#I mean most padawans didn’t have that cut I am ONLY referring to him when I say I like it

[padawansuggest]

While I’m at it, since y’all seem to be forcing your ideas on me and I think that’s nasty, let me tell you MY (as in, mine, not necessarily yours) ideas on the Padawan cut with Obi-Wan: I see Obi-Wan’s little smirk in TPM and I’m like ‘yeah, that boy goes over his master’s knee nearly daily’ and I stick by that assessment. He’s a naughty boy. He’s mischievous. He’s a cat who pushes your cup off the table when you don’t pay enough attention to him. He has a constantly sore bottom from punishment from Antics™️. He’s just a Little Guy. He ate too many candies and has a tummy ache. He’s got an oral fixation and keeps breaking pens. He’s a baby boy. A sugar baby. He doesn’t know the value of a credit he just hands the bill to someone richer and trembles his lip when he doesn’t get his way. He’s got silly syndrome!!!

Where as I see the Jesus cut (that shit ain’t a mullet you don’t KNOW what a mullet is he just hasn’t had a haircut in a while) and I’m like ‘ew. Now I know why they crucified the original.’ And that’s lol.

[labyrinth-runner]

Having a Ball

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

Word Count: ~3k

Warnings: None

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Master Kenobi?” you called out. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enlightening, indeed.

[dindooku]

Now you’d had your fair share of tense meetings and interrogations before, but this one definitely takes the cake.

rating: E (swearing)

word count: 5,236

You stood in the middle of a large, circular room, surrounded by beings of similar attire to Kenobi. Some looked to be human, whilst some most definitely did not. Kenobi had given you a brief rundown of some of the council members on your way over, but the only two names you could remember were Windu and Yoda. He’d also advised you to address all as master, and that Yoda was referred to as the grandmaster, although he wasn’t too strict on formalities — which relieved you…a bit.

Before you had the chance to say anything, Obi-Wan introduced you.

“Council Members, this is Amy. She is a Commanding Officer for the 118th SAS forces from a planet named Earth. Unfortunately, we have never heard of the planet Earth, and Amy has found herself in an unfortunate circumstance. Amy, please can you explain to the Council Members how you arrived at Coruscant?”

Kenobi was being incredibly punctual towards the council members, and you got the hint. So, you tried your best to return the formalities in your response, using your Officer tone should do the trick.

“Council Members. Unfortunately, I would not call my presence to Coruscant expected, as to which you are most probably aware. On my planet, Earth, I am a commanding officer in our Special Services, who operates specialist operations and undertakes highly strenuous, dangerous, and tensile missions, including counter-terrorism, sieges, reconnaissance, and more. My most recent mission, however, is the cause for my attendance on Coruscant today.”

“My mission was to lead a command group of 6 into a classified area of uncharted forestry within the Amazon Rainforest. Upon entering the target co-ordinates close proximity, we happened upon an ancient temple, of sorts — which was decorated in the same symbols which line the pillars of this temple. Upon breaching the ancient temple, it became apparent that it was abandoned, or had not been interfered with for centuries. Upon reaching the center of the temple, I made my way through and into the middle of the room, in which I found myself blocked by an invisible force…a wall of sorts — it was nothing I had ever encountered before. I made the fatal mistake of touching this…wall, and if I remember correctly, it… it electrocuted me. It was odd… the whole room was static beforehand, and there was a significant shift in the temperature too — but what was even more abnormal was the fact that I was the only one that felt it. Anyway, after touching the…wall, I found myself waking up on the floor of one of the streets here, on Coruscant, and the rest is history.”

After finishing your little speech you took a deep breath in, and out. You needed to relax, your nerves were getting the best of you. You chanced a look over to Obi-Wan, who gave you a comforting look and a small, friendly smile.

“Unusual, this is. Heard of, it is not…” the little green frog thing spoke, and you quickly recognized this to be Grand Master Yoda.

“Yes, I agree. Say, you said you’re from a planet called, Earth?” Another Master asked.

“Ugh, yes, Master…” you stutter, realizing you didn’t know his name.

“Master Windu, but you can call me Mace,” Windu replied. He was just as stoic as Obi-Wan, however, his presence seemed to be darker, more stern, less patient — not necessarily a bad thing, but you knew you couldn’t give this guy shit, you had to be straight with him.

“Mace, um, yes, my planet is called Earth, from the Milky Way Galaxy,” you re-iterate.

“And you say you…you touched this invisible wall? And it electrocuted you?” He asked, leaning forward slightly on his chair, now resting his chin on his hand which was situated on one of the armrests.

“Yes, Sir, it… I could see my reflection, even though there was no mirror or ‘wall’, I can’t really describe it, it’s nothing I have ever experienced,” you mutter the last part of the sentence, you’re still just as puzzled by the strange events as you were as they happened.

“Interesting, this is,” Yoda chimes in again, his big ears drooping slightly as he rubbed his chin in thought. You glance back to Obi-Wan, who again meets your gaze with his, this time however he seems more concerned, his face wasn’t graced with his smile, and instead, it spoke of uncertainty. This certainly didn’t make you feel any better.

“And, you say that you felt a change in the feeling of the place?” Mace pressed.

“Yes, Mace, it…when we first entered the temple. The first thing I noticed was the temperature change, it felt hot, stifling even. But the biggest shift was odd, there was electromagnetic interference, my intercom stopped working, making a static sound from my mic piece. It also seemed to have an effect on my thought processes…everything became clouded almost like I was in a haze. Then, once I entered the central room, the temperature shifted to ice-cold, and the static grew even louder, to the point that when I was close to touching the wall, I couldn’t hear my men shouting at me. They…they were…” you couldn’t finish your sentence, the look of pure fear in their eyes had ripped you open. Now that you look back at the memory, you can feel the brutality of what has transpired in the last 24 hours. Their screams were hoarse, terrified. You’d never heard them like that, and the pure horror on their face, as if you’d just disappeared, it terrified you. Sensing your distress, Obi-Wan interjects.

“I think it’s wise we come up with a contingency plan, Masters,” he suggests. You hear his words but you’re still in a haze, the gravity of the situation was pressing down on you with an unbelievable weight.

“Hmm, stay with you, she must. Protect her, you will. Trained, are you, in combat?” Yoda asks.

“Uh, yes, Master Yoda. I have over 10 years of SAS operations experience. I’m specially trained in hand-to-hand combat and tactical assault.” You confirm. You were proud of your experience within the Army, but not necessarily proud of all the things you’d done…some haunted you, and those were secrets, admissions you were not yet ready to face.

“Great, this is. Accompany Master Kenobi on missions, you will help each other, you must.”

A wave of comfort and relief rolled over you. You’re glad that you know that you won’t be separated from the one person you trust on this god forsaken planet. If it means being escorted everywhere, you’d rather that than be left on the street, trying to find your way back across the Galaxy, home… if that was even an option anymore. You turned to Kenobi, who once again greeted you with a smile, this one wider than the others. It was infectious, and before you could control yourself, you were smiling giddily back at him. Jesus, what was this guy doing to you?!

“Master Yoda, may I ask where Amy will be staying? Surely there is a spare block or room she can—,”

“Padawan room, do you not have, Kenobi?” Yoda asked, interrupting Obi-Wan.

“Y-yes, Master Yoda?”

“Then stay there, she will. A close eye must be kept on young Amy, dangerous times this is, odd circumstances we find ourselves in. Time for doubt, there is not.” Yoda sternly replies. He really is one grumpy frog.

“Yes, Master,” Kenobi replies, keeping himself civilized despite his clear questioning of the living arrangement.

And with that, the council meeting was adjourned. Masters instantly began to filter out, obviously having places to be. You waited to be dismissed, as was habit, and after waiting you found yourself drifting into a distant trance of concentration — reliving the haunted events of your last mission.

Again, cutting you from your thoughts, Obi-Wan places a hand on your shoulder. His touch makes you jump, and you instantly crane your neck up to his, your eyes searching his for a hint of emotion other than pain and fear. And with a little quirk of his lips, he brings you out of your stupor, returning the feeling of giddy happiness you had felt only minutes ago. You relished in his ability to read you like a book and pull you out of your own mind, bringing you to the present moment, layering positive, good emotions over your soul. He was helping you in more ways than you could imagine, and you were helping him in more ways than he could, too.

“Come, let’s go get some food. I know a place,” he smirked, and you couldn’t resist the giggle which tickled your throat, so you caved, relishing in the moment. You followed him out towards the exit of the temple.

_____

Words simply could not describe what you were feeling right now. Maybe going to Dex’s on your first day was a step too far.

The complete multitude of emotions you were feeling was unfathomable. You’d compiled a mental list of things you’d never thought you would ever see in your lifetime:

* Flying cars: check

* Aliens: check

* Floating buildings: check

* Actual motherfucking wizards: check

These were just a few, and unsurprisingly it was the last one that caught you off guard.

“So I'm going to start calling you Gandalf now… or Potter…actually, space Jesus suits you better,” you chuckle from the diner seat of Dex’s restaurant. Obi-Wan had insisted that this was the best diner in town, and it was odd really, giving off a homely vibe - American diner aesthetic. This, you could get behind.

“Gandalf, Potter, Spa—Space Jesus? Who in Maker's name is Jesus?” Obi-Wan laughs heartily, these names really were something — he was truly awestruck in your imagination, the depths of your mind, and its ability to pull off wild stunts and stories like this.

“Well, Jesus is some guy from Earth, he’s from a Religion called Christianity. He’s the son of God, who some believe created all things. Kinda crazy if you ask me but each to their own, I don’t blame them. Potter is a wizard, he’s a kid’s book character who is basically going through what I am right now. Gets sucked into a world of magic and has to find his way through it, learning along the way. But Gandalf, he’s the real legend—,”

“Legend? Now, tell me about this Gandalf guy,” Kenobi chimes, leaning forwards in his seat, placing his head further over the table. He was completely and utterly enthralled by your descriptions.

“Well, see, Gandalf is known as Gandalf the Grey. He was a fine man, who was quick to anger, but just as quick to laugh. He had incredible wisdom, something he earned over his time in middle earth along Valinor. He was a mighty warrior, but also a gentle creature, who cared for all creatures of good-will and took pity upon those who were weak,” you scrambled. Finally being able to express your inner nerdy bookworm was therapeutic, especially when the one listening was as invested as dear Obi-Wan.

“Go on, don’t stop!” He nearly shouts, leaning closer in, his smile pulling an infectious grin from ear to ear like the Cheshire Cat.

“Well, Gandalf had immense power, but he would only use it to protect the innocent and good-willed. He fought for himself and himself alone, he was a server of Justice and Morality, no matter the consequences. Gandalf was a wise, wise man — funnily similar to Dumbledore, in fact,—”

“Who is the God’s name is Dumbledore?!” Obi-Wan laughed, completely dumbfounded that there was, even more, to go by. He loved his life on Coruscant and wouldn’t change it for anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t envy your experiences or knowledge of said wisdom-full wizards.

“Don’t even get me started on Dumbledore!” You laughed, leaning even further into the table. Never in your life had you gotten along with someone so well. It was weird, it almost felt like you’d known each other forever, and where just catching up after a long vacation. You were instantly best friends, and you certainly wouldn’t complain about being best friends with a man like Obi-Wan. The higher powers were certainly shining down on this boy when he was brought into the Galaxy. Something just clicked between you both, and you couldn’t feel more alive if you tried.

But, before you could give your hour-long prepped speech on why Dumbledore was the best wizard of them all, a robot had rolled over to arrive with your meal.

“Here’ya’are Darlin, ya new around here, aren’t ya?” The machine asked.

“Ugh, yeah, yeah I am, how could you tell?” You asked, slightly uneasy by the clear Artificial Intelligence of the robot.

“Honey, I would have remembered that pretty face of yours if I’d seen it before, sweetheart. Ya stunnin”,” she exclaimed. You instantly blush at the compliment. Even though she was just a machine, you felt like you were talking to a living being, and you didn’t mind that if all droids were this nice. You chance a look at Obi-Wan, only to see him nervously tugging with a loose chord at the end of his sleeve, although he couldn’t hide the smug blush that was plaguing his cheeks, bless.

“Thank you for your compliments... and the food looks delicious, thank you!” You chime back, eyes now glued to the incredibly crunchy-looking fries in front of you.

“Corellian taters’ are the best darlin’, enjoy!” She jingles before scooting off to serve the next customer.

You both quickly delve into your meals. You hadn’t realized just how hungry you were, and you couldn’t remember the last time you had any food of some sort of sustenance. You lived of ration packs in the Army, and a specially cooked hot meal was like Christmas for you. But, curiosity still has you in a bitter grip, so you pause for a moment and peer up to Obi-Wan.

“What is a Jedi?” You ask, now completely and utterly interested in understanding who exactly he is.

Obi-Wan stops mid-mouthful, slowly putting the fry he was about to devour back into the basket. He clears his throat and straightens up a little as if he’s about to give some sort of memorized speech.

“Well, my dear, Jedi are warriors of the Light, we are a force of good upon the land we live in. We are protectors who are united in our ability to utilize the Force, and maintain inner tranquility through seeking balance, avoiding emotions of anger and hatred, as those emotions lead to the Dark Side—,”

Whoa, whoa, hold your horses, Hercules. The Force? Light side, Dark side… elaborate,” you interject. This was all a bit crazy.

“Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi their power. It’s an energy field created by all living things, it surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.” He exclaims. The worlds roll like honey off of his tongue, and you can tell you’re already addicted to his voice.

“…continue”

“Well, the Light Side of the force is the path that Jedi choose to walk, making ourselves vessels to the Force. The Dark Side is quite the opposite. Those that choose the path of the Dark side are considered Sith, and their intentions are solely individual, profitable.” He finishes. You can feel his emotion rolling off him in swathes. As soon as he mentioned Sith, his emotions dropped, the smile that once graced his handsome face is all but banished, instead, a hurt frown cripples his emotions. Trying to pull him out of his stupor, you blurt out the first question that comes to mind.

“So what powers do you have?” You ask, blunt as a knife.

“Well, for starters, I can do this,” he chuckles, and without moving a muscle a single fry starts to hover in the air right in front of your face.

“Shut the fuck up,” you whisper in astonishment. The fry drops immediately, and you bore a daring stare in Obi-Wan.

“How many times have I got to reprimand you on your language?” He chides, placing a hand out to quickly pick up and munch on the chip that had just been ceremoniously dangled by some invisible strings in front of your face.

“Do it again,” you demand, you have to see this again, just to make sure you’re truly not seeing things.

“If you insist,” he chuckles and points to a speeder parked just outside the window. And without even a hint of strain, the speeder lifts precariously in the air and swivels slowly around on an axis. You glance back at Obi-Wan, who is intently staring at the speeder. You look back, only to watch him gently place the speeder back down, now facing the opposite way from before.

“This is some Matilda bullshit right here,” you mutter, eyes plastered open in awe. You couldn’t imagine this man to be any better. He was incredibly handsome, so kind to an extent it hurts your heart, and now he’s just revealed he’s some sort of telekinetic space God. But your thoughts are cut short but the firm grip on your chin. Your eyes dart back to Obi-Wan, who is now glaring daggers your way.

His grip is firm on your chin, and he brings his head in closer to yours, maintaining strict eye contact.

“Stop. Swearing. Or I will have to make you.” This wasn’t an aggressive threat, not one that is meant to scare you or frighten you — no…this was something else. Obi-Wan Kenobi was flirting, and God’s… did he know how to press your buttons; all the right ones at least. And he seemed to have done the trick because now you’re completely and utterly breathless. All you can do is stare intently at the man you are now absolutely, one hundred percent reeling for right now. Fuck, you love space wizards, especially ones named fucking Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“I can read minds too, darling,” he mutters, slowly removing his grip on your chin, satisfied that he’s made his point…obviously pleased with the results.

“Hold up, you can read minds!? So you know what I’m thinking all the time?”

“Not all the time, only if I pry, but you are incredibly loud sometimes, dear,” he counters, getting back to eating his fries before they turn cold.

“…loud?” Okay, now you’re genuinely confused.

“Your thoughts are loud, but only sometimes. Yours is an odd case, sometimes I can hear what you’re saying, and sometimes I can't. Your energy in the force is…unstable. See, everyone has a Force signature, and when you have a large affinity of Midichlorians, you’re able to harbor the Force in greater ways, however, with you, it seems…the opposite, like you...repel the force, sometimes -- when your emotions are getting the better of you. This is something I haven’t seen before, and I think that is why Master Yoda wanted us to stay together, to make sure that we keep this under control,” He confesses, he begins slowly rubbing his chin in thought, clearly perplexed by whatever theory that was running around in that incredible head of his.

“Well, okay, Midichlorians? Force signature… I, I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean…and, maybe…could you maybe teach me to not be so…loud?” You ask, trying not to show your hesitation. Force signature? Did he say I repel the Force? As exciting as being next to Obi-Wan, it was also quite terrifying to know that, or to feel like there was something wrong with you, and that they had no idea how or what to do…and that for the meantime you’re just going to have to sit around and make yourself useful. But, thinking about the incredible telekinesis you’d just witnessed, excitement at the possibility of living out an actual dream gripped you again. Maybe he could teach you a few tricks, in return for you teaching him?

“I don’t see why not?” He replies, that beautiful smile of his returning to his lips. It truly was marvelous, and you knew you’d never be able to get enough of it. “Come, finish up your food and we’ll head back, you need sleep, you’ve had a busy day.”

______

 For the second time today, you found yourself stood outside of Obi-Wan’s flat…apartment…condo…whatever it was. Pressing a button like before, the door whooshes open and you both walk in, with it closing with another electronic hum behind you.

Obi-Wan instantly heads into the kitchen to switch on what you assumed was the kettle. Not knowing what to do with yourself you stood like a lost child in the middle of the living room, rolling on your feet a little and swinging your arms. This whole day was incredibly overwhelming, and you couldn’t, even in your wildest dreams, even begin to imagine what you’d experienced…and even though your circumstances could be seen as quite horrific and terrifying, you couldn’t help but feel happy to be here, happy to be in the presence of Obi-Wan and other incredibly magnificent beings, in this huge temple, on a grand planet, in the middle of another motherfucking Galaxy. The pure scale of your circumstances isn’t comprehendible, and you don’t think it ever will be.

“Tea, darling?” You hear faintly, like a whisper from deep within your mind. Odd, you don’t remember thinking about Tea…Tea isn’t really a deciding factor in your circumstances right now, why are you thinking of —

“Hello? Amy, my dear, where have you gone?…she was here just a second ago…” you hear, turning around you see Obi-Wan, walking from the kitchen and walking around his apartment. He was…he was looking for you? But you’re right here, can’t he see you?

“Obi-Wan, stop playing I’m right here,” you say, but no sound leaves your lips. Huh, that's weird. You go to take a step towards him to pat him on the shoulder but as you go to touch him, your hand falls through his shoulder as if…as if you don’t exist. Okay, this was starting to freak you out, this was like back when you were on Earth when the Boys couldn’t see you. You quickly glance around the apartment, remembering that you left your backpack in the bedroom. You rush into the bedroom and try to dig through it but like before, your hands just slip through the objects in front of you. You need to concentrate, center yourself. So, you close your eyes, control your breathing and reach out, again, trying to touch the bag. As soon as you make contact, something shoots through you like ice, and before you know it, you’re touching your backpack in the bedroom, for real.

“Oh! There you are, I didn’t hear you creep off, would you like some tea, my Dear?” Obi-Wan asks, leaning on the doorframe casually. You don’t have the mental capacity to admire it right now, you’re still trying to process what exactly just happened. “Are you…are you okay?” He asks, now slipping off the doorframe and heading towards you, clearly concerned over your sudden change in demeanor.

“Yes, yeah, I’m fine, thanks, just…I think the events of the last day or so are starting to catch up on me..aha,” you say, laughing awkwardly towards the end in a sorry effort to convince him that you’re just tired and not absolutely shitting it at the fact that you just disappeared for a minute or so.

“If you’re sure…Tea will help, come,” He says, holding out his hand to you. You go to take it but hesitate slightly, and he notices but doesn’t let on. You take his hand, and you make your way into the kitchen.

_____

 “So what Tea would you like?” He asks as he sets two cups out on the counter.

“Um, well, just regular…Tea?” You reply, completely unsure if Tea here is the same as Tea at home.

