#just got my Inquisitor left | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

goosewriting · 5 months

Text

Warmth

summary: now that reader got to look underneath the surface, they discover the not so pretty parts about being an inquisitor

relationship: inq!Cal Kestis x gn!reader

warnings: 18+, semi-graphic violence, mentions of blood, trauma, it gets pretty steamy, but still fade to black, implied sexual encounters, cal being emotionally constipated because what else is new, dom cal, soft cal, dirty talk? sorta?, talking about killing people, reader being a nerd, having a bath together, non-sexual nudity, reader gets choked, a lot is happening ok

word count: 12k … this one got away form me, i–

A/N: tbh when i started this i had no idea where i was going with it; this just took on a life of its own. i guess this one’s a little more grounded than the previous one, as reader and cal explore what it means to be an inquisitor. it’s a bit different to my usual stuff but i hope you like it nonetheless :’D

this can be read on its own, but it's technically a sequel to underneath!

(english is not my first language. constructive criticism and grammar corrections are very appreciated!)

— — —

It’s rather calm today, uneventful, as you sit at your office desk doing your work absent-mindedly.

You think back to your first night together with inquisitor Cal Kestis. It’s been some time since then, and you’re glad that there were more nights after that one.

Whatever is going on between you two, you try to be discreet about it. But it didn’t go unnoticed by others how Cal would approach you in the hallways to say hi or have a quick chat to check in on you. At first, you were nervous that it would affect your job in some way, negatively change your relationship with your boss and colleagues (not that you’re too close with them, but you still want to keep it professional and respectful with them). To your surprise though, the others seem to respect you more because of it. Apparently being able to hold your ground against an inquisitor isn't a small feat. ‘Hold your ground’... More like being wrapped around his finger.

You smile to yourself as you think back to a couple of nights back. Your heart quickens and the tip of your ears burn as you remember the trails of kisses Cal left on your skin, setting your whole body on fire, accompanied by words of praise and adoration, words only for you to hear.

Shaking your head to rid yourself of the slippery slope that is your current train of thought, you refocus on the screen in front of you and continue clacking away on the keyboard. You haven’t really defined or put a label on what you two have, but you know it’s special, and it is real. And you’re content with that for now. You like the current dynamic, where you have dinner together as often as your jobs will allow it, and you sleep over at his quarters every other day.

However, lately there’s been a habit of Cal’s that worries you a bit. There’s been several instances now when you wake up in the middle of the night and your hand reaches out to find him, but his side of the bed is empty. Sometimes he’s not in the room at all. Other times you can see him standing at the window with his back towards you; his red hair seems to glow above his dark silhouette contrasting with the dim fiery glow coming from Mustafar, appearing from behind a veil of clouds. You know he knows you’re awake, but you stay still, pretending to be asleep. Whatever is weighing on his mind, whenever he feels ready, he’ll come to you. And you’d wait for as long as he needs.

Still, getting up so often at night starts to take a toll. You notice he’s more irritable, you see the dark bags under his eyes. But when you try to confront him about it, he dismisses it as unimportant, saying he’ll get better sleep that night. But it’s just the same thing over and over again.

One night after dinner, you’re both sitting on his couch, and you finally manage to pry out what has got him unable to sleep: nightmares. You don’t really understand what the problem is; everyone gets nightmares every once in a while. Even if he were to move around a lot, you’d try to calm him down and get him back to sleep.

“Do you know how inquisitors are made?” he asks seemingly out of nowhere while on the nightmare topic.

You take a moment to think about it, and realise that you do, in fact, not. So you shake your head.

“The Empire captures Jedis, to torture and remake them however they see fit”, he explains and stops from a moment to let it sink in.

“Part of them is lost forever,” he continues, his gaze moving to the side, looking at nothing in particular. “The other seems to be trapped, unable to move or escape. Jedis are trained to not give in to hate or anger. For inquisitors, those are the only things keeping them going. Ironically, feeling an enemy’s life force fade away… It makes you feel alive again.” He looks down at his hands. “It lets you feel something again at all: the rage, towards oneself and towards everyone who’s ever wronged you. It’s an addicting feeling, all-consuming. But much too short. So you seek it out again. And the Empire has plenty of enemies they need gone, so you comply.”

He pauses, allowing you to interject if it’s too much, but you remain silent, listening attentively. You’ve never heard this side of him, of how it felt being an inquisitor.

“In those moments–” he goes on, clenching his hands into fists. “–feeding off of someone's desperation and pain that you can feel through the Force, it also opens a minimal gap for you to feel other things too. Things you thought you had forgotten or want to forget, like regret, fear and doubt. Or things you think you don’t deserve to feel anymore, like warmth. Happiness.” He pauses for a moment. “Love.”

You remain silent for a moment longer in case he wants to add anything else, but it doesn’t look like it. So you ask something instead.

“And what do you remember in those moments?”

Cal closes his eyes and throws his head back slightly, taking a deep breath.

“The smell of the temple library on Coruscant,” he replies. “The rare sound of the clones laughing in the mess hall. How safe I felt with my master.”

You tilt your head with a slight grimace; it breaks your heart to hear he thinks he can’t have those things anymore because of what he is now. Or rather, what he was made.

“You still deserve all of that, the warmth and feelings of safety,” you say, and reach out to run your fingertips over his cheek, but he turns away.

“You don’t think I’m a monster? Like everyone else does?” he asks with a wry chuckle. “You know what I do. I don’t deserve any of it.”

Or you.

He doesn’t say the words aloud, but they hang heavy in the air between you two.

“Okay, Kestis,” you say as you stand up, one hand stretched out towards him. “No moping, c’mon.”

He gives you a suspicious look, but accepts your hand nonetheless. You guide him to the washroom and run a bath for him, using one of your nicer bath bombs which you kept for special occasions.

“Time for some pampering. You deserve it,” you enunciate that last part. “Clothes off.”

He narrows his eyes at you, unsure of what you’re scheming. You can’t help but laugh at the faint blush spreading on his freckled face as you start to strip yourself.

“Now, don’t get any ideas. No funny business, I mean it. Just a bath,” you say, pointing a finger at him.

“Alright, alright,” he gives in with a low chuckle, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

Not long after, you’re both in the tub, with you sitting behind Cal, both enveloped by fragrant bubbles filling the warm water surface. You instruct him to lean back so you can wash his hair. Using your own shampoo instead of the boring, Empire-issue one, you lather up his hair, massaging his scalp, which earns you a grunt or two, and you can’t help a triumphant smile.

“Does it feel good?” you ask, and you get another grunt in response, so it must indeed feel good.

After you’re done with the hair, you tell him to turn around, and you squirt some soap onto a wash cloth. Starting at his neck, you scrub gently in circular motions, making your way down over his shoulder and his arms. Then you repeat the process on the other arm. As you lift it out from the thick layer of bubbles, you notice some reddening on his skin at his bicep. You take a closer look.

“Is that a new scar?” you ask.

“Yeah, don’t know where from though,” he says, and you get the impression that he does, but you don’t ask him about it.

“Is that so,” you mumble, then lean in to place a soft kiss on it. “There, now it will heal faster.”

Cal snorts and rolls his eyes, but his gaze remains soft.

“What, you don’t believe me?” you retort in mock offence. Then you start placing kisses on all his scars, the ones on his face, at his jaw and over his nose. The scars on his chest, his shoulders. You end by placing one last kiss on the tip of his nose, and grin up at him, but your face changes into worry when you see his expression. His brows are furrowed, as if in pain, his eyes shut tightly, his shoulders tense.

“Cal, are you okay?” you ask, and his hand comes out of the water to hold your face. You place your hand over his. He blinks a couple of times, and when he fully opens his eyes again, his features relax, and he smiles warmly. But what shocks you the most is that his eyes aren’t their usual yellow; they’re greenish blue. You open your mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. His gaze is not only a different colour, but also as vulnerable and tender as you’ve never seen before in him.

“You’re too good to me,” he whispers, leaning in to place a single, lingering kiss on your cheek.

Suddenly, his face contorts in pain again, this time more than before, and his hands shoot up to either side of his head, pressing onto his temples. When he opens his eyes again, they’re back to the yellow you know and love.

