Not when they were strapped to a table, killer. Rey, I was your enemy. I was the bad guy you were fighting against. I gave the orders that almost wiped out the whole Rebel fleet! And even after that, you came here to meet me every chance you got! And we never talked, here.  We talked when we were light-years away from each other. When we were together all we did was fuck. I was the Supreme Leader, I could do what I wanted. Go where I wanted. Nobody questioned me. I killed three generals who asked me what my business was with the Rebel girl. Those bloodless Imperial fucks stopped asking me stupid questions about my Little Rebel Girl after that. You were training to be a Jedi. You were the big hero of the Resistance. And you risked all that to come to Tattoine and fuck me out in the desert. When you had two guys, right there, who would have dragged their balls over hot coals just to get a shot at you. How long did the moment last? Two or three years? That’s a long karking moment, isn’t it?”

“It’s because I love you, Ben.”

“I love you too, Rey. But you are not a poor, meek, winsome little scavenger. You are a hot-blooded Force warrior. A two-tone, blood-glutted, cock-hungry hellcat who likes fast ships, bad men, high adventure, a damn good fight, and a real hot fuck. Be who you are, Rebel Girl. Some other guys might get turned off by that, but I’m Kylo Ren, remember? I love it when you’re bad. Hell, I killed myself at Exegol, satisfying our mutual battle lust. But I figured, what a way to go!”

“That’s why I was never going to touch another man, ever again. I killed you, Ben.”

“I came, and then I went.”

Ben laughed.

“It’s not funny! You gave me life and I took it back from you!”

“You didn’t kill me, Rey. Sheev Palpatine killed me. I knew I was going to die in that cave. I knew it before I brought you back. But I thought, hell, if I have to die, I might as well do it after a great victory in battle and a great fuck with the Valkryie I love. My Little Rebel Girl. And it’s not going to happen again, because I am now the most powerful Force sensitive being in the galaxy. Well, next to you. So do me a favor, and drop the act. It turns me off, and you’re insulting yourself.”

“Ben Solo, you are such a bad man!”

“Through and through. Did you think Kylo was the bad guy and Ben was the good guy? The best you can say about me is that I’m the good bad guy. Rey, my father was a ruthless pirate.  My grandfather was Darth Vader. I’m bad right down to my bones.”

“You wont tell anyone else about me, will you, Ben?”

“They already know. They’re just too terrified to argue with you. Damn, I have to piss.”

He got up and went to the bathroom.

Rey shifted around a little.

Thinking about what he had said.

Ben came back to bed.

He got under the covers, kissed her, and rolled over on his back and shut out the light.

Rey was a little disappointed, until Ben hauled her on top of him.

“OK, Rebel Girl! Your turn to be on top!”

***

The one thing that people all the way to Anchorhead would tell you about Ben Skywalker was that he had to be related to Ani Skywalker, because he looked just like him.

His hair and beard were black, and hsi etse were dark, but other than that, he was Ani all over again.

He wore the same kind of desert pilot’s clothes; in fact, Ben and his wife were poor; he might have been wearing Anakin’s clothes that he found at the old Skywalker moisture farm.

Young Skywalker and his wife, who was a nameless scavenger from Jakku before he gave her his had come right from the wars.

Ben had lived out on the old place for years, but during the wars, he was always coming and going. 

When he came to the cantina in the village without his wife?

Once he had a few pitchers of beer, he'd show you all his scars.

Take his pants down and everything, and the foolish boy didn’t wear underwear.

He had moods, but those scars meant he came by those moods, honestly.

He said he was a pilot, but all he seemed to be doing was getting his old wreck of a ship fixed up.

You might see him, running through the desert, barefoot, bareheaded, and slathered with sun protection, wearing only a pair of regulation Imperial exercise undershorts.

When he got to the village, he’d stop by the cantina for lunch.

“Training. I eat too much, and I drink too much, so I have to train like a goddamn Sith just to keep from turning into a big day tub of guts. That, and the Little Rebel Girl I married? She’s horny as an Askajian whore with a Twi'lek mother. She was a real killer, in the wars. If I ever quit banging her two, three times a day? She’d burn down the planet. But she keeps me in shape. Best exercise there is. Doing push-ups with girls. Before I met Rey? Hell, I had two or three women a week, just to keep me happy. Hell of a woman, my Little Rebel Girl. Better run home before she thinks I’ve got a girl on the side.”

Then he’d drink another pitcher of blue milk, finish his four sandwiches, and run home.

But what Ben was most famous for in the village was fighting a full grown Wookiee, and winning.

He made a lot of money doing it, too.

Ben Skywalker was the local character before the war was over, but taht wa sto be expected.

He was a Skywalker, after all; they were all characters.

In short?

Nobody suspected a damn thing.

***

After having lived by her wits from the time she was 14, and then becoming a Jedi, a warrior and the savior of the Galaxy?

The last thing Rey thought would make her happy was being a wife and keeping a house.

But somehow, just now?

It did.

At first Ben's moods were a problem, but when she discovered there were four of them, it became manageable.

Brooding Mystic, Wild Man, Happy-Go-Lucky Pirate, and Sexual Death Star.

Sometimes all in the same day.

And she had to admit, the fact that Sexual Death Star was a regular daily mood made it easier.

Ben naturally had a lot of stamina, and he was well endowed, but Rey always thought he had made sure to become a good lover to make it up to a woman for his moodiness.

But Ben knew himself, he had stocked his home with all wooden plates, bowls, and cups, and a stoneware pitcher that she he said he had thrown at a stone wall before buying.

So he got mad, sometimes and threw things and yelled?

It didn’t bother her.

Ben was always hungry, so he was always cooking, and there was always enough to eat.

They stayed in bed for days, sometimes, making love, and being goofy and just being together.

And she had not just a room, but a whole farm.

She and Ben had cleaned it up, and fixed everything, and even the old rusting farm machinery looked like art.

Ben worked on the Falcon, his ship now and there was a lot of work to do, because Rey had let it sit for a year.

Ben talked about getting in touch with “Uncle Chewie” he was thinking about getting back to work, with Rey as his scavenger.

He had a scheme in his heart, and that was a good sign.

But neither of them were ready to leave.

They went to the market in the old speeder, and brought fresh bread, and sometimes, when the moon was bright they had lightsaber duels out in the desert, and then they’d make love like lions, under the stars.

The stars that still belonged to them.

It was a beautiful little life, with just the two of them, but one day, the west wind from out behind Tattoine’s twin suns blew Chewbacca in to Mos Eisley, and there was a radio message from him.

He was coming out to the Skywalker Farm, and when he got there, they should be on the Falcon and ready to go.

Rey knew, then that everything was about to change.