“Well, I’ve got Corellian, Naboo special, Coruscant special blend…” he says, but before he can finish his sentence you remember something.

“Wait, gimme a sec!” And before he can process what you've said, you’re bounding into the bedroom once again to grab your food pack. Once back in the kitchen, you open the tin and pull out a Teabag. “Tetley's will do—” you say, grabbing one of the cups and placing the teabag inside. Then, you grab a sachet of sugar from the tin and pour it in.

“…Tetley’s, I can’t say I’ve heard of that kind of Tea before?” Obi-Wan mumbles.

“Well, it’s alright, not the best and not the worst, but still good ol’ British tea!” You laugh. Tea was your savior during excursions, it was one of the only homely comforts you could bring with you, having possessions and trinkets just wasn’t an option, but Tea? Everyone has time for a cuppa. Just as you finish the kettle goes off and you make a move to grab it, pouring the hot water into the cup. Next, you take one of the spoons Obi-Wan layed out and twirl the teabag in the cup, making sure to get the most out of it. “Do you, um, have any Milk?” You ask.

“Milk, I mean, I have blue milk in—,” he says as he fills his cup of tea up too.

“Wait…Blue. Milk?” You chuckle, dumbfounded by what you’re hearing.

“Yes…Blue milk,” Obi-Wan reiterates, almost in a way as if to say are you crazy? What, you don’t know what blue milk is?

“I—I think I'll pass on the Blue Milk—,” you chuckle, today couldn’t get any weirder. Instead, you fish out the teabag from the cup and place it on the small plate before you, and then you grab the small sachet of condensed milk from your rations tin and pour it in, swirling the mixture with the teaspoon from before.

“Wait, you put milk in your tea?” He asks, again absolutely dumbfounded by what’s going on in front of him. Milk…in tea? That's criminal!

“Ugh…yeah? Here, try this,” you say, fishing once again through the ration tin to grab a small bag of malted milk biscuits. You dunk one into your tea and quickly fish it out again, then hand it over to Obi-Wan. He looks at you hesitantly before slowly taking the biscuit, giving it a small sniff before taking a small bite. You watch him patiently with eager eyes, hoping that hell enjoy it.

“Oh…My God’s,” He mutters, his eyes blown wide at the new experience. “This…what is this?” He asks again, before sticking the whole biscuit into his mouth, practically hoovering it up.

“It's a malted milk biscuit, and this is British tea…on Earth, were pretty much the Godfather's of Tea” you laugh, enjoying the show of emotional turmoil playing out on Obi-Wan’s face.

“Malted Milk, British—Godfather?” He asks, completely and utterly lost to his own train of thought.

“You wouldn’t get it…” you say, taking a sip of your tea, but still maintaining eye contact with him as he revels in this new experience. And with that, the two of you sit and chatter on until both your pots of tea have gone cold, but neither of you cares, you’re both too enthralled in the conversation you’re both having to even realize a whole hour has yet again passed.

You chance a look at your watch only to see it's sitting comfortably at 11:48 PM. “Christ it’s late…” you mutter, blinking your eyes again to make sure you’re seeing it right.

“What is that?” Obi-Wan cuts your gaze, leaning over slightly and taking your wrist. He examines your watch intently, watching as the second-hand jumps around the watch face.

“It’s a watch,” you say, a little confused as to why it’s such a question. Surely they have clocks here?

“I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it, um, what are the three little spikey things? And what do the symbols mean?” He asks, genuinely curious.

“Well—,” you say, leaning further in so your heads are only centimeters away as you both peer down at the watch on your wrist, “The spikes things are called hands, and they sit upon the watch face. The one that is jerking now is called the second's hand, as it counts each second. This hand,” you point to the biggest hand, “is called the minute hand, and this one, the smallest one, is called the hour's hand,” you finish, but Obi-Wan stays silent, like he’s in a trance of sorts, so you continue, “And, and these symbols, they’re called Roman Numerals, they’re an ancient form of literate numeracy used by the Roman’s, who were fierce warriors who existed thousands of years ago on my planet. They were incredibly intelligent for their time, I mean, all things considered. They invented many things, but they destroyed many, too.” You finish. And you just sit there, intently watching the metaphysical cogs turn in that astronomical mind of his. Normally manners would dictate it is rude to stare, but you can’t help yourself. Something about him is just so…right, so pure and genuine, innocent yet, violent, powerful, wise. People say that God’s and beings of mystical nature never existed, that it's just a hypothetical way of education and hindsight that humanity uses Legend and Fairytales to demonstrate the lessons of life; but at this moment you know that you’re in the presence of a truly, incredible being and that isn’t a fairytale, this isn’t legend, this is real, and you’re sat right next to him.

He slowly peers up from where he’s leaning over your wrist, and you lock eyes, once again, but now closer than you’ve ever been. You can feel the warmth of his breath on your skin as it twists and curls around your lips, kindly caressing and making your breath hitch uncomfortably in your throat. But you welcome this discomfort, for you cannot believe you have lived life, thinking yourself happy, only to not have known Obi-Wan; and now you question few moments of your experiences on Earth, knowing that you would trade anything just to spend another second under his spell.

“We should, you…you should get some sleep. We have training tomorrow.” He quickly snaps, shaking his head slightly as he stands from his seat and grabs both cups, leaving them in the sink. He…did he not feel the same?

You cringe at yourself a little, silently kicking yourself for being so foolish and letting someone get under your skin like this. You’re better than this, for Christ’s sake! No, if he doesn’t feel the same, then you won’t force it. You’ll keep to yourself, and you’ll be respectful, no matter how much you want to be closer. And just like your previous thoughts, the tales of Legends burn a painful pinch of hindsight into your conscience — like Icarus, you flew too close to the sun.

“…You need your sleep if you’re to have any chance against me…” Obi-Wan mutters from the sink. And with that you instantly laugh, the titanic of emotions finally capsizing as you break your self-deprecative destruction.

“I could say the same for you, Master Kenobi,” you giggle, and before he has time to counter you’re skipping off to the Padawan bedroom which you’re now to call home…for the foreseeable future.

[gigilberry-wips]

the bonds of kinship

(image used can be found here)

Fandom: The Mandalorian

Pairings: None

Warnings: Brief mentions of fighting and violence, Spoilers for Season 2 Finale

Tags: Reader-Insert, No (Y/N), GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, Creative Depictions of The Force, Action, Angst, Feels, Character Study, Healthy Relationships, Hopeful Ending

Word Count: 2.9k

Summery:

You’re a Padawan training under Luke Skywalker when your master recieves a distress signal from a Force sensitive child. He follows the lead and brings you along for the ride.

AO3 link

A/N: A few days after the season 2 finale I was lurking in the mandalorian tags, as you do, when one of those “i wish someone would write-” posts (this one) got my muse to drop by long enough to toss this one shot through the window.

- Obligatory disclaimer that I don’t know a thing about Star Wars. This show is my first introduction to the franchise and at the moment I am in absolutely no hurry to enlighten myself further (is there anyone else who’s here for the authentic experience of being as clueless as Din about this show? Because I’m having a blast :D Just about every subtle reference, easter egg, and character mention has gone flying over my head and I honestly find that hilarious)

I don’t know how well I’ve written the Force here, so just ... roll with it, please and thanks.

- Apparently Luke's ship is supposed to be a one seater kind of deal, but for the sake of this fic let's just pretend it has room for two people, yeah? Yeah? Good.

While writing this I thought of the song King of the Fairies, performed by The Dubliners. It'll make more sense near the end bit of this. I hope.

@ctrlmando​ I hope this turned out alright! Enjoy! ^_^

*

The Imperial battle ship made an imposing figure in the vast, glittering expanse of space. Under the cramped confines of your knees, R2D2 stirred, blinking and beeping in a way that made you mildly concerned for your shins.

“… so, this is where he is?”

“It is.” Master Skywalker nodded, his eyes trained on the floating craft. “Do you remember your part of the plan?”

“Get in, find the kid, get out.”

“Correct.” As a port came into view, he added, “Are you sure you’re ready for this? If you want to, you can stay here with R2D2.”

You gripped your saber’s hilt where it was clipped to your belt. In all the years you’d been under your master’s tutelage, there hadn’t been much in the way of students to train with on your level, few and far between as they were. This wasn’t just the first student to contact your master first, and through the Force no less, this was the first time you were being trusted on a mission like this.

For you to pass up such an opportunity? Out of the question. “Born ready,” you said, your tone firm.

“Then by all means, lead the way.”

The ship’s hull passed through the entrance just as the comms came to life. A woman’s voice spoke through it, but neither you nor your master answered. The moment the ship docked, you jumped out and took off at a sprint.

Keeping low to the ground, you focused all your powers on stealth and speed, dodging around the combatants before they had time to react. It wasn’t your job to take care of them, not yet – and from the sounds of it, your master was doing well for himself. While he took the brunt of the fire, you focused on navigating the corridors and opening your mind to the Force.

He was there. The child was a strong, bright little beacon, his presence lighting a path that ran clear as truth. The droids that tried to block your way you shoved aside with your powers, until you were well past them and they were left to face another, far more deadly opponent to charge at.

You hardly registered the fallen bodies you skipped over. Didn’t matter. You’d think about it later. Rescue came first.

The child’s presence led you to a lift. Above your head, a humming, artificial energy grew stronger and stronger the further up you went. When the lift opened, it was to a short corridor lined on either side with battle ready droids.

But by then you had your lightsaber out. Time to fight.

In a blur of sparks and tearing metal, you sliced the first droid in half. The next to come at you got its gun tossed out of its grasp through the Force and its head swiped off. One after another you cut them down, using the lightsaber and Force as needed, switching between the two with an efficiency that had been drilled into you until it had become habit.

The last droid fell in a twisted pile at your feet. You stepped past it. You waited.

In the few minutes of sizzling silence, you contemplated the dented metal door before you, so large it encompassed to breadth and hight of the corridor. There were … five? Six? Six adult creatures, all facing the entrance. Or no – one was unconscious. There was also that bright little child. He seemed unharmed, but you couldn’t be sure until you saw for yourself.

The door slid open. You marched into the room with lightsaber in hand and smoke curling at your heels. You allowed your hood to drop, finally showing your face to the gathering.

Front and centre there stood a humanoid clad in armour. Beskar armour. In a style you never thought you’d see more than once in your life.

A Mandalorian.

And it wasn’t just one. There were two more in the back, with slight modifications in their armour design, but distinctly Mandalorian all the same. Save for the first Mandalorian, the rest of the adults had their weapons raised at you.

The Mandalorian spoke. “Are you a Jedi?”

“… I am a Jedi in training.” You tilted you head. “My master should be arriving shortly.”

He had just finished down below. You felt more than heard him board the lift; he would be there in a few moments. Deactivating your lightsaber, you clipped it to your belt and stepped to the side of the entrance, closer to where several monitors idly hummed.

A very long, very green ear peeked out from behind a chair and you were met with the beseeching gaze of a child.

He … was tiny. You doubted he’d even pass your knee. He clung to the seat with tiny, tiny hands, and he was dressed in a brown, smock-like thing that made him look even tinier. But no matter how fragile he looked, no matter how impossibly wide and dewy his eyes were, the presence that radiated out of him was unmistakable. He was the kid.

Curious, you reached your thoughts out to him. A warm, exuberant little mind eagerly found yours, shy and hopeful.

What do you want? You asked.

You were met with a flurry of sensations. A sweet smell, a full belly, a metal ball?, gentle hands, a human chuckle.

… well. That wasn’t … unexpected, per se. He was a baby after all. But he hadn’t quite understood your question.

You tried again. Why did you call my master? Why are we here?

The child’s ears twitched. He opened his mind further and allowed you to see.

There were many emotions there, confusing in how strong they were and how drastically they contrasted. Nostalgia, safety, joy, peace. Sorrow and pain, loss and rage. They all held a strange depth to them, like a mind that had lived far, far longer than its apparent youth suggested.

Eventually, the emotions solidified into thoughts. Make me strong. They said.

… You want strength? Why would he need more? He was already strong, incredibly so.

… I have been hurt and I have been lost. But he protects me. The child looked up and to the side, towards what you now realised was his caregiver. I love him, and he loves me, but I can’t protect him. He fights for me and he saves me and he will die saving me and everyone dies saving me and it’s MY FAULT. Without warning, a barrage of memories flashed through your sight, followed by feelings of fear, panic, and helplessness. So make me strong. If I can protect me, then he doesn’t have to. He can just love me, and we will be happy.

At this, a sudden wave of love flooded out from him. It was a selfish love, needy and possessive. But that wasn’t unexpected either. Most of it was just simple, baby love, a “this is mine to keep and mine forever” love. You would’ve been surprised had it been anything different.

A hand landed on your shoulder. At once you felt your master’s presence, bringing you out of your observations and back to the present.

“… he doesn’t want to go with you.”

You looked up sharply. It was the Mandalorian who’d spoken. He glanced between the two of you and his charge.

“He is waiting for your permission.” Said your master, oddly gentle.

The way you were reading into the Force meant that you could feel a little of the surface emotions coming from those in the room. You imagined that if you could see it, the Mandalorian’s face would’ve taken on a complicated, pained expression.

Not receiving a reply, your master continued. “He is strong with the force, but talent without training is nothing. I will give my life to protect the child. But he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.”

Although he spoke quietly, his words carried a weight and authority that could not be refuted. One that came from being the one and only Luke Skywalker, the Jedi master who had earned the right to use it. And when he spoke, most tended to listen.

Something in the Mandalorian seemed to fall apart at those words. But at the same time, many other things fell together, forming a picture of resolve and acceptance.

He walked to the chair and carefully picked up the child, his hands steady even as his voice shook. He spoke to him and him alone, words so soft you barely heard some of what he said.

“… I’ll see you again … I promise.”

The kid reached for him, an unspoken request. Without hesitation, without a second thought, the Mandalorian did something that shocked what little knowledge you had of the Mandalore right out of you.

He removed his helmet.

Where before there had been a nondescript Mandalorian, there now stood a man. A heartbroken man with tears in his eyes. The tears did not fall, not even when the child touched his cheek and he shut his eyes to them.

“… time to go.”

The kid’s ears drooped.

He said something else and let the child down. Straightening up, he nodded to you and your master.

While your master nodded back, you furrowed your brow. There was something strange about the emotions that came from this man. Not so much that they were bad or wrong, but that they were different from what you knew. It wasn’t just sadness or longing, as it often was in the parents and family of the disciples your master took into his care. It was more … complicated. Deeper, somehow. Even the love that came from him felt different. You couldn’t quite place your finger on how or why.

It perplexed you, made you want to reach into his skull and see what was there. But that would be rude.

“Are you sure you want him to come with us?” You asked.

Because if he didn’t, if he really, truly had a problem with it, then the kid wasn’t coming. Family drama was messy, and your master knew better than anyone else not to get in the way of that.

The man considered you. You crossed your arms. His gaze darted to the monitors, where the view from different parts of the ship still showed.

“… do you know, I took out one of those droids.” He smiled. That is, his lips tilted up at the corners. “One of them. And I barely did it. But you, you took on dozens of them. I saw you. You did it in moments, and you say you are in training.”

Glancing down to where the child clung to his leg, the smile became something sad. “This child has been hunted across the galaxy. I have done what I could, but this … this is more than I can do for him. I cannot give him what he needs me to. I cannot protect him the way he needs me to. He’s made a choice. The least I can do is see that he gets it.”

“Even if it doesn’t make you happy?”

Because it didn’t. It shouldn’t have, not with the bond that stretched between the two of them.

But he only shook his head. “I’d rather he be alive with you than dead with me.”

Before you could think further on that, a loud trill interrupted the air. R2D2 rolled past the doors and came to a stop to the right of where you and your master stood, happily beeping like it either didn’t notice the tension in the room or else didn’t care.

It caught the child’s attention. His entire face lit up – oh. Oh. There was a bond there, too. Something to ask about later that you tucked away in your head.

Letting go of his caregiver’s leg, the kid toddled up to the robot and babbled at it. R2 responded in kind. The sight created a bubble of cuteness strong enough that you didn’t have to look to know that most of the adults had eased their collective guard.

While the two conversed, the unmasked-Mandalorian idly held his helmet. And there was another contradiction – to ask, or not to ask, that was the question. To get it over with now or leave it alone. You didn’t have to; it’s not like knowing the answer would affect you in any way.

But then again, it was the first time you had a Mandalorian to give you an answer. Might as well.

“… You know, I’ve never met a Mandalorian before.” You said conversationally. “Doesn’t taking the helmet off go against your creed?”

He blinked, looking down at the helmet like he’d forgotten about it. Meanwhile, Master Skywalker did the mental equivalent of a tsk, but you ignored it.

“… yes, and no. I thought it did. But there is more to it than that. When you reach the heart of it.” His eyes settled upon the child. “I am a Mandalorian. I have my creed. I have not betrayed it, not in the way that matters. It … took me some time to realise this.”

He sighed, closing his eyes again. When he opened them, it was with a clarity that shone in his emotions. “I trust you. Both of you. Please look after him.”

“We will.”

At the sound of his voice, the child seemed to notice your master for the first time. He tilted his head curiously up at him. After a moment, he shuffled over and lifted his arms up.

Master Skywalker obliged him. Picking him up, he nodded his thanks to the room and walked out the door. Taking one last look around, you gave a slight bow and did the same, not turning back or minding the still sparking heaps of broken metal strewn across the floor. Propped up on your master’s shoulder, the kid had a good view of what you were walking away from, kept in his sights all the way to the lift.

It was when you were in the lift yourself that you saw what he saw. The gathered adults back in the room, but especially, the man who had cared for and protected him. And as you contemplated the two of them, you felt that something again, reflected in the child as he felt it from his guardian and held fast to it.

It stayed with you, as your little rescue party traversed back through the wreckage that was a once heavily armed battle force, as you climbed into your seat and your master guided the ship into the embrace of space.

Of course, he called attention to it first. “Your mind is troubled.”

You shrugged, even if he couldn’t see it. The lights of hyper space flashed by the windows, reflecting in the child’s eyes while you held him securely in your lap.

“I’m just somewhat … confused, is all. I know what I felt, but I don’t know what to make of it.” You bit your lip, giving the kid’s cheek a tap. “You felt it, too. What do you think?”

“Why don’t you ask the little one? He should be the most familiar with it.”

Ah. That reminded you. So far you’d spent the entire time referring to your new fellow disciple as “child” and “kid” and had yet to ask his name.

You mentally nudged him. He twisted around to look up at you and gurgled.

Grogu. He said.

“Grogu.” You nodded, brushing your thumb over his nose. I have a question for you. That person you cherish, he confuses me. When you think of him, what do you see?

Grogu pushed his hands against your chest, and his bright little mind painted a picture of the man who’d come to span the entirety of his world. Who’d lifted him from a life of darkness and pain and given him another, one filled with safety and warmth and home.

Through his eyes you saw what he saw. Through him you felt what he’d felt. A man who bore the marks of loss and terrible grief. A soul that had been shaped by duty, devotion, and sacrifice. Of promises that were honoured, of kindness for the sake of kindness, of extending peace when there was a choice to be had. Of an unconditional, selfless love, that gave itself freely and demanded nothing in return.

That you knew. You knew it in the way you were taught to connect with the Force and all it touched. Because the truth was that being free of attachments did not dictate that there had to be no love. To protect something, you first had to love it enough to protect it. To honour life and all it entailed, you had to accept it and grow with it and still learn to love it, faults and all.

That is what it meant to be on the side of the Light. That is what it meant to take the gift you had and use it to restore balance and peace.

The way that man had loved carried a protectiveness and freedom that was entirely for the one he gave it to. A love that was given freely, that cherished what it held and asked for nothing in return.

And this little child held it in his heart and his hands. He pressed them into your cheek, and his dull claws made indents in your skin. You dazedly blinked out of your thoughts, his face coming into focus and the warm weight of him held against your front.

“… I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a thing in someone.” Even to your own ears, you sounded faint.

Your master didn’t ask what you were talking about. He’d probably felt it as well as you had. “He has a good example set for himself.”

The ship’s dashboard blinked with lights as it exited hyperspace. It made Grogu perk up and try to turn around to see it, wiggling in your arms. You quietly smiled.

“Yes … yes, he does.”