“My head is killing me suddenly,” he says through gritted teeth. “Can we wrap it up?”

“Uh, of course, yeah,” you answer, making quick work of rinsing off both of you and getting some towels.

Soon you’re both in bed, with your back against his chest, as he holds on to you like his life depends on it. Cal falls asleep first, but it’s rather restless. He keeps twitching and flinching, and with every sudden move, you’re dragged back out of your almost drifting to sleep. When he seems to finally have calmed down, you exhale deeply, eager to follow suit and drift into dreamland as well. Instead, Cal groans loudly, and you lean onto your side to look up over your shoulder. He looks distressed, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

“Cal, are you okay?” you ask, placing your hand on his shoulder to try and wake him, but you retrieve it quickly when his eyes shoot open, wild and angry and disoriented.

“Prauf!” he screams, grabbing you harshly and rolling over so he’s straddling you, one of his hands fisting the sheets while the other goes to your throat, starting to choke you.

“C-Cal…!” you rasp out, holding onto his wrist to try and get him off of you. “You’re hurting me!”

He puts more weight into his hold, and you start seeing white dots sprinkled in your field of vision.

“It’s me, please,” you gasp, raising your hand to hold his cheek instead, and that seems to work. Slowly, his eyes seem to focus again, and his ragged breathing calms down slightly. When he finally sees you under him and understands what he is doing, he lets go and jumps off of you, off the bed, and slams his back against the opposite wall. You take a gulp of air, falling into a coughing fit.

“Are you okay?” you croak when you can finally talk again, and you see him holding his head, trembling.

“I- I’m sorry- This-” he starts, but can’t form a sentence. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he lets his hands fall back down to his sides. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”

Cal leaves the room before you can protest, and the doors close behind him. Just like that you’re left alone, wondering what in the world just happened. Does it have something to do with his eyes earlier? And what, or who, is Prauf?

— — —

The next morning, you’re awoken by the alarm clock on his night stand, and it takes you a couple of tries to turn it off. Sitting up on the bed with a yawn, you start remembering what happened the night before, and your hands comes up to your neck, where you can still feel some soreness from being choked like that.

You tiptoe out of the room, but just as you expected, Cal is gone. Taking a quick look at the clock, you yelp as you realise how late it is, and you hurry to the washroom to get ready.

Once you’re ready to go, you take one last look at yourself in the mirror, and realise that your neck has visible marks, clearly in the shape of a hand. You grimace slightly, propping up the collar of your uniform as high up as it will go, and it covers up most of it. As long as you don’t look up or stretch your neck too much, you should be good. So you leave Cal’s quarters and head to your office.

The whole day, you’re a bit distracted, hoping that Cal doesn’t feel too bad about what he did. You just want to help; sure, the nightmares are worse than you thought. But you’ll figure it out, together.

You don’t get to see or hear from Cal the whole day though, or the next, or the one after that. For almost a week, he seems to be avoiding you completely. He doesn’t answer your holocalls or texts. You only catch the occasional glimpse of him leaving a room just when you’re entering.

Tired of this game of cat and mouse, you decide to go find him. Instead, you end up cornered by the Ninth Sister. You’re slightly scared of her if you’re honest – no, scratch that. You are scared of her; she’s incredibly intimidating, not just by her sheer size and strength, but her presence in general. She always sounds mad, a deep frown etched into her face. So when she suddenly tells you to follow her, you don’t find it in you to refuse. To your surprise, she hunts down Cal as well, and brings you both to an empty hallway.

“Whatever is going on between you two: fix it!” she barks, then turns around with a scoff, muttering something about it being like scolding children.

You look around, and there’s no one around, so you look up at Cal’s helmet visor, trying to find his eyes under it, but obviously only seeing your own reflection.

“Hey,” you greet him, giving him a smile to signal you’re not mad. “I missed you.”

His shoulders slump slightly, and he looks around as well. Instead of answering, he grabs you by your elbow and guides you some steps down the hallway to a maintenance shaft. He flicks his wrist, and the doors open, he shoves you both inside and closes the doors.

Only now does he take off his helmet, and you can’t suppress a gasp, horrified at the sight. His hair is sticking out everywhere, the bags under his eyes are the darkest you’ve ever seen, and he not only has new scratches on his face, he also a black eye that seems to be a couple of days old.

“What happened to you?” you ask, and you’re aware that it’s not a great opener, but you’re genuinely worried. Your hands gingerly run over his face as you inspect the damage. Cal shrugs nonchalantly.

“I’ve been distracted lately and it affected my performance,” he says with a wry smile. “So they had to correct my bad behaviour.”

You take a moment to make sure you’re properly understanding what he’s implying. By the look in his eyes, kinda sad and a bit ashamed, it seems you are.

“Do you get corrected often?” you ask carefully.

“Sometimes. When I get greedy,” he answers. You think back to your conversation about being an inquisitor, and remember how he said that he only got a glimpse back into his own heart when he was out there, doing horrible things. Does that mean he was defying orders just to be able ‘to feel something at all’?

“Do you usually get corrected… after being with me?” you ask this time, almost scared of the answer.

“It’s not your fault,” he indirectly answers your question, taking your hands in his. “Being with you is just as addicting as being out there. I’m just… weak like that, I guess.”

“Oh, Cal,” you whisper, giving his hands a squeeze. “The warmth you yearn for and that you seek, it may make you feel vulnerable, and you think that makes you weak, but all it does is make you real. You’re real, Cal, and so am I. And I don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t need to be greedy; I’m here, I always will be. You deserve that warmth, and if you’ll have me, I’ll give you all of it.”

His brows rise slightly in surprise, and you realise you basically just professed your love for him. Heat erupts on your face and in your panic, you grab onto his collar and kiss him, hard at first, but then you’re both moving in unison with a rare softness you don’t always get to experience from him.

Suddenly he pulls back with a pained grunt, and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor.

“Cal, are you okay? What’s wrong?” You kneel down beside him, and you lift his face to look at him. Once again, you’re met with blue eyes, this time like an ocean about to erupt into stormy waves. He’s close to tears, and he looks so scared, so small, it breaks your heart. If only you knew how to mend the broken pieces of his soul, you’d kiss them all better if you could.

“I’m sorry I stayed away so long,” he suddenly says, hugging you into his chest. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of hurting you again. What if I don’t snap back in time? What if I do something worse?”

You rack your brains for something reassuring to say, and finally land on something.

“You know, as a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare,” you start, hoping to not only get your point across better with your story, but also getting him out of the rabbit hole he was about to go down. “I kept dreaming that my parents abandoned me. We would all be together somewhere, and I looked away for a moment, but by the time I turned back around, they were gone. And I would feel so alone, and full of dread, I felt like I was going crazy. I’d often wake up screaming and crying.”

You take a moment to gauge his reaction; talking about your pasts has been kind of a taboo topic between you two. He openly said once that he doesn’t want to talk about his past, which you respect, but it also meant he never asked questions about yours. Maybe he’s scared to know more because it would reawaken memories of his own. Maybe he just doesn’t want to pry. Maybe he doesn’t care. Either way, you’re now crossing that invisible line and hope it won’t scare him away completely.

“No matter how much my parents reassured me that they wouldn’t abandon me, it always played out the same,” you continue your story. “One night, I was so scared of having the nightmare again, that I straight up refused to go to sleep. That’s when my mother told me this: sometimes, dreams are just your mind and soul processing something that actually happened. But other times, it’s the mind’s way of trying to find closure for something that hasn’t happened. So even if the dream isn’t nice, you have to wait until the end. Only then will your mind be able to tell you what it needs, even if it’s something you don’t want to hear.”

Wiping the silent tears off of Cal’s cheeks, you give him a comforting smile.

“And I know this doesn’t compare in any way to the nightmares you have,” you say. “But, maybe, you just need to let them play out. What if it’s your subconscious trying to tell you something and you cut it off before it has a chance to? What if… it’s the Force trying to tell you something important?”

This seems to click in some way with Cal, and he takes a moment to think over your words.

“Whatever happens, when you wake up you won’t be alone. I promise”, you assure him.

Cal is about to say something, when his eyes shut closed and he claims his head hurts again. He blinks a couple of times, holding his head, and his eyes switch between greenish blue and yellow.