*

*

*

I have my own thoughts on the finale and people’s reactions to it that I might share eventually, but for now I’ll give credit where credit is due:

Din and his beliefs

Din being a good father: here, here, here, and here

Din being a kind, wonderful person in general

What got me thinking of that song for Din in the first place

R2D2 & Grogu headcanon

From Grogu’s perspective: here and here

From a storytelling perspective: here and here

[kyberled]

@cosmicnexus​ said:

// i don't even know the whole story but i know based on the red x's on the picture those kids ain't alright and i am S A D but holy fuck jay this picture is amazing!!! the shading and the rendering!!!!

// AaaaaAAAA thank you Kato ;w; You’re always far too good to me and I love you <3<3<3

The basic story is this is Braig’s little ‘inner circle’ group of best friends. He met Hano (the Cathar) when he was three, and they’ve been best friends ever since; he met Naweh (the Tarasin) not long after, and she fit in with them perfectly; He met Booda (the Gungan) when he was four, Lohata (the Rodian) when he was five, and he sort of knew the Affgor twins, Garak and Shah-Ki (the Weequay) in passing, but he didn’t actually know them until their Gathering, when the seven of them - at age seven - went to find their kyber crystals. Ever since the Gathering, they’ve sort of been their own little clique, so they refer to their collective selves as ‘the Gathering group’. Not very creative, but it suits their purposes. 

(Little fun fact: Braig’s the oldest of all of them! Technically they’re all born in the same year, but he was born first. The actual age order is Braig -> Lohata -> Hano -> Naweh -> Booda -> the Twins. The Twins don’t know which one of them was born first, and change their answer depending on their moods.) 

(more details under a cut because I rambled)

Tarasins, such as Naweh, have skin that changes colour based on their emotions. They can learn to control the changes, and even use them to communicate when they get older. Normally, Naweh keeps herself a calm, neutral blue-purple-green, but she knows her friends don’t care, so right now, she’s a happy/excited pink-yellow-orange. Anyone who knows Tarasin skin colours would take one look at her and go ‘wow, she’s stoked to be there’. 

One of Naweh’s favourite places to be was the nurseries. She always said if she hadn’t been chosen to pursue knighthood, she would’ve been happy working with the younglings (to the point where if she ever had the Group’s braincell and advised against something, they’d usually chorus a light-hearted ‘Yes, Crechemaster’). She loved kids. That’s why, aside from encouraging Hano to embrace his bastard status, she’s braiding Braig’s hair. She doesn’t have hair of her own, but some of the little ones do, and having it braided makes it easier for them to do their training. She’s practicing braids so she can help the kids better on her next shift. (That’s also why she has a bunch of hair ties around her wrist, in part. She also just wore them because most of her close friends - Braig, Hano, the twins - have long hair, so she comes prepared in case they lose one of their own ties.) 

She gets a red X because she was in her beloved nurseries when Order 66 was declared. She died shielding the younglings, helping the staff smuggle them out. One of the last things she ever did was use the Force to shove some of the smaller ones into a ventilation duct in the hopes they might escape. She knew she wouldn’t. If you were to  find her body after the Purge, you’d find her still covering some little ones who weren’t so lucky, a guardian to the last. 

Of course we all know and love Braig. I don’t have too much to say about him here, since, again, we know him already. He’s napping because he’s warm and safe, the Force in the gardens and with his friends feels amazing, and he’s been getting his hair played with for the past five minutes. He’s also, as the group’s healer, on standby in case Booda’s prosthetics hurt her, but they all trust the Twins’ work enough that he feels safe dozing.

He survives Order 66, so no X - but his connection to the Living Force, combined with so many deaths all at once, leaves him with near-permanent metaphysical chronic pain. Sometimes, the literal air around him just feels painful to him. It sucks.

Hano is the tallest and strongest of the group. He evens out at 7′5, over 300 lbs. The Force gave him a bronze crystal when he was young and he did not disappoint. The necklace he wears is actually a trophy from the first hunt he went on, a rite of passage among Cathar. The trophy just lets other Cathar know he completed the hunt and can be welcomed as an adult into their society. Given that he was training as a tracker (Braig always called him ‘the greatest/most skilled tracker I’ve ever met’), his success was inevitable. As intimidating as he can be, he’s a gentle giant and a goofball at heart. He’ll tear it up on the battlefield, sure, but he’ll also use the fact he’s strong enough to lift a clone trooper in one arm to carry wounded men back to safety, to carry his friends around for fun, or to help the men, other Jedi, and the Temple staff with more strenuous physical labor. He also enjoys play-fighting, especially with Braig and Naweh, and the control he learned through the rigorous training of a Jedi means he can easily do so without hurting them. He’s always had a penchant for mischief, which is why he’s been telling dumb jokes and awful puns for the past little while. 

(Bonus fun fact: I joked, years ago, that he’s large enough that when he goes out with his friends - especially Small Friend Braig - he gets mistaken as their master. When I posted a WIP of this in my discord server, my friend Reece assumed he was their dad, so. It looks like that’s not a joke and actually happens, and Braig was quietly sulking that he’s three months older for a while after. Hano continues to think it’s funny.) 

He survived Order 66, barely. He was blinded and lost a leg in an explosion (hence the red scribbles). His master, Yokar Eedai, hid him among rubble, commed some of his non-Jedi friends to find the location, and then lead the clones away at the cost of his own life. Hano spent many years hiding in the Outer Rim in self-imposed exile. (He does eventually reunite with Braig, though. If you swing by Braig’s weapons shop, you can usually see him there, bandages tied over his eyes and metallic claws peeking out from under his left pantleg.) 

Garak and Shah-Ki aren’t very talkative or physically affectionate. They show their love for their friends through inclusion and acts of service. When they were young, still forming their group, Braig always thought that they were ‘each others’ best friend, and could live without the rest of us’. While that may have once been true, they’ve bonded with the rest of the Group quite thoroughly. So Garak is brushing Hano’s hair for him (Hano usually wears it in braids) and Shah-Ki is fixing Booda’s prosthetics, though they’re both debating the best way to enhance the water-proofing without sacrificing mobility. The twins were training as Shadows, a rare variant of Jedi that specializes in stealth missions. They were also brilliant slicers and engineers, making them incredible secret agents. By the time they were senior padawans, they could make not only themselves invisible through the Force, but one or two others, as well. They would often use this talent to bring one of the others of their group to see what they had most recently found or made. The rest of the Group always joked that you never knew what it was going to be. It could be a store room in the Temple that had fallen out of use, it could be a Battle Droid they repurposed, or it could be the complete dossier of someone who wasn’t legally supposed to exist. Just whatever they thought was cool. 

Their penchant for going unnoticed also meant that they heard, intentionally or otherwise, all sorts of gossip throughout the Temple. They’d usually share interesting tidbits at mealtimes with their friends, a practice Naweh had affectionately dubbed ‘Holocast T’. 

While Weequay can grow hair, braids are significant to them culturally, representing how many times they’ve visited their home planet of Sriluur. Because of this, the twins opted to have silka bead padawan ‘braids’ instead. 

They were finishing up a mission when Order 66 hit. While they were never as outwardly friendly as some others, they did trust their men, and as such didn’t think to hide themselves from those that became their executioners until it was too late. They died only moments apart, still reaching out to each other, but weren’t quite able to touch. 

Lohata and Booda are dating! They like to pretend nobody knows. The entire Group knows, of course, but they pretend they don’t, for their sake. 

Lohata is as close to a ‘mom friend’ as you can get when you don’t have a mom and haven’t been raised to know what having a mom is like. She usually has the braincell, and does her best to make sure the others can get out of any trouble they get into. That’s not to say that she doesn’t get into trouble a lot, too, she’s just usually the one who can bail them out when ‘blame it on Braig’ isn’t feasible. She’s also a bookworm, and usually has a datapad in her hand (she always appreciated that her friends would just let her read when they all hang out, jumping into and out of the conversation whenever she wanted without judgement. It was nice). She and Braig often exchange ‘pads from the archives (with Mistress Jocasta’s permission) if they found one they thought the other would like. She has a fairly dry sense of humor, which is why she’s in the middle of telling Hano that if he tells the one about the Womprat and the Quacta again, she’s defecting to the Separatists so she can hit him with a tree branch without getting in trouble. (Hano, being Assigned Disaster At Birth, is now figuring out how to reroute the conversation into a good segue for the one about the Womprat and the Quacta.) 

Aside from reading, she loved flying and singing, and was quite good at both - though she wouldn’t admit to the second. When Booda was recovering from getting her prosthetics for the first time, Lohata used to sing to her to help her relax. She wasn’t quite as good at dancing ad Booda was, but, if they had a moment alone, she’d make the effort for her girlfriend. 

Booda is much sunnier and more open than Lohata, but not as outgoing as Braig (hence why he’s usually their mastermind). She has a joy and genuine love for life, and, in the moment, is just happy to be home with all her friends, all safe and together and able to relax for once. 

As a Gungan, she knows all too well how her species is regarded by the rest of the Galaxy. She’s trained herself to not speak Gungan Basic in an effort to appear more ‘civilized’ and ‘respectable’ as a Jedi, and to hopefully avoid the negative stereotypes. (She only ever speaks it to other Gungans, now, and tries to avoid doing so in public.) Like Naweh, she figured if she ever got tired of field work, she’d be happy in the Temple - though she wanted to work in the Archives, not the nursery. She was a cultures nerd, like Braig, and the two of them often edited each others’ cultural papers and assignments before handing them in. 

Booda got her prosthetics after a mission went wrong, damaging both her arms beyond repair for the current Jedi on the scene. Her master, a Nautolan named Nid Arto, blamed himself for it, and had to speak to his own (former) master at length and meditate for a while to come to terms with it. He visited her for hours on end every day in the Temple’s medbay until she was cleared. She hadn’t yet turned 16, so she was still growing - this, as well as the frequent wear and tear of missions, meant that she had to get them replaced quite often. Oddly enough, this helped her come to terms with it more. At Nid’s suggestion, she started getting coloured casings for them, and that made it a bit more fun.  The Group would often visit her after these procedures with washable markers and draw or write little notes and designs on, which made it even better. By the time of this little meeting of theirs, she’s grown used to them, and is quite pleased with these new pink casings (they’re her favourite colour). 

She’s also the best dancer of the group, and usually teaches the others different dancing styles to help with diplomatic missions. Naweh, Braig, and Lohata are her usual students, as they’re the ones who do diplomacy more often (and she likes being able to dance with her girlfriend). Hano doesn’t do high society - it’s hard enough to get him to put on a shirt, he hates how it feels with fur - and the twins are shadows, not consulars or guardians. The three of them still show up for support and shenanigans, though. The twins are quite good at a Corellian waltz. Booda and Braig had a long-running joke about how he insisted dancing was just like sparring without hitting each other, dips were take-downs you stopped half way, et cetera, and she, through increasing giggles, would try to convince him to stop trying to punch foreign dignitaries to music. 

When Order 66 happened, Booda, Nid, and Lohata had just finished up a mission to Naboo (Lohata’s master had been sick, so Nid invited her along for the ride). They’d finished up early, so Nid, who knows Lohata likes to fly and Booda likes being on Naboo, decided to let the girls get a bit of flight practice in (with Queen Jamilla’s permission) in friendly skies. The men turned on them, and Lohata’s ship crashed, knocking her out. It was the fire and injuries that eventually took her life. Booda tried to pull her out, but only succeeded in damaging her prosthetics before Nid pulled her away to get her running. The two of them hid in a lake. When the men dropped depth charges, Nid shielded Booda and died in the process. She hid under water and in under-water caverns with air pockets for days, peeking out to still see her master’s corpse floating there before someone eventually removed it. She would never really be able to leave the lakeshore again, barely being able to venture into town for food weeks later, and to get her arms fixed over a year after the Purge. She, too, eventually reconnects with Hano and Braig - while she never feels safe leaving her lake, they make sure to comm her fairly regularly, and visit in person when they can, and it’s the closest to feeling truly safe she’s been in decades. 

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Severed Bonds

Summary: Edge, Jedi Knight, is lost in a Galaxy without the Jedi Order and the only one left to him is one who already betrayed them all.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Star Wars AU, Darkfic, Angst, Minor Character Deaths, Friends to Enemies to ?, Hatesex...?, Trauma, Implied Possible Insanity

Note: In the Star Wars Universe, Order 66 was a direct command for the Clone Troopers to kill their Jedi leaders. In the movies, this happened in the Revenge of the Sith, and it nearly wiped out all the Jedi in existence.

This story is set directly after that. So...yeah, it gets a little dark. 

Ah, but Star Wars was one of my very first fandoms and imagining Rus as a Sith Lord and Edge as a Jedi Knight was too much to resist. Particularly when you have Cheapbourbon's gorgeous art to thank for planting the idea in my head.

Check it out here!

I've taken liberties with both the Star Wars and the Undertale universes, of course. Played fast and loose with canon. It's more fun that way. As an extra warning, this isn't my normal fluffiness and I can't exactly call it a happy ending. None of the character deaths references are either of our boys.

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Consciousness came slowly, painfully so. Edge barely opened his sockets, enough to glance around the room he was in.

It was an unfamiliar medical bay and there was no one in sight. He sat up, stifling a groan at the ache in his skull. A medical droid powered up and left its charging station to come to him, metal hands urging him to lay back.

Its mechanical voice said with bland urgency, “Sir, you should lay down.”

He pushed the droid roughly aside and staggered to his feet. It moved back, out of his way, watching in silence, but if it was alerting a captor, it was too late to stop it.

All his clothing was clean and folded on a tray at the end of the bed. By time he pulled on his outer robe, Edge had found his balance, suppressing his headache with practiced ease, and no one came to investigate his waking.

His lightsaber was also on the tray and Edge took it automatically, clipping it to his belt.

Memory of what happened was fragmented; the suppressed pain did not eliminate the injury. His team traveling to seek out the Sith, that much he recalled, and there had been…an attack? An ambush? He needed answers before he chose his path.

He sank to his knees with the fluid grace despite his injuries, closing his sockets and reaching out with the Force. What he felt made him gasp, an unexpectedly wrenching cry of pain from within the universe itself and he hastily blocked it, kept his touch light, close. Memory came, as shocking as the pain flowing through the Force, and Edge opened his sockets.

There was only one other living presence on this ship and it was one he knew, all too well.

The ship was small and the walk to the cockpit was a short one. The other was sitting in the pilot’s seat, but the star field told Edge they were in hyperspace. His hands on the controls meant nothing. Familiar hands, long fingers of bone.

It was the first time in years he'd seen Rus anywhere except from the other side of a battlefield.

The lightsaber at his side was not a design that Edge knew, but he knew the color of its crystal. Red, as blazing crimson red as his own eye lights, though the meaning behind it was not one of a chance of birth. It was a choice.

Once his lightsaber had been green, complimenting the blue of Edge’s. They’d made them together, the one Edge still possessed and the one that Rus abandoned all those years ago.

Rus did not reach for his lightsaber, did not so much as look at him, even when he spoke.

"Where are the others?" Edge marveled at his own calm. He was a Jedi Knight and yet even he had his limits. The memory of the troopers who were supposed to be their allies turning on them, their blasters firing, of his fellow Knights falling beneath that deadly rain was fresh in his mind.

"they're gone," Rus said curtly. “all of them.” His voice was unchanged, even after all this time. Except for the underlying note of gentle humor that it had always held. His endless laughter was gone.

As gone as the other Jedi. "That's not possible."

But the Force told him otherwise; it cried to him, a universe worth of mourning and there was nothing but gaping emptiness at the other end of every bond. His team, Jedi he'd known and trusted for years were gone. Friends, teachers, students. Every mental path led to ragged emptiness. Where once the collective consciousness of the Jedi was a galaxy, now there was only the rare twinkle of a dying star.

It was no wonder he was so calm, he was probably going into shock

It was only his years of training that allowed him to keep his control. "You did this. This is because of you. You turned against us, turned to the Dark side."

Rus did not deny it but even as he said it, Edge could feel that it wasn't entirely true. He’d watched in quiet despair the depths that Rus sank to since his turning, watched as he killed when he should have been fighting at their side and yet. Rus had betrayed them, true, but this genocide was beyond even what he’d shown himself capable of.

They’d begun in the same crèche, he and Rus. Trained together as children, worked together as Padawans. They were knighted together, well on their way to being permanently teamed. Until with one desperate, reckless kiss, Rus destroyed it all.

On a mission with only the two of them, negotiations failed and turned violent. They’d only barely survived and ended up in the hold of a rickety transport they’d managed to barter passage on, huddled together against the cold. They were exhausted beyond reckoning and too tired to sleep. Edge trying to meditate, to reconcile what they’d gone through coming so close to dying, when there was a whisper in that darkness, his name.

“edge—“

Rus’s mouth had been hot, desperate against his own, pleading wordlessly, and Edge pushed him away.

He could still remember the look on Rus’s face, the raw emotion that no true Jedi would show.

It all collapsed so quickly after that, like a child’s balancing game destroyed by an ill wind.

And now they were here and the emptiness in his mind was as raw, as anguished, as Rus had been that day.

"Where are you taking me?" Edge asked, finally.

"i don't know. far away." Rus made a ragged sound, a mockery of his past laughter. "my Master has been calling to me, demanding my return. we need to get as far away as we can."

It would never be far enough. Through the Force all things were possible. Even darkness.

Edge sank into the co-pilot seat, staring at the starfield speeding outside. "You could have let me die."

Again there was that laughter and Rus shook his head. "i couldn't. i never could. not you, never you. it was always you, always, you were my downfall to begin with!" His anger trailed away into a low, broken chuckle, even now finding humor. “i gave up everything for you.”

"You gave up everything for yourself," Edge told him coolly. That was the truth of it, that was the Master’s teachings. The Jedi used their power for the benefit of all. To want for yourself was the path of the Sith and the proof of it was sitting before him. "I am not a possession for you to own."

"i didn't want to own you, i wanted--" Rus let out a low, shuddery breath. "it doesn't matter anymore. probably never did.”

"You left my lightsaber."

His laughter was bordering on hysteria now and Edge wondered if Rus was completely sane. Wondered the same thing about himself, if his preternatural calm was closer to a loss of self.

"i did,” Rus giggled, rocking in his seat. “i did. i wasn't entirely sure we'd be able to escape, and i didn't want to leave you helpless if we were boarded. me, they would probably spare, my master prefers to mete out his punishments himself, but you? you would only be another dead Jedi."

His control was slipping, cracking, Edge noted distantly, wondering again at his own sanity. "They are truly gone, all of them."

"most of them, yes. i expect a few have managed to escape. like you."

"Even the younglings, the little ones."

"yes." Rus swallowed hard, that maddening humor slipping away. “i didn't know. i wouldn't have--when the order came..." He shuddered with a thin rattle of bones, muffled beneath his dark robes. “this wasn’t the war i was meant to be fighting. the jedi are wrong, they expect us to cage our emotions and hide from the power that's possible, they are...were…"

"Rus--"

"they killed them all," Rus whispered. He never looked away from the hyperspace surrounding them, but his hands fell away from the controls, "i have blood on my hands, on my soul, i've never pretended otherwise, this was a war, but they...they shot them in the back. honor is a useless construct for those who choose death, but they killed children, they…that…"

“It was a war, this was what you wanted,” Edge said. The numbness in his soul was spreading, leaving him as empty as the Force. “And now you’re running away from it.”

“not you,” Rus said, softly, and he finally looked at Edge. There was nothing to mark his fall, nothing that named him Sith, save for the burning eye lights in his sockets. “that was too high a price.”

“Higher than your own soul?”

“too high a price,” Rus repeated. He grinned and it was savage.

If Edge was emptiness, then Rus was an overfilled cup and his hatred spilled out to sear them all.

His lightsaber was heavy at his hip. He could kill Rus right now, finally end this; the years of searching, of watching others being cut down beneath the glow of crimson. Edge didn't reach for it and wondered distantly if Rus had known he wouldn't or if he didn't care. “Asgore will find you.”

That smile turned bitter, a dead remnant of his former self. “he will, eventually, and my master will kill me. but then, it’s hardly the first time i’ve given up everything for you.”

Edge stood, striding out of the cockpit and away from what was left of his friend. And the Jedi.

~~*~~

In the weeks that passed, Rus mostly stayed away from him. It was a small ship, some interaction was unavoidable, but passing by each other in the common areas was more like walking past a ghost, a wraith who hardly looked at him.

Those fleeting glances told him that Rus was exhausted, darkened shadows sinking in beneath his sockets. The courses he plotted seemed nonsensical, likely trying to avoid Imperial forces.

Edge paid it little mind. He spent his nights sleeping and his days meditating. Reaching out for others through the static of emptiness, feeling through the Force for survivors.

But no one came.

There was nothing but the pulse of the one already on the ship. Rus’s Force signature was nothing like his former exuberance, all his gentle light darkened with anger, with hate.

It still felt like him. Edge pushed it to the side, and reached out further, searching for others that never reached back.

~~*~~

Another week passed and they landed on Soonia to refuel. An outskirts planet, the sort where power was law and the Empire had no control. It was little more than a trading post, but there was an outdoor market, shouts from those hawking their wares ringing through the growing heat of the morning.

Edge walked through it, his robes concealed beneath a dark cloak. Small stalls lined the walkways, with questionable meats turning on spits as they displayed a colorful array of the local fruits, fish, stolen wares, and everything else beneath the double suns.

He had no credits, not a thing to barter with. He was, however, not without skill and it only took a few nudges, a couple waves of his hand to net some fresh supplies, better than the gruel that has been sustaining them.

The afternoon was getting unpleasantly warm by the time he carried them back to the ship and he was preparing an evening meal when Rus returned. Edge had no idea what Rus traded for fuel, but he was limping and there was a ghost of bruise on his cheek bone that made his soul clench.

He stopped when he saw Edge.

“you came back,” Rus said, blankly.

For the first time, it occurred to Edge that he could have left. Bartered for passage on one of the other ships and Rus expected him to do it. They would be hunting him, true, as they were hunting all Jedi, but he would be infinitely safer away from Rus, who was marked as a traitor to be executed by the Emperor himself.

Distantly, he found himself saying, “Where else do I have to go?”

Edge turned his attention back to the fresh pala fruit he was slicing, sticky juice sluicing over his fingers. It would be delicious when it was warmed.

Rus stood for a long moment, watching. Then he limped slowly to one of the chairs and sat, waiting in silence until Edge set a plate in front of him.

They still rarely spoke but from that day forward, they took their meals together.

~~*~~

At the hour for his nightly meditations, Edge couldn’t focus.

Every day, morning and night, he searched for others, other Jedi who escaped, and every time he was greeted by nothingness. There was no one out there, the tendrils of the Force that tethered him his entire life were severed, still raw and bleeding even with the passing time.

They were gone, all of them. He knew it, had known it, but tonight was when belief sank in its teeth. They were gone and he was completely, utterly alone.

The taste of salt broke his concentration and Edge opened his sockets, wiping his tears away roughly with his sleeve. The Jedi were gone, dead, destroyed. Everyone he knew was dust.

All but one.

Edge rose slowly, walked out the door of his tiny sleeping quarters. The next room was barely two steps away and it was unlocked. He opened it, stepping inside.

On the narrow bed Rus stirred, his skull lifting from the pillows as he asked, “edge? what are you doing?”

There was only sleepiness in his voice, no hint of fear or his endless anger. Almost, Edge could pretend this was another time, another place.

Rus said nothing as Edge stripped off his robes and climbed into the bed, finding bones that matched the bareness of his own.

Edge had been with others. Sexual intercourse was not strictly forbidden, and he’d found momentary pleasures before, both between the thighs of another and others between his.

This was not sex; this was punishing Rus’s body and his own. Not with pain, no, the hurts they bore weren’t of the flesh, but of the soul.

It was an echo of that first kiss so long ago in a clammy, rusted hold; this was that moment, frozen in time, twisted and darkened and waiting for him.

He swept his hands over Rus, touching the sleek bones he’d denied himself before. There were new scars, stories gouged into him that Edge did not want to learn. Pain that he couldn’t bear to share, not on top of what he already carried.

The need within him burned and he pushed Rus’s knees apart almost desperately, settling between his femurs as he sought the only connection he could.

Rus cried out as he slid into him and the sound of it was the most honest thing they’d shared since that single, damning kiss.

Rolling his hips, Edge fucked him slowly, watching Rus coming apart beneath him. Fingers clawed at his rib cage, clutching him, holding him desperately and Edge allowed it. Giving him the body he’d denied Rus before.

He took his own back, scraping his teeth against the line of Rus’s jaw, tasting his mouth again and again, sharing his own desperation, his own raw need.

The brink came too fast, inexorably, and he could feel Rus reaching for him. Not with his hands, those clung to him, refused to release their hold. It was a shaky, tentative mental touch through the Force, reaching out to him.

Edge didn’t hesitate, opening himself up to the first Force contact he’d felt in weeks. The torn bond between them that had broken when Rus abandoned the Order was waiting for him. It was as damaged as the others that lay within Edge but when he reached for this one, it connected.

Despite everything, despite all the anger, the hate, Rus splayed open his soul to him and Edge did not cringe from the poison of his mental touch. His soul was filled with the Dark Side, layers of darkness, of rage and hate drenched in blood, and beneath it all, flaking away like layers of paint, was the Rus he knew, that he had always known and wasn’t allowed to love.

So broken, so hurt, so angry, that gentle soul buried in pain. But there.

In the shimmer of merging thought, he saw memory that wasn’t his own. The moment Edge’s team found him and before they could attack came Rus’s realization of what was truly happening. The clone troopers raising their weapon and—Rus caught the one aiming at Edge’s back with a brutal use of Force, lifting him from the ground and throwing him into a wall. His shot went wild, left Edge with only a graze on the side of his skull rather than a fatal injury. The other Jedi fell beneath the onslaught, dead and dying, while Rus’s lightsaber flashed, crimson slashing through the troopers until their screams faded.

Rus, picking him up, carrying him to the ship. Rus, caring for his injury. Rus, here and now, writhing beneath him.

When he came, his seed fell over Edge’s hand, dripping onto his rib cage, and only then did Edge close his sockets, losing himself in the slick heat, in this moment, in this life that was now his, theirs, until his own pleasure fell over him, raw and real, burning within him, flaring in his own soul.

Within the Force they reclaimed their bond and in that embrace, Edge learned what it was like to fall.

-finis-

Read Chapter 2

[azuresquirrel]

Snow day Flash marathon continues!

Episode Four - WHAT IS THIS, A CROSSOVER EPISODE? Unfortunately, Yes.

“TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD I’M AN ORDINARY SCHOOLGIRL FORENSIC SCIENTIST BUT SECRETLY I’M SAILOR MOON I USE MY SPEED TO FIGHT CRIME AND FIND OTHERS LIKE ME.”

Also DEAD MOM.

Ah and here’s the “last time on The Flash” that’s actually “last time on Green Arrow.” Oh, it’s real cute that you think people would not only watch but also remember Green Arrow.

Pfffffft Barry’s like BEFORE I WAS HIT BY LIGHTNING I WAS A LONELY NERD BUT A NEAR-DEATH AND COMA GAVE ME FRIENDS!!!!!! Oh my god, he IS an anime character.

And Barry is fucking playing ping pong with Cisco and like this is literally my own fanfic. Also at the same time he’s playing Operation with Caitlin and chess (THE INTERNATIONAL SYMBOLIC GAME OF GAYNESS) with Harrison because HE FAST. And of course Barry says it’s for fun when Caitlin (who is COLD LIKE SNOW and DEAD FIANCE) asks why they’re doing this. Harrison of course says it’s also an experiment to see how much Barry’s powers can do. So that means as per usual, Harrison totally has a boner right now.

Cisco did not contribute any lines because HE’S PLAYING PING PONG WITH BARRY he probably had this fantasy like at least five times before this.

Cut from happy fun fanfic time to motorcycles going after an armored car for whatever Badguy of the Week nonsense is about to happen. To the surprise of no one, the armored car is broken into.

“Checkmate. Guess you still have a few things left to learn, Mr. Allen.” Yeah, Harrison just came.

Also we can now add BAD AT OPERATION to Caitlin’s non-dead-fiance characteristics.

Barry GOTTA GO FASTs it to the robbery and the robbers get away while Barry gets the injured drivers to the hospital because Barry is a good egg.

Apparently this was an attempted DIAMOND HEIST which Barry still shows up late to the investigation despite being the fastest man alive because ANIME PROTAGONIST. Captain Poor Man’s Santino Fontana continues to be deeply unimpressed with Barry.

Joe calling Barry out for referring himself in the third person – GOOD.

Iris is officially starting her LOIS LANE BLOG reporting/stanning The Red Streak (because he’s not actually The Flash yet though this seems to be the episode that Barry makes that stick).

And this person in Barry’s lab is Felicity Smoke. So Green Arrow woman. Hooray. I care so much.

The Badguys of the Week think they were attacked by a drone – TOPICAL! And the Badguy of the Week’s superpower seems to be MATH. EXCITEMENT.

BARRY’S SHOES CATCH ON FIRE SOMETIMES.

Oh great is this whole episode going to be Green Arrow Woman watching Barry do shit while also wanting Barry’s D? SNORE.

And they show up to STAR labs and Cisco immediately says “RUDE” I love him.

And now Cisco is geeking out over “the Arrow” while chomping on twizzlers, MORE CISCO ALWAYS.

Harrison comes in to be AMAZINGLY CREEPY by having stalked Felicity’s entire life because “keeping an eye out for promising talent in scientific fields” is how he kidnapped Cisco and Cailtin and IS A HUGE CREEP. (seriously do Cisco and Cailtin have lives outside the lab?)

“Everything we do here in STAR labs is to protect Barry Allen” HE SAID LIKE A CREEP AND A LIAR.

Oh great another scene with White Bread because I’ve already had SO MUCH to say about this episode. The point of this scene is that White Bread is a dumbass and continues to be a dumbass. (okay I did laugh quite a bit at the radio gag)

Iris is SUPER EXCITED FOR TRIVIA NIGHT I love her and also I CAN DATE YOU, IRIS. And Barry DO NOT knock $75 worth of cappuccinos, that is better than literally any other trivia night prize I have personally witnessed.

Oh god, this whole Green Arrow woman subplot is “OMG ARE YOU DAAAATING” be still my fucking beating heart.

I am officially more invested in the outcome of this trivia night than I am in 1. Green Arrow woman and 2. Whatever the fuck the Badguy of the week is doing. Also this trivia night has a VERY high budget.

BARRY IS EXTREMELY PROUD OF “E=MCHAMMER.”

Green Arrow woman shows up in a “DO ME NOW” dress. Sigh.

And Harrison just ~totally only now~ discovers that the weapon that Badguy of the Week now has is missing.

DON’T YELL AT CISCO!!!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!

NO!!!! MY SON!!!!!!!!

Apparently Cisco made this weapon (which makes Harrison MAD AND ANGRY because he “doesn’t like weapons” YEAH SURE MR. STABBY MCSTAB) and HE LOOKS LIKE A KICKED PUPPY. I’M NOT HAPPY.

I would much rather talk about the team named PRIDE AND PADAWANS and dresses accordingly.

Oh yeah that Badguy of the Week took the diamond or whatever and we now learn that Cisco made an Elsa Gun.

(GET IT??? TO *SLOW* BARRY DOWN??? GET IT????)

I’ll give them this – the special effects look pretty decent.

And Barry ends up not quite fast enough to save this one guy that gets frozen-shot. Awwww noooo, now Barry will be a sad kitten.

BARRY FINDS OUT THAT CISCO MADE THE GUN AND IS VERY MUCH A SAD KITTEN.

CISCO MADE THE GUN TO THEORETICALLY STOP BARRY IF HE TURNED OUT TO BE AN ASSHOLE. HO SHIT, ACTUAL DRAMA IS HAPPENING NOW!

BARRY THOUGHT THEY WERE FRIENDS! IF BARRY HAD KNOWN ABOUT THE GUN HE COULD’VE SAVED THAT DUDE! CISCO NOW HAS THIS MAN’S BLOOD ON HIS HANDS!

HI EVERYONE IS NOW A SAD KITTEN.

Summary of shit I don’t care about  - Papa Joe and Iris have dad talk about dating his partner –more boring Badguy of the Week stuff

Barry is now trying to GO FASTER because EMO and extends his YOU DON’T TRUST ME to Green Arrow woman who is here to give him a pep talk about how getting a team together is rough at first and BEING A SUPERHERO IS LONELY SO DON’T MAKE YOURSELF LONELIER ALSO MY VAGINA IS RIGHT HERE

Oh I guess Captain Cold didn’t take the diamond before which just goes to show how much I’ve been paying attention to this plot.

“I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING RIGHT NOW” Emo Barry says as he turns off his headset. Oh my god Barry, just listen to some Linkin Park and get over yourself before going after the guy with the bad gun that can hurt you.

We do however get a pretty great scene of Barry saving an entire train worth of people before said train crashes.

OH NOW. THE BADGUY CAUGHT BARRY. I WONDER IF TEAM SCIENCE WILL COME AND SAVE HIM???

Cisco holding a fuckass big gun = GOOD!!!

Cisco threatening to maybe kill a guy = I’M SO PROUD OF YOU, SON!!!! Clearly I’m a great mom.

“This is actually the STAR labs vacuum cleaner with a lot of LEDs.” I LOVE HIM!!!!!!

And Badguy gets away with the gun but THE TEAMS TRUSTS AGAIN! HOORAY!

And Green Arrow Woman goes back to her crappy show.

DON’T TOUCH MY SON, HARRISON!!!! YOU’RE ON REAL THIN ICE!!!!!!

(Harrison being creepy towards Barry = that’s our Harrison! Harrison being creepy towards Cisco = DON’T)

And Iris says “no more secrets” to her father which her father WILL NOT HONOR because of Barry’s superpowers and HEY I’M NOT THRILLED ABOUT THIS CONTINUALLY.

Ugh, Barry comes to visit Green Arrow woman on the train because I guess this still isn’t over. She makes the AMAZING DEDUCTION that Barry is in love with Iris, truly the Sherlock of our age.

THEN THEY KISS FOR PRETTY MUCH NO REASON. GOD.

And I thought we’d get our weekly Crazy Ex Boyfriend check in but WE DON’T EVEN GET THAT, instead we got this boring-ass Badguy of the Week recruiting a clear future Badguy of the Week. NO. I LIKE CREEPY HARRISON WHEN HE’S BEING FUN CREEPY NOT CREEPY TO CISCO CREEPY.

What a weird fucking episode. The entire part that was about the gun that Cisco made was the best part of the show so far but it was sandwiched in the worst/most boring episode of the show so far with a Badguy of the Week who DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWERS and a crossover with a crappy show. God.

There’s a reason we left crossover episodes behind in the 90s, folks.

[inkognito97]

Yoda giving the Talk to Dooku, Dooku giving the Talk to Qui-Gon, Qui-Gon giving the Talk to Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan giving the Talk to Anakin, Anakin giving the Talk to Ashoka. How much wisedom passed down from the origin and how much was changed?

Yan Dooku was fidgeting. To any outsider it was crystal clear that the young teenager was highly embarrassed and wanted nothing more than to escape. And really, hadn’t it been for the grip that the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order had on him with the Force, he probably would have bolted. Now, Yoda was not any more eager than his young charge to deepen this particularly topic - pun only slightly intended, but he understood the importance of sexual education, especially to headstrong and proud young men, like his Padawan.

“Listen you will,” the green Jedi Master chided, there was no humor in his voice. Only a small warning that meant that Yan would be in a lot of trouble, were he to continue his ‘bad’ behavior.

“Yes Master,” the brown haired male bowed his head. His cheeks were red in shame.

“Important this is,” carefully and if he had all the time in the world, did Yoda fold his legs under him and rested his walking stick on top his lap. His claw like hands came to rest on the wooden stick. 

“I know Master,” mumbled Yan.

“Know, do you, hm? A Master, you are?”

“No, my Master. It was bad enough to talk about this, but to be reprimanded was even worse.

The green troll hummed in agreement and satisfaction. “Love, a difficult topic it is. Large spectrum there is,” he nodded to himself. “But talk a bout love, I won’t. Talk about sex, I will.”

It was both astonishing and deeply disgusting that his Master was so calm while speaking of such a sensitive and private topic. And he still did not want to hear it. 

“Master, I don’t see why this is necessary. I already know how…” he paused, considering his next words very carefully, “children are made and how to protect oneself and your partner. We had it in class.” He desperately hoped to have evaded Yoda’s lecture, but he should have known that it would not be that easy. Nothing ever was with the Jedi Order’s Grandmaster.

“You do, hm? Well, then tell me all, you will.”

Yan was sure that the horror must have shown on his face and he wished he had not opened his mouth in the first place. Could this get any worse.

“Waiting, I am. Impudent Padawan, mine,” the green troll continued and Yan mentally steeled himself for embarrassing hours full of humiliation.

“Master?” the young brown haired boy at his side was not looking at him, while he spoke.

“What is it, Qui-Gon?” he knew that tone. It meant that his ever observant Padawan had found another ‘wonder’ of life and wanted to know everything about it. 

“What are they doing?” the Padawan asked.

Yan furrowed his brow and stopped walking. He looked in the directing his student was gazing, but he was unsure what could have caught the younger male’s attention. “Who, Qui-Gon?”

“The two people there, by the tree,” he sounded impatient and gestured with his hand.

The Jedi Master turned his head enough to finally see what his curious student meant and he stepped back in horror, when he saw what the boy was referring to.

“Well, they are… kissing.”

“Why is that?” the boy’s midnight blue eyes looked up at him in wonder and confusion. 

“Because they love each other, I would imagine.” He firmly turned the boy away from the kissing couple under the tree and urged him on. He did not want to be late for heir meeting with the temple government. They were already behind their schedule as it is and just because he had promised student to go see the park.

“Master…” he hesitated and for one brief moment, Yan hoped that the questions would stop, “Mace said that this is, how babies are made… is that true?”

Yan stumbled and almost fell. It had been terrible to have this specific conversation with his own Master, it would only be worse with his Padawan. “No Qui-Gon… this is NOT, how babies are made.”

“I am glad,” the relief that flowed into the Force, was alarming. “But,” his brow was furrowed and even the quickened steps of the taller man, did nothing to stop him from voicing his question, “how ARE babies made?”

Yan was sure that he heard the characteristic cackling of his former Master somewhere in the distance. “You see, if a man and a woman REALLY love each other… they… sleep together.” 

The brown haired boy tilted his head in confusion. “Like sleeping next to each other?” Sudden panic tinged the Force around him and his eyes were comically wide. Also, Qui-Gon had stopped dead in his tracks, he was suddenly as pale as a ghost. “Master, I think I got Tahl pregnant!”

The Jedi Master blinked. Nothing could have prepared him for such an outburst and such terrible panic in his student. “No Qui-Gon, by the Force, no.You didn’t get your friend pregnant,” he laid a comforting hand on his student’s shoulders and squeezed in reassurance. it suddenly sprung to his mind that his Padawan was too young to have this talk, HE had been older, when Master Yoda had talked to him. 

“Master?” there was hope and terror in equal measure.

A sigh escaped the older male. “It is not as simply as that, you see… the man has too put his… into the woman’s…” he couldn’t do it, he just couldn’t do it. “You know what Qui-Gon, as soon as we are back on Coruscant, I will arrange a meeting with you and Master Yoda. My former Master knows a lot more about the topic as I do… he will explain you everything you need to know.”

Qui-Gon contemplated the answer, then he said, “Alright,” and with that he was satisfied, at least for now. And Yan could take a breathe in relief, he did not want to get any deeper into the material - pun definitely not intended.

Qui-Gon watched from afar as the blonde duchess snuggled closer to his Padawan’s shoulder, seeking more than warmth. But his Padawan, Force bless his soul, was quite oblivious to her advances. Satine Kryze did not seem to mind, instead she buried herself against his side until she fell into a deep sleep.

Qui-Gon grinned and shook his head in amusement. He would need to talk with Obi-Wan soon, before the temperamental blonde acted first preferably. 

He alerted the ginger haired male to his presence through their bond, and requested a talk with him. Obi-Wan briefly glanced over his shoulder, eyes locking with Qui-Gon’s. He nodded in understanding in with the use of the Force, he gently moved the female off of him and laid her onto the blanket he had been sitting on. He did not rise immediately, but instead, draped his own robe over her form and he let her use his travel pack as a pillow.

His Padawan may be oblivious, but Qui-Gon wasn’t. If that wasn’t love between the unlikely pair, then he would cut off his long hair…

“Master?” the Jedi in training asked, after he had reached the older male’s position.