“Don’t block it out,” you encourage him, removing his hands from his temples and bringing them to your face instead. “I take back what I said earlier. You can be greedy, but not out there. Be greedy with me. Take everything you want, Cal. As much as you need. It’s all for you.”

He blinks one, two more times, his eyes fully reverted to their usual fiery yellow, and the fear from before is completely gone, now replaced with something sharp and dark.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he says through gritted teeth, his whole body trembling in anticipation or self-control, maybe both.

“But I do,” you reassure him, climbing over his legs so you’re sitting on his lap, and gently press your forehead against his. “That yearning is eating you up from the inside. You’re hurting. It doesn’t have to be like that.”

Cal’s hands wander from your cheeks over your shoulders, down your arms, until they rest on your waist. He looks up at you, still a little unsure, and you roll your hips against his to further encourage him and tell him it’s okay. You both can’t help the low moans that escape your lips.

“It’s okay, Cal,” you whisper, leaning in and stopping just above his lips, where you feel his shaky breath. “Consume me until there’s nothing left.”

That seems to snap him back to his usual, more dominant self that he is in intimate moments like this. Adjusting your position in his lap, he presses your body into his, kissing you passionately. It’s just as intense as your make-out sessions usually are, but there’s something else lingering as well. You can’t quite describe it, but it’s like there’s a newfound meaning behind his actions. As if he is trying to pour his whole being and soul into it in an attempt to reach you. And it does. In fact, he’s using all his senses, Force included, to breathe in all of you, and his presence envelops you like it never has before.

You start undoing both your uniforms, and you pull back for a moment to take a much needed breather.

“You’re doing great,” you pant, not really thinking about what you’re saying as you try to undo the clasps and buttons as fast as your trembling hands will allow. “Such a good boy for me.”

To say that his whimper takes you by surprise, is an understatement. You stop your movements and pull back a little more to take in the image before you: Cal’s partially exposed chest is rising and sinking rapidly, a violent blush spreading from the tip of his ears all the way down to his sternum. His usual confidence and cockiness seem gone, and biting his bottom lip, hair completely dishevelled, he gives you a flustered look you’ve never seen on him.

“Don’t call me that,” he breathes, trying to pull you closer again so you can’t look at him.

“Call you what, a good boy?” you tease him, and his whole body tenses up under you as he takes a sharp breath. “I think you rather like it, no? Being such a good boy for me. C’mon, keep going.”

He relentlessly attacks your neck just the way he knows you like, biting and licking and nibbling along your pulse.

“Ah, kriff, these uniforms, I swear–” you curse under your breath into Cal’s temple, trying to rid yourself of your jacket without losing contact with him. You only manage to push it down to your elbows. Cal’s hands slip under your shirt and start wandering up and up. Your whole body feels like it’s on fire, goosebumps erupting on your arms and back as you arch yourself into his hold. Another moan escapes your throat as he bites down hard, immediately licking the darkened spot. You finally manage to shake off your jacket and–

Your comlink beeps and you groan. Cal seems unbothered, as he’s still going, now moving back up to finding your lips, tongue darting out to meet yours. After blindly tapping around to find the device in a pocket of your discarded jacket, you take it out and look at the caller ID. Your blood freezes when you recognise it to be your boss. Right, you’re in a maintenance shaft half naked with the inquisitor when you should be at your office.

Shoving Cal away begrudgingly, he growls in annoyance, about to flick the still beeping comlink out of your hand.

“Wait, wait, it could be important,” you say through heavy breaths, trying to calm yourself down enough to sound somewhat normal. Cal merely pushes his face into your chest with a defeated sigh. After clearing your throat, you take the call.

“Took you long enough, officer,” your boss says in a clearly annoyed tone that makes you cringe slightly.

“Sorry, Sir, I was, uh, occupied,” you stumble over your words and mentally slap yourself. Cal doesn’t even try to hide his snort at your response. You smack him lightly on the back of his head.

“Whatever you were doing, officer,” the man says in a way that he knows exactly what you were doing and with whom. “Prepare your things and get ready, you’re to leave for an off-planet mission by tonight.”

“Yes, Sir,” you reply, instinctively straightening your back.

“You’re to meet us at the hangar by 1900 hours. And officer,” he adds with a sigh, his voice adopting a strange tone of embarrassment, almost. “If inquisitor Kestis happens to be there, tell him to come as well.”

“Understood, Sir,” Cal replies with no qualms, and you’re petrified.

After one more sigh and some unintelligible curses, your boss hangs up.

You blink a couple of times, trying to recover from the shock. Great, now your boss knows for sure what you were up to.

“We’re not done here,” Cal says, as he places one last kiss on the corner of your mouth and stands up, helping you get on your feet as well. “We’ll pick up where we left off later.”

“At a different location though, I would hope,” you chuckle as you two get ready to leave the little room.

After a quick detour to the nearest washroom, where you both fix your messy hair and uniforms (his smirk as you’re barely able to cover all the hickeys with your propped up collar will be the end of you), and one to your office for you to pick up some supplies, you make your way to the hangar. A group of people is already waiting for you two; two purge troopers, two stormtroopers of your own squad your boss stand next to Cal’s ship, a zeta-class shuttle: black, sleek and menacing.

After the debrief, you review the data on your holopad. It’s a mission on another planet, and you’re always excited to get one of those, as you don’t get to go out “into the field” often. In this case there’s a possible rebel cell, but their transmissions are set up in a way that decoding them from the Fortress Inquisitorius would take a considerable amount of time, so it’s quicker to get close to the base and physically infiltrate their comms system to get the information you need. Additionally, there’s been a tip about a possible Jedi being hidden within the rebel group, that’s why they’re sending an inquisitor as well. You’re to stay on the ship working on the decryption while they do their thing.

The ship takes off, and once you’re far enough, you make the jump into hyperspace. During the trip, both the purge troopers and Cal sit unnervingly still, probably power napping and saving their energy for the possible fight ahead. Your two troopers are in the cockpit flying the ship and having a chat, so you have a lot of time for yourself. You mainly work on preparing your equipment, revising your software and getting all the tools you’d need ready. It doesn’t take long for you to have everything prepped; the moment you’d enter the planet’s atmosphere, your scans would tell you the rebel’s comm system location within seconds, and once you land, you can head right out to hook up your own tech. There’s still a good portion of waiting after you’re done though, and with the constant hyperspace humming, you find yourself dozing on and off, replaying the earlier conversation you had with Cal in your mind, wondering how to act and what to say once you get back to base.

After what feels like an eternity, the piloting troopers finally announce you’re here. The drop out of hyperspace shakes you slightly, and as you look out the window, you see your goal: a small planet on the very edge of the Outer Rim; you’ve never been this far away from the Core Worlds, and as you see the vast expanse of pitch black void surrounding it, you notice the lack of starts in the distance, and you almost let yourself be swallowed by the dread that runs a cold shiver down your spine. Shaking your head, you rid yourself of any distracting thoughts and get to work. As expected, your holopad is already beeping, alerting you that it found your target location. You stand up from your seat and approach the cockpit, for which you have to walk past Cal. His helmet visor is aimed at the floor in front of his feet, and he doesn’t look up as you walk by. For all you know, his eyes could be trained on you though; there’s no way to know for sure.

Standing between the pilot seats, you show one of the troopers the coordinates on your holopad, and he punches them into the console. Holding onto the back of the seat, you stand there as the ship approaches the area you marked, and the landing is swift and almost motionless. So this is what the good ships feel like, you think to yourself. And the troopers seem to be thinking the same, if the slow whistle coming from one of them is anything to go by.

You turn around to go inform the purge troopers you’re here, but Cal is already standing in front of you, blocking your exit from the cockpit.

“My men and I will look for our target, you two stay here,” he says as he points at the two stormtroopers. Then he gestures towards you with his head. “The officer is in charge while I’m gone, and better be unharmed when I come back, understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” they respond in unison.

Cal seems to linger on your form for a second longer, then turns on his heels. The cargo door opens and the smell of humid, tropical air reaches your nose. Cal and his troopers take off, and you nod to yourself with an ‘alright’, as you get to work. Connecting a couple of wires here and there, you call one of the troopers to you.

“We need to bring this–” you point at your contraption. “–to the base of this structure.” You show him the red dot on the holomap at the edge of a water body. “That seems to be the backbone of their communication system. There have to be wires that we can hook the machine into.”

“Understood.”

He picks up the machine and starts heading out. You gather a couple more tools, throw them into your bag and sling it over your shoulder. As you approach the cargo door, you turn to the other trooper one last time.

“You stay here and hold down the fort. Keep the usual channels open for us and for C- Inquisitor Kestis.”

“Yes, Sir!”

And off you go.

After a while, you get to the point at the cliff as indicated by your holomap. Both you and the stormtrooper stand at the ledge, carefully looking down. At the base, a broad river runs along the cliffside. Scanning the rocky walls with your eyes, you find what you’re looking for.

“Jackpot,” you say, pointing at something, and the trooper follows your line of sight. “That’s our transmitter.”

It’s essentially a big metal box built into the side of the cliff, with an antenna on one side and a rather wonky satellite dish on the other, partially hidden under a rocky overhang. You’d have to climb down quite a bit to reach it.

“We didn’t bring any climbing equipment,” the trooper points out.

“We improvise,” you retort with a shrug.

You take the rope out of your bag and tie one end to a nearby tree that looks sturdy enough, and the other around your legs and waist.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Sir,” the stormtrooper starts. “If anything happens to you, Inquisitor Kestis will–” He’s stopped by the stern look you shoot him.

“I know how to take care of myself, trooper,” You say firmly. “Now, help me get down there.”

You plug in one of the thicker wires into your machine, holding the other end between your teeth. The trooper helps you climb down the cliffside step by step, slowly letting you down. Once you reach the desired point by the transmitter, you take the wire out of your mouth.

“Here’s good! Hold it there!” you call. A grunt is all the response you get.

You plug in the wire, and your holopad starts beeping, starting to intercept the messages. But they’re not written words, voices or even proper sounds, it just sounds and looks like static.

“Guess I have to calibrate my receiver,” you think aloud. “Pull me up!”

Climbing back up the way you came, you untie the rope the moment you find your footing again, which left a slight stinging sensation at the back of your legs, and you absent-mindedly rub your bum to alleviate the sensation. You notice the trooper giving you a strange look, and heat spreads on your face.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” you say as you straighten up, looking for an order to give. “Go, uh, go collect the rope.”

“Yes, Sir…” he responds with a snicker.

You roll your eyes, but you’re not really mad at him. That must have just looked really funny. Either way, time to get to work: you kneel down next to your contraption, holding your holopad next to it, adjusting some levels here and pressing buttons there. But no matter how much you try to isolate the signal, it still doesn’t get cleaner or clearer.

The trooper places the neatly tied up rope next to your bag which you left on the ground, then holds up his blaster, undoing the safety. You look up at him in confusion.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure…” he answers. “I have a bad feeling about this place. Let’s get what we came for and go back to the ship.”

“Okay…” you stretch out the word, unsure what put him on edge like that. Yes, there’s known aggressive fauna here, but all in all the planet is abandoned, there's no particular danger. Not documented, anyway. You keep looking at the static on your holopad, trying to make sense of it. But the more you see, the less random it seems. That’s when it dawns on you.

Suddenly, you furiously type away on your pad, trying to translate the encoded message, but it’s just gibberish. You tilt your head in confusion, revising your translation; it should be right. But it isn’t. Why?...

“Oh!” You say after a few more seconds, getting up to your feet so quickly that it almost makes you dizzy. “Oh, this is actually quite brilliant. Ah, these rebels sure are getting crafty. Come here, you’re gonna love this.”

The stormtrooper shoots one last look over his shoulder into the vegetation, then turns to you, still holding tightly onto his blaster.

“You ever heard of Dadita?” you ask, not bothering to hide your excitement.

“No?”

“Of course you haven’t,” you say with a click of your tongue. “It’s an ancient Mandalorian code consisting of short and long bursts of static, where each combination stands for a letter. But these rebels combined it with Mon Calamari blink code, which is the same principles but with light sequences. They used Dadita static, but the sequences actually correspond to the blink code letters. No wonder back at HQ they thought we couldn’t intercept proper comms. It’s made to look like static.”

“Uh-huh,” is all you get out of the trooper, still nervously looking around.

“C’mon, this is cool,” you try, but to no avail. Sighing in defeat, you add, “You know what, nevermind. Let’s just go back.”

At least Cal will show interest in your find. Or so you hope. Speaking of, you wonder how he’s doing. You know you shouldn’t ping him as it could interfere with his mission, but you just hope they made it back safely to the ship by the time you’re there.

“Contact the ship, will you? And tell them we’re going back,” you instruct. The trooper presses some buttons on the console on his wrist.

“Ground team to ship, do you copy?”

The only answer is static.

You look in the direction of the ship as the trooper tries again, and you feel something cold on your nose, then on your cheek. You look up; it’s starting to rain. Great. Your machine shouldn’t have trouble with a little rain, but you still don’t feel great about it. You kinda made it up on the spot, so there are a couple of exposed wires.

“We need to go get something to cover the receiver. Any answer yet?” you ask, and it’s really starting to come down now. You have to blink several times to get the water out of your eyes.

“No,” he responds, nervously looking around. “I told you, something is wrong.”

“Okay, no need to panic,” to try to calm him down; his demeanour is starting to make you nervous as well. “Let’s just quickly go back; I'm pretty sure I saw a piece of canvas that we can use to–” You sling your bag back onto your shoulders as you speak, but the inertia of the bag makes you lose your balance for a second, and with the ground now turning into mud, your boot loses its grip on the ground, making you slip and your knees give out under you.

“Officer!” You hear the stormtrooper call as he stretches out his arm in a vain attempt to catch you, but you’re already falling backwards off the cliff. Seemingly in slow motion, the trooper and the treeline disappear from your view, being replaced by a grey, cloudy sky. You close your eyes, feeling the droplets on your face and the air rushing by your ears, and you’re strangely calm. All you can think of is Cal.

Are you okay? I wish we had properly made up before this.

When your back hits the water of the river at the base of the cliff, your survival instincts are awoken all at once. The current is stronger than what it seemed from up the ledge. You swim with all your might, trying to stay afloat and taking gulps of air whenever you can. it isn't long until your arms are burning from the sudden effort, and you scan your surroundings, desperate to find something to hold onto. The river seems to open up and away from the cliffside. Here, the shores are filled with mangrove-like trees, their roots thick and plenty, some of them stretching out like low-hanging branches over the water surface. You try to hold on to one, but your gloves don't provide much of a grip, so you take them off and ditch them. Nearing the next big branch, you ready yourself and throw your upper body out of the water so that you can hold onto it with both your arms, and it works. Slowly, you inch closer and closer to the tree trunk, until you reach the shore. Letting yourself fall onto the mossy ground, you take some deep breaths trying to calm down your breathing, racing heart and aching limbs.

You pat your uniform and conclude that you lost your bag somewhere along the way, which had your holopad and all your equipment. You sit up and wipe the back of your sleeve over your eyes, but the constant rain keeps hitting your face. You pop open the collar of your uniform and it feels like ridding yourself of a chokehold. The uniforms were never particularly comfortable, being on the stiff side, but drenched like this, it’s much worse.

Looking around, you stand up; you have no idea where you are or where the ship could be. Giving yourself one more pat down, you find your comlink in one of your zipped up pockets, and thank the Maker under your breath.

“Hello? Does anyone copy?”

You can hear static, so you assume that it is working, but it’s the mic or speaker, or both that are ruined. At least from the ship they should be able to locate you with it.

A gust of wind makes you shiver slightly; despite it being a rather tropical climate, being completely wet does make you feel the dropping temperatures that will probably await you at night. In fact, it’s starting to get dark.

They’ll find me. It’s fine. I just have to make sure I’m alive by the time they get here, hah, you tell yourself with a wry chuckle.