Qui-Gon smiled reassuringly at him. “I think it is time we have a certain talk, Padawan mine.”

“Certain talk?” he tilted his head, curiosity clearly written on his features.

“Yes, about love and sex.”

There was a slight grimace on Obi-Wan’s features. “Oh?”

Qui-Gon nodded. He leaned his back against a tree, getting as comfortable as possible, with his arms crossed before his chest. Obi-Wan remained upright, and even though he looked unsure, there was also a healthy amount of curiosity and interest in the boy’s ever changing blue-green eyes. The older of the two sometimes asked himself, where the time had gone. Bandomeer and Melida/Daan seemed just like yesterday sometimes.

Obi-Wan’s gaze briefly flickered towards the form on the ground behind him and then back to his Master. Understanding dawned upon him and Qui-Gon was proud for his insight.

“Always remember Padawan, the Code only forbids attachment, not love.” He smiled widely, “Now… if two people, like you and Satine, love each other… there are certain activities they like to do.”

“You mean sex,” Obi-Wan interrupted.

“Indeed,” there was mischief glittering in his midnight blue eyes. “Now listen. I am rather sure that you are aware that a man possesses a penis and a woman, a vagina.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Obi-Wan replied dryly, causing his Master to chuckle.

“You already know the basics Padawan, very good.” Obi-Wan snorted at the comment. “There is nothing fancy about sex and nothing disgusting either, i want you to know that Padawan. There are enough people on the galaxy, who things otherwise, but I want you to know that there is nothing embarrassing about it, as I said, it is natural and and a part of life.”

“I understand,” Obi-Wan nodded and not for the first time, was Qui-Gon glad to call such an open-minded being his apprentice. Had Obi-Wan be more like his former Master, things would have been much harder - pun intended - for the both of them.

“It is very important that both partners are ready, my Padawan. Don’t pressure your partner and don’t let yourself be pressured by her… or him.” He raised a challenging eyebrow.

“HER, Master, definitely HER.”

“Fair enough,” he would not have expected Obi-Wan to be attracted to the same gender, but he had just wanted to make sure that Obi-Wan knew that it wouldn’t be the end of the world either. “The act of lovemaking does not always include penetration, my Padawan. There are many ways to achieve satisfaction and pleasure, though the most common IS penetration. And I BEG of you, PLEASE use protection, Obi-Wan.”

The Padawan’s eyes were slightly round and there was a light shade of red on his freckled cheeks. “Yes Master,” yet he did not look away.

Qui-Gon allowed a smile to appear on his features and he reached out to ruffle the ginger hair of his precious student. “You can always come to me and ask questions. Don’t hesitate, Padawan.”

“I won’t,” promised the boy and with an acknowledging look from midnight blue eyes, did he turn around and silently made his way back to the abandoned female. He stopped halfway and hesitantly looked at the older male.

“Go ahead Obi-Wan,” he encouraged.

The Padawan looked at the ground, “Master, did you and Master Tahl ever…” he let the sentence trail off.

A sad smile played on bearded features. “Yes.” And old and faded memory, yet bittersweet all the same.

“I’m sorry,” said the ginger haired teenager and he fully turned around again, not saying another word.

Qui-Gon watched, how his apprentice maneuvered the sleeping female so that her head was resting comfortably on his lap. Obi-Wan seemed content and that was the most important thing. With that last thought, the Jedi Master turned away to give the two young people some privacy, though he doubted that anything more than kissing would be happening in the first place.

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure if it was truly the right time to have this talk. His Padawan was very young, yet he had already gone through so much and there was no doubt in the Jedi Master’s mind that the boy had seen a lot of things that no child should see or experience, EVER. 

A sigh escaped the ginger haired male, but he quickly hid his anxiety behind a well crafted mask, upon the entrance of his relatively new student. 

“Anakin, please take a seat,” he smiled softly at the blond boy, who shyly returned it. The former slave seemed to know, or sense, that something important was about to happen. 

“Anakin,” his tone was serious, “I spoke with the mind healers and they told me that it would be best for you, if you were to speak to someone about your past. Now, you don’t have to talk about everything at once and you don’t have to talk, if you are not ready… yet there IS something that I need to know.”

“Alright…” the boy replied hesitantly.

Obi-Wan took a deep breath. “Now Ani, I am your teacher, but I am also your friend and guardian. I am responsible for your safety and I have and want to, take care of you. You are important to me and… it is not easy for me either, let me tell you…,” he sighed, “but I need to know if there was, at some point in your life… anybody, who made you do something that you did not want.”

“Like making me clean the shop?” the blonde asked.

Obi-Wan grimaced, “Not quite as simple I fear.” He sighed, there was no way to make this easy or nice. “Did anyone ever… touch you?”

For a moment, the younger male blinked, then he deadpanned, “Oh, you mean sex?”

Again, the Jedi Knight grimaced. He should have known that a former slave would have more education in such matters than a child from the temple. “Indeed,” he nodded.

“Well no, but… there was a woman once… she was crying and a man… I pushed him into a wall and the woman ran away.”

Blue-green eyes were round. “Okay Padawan, I want you to listen closely now.” He waited until his charge had nodded. “What that man did, was obviously wrong. He touched and used that woman against her will. It was rape. And there is a huge difference between rape and sex, because sex is supposed to be pleasurable for BOTH partners and it should only be done, when both are ready for it.”

Understanding dawned in the blond’s eye. “So it… usually would not… hurt?” he tilted his head.

“No,” Obi-Wan shook his head frantically, “It is NEVER supposed to hurt, do you understand?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Good,” he nodded, more to himself than to the young boy sitting in front of him at their kitchen table. “Now, do you have any questions?” 

Obi-Wan found himself sitting at the old table for the rest of the day, answering endless questions and making sure that Anakin understood the difference between love and attachment, rape and sex, as well as protection. It had not been so hard after all - pun definitely intended.

“Master? What is this?” the female Togruta looked confused between the heap of datapads before her and her Master, who was standing in front of her with his arms across her chest. 

“This, Snips, is your new project.”

Ahsoka took one of the datapads hesitantly, she had a bad feeling about this, and checked its content. Surprised, she dropped the device back onto the table. “Master?”

“This is very important Snips, and I want you to read through it. Now I know that it can be uncomfortable for women to talk to men about sexual matters, so if you have any questions that you do not want to ask me or Obi-Wan, contact Padme. I already spoke with her and she would gladly answer every question you have.”

Ahsoka blinked in surprise at the thoughtfulness of her Master. She knew the older Jedi as a reckless and brave man, who acted and thought later. But this was truly thoughtful of him and she found herself admiring him just a little bit more.

“I will Master, thank you,” she eventually said. The Jedi Knight gave her a small smile and turned to leave her to work in privacy.

That hadn’t been hard at all - pun not really intended, but still funny. 

[skywalkersapprentice]

Day 19- Order

After leaving the Jedi Order, Ahsoka Tano meets Ferus Olin by chance.

rating: g

pairing: ferus olin/roan lands

word count: 2349

(read on ao3)

Here it is, the ridiculously self indulgent fic. 

“I thought Dooku was the last Jedi to resign from the Order.” Ahsoka frowned at her datapad, then down at her Master from where she was sitting on the wing of his starfighter.

“He was,” Anakin replied, sliding out from under his fighter. There was a streak of oil on his nose. “Why do you ask?”

“Because this list here says that he wasn't. A Jedi named... Ferus Olin left peacefully about six years ago.”

The welding tool in Anakin's mechanical hand creaked under the sudden pressure. “Ferus Olin was a Padawan. The Lost Twenty you see in the Archives only refers to Jedi who achieved mastery.”

There was something... off, about the way he said Ferus's name.

Ahsoka went back over the list again, which she had encountered in her research on the history of the Jedi Order. She and her Master often spent afternoons like this; Ahsoka studying while Anakin tinkered with something complicated. That way, he could help her if she had questions, and he had somebody to hand him tools and bounce ideas off of. But she'd never seen him throw up his guard so fast to a question as simple as this.

 Ferus had been eighteen when he left the Jedi, which made him about two years older than Anakin. Likely, they would have had some classes together. Ahsoka studied the picture beside the text. The former Padawan wore a serious expression. He had dark eyes, and there was a thick gold streak in his brown hair. “Did you know him?”

“Once,” Anakin said shortly. That was his I don't want to talk about this tone, but Ahsoka was curious.

“Why did he leave?”

Anakin sat up, reaching for another tool. “Another Padawan was killed on a mission. Ferus felt responsible, so much so that he walked away from the Jedi.”

“Oh,” Ahsoka said softly. She couldn't imagine what that must have been like. How could he have brought himself to make that choice? At eighteen, he would have been just a few years away from becoming a Jedi Knight. All that hard work... for nothing. “I never knew about that.”

“It was a long time ago.” Anakin began to slide under his fighter again, but Ahsoka had one last question.

“Were you friends?”

Anakin snorted, a bitter smile twisting his lips.“Not exactly.”

So that's what she'd been sensing from Anakin. He wasn't sad, or upset. He'd... resented Ferus, for some reason. That was odd. Her Master occasionally disagreed with the methods of his fellow Jedi, but he always respected them.

Ferus Olin, gone from the Order for over six years, seemed to still be getting under his skin.

Anakin read the confusion on her face and seemed to decide he wasn't getting anywhere by being vague. “Ferus and I were complete opposites. He would have been a great Padawan for Obi-Wan- he loved rules, never stepped out of line, never skipped a lesson. Everyone loved him.”

Except you, Ahsoka thought.

“But he thought I was too reckless and I thought he was too careful,” Anakin continued, tone a little too flippant for that to be the extent of their issues. “We had our differences. But he would have been a good Jedi, had he stayed.”

Ahsoka wondered what Ferus was doing now. What did Jedi do, once they left the Order? It was something she'd never considered before. Did they find their family, wander the galaxy? Did they continue to serve the Republic in some aspect? Did they start families of their own?

“Pass me that wire cutter, will you, Snips?” Anakin asked. It was a pointed change of subject, but Ahsoka decided to let it go. It was clear that Ferus Olin was someone Anakin wanted to leave in the past, and she would respect that.

Ahsoka wondered, from time to time, how someone could just choose to walk away from the Jedi Order, but she never truly understood until it was her turn.

It was something that she knew, deep down, was the right thing to do. It had been her choice to make, and yet walking down the steps of the Temple was the hardest thing she'd ever done. Now, three months later, she was still figuring things out.

It was a slow adjustment process.

It was up to her, and only her, to decide how she wanted to live. There was no Master to tell her what to do, no Council to send her to far off places. She had to provide for herself, and although Ahsoka was accustomed to living in uncomfortable conditions, she wasn't used to the routine of civilian life.

Every morning, she woke up and headed to Coruscant's floating parks to meditate. Then, after breakfast, she would go to work at the repair shop she'd found, several levels below the surface. It was a tedious job, but one that paid well enough. As the lights began to dim on Coruscant, she would then walk the streets, taking in the city she'd known her entire life, but never had a chance to explore.

She didn't know what she was looking for. But it beat staying in her tiny room with nothing to do.

Today found her in a cafe near the surface, reading a holonet commentary on the war effort, hands wrapped around a mug of Alderaanian-brew caf. It was her favourite, she'd discovered, and that in itself was odd. She'd never really realized that she could have favourites like that before.

There was a lot of things she had never realized before leaving the Jedi Order.

The door opened and Ahsoka looked up out of habit. There were two Republic officers entering the cafe, both wearing the uniforms of a General. That wasn't uncommon in this district of Coruscant, Ahsoka was discovering. All the best cafes on Coruscant were on level 5125, and they were only two levels beneath the Senate District, where the Republic Center For Military Operations was.

“You're cutting this a bit close, don't you think?” one of the officers was saying. He reminded Ahsoka a little of her Master (former Master, she reminded herself) with a tall, powerful build and long dark hair. She looked away.

“Ah, but who's fault is that?” the other one asked lightly. “If you could drive half as well as you could plan a tactical assault, we'd already be back at the compound.”

“Which one of us has never been to Coruscant again, Ferus?”

Ahsoka snapped her head up. Ferus was not a common name.

Could it really be...?

She hadn't paid much attention to the other officer at first, but looking at him now, she could see the same dark eyes, same hair, same angular face as she remembered from that list, at least a year ago. He'd changed a bit, his face was older, his hair longer, and the gold streak now carried hints of silver, even though he was still only in his twenties.

The biggest difference though, was that Ferus Olin was smiling.

“I'm hearing excuses when we should hurrying,” he said to his companion as they joined the line. Ahsoka didn't mean to keep staring, but she couldn't look away.

He was so different than she'd imagined him to be.

Anakin had painted a picture of a stiff, formal, unsmiling Jedi, one who didn't know how to joke around or laugh, and that was not who Ferus was. His stance was casual despite the uniform, and he was clearly at ease with the other General. Had her Master been wrong about Ferus? Or had leaving the Jedi Order changed him that much?

Ferus must have sensed her watching him, because he turned around and his gaze found hers immediately. Ahsoka expected confusion, or for him to ignore her completely, but instead, his eyes widened in recognition. He hesitated, just for a moment. Then, he said something to his companion that she didn't catch, left the line and made his way to her table.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked.

“Be my guest,” Ahsoka told him. “Ferus Olin, right?”

Ferus nodded, sliding into the seat across from her. “And you're Ahsoka Tano. I heard about what happened. I'm sorry.”

Ahsoka looked down. “Thank you.”

“I have to ask- how do you know who I am? I don't think we ever met at the Temple.”

“There's a list in the Archives, containing the names and pictures of every Jedi who's ever peacefully resigned from the Order,” Ahsoka told him. “When I found it, your name was the most recent one.”

It was still painful to think that now, her name would be at the top of that list. Dooku. Ferus Olin. Ahsoka Tano.

Ferus nodded. “Leaving the Jedi is still the hardest choice I've ever had to make,” he said. “I wouldn't wish that on anyone else.”

The words were out before she could stop them. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” Ferus said. There was no hesitation, and something lifted in Ahsoka's chest. “I remember being where you are now. I spent my first few months out of the Order wandering the galaxy, looking for a new sense of belonging. That adjustment period is hard. But it will get better.” He smiled. “If I can do it, anyone can.”

“Did you find it?”

“Find what?”

“The belonging you were looking for.” It was belonging to something bigger, having a purpose, that Ahsoka was missing so much. Where in the galaxy could former Jedi find their place?

Ferus glanced sideways, in the direction of the front counter. His smile went soft, just for a moment. “I did. And you will too.”

He was happy, she realized. Ferus had left the Jedi Order in a similar sense of heartbreak. He had gone through the confusion and despair of trying to live outside the Order. And he had built himself a new life.  

It filled her with a sense of both hope and determination. In time, this heartbreak would heal, and Ahsoka would find her own path.

“You're...” Ahsoka shook her head, trying to find the right words. “You're not what I expected.”

Ferus looked amused. “You were Anakin Skywalker's apprentice, right? What did he tell you about me?”

So the rivalry had gone both ways. “Just that you two were complete opposites,” Ahsoka said. Maybe it was best that her Master had left it at that.

“Well,” Ferus said, “he wasn't wrong. I'd like to think he's changed as much as I have, though. When we were kids, I could never imagine him taking a Padawan.”

She didn't tell Ferus that Anakin hadn't wanted her in the beginning, just as she didn't tell him that her leaving had crushed him. “He was a good Master,” she said softly. She didn't know exactly what Ferus thought of Anakin, but she thought he should hear that much, at least.

“You miss him,” Ferus said. “I understand. But that gets easier in time as well.”

The other officer approached then, holding two drinks. “I hate to interrupt, but Ferus, if we're any later than we are, we might actually get court-martialed.”

“Duty calls,” Ferus said with a sigh. He stood, grimacing, and his companion shot a concerned look at his leg.

What brings you to Coruscant, anyway?” Ahsoka asked.

“Meetings, mostly,” he said. “I was injured during the battle of Lythillian and Senator Grendor wanted to personally thank me for my service. Of course, by personally, he meant, come to Coruscant. After all, there's no press in the middle of a war zone.”

Ahsoka had met Senators like that. The Republic was filled with greedy politicians, looking for their moment in the spotlight so they could gain more supporters. They'd always been there, of course, but the war was changing everyone.

“Ferus refused to get into all of that without caffeine,” the other officer said, handing one of the drinks to Ferus, “so here we are.” He turned friendly eyes on her. “I'm Roan Lands.”

“Ahsoka Tano.”

Roan glanced at Ferus. His expression shifted to that of understanding. “It's nice to meet you, Ahsoka Tano,” he said to her. “Sorry this has to be so short, but my partner here has Senators to charm-”

“I'll meet you outside,” Ferus told him.

“If you're longer than thirty seconds, I'm dragging you out by your hair,” Roan informed him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

“Go,” Ferus said good naturedly, and Ahsoka watched as Roan slid his fingers gently down Ferus's arm before he pulled away. She watched the way Ferus smiled after him as he walked out the door.

It reminded her of something, another secret relationship that wasn't so secret.

Maybe Anakin and Ferus weren't so different after all.

“You should go,” Ahsoka said. “You know how those Senators hate to be kept waiting.”

“If anything, that's incentive to stay.” Ferus looked back to her. “You know, you're already doing better than I was when I left. But-” He handed her a business card. It read Olin/Lands, and there was an address on it for the planet Bellassa.

So that's the life Ferus lead when he wasn't fighting a war. A businessman.

“If you ever need anything...”

“I'll know where to find you,” Ahsoka finished. She felt warm, and it wasn't just from the caf. “Thank you.”

Ferus nodded. “My pleasure. And now I really have to go.”

“May the Force be with you, Ferus,” Ahsoka said, and Ferus, who had begun to turn, froze. There was a curious expression on his face.

“I haven't heard that one in a while,” he said, almost to himself. Then, after a moment...“May the Force be with you, Ahsoka.”

And then he was gone.

Ahsoka was alone once more.

She didn't feel alone, though. It was comforting, to know that there was someone out there that knew what she was going through. Ferus had reminded her of both what she'd had, and what she could have. She would build a life for herself, just as he had. She would find her place of belonging.

She would just have to keep looking.

Listen, if nobody else is gonna write Ferus/Roan or two of my favourite Star Wars characters meeting, I've gotta do it myself.

(Ferus Olin was a character created by Jude Watson, if you aren't familiar with him. I've tried to stick as close to canon as I can here- he and Anakin were rivals, Ferus left the Order after the death of a Padawan, then he met Roan Lands and they started a business together called Olin/Lands, later falling in love. It's mentioned in the Last of the Jedi series that he and Roan served as officers in the Clone Wars, so I took that and ran with it.)

[captainmazzic]

The Ahsoka Novel Review, or, Goddamnit Star Wars, Part CXXVIII

Under a cut because this thing is long as fuuuuuck

...Okay. That was... Interesting.

I’m just going to ignore the first part where the author pretends to make Ahsoka have some sort of compassion-sympathy for Maul while taunting him and throwing his disability in his face at the same time. Was there even any point to having this little exchange? It’s not mentioned later, Maul has no bearing at all on this plot, and nothing Ahsoka does here is relevant even as a learning experience for later. It’s just... there. Token inclusion to draw in the Maul fans, I guess? Or.. alienate them yet again, I don’t even know.

This is how it starts. *laughing*. It gets so much worse. And... has a few moments where it shines, I admit. Anyway. Let’s get this party started. 

So pretty much we follow Ahsoka around for a few years while she mopes about not being an Official Jedi™ and develops a major martyr obsession. Coming from Ahsoka’s mouth, it just seems so out of place, incongruent, and it gets old real fast. She regrets leaving the Jedi Order before Order 66 happens, she wishes she hadn’t survived while the rest of the Jedi died, she wonders why she lived when she didn’t “deserve” to because she “deserted” the Jedi, etc. etc. ETC. I am so sick of Heroic Characters™ with survivors’ complexes that don’t even fit their fucking character. We need another one of those like we need another vampire bemoaning immortality as a curse, or a burning stick to the eye. I’d rather take the burning stick. Ugh.