First thing you have to do is seek shelter from the relentless rain. Hugging yourself, you cringe at the sensation of your feet against the wet boots, but you still take step after step into the vegetation, looking for some place to dry off. Completely lost and giving up on the idea of ever getting out of this maze by yourself, the only information you keep in your head is the direction of the river; you'll be needing water after all. For now, you could just drink rain water though, so you venture further and further away into the forest. With the dense branches sporting big, round leaves, they already stop part of the rain, but not enough. Finally, you come across a big tree, the roots lifted into the air so that they form something akin to a cage, and the ground beneath it is dry; that's exactly what you need.

Hurrying through the gaps between the roots, you take off your boots, jacket and trousers, giving everything a good squeeze to wring as much water out as possible. Left in your underwear and a black short sleeve shirt, you wonder what to do next. You’d need food soon. You sigh, leaning back onto the rough surface of the tree.

“This is exactly why I wanted an office job,” you say bitterly. So much for being excited about a mission ‘on the field’.

For now, you decide to wait out the rain, which could hopefully stop just as suddenly as it started, and you just sit there, holding your comlink in your hands, looking at it intently.

After a while, the rain finally seems to subside, and while your clothes are nowhere dry, you don’t exactly want to explore a jungle half naked. So you put your trousers back on, which takes a while, as the wet fabric keeps sticking to your legs. After what feels like another workout, you finally zip them up, and put on your equally wet boots. Oh, how you crave a warm shower right now.

Taking the jacket into your hands, you feel the wet fabric and decide to leave it. Your skin dried much faster, so it was better to be a little cold without a jacket than very cold with a drenched one. Placing your comlink into your pocket, you go foraging for some sort of fruit or berry. After the rain and with no equipment, you doubt you’d be able to start a fire to cook anything, so you have to find something you can eat raw.

As you’re picking some reddish purple berries from a bush and contemplating if you can eat them, you hear some rustling behind you. Dropping the berries and immediately turning around, you’re met with a human and you notice several things. First of all, they’re holding their side, which is bleeding a lot, their clothes stained in a dark red. Second, you see the lightsabre in their hand, emitting a blueish hue, its electric hum the only sound aside of their ragged breathing. And third, you see the plea in their deep brown eyes, silently asking you for help. Almost in the same moment, you also see their eyes dart down to your uniform and back up to your own, realisation spreading on their face. And you’re conflicted.

You know who’s after them. You know what’s going to happen. So it’s not like you don’t want to help; you can’t. If the circumstances were different, would you help? You realise you don’t want to know the answer to that. Either way, you're unarmed, hungry and shivering, so you can't really put up much of a fight against them either.

“I'm sorry,” you say instead, and you're not really sure which part you're apologising for. You're about to take a step to the side and gesture them to go past you, but you hear footsteps approaching quickly.

The stranger winces in pain as they try to take another step, but collapse onto the ground, the sabre retracting with a whirr. They look up at you again, this time enraged, a deep frown etched into their face, and you're about to say something, but a modulated voice is quicker.

“Officer, what are you doing here?” It’s the purge trooper.

“I- I fell,” you say sheepishly. He scoffs in disbelief, shaking his head.

“Well, good job stopping our target. It’s a slippery one, this one.”

The trooper picks up the sabre, and turns around the Jedi onto their back with his boot, earning a pained grunt. From behind him emerges Cal out of the vegetation, and you’re horrified at how he looks: helmet gone, hair wild, and face partially covered in blood. If it’s his own or not, you can’t tell. He looks frustrated and beyond angry. You’re about to say something, asking if he’s okay, but the sharp look in his eyes freezes you in your spot.

“It’s the end of the line now, Jedi,” he spits through gritted teeth, and holds his red lightsabre a little tighter. He shoots you a quick look, then at his trooper, and motions with his head to the side. The man nods and turns to you, grabbing you by your bicep, and starts dragging you away.

“Wait, wait!” You try to turn back around, but the trooper’s grip keeps facing you forward. When you reach a thick tree, he slams your back into it rather harshly, and tells you to stay there. He doesn’t move from in front of you, holding onto his electrostaff with both hands. It emits an electric crackle of purplish hue, clearly warning you not try anything funny. And to be honest, you don't have the energy right now, so you just rest the back of your head against the bark. You can hear the stranger starting to plead for their life, trying to get under Cal’s skin, saying something about a time before being an inquisitor, but Cal is fresh out of patience, and the Jedi chokes on their words. Their laboured breathing fills this corner of the jungle, and after the sound of a lightsabre swinging and the distinct sizzling of flesh, there is silence.

The purge trooper stretches his neck to see past the tree, then gestures to you with a quick nod.

“Let’s go,” he says, and you comply.

Cal stands in front of the body, partially shielding it from your view, and you walk past him as well, following the trooper. As you three make your way back, you notice there's no trace of the second purge trooper that had left with them.

“The other one's dead,” Cal says before you can even ask, and gets handed the Jedi’s lightsabre, which he clips onto his belt. “Why are you down here? And where's your jacket?” You sigh.

“I fell,” you say, and it still sounds as stupid as it did before. “I slipped, and fell down the cliff. I left my jacket by the river. But before that I did get the receiver hooked up and I know how to decrypt the messages. Do you know if my squad made it back to the ship?”

“Don’t know, our comms don't really seem to work down here.” He suddenly stops and looks around, gesturing to a different direction, and the purge trooper takes off through the bushes. Cal turns back to you, and you shoot him a questioning look.

“You fell from a cliff? Just what were you doing.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, clearly distressed by your reckless actions. “I pinged you several times, and you didn't answer. I knew it probably was the signal being jammed but… I thought that– What if–”

“Hey, it's okay. I'm okay.” You place your hand on his chest and that's when you notice several gashes on his uniform. “Are you okay, though?”

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, his worry replaced by exasperation.

“You really shouldn't have–”

He stops in the middle of his sentence and takes a quick step back away from you as both your heads turn towards the sound of approaching footsteps. The purge trooper approaches Cal and hands him his helmet. Or what's left of it, anyway. The visor is broken, the part that sits above the jaw seems to have been sliced off entirely, and there are several dents on the other side. Your eyes meet Cal’s again in worry, but he avoids your gaze entirely.

“Let’s move.”

The trek back to the ship is quick, as per the relentless pace of the two men. There are some obstacles on the way though, where you need a little help. When crossing a river with a particularly strong current, you lose your footing on the rocky riverbed, and find yourself holding onto the next best thing, which happens to be the purge trooper. He lets you hold him as he guides you across to the other side, where he quickly shakes you off. You wonder if he’s really that uncomfortable to be close to you, and you make a mental note not to ask purge troopers for anything in the future, especially if it entailed physical contact of any kind. But what you didn't see were the Force daggers that Cal was stabbing into the back of the poor man’s head.

Not long after the river, you come face to face with an abrupt slope with a flat, rocky surface. It’s almost like a wall, leading to the plateau above. It’s too high to jump and too even to climb, so you wonder how you will get up there. Once again, Cal seems to read your mind, as before you can even ask, you see him essentially levitating up and onto the ledge above. Now that's a handy Force trick. You expect him to throw down a rope or something for you to hold onto, but instead, you're being lifted off the ground by an invisible force, as is the trooper next to you. Once you reach the top, you’re gently placed back on solid ground, while the trooper is let go far earlier, which he is unprepared for, so he falls forward and onto his knees with a grunt. But he gets back up onto his feet without complaints or remarks, simply dusting off his thighs and continuing the way back to the ship. You want to scold Cal a little for being unnecessarily mean, but the harshness still etched into his face, now stained with dry and flaky patches of blood, refrains you from making any comments.

Finally, you make it back to a place you recognise, where the ship isn’t far away. You run off first, despite your muscles screaming in pain to finally give them some rest. The cargo door is closed, and you bang your hand on it twice.

“Open up!” you order, and the ramp opens with a mechanical hiss, then gets lowered down. You quickly climb up before it even completely reaches the ground.

“Officer!” both stormtroopers exclaim in unison and in apparent relief when they see you alive and in one piece. One of them runs off to the equipment storage to get a blanket for you, and you gladly accept it. Only now do you realise how cold and stiff your whole body feels.

“Have you been intercepting the messages?” you ask, grabbing a spare holopad to log into your receiver’s software to start decrypting.