Anyway. When Ahsoka isn’t being that particular brand of OOC, she’s being a mouthpiece for... something. Someone. I’m honestly not sure who. Or why. But she says stuff that makes no sense for someone like Ahsoka to say, and you get the impression that she says it just so that the author can have these things out in the open. That whole making the crystal bleed? We won’t get started on that just yet. But yeah. What. The. Fuck. And she says stuff about Barriss being.. a... bully? Did I fucking read that right? Like I mean she says some things about Barriss that are accurate (it was cruel for her to try and let Ahsoka take the fall for the temple bombing, she didn’t trust people, and she was afraid of the war), but I’m not sure where she was ever a bully? Oh wait I guess that’s just the book being badly written. 

And oh my god. Let me just. Excerpt a few… unfortunate word choices:  

“The mechanisms put in place during the Clone Wars had been twisted for the Empire's use, and every day the Emperor’s hold grew tighter. She almost admired Palpatine for his ability to pull off a long-term plan – except for his being evil and all."

About the Grand Inquisitor:

“His agents must follow his every order as though the Emperor himself had given it. That sort of power made him feel very strong.”

Also about the Grand Inque:

“As he stalked through the corridor, his agents scattered out of his way. They were all afraid of him, which he liked rather a lot.”

And my personal favourite cringe-worthy writing:

“Dark crystals were made, too, but not in that holy place. They were plundered from their rightful bearers and corrupted by the hands that stole them. Even rock could be changed by the power of the Force, bleeding alterations until their color was the deepest red. The balance was finely staged between the two, light and dark, and it took very little to upset it.”

...What in the flying freebasing FUCK does “bleeding alterations” even fucking MEAN? What balance? Why is it staged? Why, if there is supposed to be a “balance” in the Force inside these bits of mineral, are they supposedly inherently “light”? Why are the Jedi their only “rightful bearers” (I mean, other than the Jedi arbitrarily laying sovereign claim to anything Force-related they set eyes on, whether meant for them or not)?

Oh, well let’s see here. Ahsoka is here to help.

"I've never seen white ones before," Bail mused.

"They used to be red," Ahsoka said. "When the creature had them, they were red. But I heard them before I ever saw him on Raada, and knew that they were meant for me."

"You changed their nature?" he asked.

"I restored them," Ahsoka replied. "I freed them. The red crystals were corrupted by the dark side when those who wielded them bent them to their will. They call it making the crystal bleed. That's why the blade is red."

Okay so basically Ahsoka met an Inquisitor (whom she, persistently, ever so kindly calls a “creature”, more on that in a minute), killed him, stole and destroyed his lightsabers, then ripped the crystals out of them and put them in her own shiny new lightsaber hilts she just made. They apparently faded from bright red to colourless. (Which, honestly, to me, in my ever so humble opinion, interprets as “I just killed everything unique and vibrant about these crystals and drained them of all individuality, just like the Jedi do to people when they ‘free’ them :D :D :D”. But I mean. That’s just me.) This crystal bleeding is fucking Jedi folklore superstition. It’s stupid. It’s even stupider than the old “synthetic crystals are unnatural so of COURSE the Sith use them, m’kay” canon.

I’m just. So annoyed. So very annoyed.

So anyway. Ahsoka killed an Inquisitor, the Sixth Brother. She and a little girl sense him as a shadow at first - “The shadow was almost certainly one of the dark side's creatures. Ahsoka had no idea what sort of thing it might be, but whatever it was...” And that’s that. He’s “the creature” for the rest of the time he’s referred to. Seems like she hung around Kenobi way too fucking much, his style of Jedi seems to have rubbed off on her. Sigh.

But then she protests.

"I'm not really a Jedi, you know," she said. "I left the Temple, turned away from the Jedi path."

"If you're not a Jedi, then what are you, Ahsoka Tano?" Bail asked. "Because to be honest, you still sound and act like a Jedi to me."

OF COURSE SHE DOES. SHE IS A GODDAMN JEDI. A ~Grey Jedi~ is still a fucking JEDI OH EM FUCKING GEE. They’re Jedi Lite. Half the calories, most of the judgment, twice the taste, all the guilt! Goddamnit Star Wars. You’re not fooling anyone. Stop trying.

Moving on.

So then we have the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Ahsoka and Kaeden. Which largely means… Unrequited Feels on Kaeden’s part and… nothing else.

"Ahsoka!" Kaeden ran toward her, but stopped short of throwing her good arm around Ahsoka's shoulder. She knew that lightsabers were not to be trifled with. She could almost feel the power pouring out of Ahsoka anyway. It was amazing. "I could kiss you."

Ahsoka stopped in her tracks. The look she shot Kaeden was mildly confused.

"Not now, I mean," Kaeden said. She wanted to laugh for the first time in weeks but thought that might just be the hysteria setting in. "My timing is terrible and you have all those Jedi hang-ups. I just wanted you to know in case we die."

"Oh," said Ahsoka. "Well, thanks."

….. Oh. Well, thanks.

*beats head against wall* WOULD IT HAVE KILLED YOU, STAR WARS, TO HAVE GIVEN US JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE. I mean, I’m all about canonical asexual and/or aromantic Ahsoka, that would have been fucking rad, but they’ve already given us the fiasco that was goddamn LUX BONTERI, so The Powers That Be already canonically ruined that for me. Bi or Pan or Lesbian Ahsoka would have been really awesome too. Just… anything but Clueless Insensitive Straight Ahsoka for canon, please. PLEASE. We have enough of those characters already. Ahsoka doesn’t need to be one of them. Just my opinion though. Of course. *sigh*

...And then we have a brief, very out-of-place flashback from Anakin’s POV, that actually has zERO to do with anYTHINg, but it’s heartbreaking nonetheless because it’s just before Ahsoka is introduced and Anakin is still thinking that Ahsoka is going to be Kenobi’s apprentice.

"Anakin wasn't entirely sure what his place next to Obi-Wan would look like once his friend had a new student. Jedi weren't as married to the concept of two as the Sith were, but most of them acted singly or in pairs. It was one of the reasons Anakin had never put in for a Padawan of his own. He didn't want it to look like he was pushing Obi-Wan aside. Now, Obi-Wan had gone and done it first, and Anakin still wasn't sure how he felt about it."

He didn’t want Kenobi to feel sidelined. I’m. Just. Goddamnit Star Wars don’t give me Obikin feels when we already know Kenobi turns into the most asinine, horrible person in all the Jedi next to, maybe, Yoda.

Anyway. Let’s move on again.

Oh yeah. So there’s Kolvin. He’s a Rodian.

….. Now, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it very often, but one of the things I fixate on in Star Wars is the frequency of Rodian deaths. Almost all of the named (and a bunch of the unnamed) Rodians we meet end up getting killed. A good majority of them on-screen or in-story. Rodians are one of my favourite species in the entirety of Star Wars and it really upsets me that the greater majority of the ones we meet get axed quickly after we’re first introduced to them. And Kolvin’s no exception. We are pretty much introduced to him solely for the sake of watching him die, graphically, a chapter or two later. I’m just… furious beyond being capable of physically showing it. It’s exhausting.

And I think my final criticism of the book is the entire story behind the Empire even being on Raada in the first place. It’s such a fabricated, “Oh I guess we need a reason to fuck up Ahsoka’s life again via the Empire” kind of plot. It makes LITERALLY ZERO LOGICAL SENSE, even if I stretch real hard and invoke believing at least six impossible things before breakfast. There is NO reason why these genetically engineered plants would be useful. The Empire would not go through all this trouble to search for productive agricultural worlds only to use them once (ONCE??) and then give it up as a barren wasteland after first use. That is so unproductive, unprofitable, and inefficient. Why would they do that, and then leave the farmers to try and scrape by after that? Such a waste of resources. We already have PLENTY of examples of what the Empire does with agricultural worlds. Ones that MAKE SENSE. They come in, set up their infrastructure, heavily regulate work schedules, and implement their own ideas about what needs to be grown. And guess what? It’s stuff that they can plant indefinitely, because that keeps the population working under tight, regulated control. It keeps them in a routine that is hard to break. It keeps them busy, it keeps them tired, it keeps them distracted. It maintains a level of familiarity that’s just close enough to normalcy that they will be hesitant to do anything to break it. These are useful things to the Empire. VITAL things.

Instead we get a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon where the Empire sweeps in, destroys everything, cackles maniacally, knocks over your sandcastle, and kicks the puppy on the way out. Why is it so fucking hard for these hired writers to come up with a good villainous reason for the villains to be villainous? Honestly they have material RIGHT THERE. USE IT. For fuck’s sake.

Okay but with all this criticism there were a couple highlights.

There was a Black Sun agent. They didn’t last too terribly long as a part of the story, but they’re referred to only with they/them pronouns for the entire time they’re around, and that. Pleased me. Greatly. And there wasn’t even some concentrated effort to “find out their gender” or idle speculation or some other stupid bullshit. It was very much a non-issue, and that also pleased me. Good job. Gold star.

And despite the fact that Ahsoka had a lot of damning things to say about Barriss, she had this to say as well:

“She had a point about the Republic and the Jedi. There was something wrong with them, and we were too locked into our traditions to see what it was… If we'd listened to her – really listened – we might have been able to stop Palpatine before he took power."

In the text, that statement is surrounded with too many disclaimers and defensive finger-pointing for me to be entirely happy with it, but it’s something, and I’m glad Ahsoka was the one the writers allowed to say it.

I really liked it when we had some glimpses of Ahsoka’s actual questioning nature whenever the story got in her head. It didn’t happen very often at all, most of the time she’s just developing her martyr fixation or bemoaning her existence, but every now and again we get a tiny peek of the Ahsoka that captured my heart towards the end of The Clone Wars, walking away from the Jedi temple and saying that she needed to figure things out on her own, without the Jedi, without Anakin, without the crutches and restrictions that the Order held her down with. If only we’d gotten more of that Ahsoka throughout the book, it could have made the story shine.

[gffa]

I have a lot of affection for PADME AMIDALA’s character and sometimes she can get a little lost in the shuffle (both in canon and in fandom) so LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY PADME FEELINGS AND WHAT WE COULD HAVE HAD, by which I mean cry about my feelings on Padme fic, especially Padme Lives fic. STAR WARS FIC RECS - PADME AMIDALA: PADME LIVES: ✦ Keep Breathing by Yesac, obi-wan/padme + some anakin/padme + luke & leia & oc, 45.8k ✦ the family amidala by dirgewithoutmusic, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia, 6.8k ✦ Rumours of my Demise by cupiscent, obi-wan/padme & cast, 4k ✦ Lights Will Guide You Home by darlingargents, obi-wan/padme & obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, 6.2k wip ✦ turn my sorrow into treasured gold by cosmicocean, obi-wan/padme & luke & leia, 15.6k ✦ Far More Than Rubies by frodogenic, padme & luke & obi-wan & vader & cast, 71.7k ✦ Holder of the Torch by SimplexityJane, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia, 4.1k ✦ Circles by ambiguously, obi-wan/padme & luke & leia & anakin + past anakin/padme, 4.2k ✦ Resurrection by Lefaym, obi-wan/padme & cast, 1.1k ✦ recovery by dadcastellanos, obi-wan/padme, 1.8k ✦ counterpoise by spookykingdomstarlight, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia & cast, 6.1k ✦ The Beginning After the End by notbecauseofvictories, padme & cast (some anakin/padme & obi-wan & palpatine & luke & leia), padme lives, 7k ✦ We Push Away the Unimaginable by KeeperofSeeds, obi-wan & padme, 1.3k wip ✦ Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale by ninemoons42, padme & luke & leia & obi-wan & sabe & dorme & mon mothma, 14.7k DARK!PADME: ✦ It Would Ruin Us by themoosejthm, obi-wan/anakin/padme, NSFW, sith!padme, 4.6k ✦ Sharp and Bright and Vicious by TheFreakWithTheWings, obi-wan/anakin/padme + palpatine, sith!padme, ~1k PAMDE FIC: ✦ Leverage by venusmelody, padme & cast, 1.1k ✦ lose me in the crowds at twighlight by philthestone, padme & han, 3.4k ✦ Sea Change by sevenofspade, obi-wan/padme & anakin, 3.9k ✦ Fate, Inexorable by imadra_blue, Luthe, obi-wan/padme + anakin/padme + implied obi-wan/anakin, nsfw, 9.1k ✦ Supreme Chancellor Padme AU by phosphorescent-naidheachd, some anakin/padme, references to obi-wan/anakin(/padme?), ~1k OTHER PEOPLE REMEMBER PADME: ✦ A Figment of Mother’s Love by Darkmagyk, luke & leia & padme + anakin/padme + cast, 4.8k ✦ La memoria de mi madre by imadra_blue, leia & padme & cast, 2k NOT THE CENTRAL CHARACTER, BUT ENJOYABLE PADME ROLES: ✦ i could teach you (but i’d have to charge) by blackalien, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & dooku & cast, 7.1k wip ✦ Plot Twist by skywalkersamidala, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & cast, human au, 10.1k ✦ all I am are darken lines by KeeperofSeeds, obi-wan & padme, 3.7k ✦ untitled by themoosejthm, obi-wan & anakin/padme & ahsoka & luke & leia, 1k full details + recs under the cut!

STAR WARS FIC RECS - PADME AMIDALA: PADME LIVES: ✦ Keep Breathing by Yesac, obi-wan/padme + some anakin/padme + luke & leia & oc, 45.8k      Padme doesn’t die at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Instead, she decides to take the twins and join Obi-Wan in exile.      Oh, what a gorgeous fic for Padme’s character and it hit so many of the buttons I have for her relationships with both Anakin and Obi-Wan. I have a tenuous interest in Obi-Wan/Padme, it has to be done with such precision and I don’t see it ever really happening without the ghost of Anakin between them, but this fic gets that, because Anakin very much is the ghost in the room, even when their relationship grows beyond him, that it does become about them. It hit me so hard because they both love Anakin so very much, the loss of him never really goes away for either of them, they both so desperately miss him and want him back and want to believe that something of the person they loved is still in there, even as they fight back against him, even as they refuse to bend to him. The way the fic sets up their lives, the way Obi-Wan truly becomes the children’s father, the way Padme finds her strength again after everything she’s lost, it’s so spot on for the characters. The fic never shies away from the difficult things, never holds back on that this is Star Wars and tragedy follows everyone around, even as there is always hope. The scenes with Vader don’t come until later in the fic, but my heart hurt for everyone and, oh, the way Padme saw him and interacted with him and what she came to realize about herself and about Anakin, it was all beautifully built up and had really lovely character insight into all of them. It’s a fic that is so satisfying for how Padme’s life might have gone if she’d lived, how all of them might have changed, how some things stayed the same, in some ways it was better and in some ways it was worse. But I came to care about all of these characters, I was so glad that they got to have a family together, that there was love and meaning in their lives, yet it didn’t hold back on how things ultimately had to go. Plus, the ending was just perfect and it’s everything Star Wars should be. ✦ the family amidala by dirgewithoutmusic, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia, 6.8k      Padme lives. She runs.      I love this fic so much, I never knew how much I needed Padme living and raises her children, while Obi-Wan gets roped into their family, too. The shadow of Anakin is always there, it’s not about replacing him, they’ll always love him, but I love how they still live without him, that the twins grow up and are still so very much themselves, if different because of the families they have now. I love the way the fic echoes canon sometimes, the way Leia is still drawn to Alderaan, the way Luke is still so much like his mother, the way Leia is so much like her father, but it’s not the same still. This Padme is also gorgeously written, the sheer strength of her character in every scene is fantastic, and I love that this fic hurts less for Obi-Wan than the canon does. I loved this fic a lot. ✦ Rumours of my Demise by cupiscent, obi-wan/padme & cast, 4k     Padme Amidala cannot live in a galaxy where he has come to be what he is. Obi-Wan Kenobi spends most of his time talking with ghosts.      I’m often wary of Obi-Wan/Padme fic, because Anakin’s presence between them is such an important thing, that trying to find the line between that and genuinely connecting these characters can be difficult, but, oh, this fic managed it beautifully. It sticks pretty firmly to the canon timeline, just adding scenes between the moments we see on the screen, to show that Padme lived and that we don’t really know how much it changed, because it’s not about that, because in the same way that Obi-Wan didn’t survive Anakin’s fall, neither did Padme, they’re both halfway to being ghosts. The strength of both of them and yet how utterly bittersweet this piece is, how Anakin absolutely is between them and yet he’s not, it hit all the right buttons and, oh, the moments when Padme visits Obi-Wan on Tattoine or the messages they send each other now and again, it’s heartbreaking and perfect. ✦ Lights Will Guide You Home by darlingargents, obi-wan/padme & obi-wan/anakin/padme & cast, 6.2k wip     Obi-Wan knew that if he didn’t leave now, Padmé would die. And so he made his decision.    Chapters 1: This is only one chapter of a wip so far and it took me a bit of time to really get into it, but by the end of it, I was absolutely engaged with it and it doesn’t matter how many times I read Padme Lives fic or that she runs with Obi-Wan, when a fic can still be charming and sharp, I’m still always going to be there for it, like I am with this one. The slow sense of… not moving on from the grief, it’s still so fresh and overwhelming, but that sense of soldiering forward, of not giving up, of holding onto what little hope they have together, the quiet touches of whatever it is between them, as they hide out together and don’t talk about Anakin, as well as… there are just a lot of really great little quiet character moments. My favorite is probably when Obi-Wan and Luminara had a moment of shared mourning: Twenty-five thousand years of protecting the galaxy, and when our children were slaughtered and our temple burned, no one saved us. Ow. But also every moment of Obi-Wan and Padme with the babies and the quiet moment of a hand extended out in comfort in the middle of the night. I am super eager for more of this one, absolutely.    Chapters 2-3: This is an update rec, so it will focus on these chapters, rather than the fic as a whole. I’d somehow missed chapter 2 being posted, so I got to read 2 and 3 at the same time and, ahhhh, I continue to want to roll around in this fic a lot. It’s a Divergent Timeline fic, where Padme doesn’t die, but instead she’s on the run with Obi-Wan, where they try to figure out what to do next, whether to hide while raising the twins or get involved with the Rebellion. I love that there’s such a strong relationship between them, I love love love fic where Obi-Wan raises the twins as their father, that his relationship with Padme isn’t necessarily quite romantic, but it’s not platonic, either. It’s… the ghost of Anakin is always between them and that’s my favorite, especially knowing that he’s still out there as Vader, that eventually that’s going to come to a head. I love the use of Barriss in this fic, that Luminara may not be a central character, but you can feel her struggle with her care for her former Padawan, all the more meaningful in this new galaxy where the Jedi are all but dead, that nothing is quite so clear-cut anymore. But also Padme! Who goes back to Coruscant to help get more intel! Who is brave and faces the terror of being in the same room as Palpatine and, of course, showing her face again means Vader will eventually have to know! All of this interspersed with Luke and Leia being teenagers now, that there are these moments of something like slice of life, but not, because they’re training and the Empire hangs over all their heads! And bringing Ahsoka back to all of them! It’s a really well-written, really solid story that I would love to have all of it in my hot little hands right this second, but am also enjoying each chapter as it comes out. ✦ turn my sorrow into treasured gold by cosmicocean, obi-wan/padme & luke & leia, 15.6k      Padmé survives childbirth, dies as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, takes her children with Obi-Wan, and runs.      Oh, I was just utterly engrossed by this fic, it’s such a lovely story about Obi-Wan and Padme post-ROTS and how they slowly develop a relationship, how Obi-Wan is absolutely Luke and Leia’s father even if they’re not his by blood, how Padme is their mother, how so many things are the same and yet so many things are different, how the fic can still break my heart and yet provide something a little better for these characters. The only way Obi-Wan/Padme usually works for me is when Anakin’s ghost both is and isn’t there, which this fic does perfectly, they both loved (love) him but he’s gone and they’re building something for the twins, they’re building something between the two of them as well, which all these little details and moments in the fic builds up towards. I love how much presence all four of them have here, that none of them are left out or forgotten by the story, I love that the fic is just so solidly good and I would have read another 100k of it, both for how much it pleased my id and just how well-told it was all the way around. This is a terrible rec, but this fic was an absolutely wonderful addition to the Padme Lives fic in the fandom, as well as for Obi-Wan raising the twins. ✦ Far More Than Rubies by frodogenic, padme & luke & obi-wan & vader & cast, 71.7k      Nine years after AOTC, tragedy revisits the Lars Homestead. Little Luke Skywalker is suddenly plunged into chaos as the rebel movements discover a secret military project that may make a crucial difference in the war with the Empire.      Oh, man, this fic was my joyful place for a few days because I just got so engrossed in it, it was such an utterly fantastic and engaging read! I admit, the first couple of chapters are rough, the fic relies too much on epithets and trying to obfuscate what’s obvious, but the writing quickly improves and by the end of the fic, it was very smooth and polished. I’ve read several Padme Lives AUs, but this one was special for just how much time it put into her relationship with Luke and gave me a really solid plot to go with it! Padme as part of the rebellion, as well as trying to reconnect with her son, that the action and the emotions go together in a really, really satisfying way was at the heart of this fic, it’s everything I could have asked for from why I read longer genfic in the first place, it could have been part of canon, for how spot on it felt in keeping up with the plot. There are so many things that made me love this fic, though, beyond just that it was an incredibly solid read, which I mean in the most complimentary way. Like that it’s absolutely a good Padme fic! It’s got a cute kid who isn’t too precocious, but instead you fall in love with kidlet Luke! It’s got a good amount of Obi-Wan, who at first is there to be a familiar face for Luke after they leave Tatooine, but then becomes a good friend to Padme all over again and supports their reestablishing relationship, and even if he’s not the focus he felt right to me. I loved that he didn’t always agree with Padme, I loved the interaction he had with both her and Luke, how much he obviously cared for both of them, I loved every second of his relationship with Anakin in this fic. But, ultimately, this was Padme’s fic and she’s perfect here, she’s so human and fragile in some ways, but so strong and like steel in other ways, just as she should be. Her dedication to the Rebellion, but also her absolute utter ache over the loss of Anakin, her hesitancy about not sure what she should do, but also that she knows what she wants, the way she had to work to rebuild her relationship with Luke, but it’s so good when she does! ALL OF IT was so, so satisfying and a great read for anyone interested in these characters. ✦ Holder of the Torch by SimplexityJane, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia, 4.1k      Padmé Amidala has to make a life for herself and her children out of the ashes of her old world. It’s a very good thing she’s survived so many assassination attempts.      I picked this up for the Obi-Wan & Padme interaction, but it’s really more of a Padme piece and it’s a few snippets in amongst the greater ROTS storyline and a Padme Lives storyline, as she raises her children in the Space Jewish way. It was a solid, interesting piece that was a good look at Padme’s character and gave her more of what I wanted for her. ✦ Circles by ambiguously, obi-wan/padme & luke & leia & anakin + past anakin/padme, 4.2k      Padmé and Obi-Wan raise the twins together while hiding from the Empire.      I will always love fics with this concept, especially when they’re so beautifully done like this one is, where everything is so painful and bittersweet and yet there is still hope. This is primarily a Padme piece, how shattered she is by the events of ROTS, but manages to live through them here, the way her children are everything to her, the way Obi-Wan becomes so dear to her, the way they both share this absolutely aching loss of Anakin, that their relationship is never free from his ghost between them, even as they genuinely care about each other. It’s just the right amounts of everything there. And it’s a fascinating look at trying to keep her children from a Vader that knows he has a child, how they can all hide for only so long, how Luke and Leia are such strong personalities already, there’s a great climax scene with so much hurt to go around for everyone, and it’s just. A really, really fascinating Padme Lives AU, seeing what could have been in a different world, for better or worse. ✦ Resurrection by Lefaym, obi-wan/padme & cast, 1.1k      It’s hard to adapt to life as a dead woman. But not everyone sees her that way. Not quite.      One of the best things about the May The 4th Be With You exchange this year is that there were some really interesting and engaging Padme fics to read, of which this was one, where she lived and went into hiding and it’s just so bittersweet and heartwrenching for her. She can’t do anything without too big of a risk, she has to stay back and always hide, always stay distant from her children and the man she loved and even her own name. It’s not a long fic, it’s just a handful of scenes, but it does a lovely job of showing how difficult this is for her, how deeply she mourns, and the connection between her and Obi-Wan, the loss that only the two of them share. This is exactly how I like their relationship and it was just right here. ✦ recovery by dadcastellanos, obi-wan/padme, 1.8k      Padmé survives the loss of Anakin and goes into hiding with Obi-Wan. Slowly, slowly, they make something of their new lives together.      Oh, I really enjoyed this fic a lot, that Obi-Wan and Padme eventually manage to find some measure of peace and happiness together, that it takes them a long time to do so, that it’s not this great, grand, huge passion, but a steady, slow love that binds them together, with Anakin’s ghost almost lingering on the edges of the both of them. That’s exactly how I ship them and I loved that this was just as much about Padme trying to cope, that she can’t do it perfectly or all at once, she’s still destroyed by the loss of Anakin, but eventually recovers into something like her old self. It’s not a long fic, but you feel the passage of time, you feel the sorrow and loss just as much as the sparks of hope at the same time, which is just what Star Wars fic should be. This was really lovely. ✦ counterpoise by spookykingdomstarlight, padme & obi-wan & luke & leia & cast, 6.1k      Guilt stabs into Padmé’s chest, a rhythmic pain that keeps time with her pulse. Leia knows her father was a Jedi, that he loved her—would have loved her—and that he died fighting the Emperor before there was ever really such a thing as the Rebellion. It’s the truth. From a certain point of view. But that doesn’t stop doubt from coursing, ragged, through her veins.      This round of May The 4th Be With You brought a lot of new Padme Lives AUs and I’ve enjoyed being able to snatch so many of them up, but I think this one might be my favorite yet. It’s such a great look at her character, it aches for what she’s lost and how it hurts every time she has to step aside to protect her children and protect the galaxy, how much it hurts for what she’s lost and how she can’t even bring herself to think Anakin’s name most days, yet how she never entirely breaks, how she continues to love and survive and live. Her relationship with the various people around her, Obi-Wan and her children, are lovely and full of such compassion and care and sadness, that her children grow up to be brilliant each in their own ways, that Leia especially is such a mix of both parents, so many beautiful little details woven into the story here. It’s a gorgeous read from start to finish, especially for the mother/daughter relationship that feels like it’s everything they could have been. So, so lovely a read. ✦ The Beginning After the End by notbecauseofvictories, padme & cast (some anakin/padme & obi-wan & palpatine & luke & leia), padme lives, 7k    Padmé wakes to the back of Obi-Wan’s head, his hair mussed and his arms spread, outstretched over her knees as though to shield her from all that would come. (Too late, Padmé thinks, feeling the dull ache around her throat, where phantom hands tightened. Much too late for that now.)    This was a lovely look at Padme’s character, at a scenario where she lived and had to carry on, hiding her children away from Palpatine and mourning the death of Anakin and the Republic she so loved. There’s a lovely sort of friendship between her and Obi-Wan that’s somewhat comforting but also never quite gets out of the mourning stage, and probably never will after they learn that Anakin survived Mustafar–which is the highlight of the fic. The tension of the scene was perfect, the moment that Vader and Padme were in the same room together again was so good, everything about Padme’s character wrenched at my heart for what she had been through and how torn apart that relationship was. But it’s also a story of Padme slowly coming to the Rebellion in her own way and it’s a great look at her character overall! ✦ We Push Away the Unimaginable by KeeperofSeeds, obi-wan & padme, 1.3k wip    RotS AU: Padme survives. Weak from her injuries on Mustafar and healing after giving birth, she and the twins are taken into hiding by Obi Wan. Now they are on the run from the Empire and dealing with each other’s trauma, as they try to figure out what to do after your world falls apart.    This is only the first chapter of a WIP, but it’s a Padme Lives AU, it has a lovely look at her character, both the strength and the sorrow, and it has lovely interaction between her and Obi-Wan. It’s one of those that you should probably only pick up if you’re okay with WIPs, since there’s not yet much time for things to be happening, but just having those scenes between Padme and Obi-Wan, how they draw comfort from each other, how the early days of their new lives are so painful and yet they have hope, ahhh, this is what I keep coming back to these AUs for. ✦ Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale by ninemoons42, padme & luke & leia & obi-wan & sabe & dorme & mon mothma, 14.7k      One: Padmé lives. Two: she survives the birth of the twins. Three: she does not let anyone take the twins away from her. Four: she rallies her friends and allies together once again.      I am greatly fond of Padme Lives AUs, so I was intrigued by this one and it’s a solid, fun piece that has a lot of neat things! While I was initially attracted because of the promised Padme & Obi-Wan interaction, he’s really hardly in it at all, this is very much all about Padme’s character and making her the most awesome, but also about her getting to raise her children and how difficult this all is for her, but how she pulls through for them. It’s five fics set at different points in how she gets involved with the rebellion and it’s got a strong focus on female characters, which is always nice to see for a change! A solid, good read that I tore through everything of yesterday. DARK!PADME: ✦ It Would Ruin Us by themoosejthm, obi-wan/anakin/padme, NSFW, sith!padme, 4.6k    This is a Sith!Padme fanfic where nothing is okay and no one wins. It features obianidala, obsessive love, and no happy ending. I’m so sorry.    I didn’t realize I would love the idea of Sith!Padme as much as I do, but, oh, I really love her here, I love that this is both an Obianidala fic and really a Padme fic, that it winds together her history and her ruthlessness and anger and posessiveness, that she’s obsesed with Anakin and the only one she’ll ever share him with is Obi-Wan but even that is doomed to fall apart, all written beautifully. There are so many great little moments, I love that the fic isn’t a happy one precisely, this Padme is dangerous and lethal and angry, but there are moments of them being happy together, she cares so deeply about Anakin, she gets along so well with Obi-Wan, especially when they’re fucking Anakin, whether he’s on his knees and filled up with Obi-Wan while she directs them or she’s sitting on Anakin’s face while Obi-Wan slowly opens him up, they can be stable for a few moments and it’s so good, until something threatens what’s hers and then she’s off. I love that this fic is beautifully written, I love her obsession with Anakin and the weight of her character here, I love that it’s a fucked up universe but in such an engaging, engrossing way, I love that I would have read it for those moments of sex (seriously, they’re so ridiculously hot, every time Anakin is a whiny needy mess because he wants more, it’s perfection) but that I wound up loving it for Padme herself, too. ✦ Sharp and Bright and Vicious by TheFreakWithTheWings, obi-wan/anakin/padme + palpatine, sith!padme, ~1k    Padmé’s plans have accelerated. It is time to rid the galaxy of Darth Sidious.    I have a weakness for any and all Sith AUs and this one was really charming and entirely fun! I love the elegance of the character, as Padme faces off against Palpatine, that she’s entirely willing to straight up murder him because he touched what was hers, that he tried to take Anakin from her. I’m just really charmed by the images this put in my head, the way it caught my imagination for how would Padme try to poach Obi-Wan from the Jedi, because Anakin wouldn’t be entirely happy without him? How would their Empire look, once Palpatine was gone? I love stuff like that! PAMDE FIC: ✦ Leverage by venusmelody, padme & cast, 1.1k      “Her children need her. That is true. And she can give them only one thing.” Or, the real reason Padmé let go of life, and heartbreak was just a miniscule part.      This was a lovely look at Padme’s character and why she gave up on living at the end of ROTS, why it was a deliberate choice against what she personally wanted and why she thought it was the thing she had to do. It’s a good read for her character, but also it helps to potentially take some of the sting out of what happened to her, how her story ended, to give her this choice being hers. I love a good Padme Lives AU, but at the end of the way we’re still tied to the canon and this was a good look at what could have been going on with her character. ✦ lose me in the crowds at twighlight by philthestone, padme & han, 3.4k     Padme could already see the headlines: “Distinguished Senator from Naboo disrupts pleasant upper-class dining environment by trying to buy the Corellian street urchin who was robbing her a sandwich.”      Oh, I loved this fic a lot, it’s such a beautiful look at Padme’s character, who is so kind and compassionate and diplomatic to everyone she meets, to everyone who deserves it, no matter who they are. It’s pretty adorable to see her interacting with kidlet Han, who was absolutely darling, I loved it for the connection of it all, knowing how important he would be to her children one day, but also just because, oh, this was Padme and it was such a lovely look at her character and the little moments of her kindness, even when there’s so much else going on in her life, she still absolutely has time for moments like this. A great read. ✦ Sea Change by sevenofspade, obi-wan/padme & anakin, 3.9k      Padmé Amidala is accompanied by Obi-Wan Kenobi to Naboo and Anakin Skywalker is the galaxy’s worst detective.      This is one of those fics that’s a bit difficult to describe, where things are set up a little differently and so events (and relationships) unfold differently and it did have moments of needing more connecting pieces, but I found that I really enjoyed reading this as a Padme piece, I enjoyed it getting to see Obi-Wan and Padme develop a friendship, which did involve sex, but it’s not love for either of them, which works for me. There are some fun Anakin moments as well, there’s a lot of things that just seem to go a little better in this universe, and sometimes that’s really nice to read! I thoroughly enjoyed this one. ✦ Fate, Inexorable by imadra_blue, Luthe, obi-wan/padme + anakin/padme + implied obi-wan/anakin, nsfw, 9.1k      When Anakin is kidnapped by Separatists during the Clone Wars, Padmé accompanies Obi-Wan to rescue him. On a strange trio of planets, they search for him, drawing closer in their mutual fear for Anakin. The bonds that form will not be strong enough to face the future that awaits them in Revenge of the Sith.      Oh, I really enjoyed this fic a lot, for the look at Padme’s character especailly. It does go against canon in a few ways, so you have to just roll with that, but it’s not really a story about those things, it’s about Obi-Wan and Padme worrying about Anakin who has been kidnapped and how that draws the two of them together. It’s lovely in how unrelentingly caring and compassionate that Padme is, that she loves Anakin so much and she’s drawn to Obi-Wan both for how charismatic he is and because of his connection to Anakin, that she can be envious and nervous about what that connection is, that it’s something she feels outside of, while never letting it make her any less of an amazing and caring person. The way she sees how much Anakin means to Obi-Wan, the way she feels that connection, just as much as her own connection to Anakin (and the subtle worry that maybe it’s more than her own) is nicely done. The fic is never about punishing her for being drawn to Obi-Wan when worried about Anakin, that it’s the missing presence of his between them that’s what draws them together in the first place, that it feels somehow natural for Obi-Wan to slide into her the way Anakin usually does, the way she can’t help but see Obi-Wan sliding into Anakin instead of her, so while it’s infidelity and she feels gulty about that, it takes nothing from her character and instead only adds to it. It’s a fic that’s really about two established relationships and the third one that’s temporary only because of how they both feel about Anakin, which hits pretty much on exactly what I want from Obi-Wan/Padme. ✦ Supreme Chancellor Padme AU by phosphorescent-naidheachd, some anakin/padme, references to obi-wan/anakin(/padme?), ~1k    Early into the events of Return of the Sith, the Delegation of 2000 calls for a vote of no confidence in Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. By some miracle, it actually passes and Padme is voted in as interim chancellor.    This is sort of half fic and half fic summary, but it’s a delightful AU sketching where things go a little differently, Padme takes over as Chancellor and things become so much better. I love how happy it is and I actually really love the idea of Padme being Chancellor, I would have loved to have seen what she’d done with the role, I love how she was such a force for good here and it allowed so much to go so much better. This was lovely. OTHER PEOPLE REMEMBER PADME: ✦ A Figment of Mother’s Love by Darkmagyk, luke & leia & padme + anakin/padme + cast, 4.8k      “Where was she from?” Luke asked. “To have soft hands.”      This was a lovely look at the twins wondering about their mother and eventually learning about her. Padme’s influence on the OT is subtle and often ignored (understandably so, with the way it was set up) so it’s nice to see Luke and Leia discovering her, to see the reflections of her in her children, how Leia looks like her and Luke takes after her. It’s just the right amount of bittersweet to go with the painful, I really loved this a lot. ✦ La memoria de mi madre by imadra_blue, leia & padme & cast, 2k      Five times Leia didn’t recognize her mother and the one time she did.      A collection of scenes that show Leia’s connection to her mother, even when she has no idea who the woman is or that there’s anything significant there yet. They’re lovely moments, often bittersweet for knowing the truth behind all of that Leia’s unaware of, but entirely worth reading for a wonderful look at mother & daughter, and then continuing on with Rey, in my favorite of all the scenes. NOT THE CENTRAL CHARACTER, BUT ENJOYABLE PADME ROLES: ✦ i could teach you (but i’d have to charge) by blackalien, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & dooku & cast, 7.1k wip    ( aka: that high school teachers au that literally no one was going to ask for, but needed to be done. featuring: anakin and ahsoka terrorizing the entire school, the clones as secretaries, and obi-wan, who definitely deserves a raise. let’s not even talk about dooku. )    Chapter 1: I was just so completely and utterly charmed by this fic, I can’t even tell you. It felt entirely self-aware of the tropes and silliness it was embracing, that it was having a blast and it made me have a great time right along with it, because it was so sharp and funny and absolutely delightful. There can be a skill to writing cracky high school AU fics and this fic felt like it had that, so all the little touches were an absolute delight. I love that I enjoyed these characters, I enjoyed Anakin’s dramatics, I enjoyed Padme’s sensibleness, I enjoyed Obi-Wan’s being the only semi-sane one in the room, I enjoyed that Dooku’s life was so put-upon, I enjoyed that I just smiled my way through this entire fic and would have read at least ten times more of it, if I’d been able to!    Chapter 2: This is an update rec, so you should start at the beginning if you haven’t read the first chapter yet. This is one of those modern AUs that’s totally cracky and good-hearted and joyfully embraces being silly and adorable that it just makes me feel good to read it. This chapter goes even harder on the silliness and adorable crackiness, but there’s just such charm to it, such affection for every character (the obvious faves, but even with Dooku, while you’re laughing at him, you also instinctually understand why his life is so hard) that it was just a super cute, fun read that I totally enjoyed! ✦ Plot Twist by skywalkersamidala, obi-wan/anakin/padme & ahsoka & cast, human au, 10.1k    The supposed love triangle between Mr. Skywalker, Ms. Amidala, and Mr. Kenobi is all their students (and even their fellow teachers) can talk about. The only thing is, no one at Coruscant High School can figure out exactly which of them are together.    I sank into this story like it was tasty candy because, oh, it was. I love school AUs and I love when the characters really fit into the roles, I love that Anakin is kind of a major disaster but his charm is in how he can be both brilliant and terrible, I love that Padme is polished and lovely but also so warm and caring, and I love that Obi-Wan is so sharp and incredible but also so human, I love that there’s such absolute charm and sparkle between the three of them that I fell in love all over again. I love that Anakin’s attraction to both of them is legitimate, I love that he’s instantly in love with Padme as soon as he sees her, I love that he’s wildly attracted to Obi-Wan and cares about him, I love that Padme leans on his shoulder when they’re curled up on the couch together, I love that Obi-Wan backs Anakin up against the whiteboard to kiss him because Anakin so badly wants just to kiss him right then, I love that the three of them are the absolute gossip of the school, that no one can figure out which of them are dating and it’s all just so…. It’s all so good-hearted and happy, it knows it’s silly at times but embraces that and comes out actually being a really solidly written story for these three. It’s one of those that made me happy in my very soul, because Anakin should definitely be sandwhiched between his two favorite people forever and always. ✦ all I am are darken lines by KeeperofSeeds, obi-wan & padme, 3.7k    Padmé visits Obi-Wan on Tatooine as a Force-Ghost.    Often times I’m at war with myself over: On the one hand, it was a really huge deal that a small handful of characters figured out how to become Force Ghosts and just tossing another one in there goes against how important/rare that was vs Obi-Wan and Padme’s friendship means so very much to me! And their friendship was lovely here, I loved this Padme, she was the highlight of the fic, how gentle and yet stubborn she was, how she watched over and loved both of her children, how she watched over them, how she tried to help with Obi-Wan’s grief after everything that had happened. She’s the one I read this fic for and she was absolutely lovely here, especially because they never really talk that much about Anakin, but you can feel the ghost of his presence in the room, and that’s just how I like these two. ✦ untitled by themoosejthm, obi-wan & anakin/padme & ahsoka & luke & leia, 1k    Anonymous asked: Padme: “I always have a note in my pocket that says "Anakin did it” just in case I’m murdered because I don’t want him to remarry.“    This is adorable and totally happy and warm-hearted and lovely! It’s a universe where everything has gone better, where they’re all there for the birth of the twins, where Padme is loopy on painkillers and it’s both hilarious and just joyful because she’s so happy, because Anakin’s so happy, because Obi-Wan’s so happy, becaus Ahsoka’s so happy. It’s a cute prompt and it’s used in the most adorable, super cute way here, one of those that’s entirely fluffy but still so well-written and I still have the biggest :D face just thinking about this universe and how happy it is.