“Yes, and as you said, it’s a coded transmission made with static bursts” the first trooper explains, the one you had been on the cliff with. “I covered up the receiver with the canvas as you asked, and we’ve been monitoring it this whole time, but we didn’t know how to decrypt it without you…”

“That’s okay, that’s my job after all.” You playfully shove your elbow into his side. “I’m just glad you’re both alive.” You smile genuinely at them, and you wonder if they're smiling back at you from under their helmets as well. The Empire may think that stormtroopers are easily replaceable, but this is your squad. And you intend to take care of them.

You take a step back to take a seat and start decrypting, but your back bumps into something, or rather someone. You turn around just in time to see Cal gesture to the purge trooper, who once again merely gives a short nod, then heads to the cockpit.

“Let’s get out of here,” is the last thing you hear him say before the cockpit and cargo doors close with a hiss, and the engines start.

Cal and you just stand there for a moment, looking at each other.

“Are you going to say something?,” you go first. “Because if not, I have work to do.”

You sit down and he doesn't stop you, instead taking a seat next to you. You type away on the holopad, letter by letter, and the message starts forming. By typing with both hands you’re quicker, but the blanket keeps slipping down from your shoulders. Cal notices and picks it up, wrapping your form in it properly again, and then leaving his arm around you so it would stay there. You give him a quick ‘thanks’, but don't stop what you're doing. For a moment you wonder if you're giving him the silent treatment, and if so, why, but you really have to get this thing decrypted, so you focus on that for the time being.

At some point, Cal carefully places his head on your shoulder, and when you don't shoo him away, he properly gets comfortable. By then, you've written a program to automate the decoding. It's a bit crude and not your best, but it works. Now the decrypted message appears much faster, and it seems to be mostly correct, except for the occasional letter here and there. The message is still clear and understandable, though, and you can feel your focus and energy quickly depleting, so you decide it’s good enough for now. You set it up so that the live decryption gets sent back to HQ as your receiver feeds the rebel comms into it.

Setting down your holopad on the seat next to you with a yawn, you gently stroke Cal’s cheek.

“You awake?” you ask softly, and he hums.

“You done?” he asks back, and you hum as well.

Then you sit in silence again. The constant rumbling of the ship, combined with your adrenaline completely gone now, is all inviting you to the sweet embrace of sleep.

“We have to talk when we get back,” is the last thing you manage to mumble before drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep.

— — —

You wake up to your shoulder being shaken and the repeated call of your name. Your eyes shoot open and you sit up straight, immediately slumping back down with a wince as your whole body aches, both because of the whole river action earlier, and sleeping in such a weird position.

Standing up with a grunt, you shiver as you look down at yourself: still without a jacket, your boots and trousers are stained with dirt, moss and sand. Your upper half must look even worse. Especially with the marks on your neck and who knows where else, courtesy of the inquisitor himself. So you grab the blanket and wrap it around yourself like a hooded poncho of sorts, hoping to hide most of your face and dirty clothes.

“I called earlier and they're waiting with a stretcher for you at the hangar,” Cal says as you try to hide both your head and legs, but the blanket clearly isn't big enough for that. You turn around with a raised eyebrow. “They're going to wrap you up and take you straight to medbay. So no one will see you.”

“How–”

“I may or may not have said that you might have a slight case of hypothermia.”

“We were on a planet with tropical climate,” you retort.

“I was convincing,” is all he says.

You can't question him further, as you feel the familiar sway of a landing ship. When it hits the ground with a ‘clunk’, everything happens so quickly: the cockpit and cargo doors open, and Cal suddenly picks you up bridal style. He places you onto the promised stretcher which is already waiting at the base of the ramp, and two med troopers quickly wrap you up in an emergency foil blanket. Just like that, you're taken to the medbay.

After your check-up, they tell you that other than being a little shaken and dehydrated, you're fine. You're free to stay a little longer to rest up, but you can also leave if you feel like it. And just like that, you're alone in the little room. How Cal managed to convince them to give you the private medbay room, you still don't know. But at this point, you should probably be used to it. Inquisitors seem to get almost anything they want here. Albeit at a cost.

The cot is decently comfy, and you consider staying here for a couple more hours to nap and rest up, knowing you won't be interrupted. So you get comfortable with a sigh, and just as you find a good position to sleep in, the doors open. You groan, lifting the blanket over your face.

“I thought you were asleep,” Cal says as the doors close behind him and he approaches your bed.

“I was about to be,” you reply with a sigh and fold the blanket back down to sit up properly. You're about to ask him what he wants, when you see that he’s sporting several bandages, one on his jaw, and some on his torso, visible through the white shirt he’s wearing.

“Are you okay?,” you ask and scoot over on the bed to make what little room you can spare for him to sit. However, he stays where he stands.

“Just a couple of scratches, I’ve had worse,” he replies, but it doesn’t make you feel better. “What about you?”

“Well, it’s not hypothermia,” you joke, in an attempt to ease the strange tension building between the two of you, but he doesn’t react. “I’ve basically been discharged. I was just about to nap, but… what is it?”

He looks at you as if he didn’t know what you mean. But the whole time, he’s been chewing the inside of his cheek. Clearly something is on his mind, and right now you don't have the energy to play the back and forth game.

“You want to tell me something, right? So, tell me.” You want to sound trusting, but it comes out harsher than you meant. He seems slightly taken aback.

“You said earlier you wanted to talk,” he retorts defensively. “And I understand.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitates for a second.

“We don’t need to keep–” He looks for the right word. “–seeing each other.”

You pause for a moment, trying to dig deeper behind his words and try to get the real meaning out, but you're lost and rather shocked by his words.

“What do you mean?” you repeat yourself, alarmed.

He sighs, running his hand through his hair; he's nervous.

“I didn’t want you to see it,” he starts, avoiding looking at you. “It’s a side of me I didn't want you to see.”

“Oh,” you say, and you understand what he's getting at; the whole hunting and killing Jedi business.

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?” he asks, his eyes finding yours and narrowing them at you. “Isn’t that what you wanted to talk about?”

“I mean, we can talk about it if you want to. I–” You sheepishly fidget with your fingers on your lap. You actually wanted to talk about how he treats his purge troopers, but this is far more important, you realise. “Yeah, let’s talk about that.”

Before he can inquire what you actually meant to talk about, you gesture for him to sit next to you. He still doesn’t move.

“Please sit,” you insist, and finally, he does. With the extra weigh dipping the mattress, you kind of lean into his side. You keep talking, both of you looking ahead. “Everything I said earlier, it still stands, you know.”

He doesn’t respond, so you continue.

“About the… warmth. And you being you and still deserving it.” You gingerly place your hand over his, and he momentarily flinches, but doesn’t pull away. “I’m not stupid, Cal. I know what you do. I’ve been aware of it from the start. And I simply don’t care. It’s not like my job is any better. My work also has… certain consequences, for others. And I’ve made peace with it.”

Finally you dare look up at him, his gaze still cast down. You can feel him trembling slightly though.

“You may be an inquisitor to others, but to me you're just Cal.” You squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. “Cal who makes pancakes with me. Cal who calls in a stretcher for me so I can save myself the embarrassment of my boss seeing me being a dirty, flustered mess. Cal who would stab someone else for looking at me the wrong way.”

He chuckles lightly at that. You reach out to cup his face, and make him look at you.

“But also the Cal who has nightmares. Cal who is sometimes scared out of his mind. Cal who asks me to stay the night because he doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. I want all of them.” You pause for a second, but you’re too tired to fight the question that’s been pestering your mind for ages now. “And all those versions of Cal… they give me warmth too. Right?”

His shoulders slump slightly with a sharp exhale.

“They do,” he finally answers in a voice so small you almost miss it.

“Glad we could clear that up then,” you say just as softly, and close the gap to place a kiss to his lips, and he reciprocates so tenderly, holding your face like it could crumble any moment and disappear through his fingers.

You want to pull back from the kiss, but his lips follow yours, capturing them once again. Cal climbs on top of you, pushing you back down onto the mattress.

“Don’t you want to get back to–” you try offering to move to a better location, but your words are interrupted by the squeal you let out as he pinches your side.

“We have to make up for lost time,” he states, getting back to attacking you with kisses, each one more and more ferocious.

You hear the distinct hiss of the doors opening, but Cal is quick to close them again with a quick flick of his wrist. From the other side, you can hear the nurse complaining.