[delicatefury]

TDPL Snippet - While Obi-Wan’s on Mandalore

Yesterday I said I was gonna post an Evil Author Day response or a snippet. I did neither. So have another NaNo snippet cleaned up for your enjoyment.

It’s Skywalker twin fluff.

Leia returns to their shared quarters half an hour after their last class ends.

“Where were you? I had to face Master Denar alone,” Luke says as soon as she shuts the door.

“You weren’t alone,” Leia’s voice is subdued, distracted. She’s not fully in the present moment yet, mind still dwelling on the conversation from the afternoon. “Caleb’s in that class.”

Luke pokes his tongue out at that idea.

“Caleb’s not the one I need backing me up in Interstellar Comparative Politics.” Leia winces because, yes, she agrees with Luke on that one. Caleb is great; he knows the temple and always looks at things a little sideways. But that means his diplomatic ideas are unorthodox at the best of times and completely unfeasible most of the rest. The remaining times they were simply insane.

“So what was so important that you missed one of Master’s favorite diplomacy courses?”

Leia sighs and trudges further into the room before sinking into the sofa cushions next to her brother. Without prompting, he gets an arm around her shoulder and his cheek pressed to her hair. Unconsciously, her hand goes up. She grabs onto her padawan braid, still unadorned except for the thread at the end and the blond and copper hair strands woven throughout.

“That bad?”

“I was talking to Anakin” Her brother tenses up. If anyone in the temple knows of her fear of that particular confrontation it’s her other half, although she is fairly certain Master Obi-Wan suspects. “And he told me stuff… it was private, and I’m not sure he’d want me to tell you, but he’s… he was… he might still be…”

“Our father.”

“Yeah.” She snuggles deeper into her brother’s side and wishes it was not just them tonight. The rooms feel empty in a way she hasn’t known since her days in the Alderaanian Palace. But Han’s busy being a courier for either Dex or Master Obi-Wan, Ahsoka’s quarters are only big enough for her, and Anakin’s already on his way to Mandalore. “Why is basic so bad at time travel?

Luke doesn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question anyway. Instead, he lifts a hand and summons the deep blue, patchy blanket draped over the back of one of the chairs.

“Frivilous,” Leia mutters, but she kicks off her boots and helps him arrange the blanket around them regardless.

“So, Lea, are you gonna tell me?” Luke asks once they’re settled in.

“Hmmm,” Leia pretends to think about it, but she knows her answer. Luke is her other half, her missing pieces. “Did you know he was a slave?”” She can feel his thoughtfulness through the Force, but no shock. “Did you?”

“I guessed. Not right away, not until after Father died. But Grandma Shmi was a slave when Grandpa Cliegg met her. When I learned Father and Uncle Owen didn’t actually grow up together,” he shrugs, “it wasn’t exactly a hard leap to make.”

Leia hums. “I didn’t know. We were comparing horror stories. He told me that he saw a slave’s control chip detonate when he was only two. Saw the explosion rip the man’s head apart.” She knows Luke’s thinking about Jabba and the collar put around her neck. Never was she more grateful for the Hutt’s haste to kill her brother and Han, than when she realized how badly and how quickly it could have all ended.

“I told him our father tortured me.” Luke tightens his arms around her. “He was… he was mad. At our father. Can you imagine? Furious. Said he couldn’t imagine anyone doing that to their own children.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no one should do that to anyone.” She sniffs, a move she knows Luke secretly labels a princess quirk. “It doesn’t matter, really. What kind of excuse is ‘If I’d known you were my child, I wouldn’t have done it’? It didn’t save you! He knew exactly who you were and he still hurt you!”

“Leia…” He squeezes her tighter with his right hand, still flesh and bone.

“I know. ‘Can’t blame him for stuff that hasn’t happened yet.’” She sighs and turns her head so she is looking Luke in the eye. “Do you know what he said when I told him he reminded me of our father? He swore, gave his solemn word as a Jedi, that he would never be like Vader.”

“The we’ll just have to hold him to that won’t we?” is Luke’s cheerful reply. Leia smiles. Well, if Luke thinks it’s possible…

They stay on the couch like that for a while. Luke tells her all about the classes she missed and gets her caught up on course work. They grab dinner from the leftovers Master Obi-Wan left for them in the cooling unit and generally don’t leave the sofa. It’s nice, spending time together, just the two of them. But when evening meditation comes around, the rooms feel empty again.

“It’s okay,” her twin cuts the silence as they go about arranging their meditation cushions. “I miss him too,” he says, tucking his own braid behind his ear. Leia loves the short little braid sticking out from under his mop, the way the brown and copper stand out so strongly against the still sun-bleached blond.

Still, she frowns. “Am I that obvious?”

Luke shrugs. “Just to me. Han too, maybe. If he was here.”

Leia pouts, but settles onto her cushions. “Master Obi-Wan’s not like Papa, you know.”

“He’s not anything like Uncle Owen either.”

“He is certainly nothing like our father.”

“Definitely not. But he’s family. He’s our family. He’s Ben.” Like always, for Luke, that was all that needeed to be said.

Leia nods. Sometimes that argument really was enough. “So it’s perfectly natural if we miss him.”

“Absolutely. It’d be weird if we didn’t.” He grins at her. “Wanna try talking to him?”

“We already commed Master this morning.” Where is her brother going with this?

Luke’s grin grows impossibly wider. “I wasn’t talking about just comming him. I wanted to try using the bond. Think we can reach him on Madalore?”

“Luke, that’s a third of the galaxy away!”

“So? ‘Size matters not,’ remember?”

Leia wants to roll her eyes so badly, but she refuses to let Luke see he is getting to her.

“Master Yoda was referring to small things being powerful, not absurd distances.”

Luke just shrugs again and flops onto his own cushion. “What’ll it hurt to try?”

“Plenty, I’m certain. You’re not gonna give up until we try this, huh?”

“It’s me and you, Leia. We can do pretty much anything together.” He grins again and hold his hands out. She smiles back. So much of the Force is overwhelming to her, but Luke’s right. Together, she feels like they can do anything.

[sanerontheinside]

Title prompt: Volunteer wildflowers

@obaewankenope, @lilyrose225writes, @meabhair, @maawi, @kyberpunk, @eclipsemidnightLook, nonnie, your options were either this or clone fic, and I wasn’t quite up to let’s-kill-them-all-angst. (Just watch, now I’ve said it, I might even do it, why am I like this.)

In the lower levels of the Coruscant Temple there was a garden; peaceful under the quiet, almost heavy layers of the Force, beautiful and complicated, full of riddles and winding paths and puzzles that never looked quite the same any time you saw them. 

It was a labour of love, both a memory immortalised and an offering to the rest of the Temple, so its creator never considered his name to be particularly important – not attached to the garden, anyway. It didn’t seem important then. Or perhaps it would have revealed far more about the creator than he was comfortable with. 

It certainly wasn’t important now, when that garden lay in ruins. 

The ship circled once, twice, around the crater in the wasteland. A smaller shuttle rattled, securely parked in the hold, creaks and groans adding to the eerie feeling that was trying to crawl up the pilot’s spine. “Well, this is it,” he grumbled. “Look, are you sure you want to be here?” 

His passenger didn’t look sure. He looked like he was pressing himself back, neck arched uncomfortably into the headrest, hands clawing into the soft seat and the arm. They were flying smoothly enough, yet he still looked like he was fighting a losing battle against motion sickness. 

“Just - set me down and I’ll figure it out,” he suggested tightly. 

“I won’t wait for you,” the pilot warned, a nervous edge bleeding into his tone entirely against his will. 

The man – old, thin, but with a clever light in his eyes – shot him a sharp look. “There’s no need,” he murmured. “What is it?”

The pilot looked straight ahead again, swallowed down his nerves once, twice. “I can hear them,” he said, half-hoping his companion would miss his whispered words. He didn’t think he’d spoken all that loudly, but he couldn’t really tell with the screaming in his ears. 

“Me too,” the passenger said softly. At the pilot’s startled look, he gave him a half-shrug and a wry smile. 

The pilot blinked, nodded. It was a relief to hear he wasn’t crazy, or at least that he wasn’t the only one. “And you still want to stay here?”

The man sighed. “I have work to do here,” he said, but did not elaborate. 

The pilot restrained himself to raised eyebrows and a shake of the head. “All right then. Tell me where to set you down.”

“North lip of the crater there, by the water.” 

“It’s cold out there, old man. Don’t freeze.”

Jedha was a desert moon, or at least it was supposed to be. But here, shining pools in a crater betrayed a presence of water, the potential for life in the midst of a wasteland. The pools were fringed with ice, and the wind was almost cutting, tearing across the flat landscape with nothing to slow it down. But the wind would pass, eventually. The man ignored it for now as he stood and looked around, then tipped his head back and looked up at the stars. 

The crater was what remained of the Holy City of NiJedha, the Temple of the Whills, the crystal mines. The Death Star’s successful weapons test had raised massive clouds of dust and soot and sand, setting off a several-degree generous drop in temperature of the moon’s atmosphere. 

It had also buried the crystal mine, and uncovered an aquifer. 

When Senator Mon Mothma had first asked him if there was anything that could be done for Jedha’s moon, he’d simply stared at her, dumbfounded. At the time, he hadn’t been sure what her question meant – did she want him to rebuild NiJedha, or was she simply asking for future reference, to rebuild any cities destroyed as a ‘warning’. His mind spun out of control – Jedha was a desert moon, it wasn’t a model for any planet where there was any kind of suspected or rumoured Rebel presence, not really. 

He came back to the sense of a hand resting gently on his forearm. “The average temperature of the moon has dropped several degrees, what life there was on it is struggling to survive. Most of the Jedhan population is leaving. I want to know if it’s at all possible to help them restore the moon to livable conditions.” 

He’d blinked at her owlishly, then snorted. “It’s a bloody desert, Senator. And it screams. No one who returns to the Holy City will ever be able to ignore those screams.”

But in the end he’d agreed. He still wasn’t sure why. No being in their sixteenth decade should be so foolish. 

The hum of the kyber far beneath his feet somewhere was a little reassuring. Even in spite of the Empire’s abuse, the strip-mining, the weapons test, something had survived here, and persisted. (Scientists could yell at him as much as they liked, but no one had yet managed to convince him that kyber or Ilum crystals weren’t at least a little bit alive.) 

He pulled in a deep breath of achingly cold air, huffed it out sharply, and walked back to his small shuttle. Pulling off thick gloves and sealing the compartment, he steeled himself and gave the engines a gentle nudge, guiding his affectionately-named Bucket (for rust-bucket) over the lip of the crater and down into the depths. 

There was less wind here. He almost wanted to call it a valley: there was so much potential around these half-frozen pools of water, his entire being ached with it – ached to see it. 

The entire galaxy seemed a little lighter these days, with the death of the Emperor. Of course, that didn’t mean the death of the Empire, unfortunately. But the Empire had no further use for Jedha, and he was content to stay here, quietly tinkering away in his shuttle. Soil samples, air quality, ultraviolet radiation – samples, readings upon readings, data-data-data. They were a welcome distraction from the near-constant screaming, even if they weren’t enough of one. 

Sometimes, as he moved from place to place, one voice might become more distinct from the chorus. It sent cold prickling down his spine, colder than the wind even as it cut through his layers. He couldn’t bear it. It was too much like what he’d already heard once, on Kashyyyk. Sixty-Six might have been decades ago, but time didn’t dull the pain of it all that well.

Almost reflexively, he apologised. He didn’t even realise he was doing it, but he found himself muttering as he went, over and over, you will be remembered. 

Not like there was anyone else left to say it, anyway. 

A few days’ traveling through the crater and around it revealed that, indeed, there were few species that had borne the cold well. He saved what he could of the frostbitten plants, found that they did well in the Bucket’s small storage room. Unfortunately, he realised, he might still have to supplement the population with something else, some sort of introduced species. He wasn’t fond of that – one never knew if an introduced species would remain so, or become dangerously invasive. But that was a question for another time. 

What will you do now, Master? A memory floated up to the surface, of his last Padawan; golden-eyed and golden-haired, clever, if almost always silent. He’d died a young Knight, before the Republic fell, and his Master often thanked the Force the boy had never seen the Order’s destruction, or the decades of suffering that followed. 

Beat the clouds, he’d answered then, with a smirk. 

Seed the clouds, really. Try to bring all that unsettled dust back to the ground. Make rain. 

It was much easier these days. He could make an orbit of the moon through its atmosphere and cover all the ground he needed. It gave him a strange sensation of power, working with environments like this. He’d never had to care for an entire moon, and he’d rarely had to work alone, but that was a long time ago. 

A long time ago, he’d been pulled every which way, tending to the scorched grounds of Felucia, whispering fondly to the Mon Cal corals, overseeing efforts on AgriCorp worlds. The Council hadn’t cared how he got things done, merely that they were done. It was easy for anyone to dismiss him as a paltry example of a Jedi Master, a researcher with no practical experience, but he knew how to work this landscape in his very bones. The Force sang it to him. 

He passed along messages, requests for what he needed, through pilots as skittish as the one who’d brought him here. Yet, invariably the answer always came with what he needed. 

Many, many years ago he’d constructed a garden in the Temple’s lower levels. This was far different, less structured, not rigidly maintained. This was meant to be wild. While he nursed the atmosphere back to somewhat more normal, he carefully re-introduced some of his plants. He wrapped them carefully, insulating them against too-cold temperatures, guarded them against the persistent damp – rather unlike Jedha’s normal climate. 

In the end, he would have been willing to admit defeat. None of the species native to Jedha were suited to such conditions. But as he sorted through the small greenhouse-cabin of his shuttle, pruning some of the survivors, repotting others, a small, purple-flowering clump snagged his attention. 

It caught him entirely by surprise. “Hello there, you little thing,” he whispered, “how did you get aboard with me? I must be getting old,” he joked, for the joke only grew funnier with every year he passed one-hundred fifty. “Where are you from?” 

He really had no idea, he realised with a twinge of regret. Once, his record-keeping had been flawless – before the war, of course. Then, Master Haldane Juo had had a name, and a Padawan, and sometimes a Knight partner, and occasionally someone wanted him – called for him by name – to speak to some tech or overseer in the AgriCorps. 

He stared at the nameless plant in his hands, thinking of how that violet colour matched the eyes of his Padawan’s agemate, whom Zeka had irretrievably fallen for. Those smooth leaves marked it a succulent, and the corner he’d kept it in marked it hardy, one that could survive and flourish in a wide range of temperatures, but most of the cold. Colder, even, than Jedha had been. From what he could tell, it didn’t grow or spread very fast. Its preferred soil type was just close enough, at that. 

“Ah well,” he sighed. “I suppose it can’t hurt to try with you. Come on,” he picked up the pot, snipped away a few cuttings, and separated them, encouraging them over the next several days to root and grow. 

“Did you know,” he mused at it, “this place, it used to be the Holy City, NiJedha. Somewhere around here, there were caves full of kyber crystals that the Empire strip-mined. I suppose there must have been an aquifer below – no other reason for the puddles in the crater here.” 

He sighed, sitting back to look at his cuttings. They weren’t doing too badly. 

“Where is your home, your real home, little one?” He reached out, brushing light fingers over small dark leaves. They told him nothing, and the Force gave no hints. “You would have liked her, the one with eyes the colour of your flowers. I did. She brought my Padawan to me, the sneaky creature,” he grinned, “fell out of one of the Archive shelves.” 

Later she, too, had traveled to starved and war-torn planets – long before the Galactic War, even – and set up field hospitals, earned herself a following of loyal, orphaned children. Force, but she’d even laid claim to a decent corner of black market trade, procuring supplies and medications for Mid-Rim worlds the Senate had neither the time nor the resources to care for. Crazy, for a Jedi. Crafty, for the Shadow she became. 

Haldane wondered what she might be up to now. If she’d even survived. 

“She didn’t think herself a Jedi then, you know,” he told his plants, skipping over so much of the story, polished away to smoothness in a well-trod part of his mind. “They weren’t very happy about her Knighting.” 

He leaned back in his seat, as far as his cramped workplace would allow, looking troubled. He only let himself look so old and so worn where no one could see – which, on Jedha, seemed to mean only in the safety and privacy of his shuttle. His hair was long, grease-streaked silver and grey where he’d absently swiped his hands after fiddling with one of the Bucket’s motors. His skin, once bronzed, had darkened, wrinkled and gone mottled with spots. But his eyes were yet sharp and brown, near-black. 

“See, here’s the trouble I have,” he said at last, still talking to the cuttings quietly arranged in front of him. “Here we have a child taken from a slave world, brought to the Temple, raised to believe she wanted nothing more than to become a Jedi. Then, she is lost. When she comes home, the Council turns her out again. For at least another decade she wanders the world believing she’ll never get her Knighthood, and what does she do? She does what any Jedi would do: she heals the worlds she finds are broken.” 

He crossed his arms over his chest with a disgruntled sigh, threw his legs up on a nearby stool, and went on. “Now look at us. In another decade and a half our home was destroyed. We were hunted, slaughtered. They destroyed even those who were like us,” he waved a hand vaguely upward, at the Bucket’s hull. “There is so little left of us.” 

Haldane let his head drop forward until his chin rested on his chest. For a long time – so long that he might have fallen asleep – he just breathed. 

“What are we left with? We had faith in the Force, in the Order, in each other, and none of it saved us. Yet a child more a Jedi than half the ones I’ve ever met did more for people the Order would never have helped without any faith in us at all. Sometimes, I think, she barely had faith in the Force. When you strip away the Order, the company of your own family, when even the Force doesn’t respond to your call quite like it used to, it’s hard to have faith in any of it.” 

So then, what had she believed in? 

In a few tens, once he was sure his cuttings would survive in the harsh conditions outside, he went out and planted a few. Then he sat down, crosslegged, beside them.

“I suppose I should name you,” he murmured, watching a faint breath of wind stir the leaves gently. “Wouldn’t do to expect you to flourish without a name.”

But in truth he’d spent so long pondering it – ever since he’d discovered that little plant hiding in the corner of his ‘greenroom’. Or, at least, while he hadn’t been distracted pondering his own place in the universe, or the lack thereof.

“I suppose,” he began softly, then broke off and looked up at the night sky. For the first time since he’d arrived, he could actually see stars, not just a blanket of clouds, overhead. “Out there, there are any number of worlds whose people are either entirely naïve of the Force or treat it solely as a religion. They believe in gods and beasts, some of them – in their ancestors, even.”

Haldane hung his head and chuckled. “Well. I suppose it’s better to start small, then, hm? For instance,” he leaned forward, closer to the little tufts he’d planted, “I believe in the potential this frosty damned wasteland has, and I’d really appreciate it if you little buggers didn’t fail me, understood?”

He felt more than a bit silly, really. One-hundred fifty-seven years young, muttering at his succulents. So he snickered; and then snorted, and then couldn’t help the full-throated laugh that threw his head back again.

“Sorry, sorry,” he sputtered through tears, “that was a long time coming. Oh, ye gods! Ha! What gods.” His face twisted in a sudden grimace and he shoved the thought away. “Never mind. Well. A name, right? That’s what I was meant to be doing.”

It’s too quiet, he thought. I’ll go mad here.

“She said they called her Shar’ii, meaning Bright Star. Said it had something to do with hope. Good as any name for you, since right about now looks like you’re this planet’s best hope. And don’t give me that look!” He menaced the plants, still laughing at himself. “You’ll have to live with it.”

With a breathy sigh he finally picked himself up, groaning a bit – the cold ground was no good place for old bones to rest, and his complaints filled the silence well enough. He shuffled stiffly back to the Bucket, humming an old crèche tune as he went. Huffing slightly, he laid a hand on the hull when he finally reached his shuttle and stopped to breathe in the air again. The quality of it had certainly gone up since he’d arrived.

So quiet, he mused, even peaceful, then frowned in confusion.

What happened to all the screaming?

There wasn’t even a hint of it. Funny, that. Haldane shrugged, and quickly trudged back into his ship.

A few months later, the giant caldera had become an oasis, pools fringed with green and tufts of purple-flowering Shar’ii.