“The officer is busy,” Cal calls over his shoulder, looking down at you the way a predator looks at its prey. “Come back later.”

— — —

Later that night, after a shower and slipping into your comfiest PJs, you’re both in his bed. Cal lies on his back and you have your head on his chest, drawing random figures onto his shirt.

“Are you sure about this?” Cal asks for the hundredth time.

“Yes,” you reassure him, propping yourself up on your elbow so you can place a kiss on his nose. “I’ll talk you through it. Just, try to stay in the dream. It will all work out, I promise.”

“Right,” he sighs, closing his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

You get back to cuddling into his side, and the even drumming of his heartbeat does quick work of lulling you to sleep.

It doesn’t take long, however, and you wake up to Cal twitching again. His brows are furrowed, his hands holding onto the bedsheet for dear life, and you sit up next to him, caressing his hair and holding his hand, whispering words of encouragement.

Cal is back on Bracca, collecting scraps from the same ships that he used to call home back when he was a Padawan. That seems so long ago now. Lifetimes ago. And maybe it is.

What would his younger self think of what he is now?

Cal stands at the edge of the partially stripped apart engine, impossibly small against the size of the machinery. A voice calls out to him, and he turns around. The world around him spins, turning into a blinding white, and he shields his eyes from the sudden change with his hands.

“Why are you here?” a trembling voice asks.

Cal looks up, meeting his own eyes, still a greenish blue, of his 13-year-old self. Disappointment and horror etched into his little face.

“What have you done?” another voice spits condescendingly.

Cal whips around, now looking at his master, Jaro Tapal, looking at him in disgust.

“Cal!”

He turns around again, starting to get dizzy, and his body freezes up, he can’t breathe. He’s standing at the edge of a scrapper platform now, surrounded by other people he used to know, but all their faces are blurred or scratched out. However, he can clearly see Prauf, his good friend Prauf, confronting the Second Sister. She holds her sabre at his throat, the blade sizzling in the rain. The red hue reflects in Prauf’s eyes.

Cal instinctively reaches out to his belt, expecting to find his own lightsabre, but it’s not there. He looks down at himself, and sees that he’s donning full inquisitor armour.

“Kill him,” the Second Sister orders.

Finally, Cal seems to be able to move and breathe again, and he takes a huge gulp of air.

“I said, kill him,” she repeats.

“No,” Cal says, and she slowly turns around to him.

“No?”, she chuckles, but the venom spills out of her voice like an overflowing glass of spotchka. It burns.

Suddenly, Cal is shoved in her direction against his will, and his inquisitor lightsabre appears in his hand. His arm is lifted into the air by an invisible force, about to swing down on top of Prauf’s head.

“Do it!” she yells, and Cal screams as well, trying with all his might to hold back his arm.

He hates this, he wants out. It hurts too much. The force trying to push down his arm and the sad look in his friend’s eyes tear into his heart like iron claws, shredding everything in its way.

Cal can hear the Second Sister’s voice yelling, urging him to get it done, but he hears something else too: it’s you. Your voice cuts through the cacophony of the scrapping grounds, pushing away all sounds of machinery, drills, saws, the rain itself and the inquisitor’s voice. Shoving it all aside, there’s just you.

“It’s okay, Cal,” you say, and the oppressing force on his arm is lifted with every word of yours. “I’m here, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not alone.”

Finally, the force is gone entirely, and he screams in both pain and relief. Cal lets go of his weapon, which retracts mid-air with a whirr, and it falls to the ground.

The world around him freezes, and everyone disappears. He’s back in the blinding white room, now in his old scrapper outfit.

“Cal,” Prauf’s voice comes from behind him, and the redhead whips around.

“My friend,” Prauf says warmly, as he always did, and stretches out his arms. A silent invitation.

Cal hesitates only for a second, then gives in. Taking the few steps that separate the two, he lets himself be embraced by the Abednedo. Unable to hold back, he cries into his friend’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps between sobs.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the older man comforts him, lightly patting Cal’s back. “It’s not your fault.”

After a few more moments, when Cal’s cries subside, he pulls back to look up at Prauf.

“Why am I here?” he asks.

Prauf smiles down at him.

“I just wanted to let you know: it’s not your fault,” he says, placing his hands on the younger man’s shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “And to say thank you, for being my friend. I hope you found your way off Bracca and can have a peaceful life. You’ve been through so much, kid.”

Cal feels another wave of tears prickling behind his eyes.

“You never really belonged on Bracca, but I’m glad I met you,” Prauf says, his voice trailing off, as if swept off by the wind, as his image also starts disappearing from in front of Cal. “I hope you found your place.”

“No, wait!” he calls, trying to hold on to him, but his hands phase through the shadow of the figure still left.

Suddenly, Cal sits up on the bed with a scream, which takes you by surprise and you flinch backwards, falling onto your hands on the bed.

He holds his shirt over his heart so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and with a broken sob, he lets himself fall back onto the bed. You hurry to scoot closer.

“You were right,” Cal says between sobs. “The Force was trying to get a message to me.”

That night, you hold him as he cries, this time not out of fear, but because he can finally allow himself to grief the loss of a friend from a long time ago.

I found my place, Prauf, Cal thinks, about to drift off to sleep after the exhaustion of crying takes over. He looks at you lying on his chest one last time, a soft smile spreading on his lips.

He hopes that some day, he’ll be able to find warmth just with you, not needing to resort to other methods ever again. And maybe then, finally, he can offer you all the warmth back that he forgot he held.

~~~~~

🐥 taglist: [link to join in my pinned post!] @dybynyght, @galaxtic-writings, @kalea-bane, @soka-writes-things, @padawancat97, @riddikulus-obsessions, @optimisticprime3, @starilicious, @ivelostmyabilitytoeven, @alternatescififandomelover, @lovelyygirl8, @cathyket

#goose feathers #cal kestis x reader #star wars cal x reader #jedi fallen order x reader #jedi survivor x reader #inquisitor cal x reader #inquisitor cal kestis x reader #inq!cal kestis x reader

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obimaulartfire · 10 months

Text

Do you ever just...wake up and think about how Obi-wan was, for most of his life, Maul's reason to live?

Let me explain, and this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to ObiMaul in the first place. (long ramble below)

We're all aware of the events at the reactor fight, and it'd be an understatement to say it was a very hostile first encounter. But it's in the aftermath where the dynamic gets interesting.

Maul survived on his own, for years, with only his top half. As a former biology major, sometimes I think about how possible this would be in real life, if at all. It would be insanely uncomfortable at best, and impossible at worst. But through the excruciating pain, Maul survived, fueled purely by his intense hatred/obsession with Kenobi (and some star wars darkside magic, I'm sure).

Maul says this himself when first meeting Obi-wan again in season 4 of The Clone Wars:

"You would never imagine the depths I'd go to to stay alive, fueled by my singular hatred...for you."

Imagine being on the brink of death, with half of your circulatory system GONE, your heart beating irregularly, and your "lower half" being in constant pain, but still finding something to live for, and living...for YEARS. That's impressive. Hate-filled or not, it's hard to deny that for that time, thoughts of Obi-wan literally kept Maul alive for a decade.

Maul comes back to the series having been left for dead by Sidious, with spider legs he made himself, and no sense of time and a destroyed sense of sanity. Yet, he lives.

And additionally, revenge on Sidious is only second in his thoughts to his revenge on Obi-wan, even though Sidious is technically the one who left him for dead. Since Maul can't sit still, he did many other things during the Clone Wars in accordance with his own ambitions, likely to attempt to reclaim that part of his life that had been lost to Lotho Minor, but that's a tangent for another post.

He gets revenge on Obi-wan (I guess) by killing Satine, but even that isn't enough for him, as evidenced by the Satine hate shrine that we see in Rebels, when Ezra visits Maul's cave on Dathomir:

(on a side note, there is no sane heterosexual explanation for this^, I'm sorry/j)

Why would you keep a memento of someone you've killed? Why would you cross out their eyes? Maul didn't hate Satine that much, and it's my opinion that he did this because she was important to Obi-wan.

And that brings me to my next point: Rebels Maul

Y'all.... there's a reason the title of my blog is "Twin Suns Changed My Brain Chemistry", because I vaguely had feelings about these two in Clone Wars, but Rebels really cemented this dynamic for me.

I cannot emphasize enough that in Rebels, Maul thinks Obi-wan Kenobi is dead. Whether he got killed in Order 66 or when Vader and the Inquisitors started purging Force Users, there was maybe a .000001% chance that any Jedi, especially Obi-wan, would have survived that. And yet. When we enter Rebels, we find Maul on Malachor, stuck on the planet looking for the Sith holocron.

WHY is he trying to find the Sith holocron? In Maul's own words:

"As for me, I...seek something much simpler, yet equally elusive... Hope."

Hope? That surely isn't a Sith ideal. It's revealed later that the only reason Maul wants to combine these ancient artifacts is to learn whether or not Obi-wan Kenobi is alive. I shit you not.

This implies that Maul has had Hope that Obi-wan has been alive for what... 15 years? That's a long time. At this point, Maul may be like, 49 or 50. He has been fixated on Obi-wan for 30 years of his life. Thoughts of Obi-wan kept him going and going and going for 3/5ths of his life. Even when he thinks Obi-wan has died, he spends 15 years trying to find him, just hoping that he is alive. But for what?

It's unclear to me what Maul, in canon, really desires from Obi-wan. But one thing for sure is that Obi-wan acts as a...source of emotions for Maul. A source of feelings, and a reason to keep going through times that other characters would give up.

Other characters may have survived, but Maul lived because of Obi-wan. Through being bisected, the Clone Wars, being chased by Vader and the Inquisitors, and through periods of despair.

And before the end, he just wants to find his reason to live again, and dies in his arms.

#obimaul #obi wan x maul #i've been writing this for hours #i just have a lot of feelings #star wars headcanons #long post #sw rebels #swtcw #darth maul #obiwan kenobi #i'm so afraid to put my thoughts out there but tumblr is the perfect platform for that so #one day i really hope to capture the raw emotion in this duo bc i crave it and there's not a lot of content out there like that #thank you for coming to my ted talk

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wyvernne · 1 year

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III. In which the Holy Knight wins Diluc’s favor

for @mmmairon

read on ao3

The moment you step through the tavern door Diluc levels you with an irritated look. You grin, knocking the door shut with your hip. “That’s quite the way to greet your guests, sir.”

Even from this distance, you can see his jaw working in irritation. Can he smell the blood?

“You look awful,” he says quietly. You make yourself comfortable at the bar, sighing at the ache as you settle down.

Today the Inquisitors were kind enough to personally spar with you, four to one. You didn’t stand a chance. Especially considering half of them wield visions.

“Thanks,” you respond dryly. It’s early enough in the evening that there’s only a few sparse customers spread across the tavern, mostly keeping to themselves. “What’s on special today?”

Diluc sets a glass in front of you. “Water.”

You scoff, flicking the glass with your finger. “Do you think I’m a child?”

“I cannot, in good conscience, give you alcohol when you’ve got wounds like that,” he says firmly.

You lift your head, squinting at him. “How can you tell?”

You already know the answer. He can smell it. Diluc doesn’t take your bait.

He startles you when he reaches out, thumb wiping against your jaw. He pulls away, lifting his hand for you to see. You missed a spot then.

“You’ve got blood all over you. Don’t think I can’t tell the difference between yours and others.” He has immaculate self control, seeing as he merely wipes his hand off with a rag. Waste of a perfectly good snack.

You wince, rubbing your temple. “Diluc, I’m really not—“

There’s a clatter, and you stop short. Diluc motions to the jar he’s just dropped in front of you. “At least put salve on that nasty cut on your temple.”

You’ve got far more than that, really. Those bastards in white didn’t hold back at all.

“Give me a glass of wine first,” you grumble.

Diluc sighs. He’s lucky he’s got a nice face. It’s a miracle he keeps customers at all with that sour attitude of his.

———————————

You’ve had far too much to drink. Charles, in all his infinite kindnesses, has supplemented Diluc’s rather stingy bartending with a generous flow of mixed drinks. It’s only you that Diluc is withholding liquor from, seeing as the tavern has gotten infinitely rowdier as the night has gone on.

Diluc chats idly with a patron at the other end of the bar. It’s hard not to watch him, honestly. It feels like a sin not to. Not when the Divines’ most perfect creation is right in front of you, hair tied back with a black ribbon.

Can ribbons be sensual? They look like it on Diluc. Gods. They’re practically a sex symbol when he wears it. Everything is.

The alcohol has dulled both your thoughts and the pain from the wounds the Inquisitors left behind. Hangover or not, it’s worth it now, when all you need to think about is how good Diluc looks.

Gods, he looks so good.

“Are you alone?” You barely manage to stop yourself from rolling your eyes as a man sidles up beside you. You didn’t come here tonight to look for a partner.

“I’m quite content by myself,” you reply. As if he could draw your attention when Teyvat’s most beautiful being is standing feet away. You turn away, and for a single moment catch Diluc’s gaze. Okay? he mouths.

“Listen,” The man’s hand slides up your back. You swat at him, scoffing. Take a fucking hint. “How about you and I get out of here?”

“Fuck off,” you reply sharply. You’re too drunk to deal with a nuisance like him delicately.

“Don’t be so standoffish,” he coos. You flex your fingers. It’s hard to mitigate your strength when you’re intoxicated, but you have no qualms about sending this bastard flying.

His hand slips to your flank. Enough. You shift back, raising your fist.

You don’t get the chance. It takes you a long moment to realize Diluc has one hand around your wrist and the other yanking the man away from you by the collar.

“If you’re going to bother my patrons, get out,” he says firmly. The tavern falls quiet.

The man laughs, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.”

Diluc releases him, shifting to block you from his view. His fingers are still clasped around your wrist, but you haven’t the mind to shake him off. Not yet.

“I wasn’t bothering you, was I, sweetheart?” he asks, peering around Diluc’s shoulder to see you.

You nudge Diluc to the side, shaking free of his hold. “Go fuck yourself.”

The man’s smile drops. He scowls, yanking his collar away from his throat. “I was just leaving, anyway.”

Something crosses his face and he grins, leaning close to you. “Ah. Does the Church know a monster is going around masquerading as a citizen of Mondstadt?”

You swing.

————————

You grin, giving Diluc a thumbs up. “You’re welcome. I wouldn’t say no to a ‘thank you’ drink, mind you.”

He sighs, pressing a cloth to your nose. “Keep it there until the bleeding stops.”

“Just give me a drink, for fucks sake,” you grumble. You’re still far too drunk to be making rational decisions, but no part of you regrets throwing that punch. Bastard got what was coming to him.

“No.”

Diluc is angry. He must be, seeing as you struck a paying customer square in the face. That bastard is lucky his elbow caught your nose by pure chance as Diluc was pulling you back. You would’ve concussed him without a second thought.

Diluc speaks again after a long beat, setting a glass down in front of you. “Please, don’t go starting brawls in my tavern again.”

You take a tentative sip, frowning at the realization that it’s just juice. “I was only defending your honor.”

He laughs dryly. “My honor has been stamped into the dirt for decades. Don’t bother yourself with it.”

A hand touches your shoulder. Not again.

You turn, half ready to swing again, but it’s only Harry. He grins heartily at you.

“I’ve come to retrieve this,” he says to Diluc, nodding to you.

Diluc’s jaw ticks. He almost looks murderous, if you could focus your vision for long enough to tell. “Back to the slaughterhouse already?”

Harry bows. “You wound us, Sir. We’re only doing our jobs. I heard a commotion and thought I would fulfill my duty and lend a hand. It’s no surprise this one was the cause.”

“Are they angry?” you manage, tossing the rag onto the counter. The bleeding hasn’t exactly stopped, but it’s slowed enough for now.

Harry scoffs, tugging you off the stool. “Take a wild guess.”

Your head is spinning. Only bad things wait for you back at the Church.

Diluc catches your arm. You turn, surprised. Deja vu, and in the span of such a short time. It’d be romantic if only you were a touch drunker.

It’s hard to gauge the expression on his face when you can hardly focus on the floor in front of you.

“Tell the Church their Knight has been delayed,” he says firmly.

“If it’s a matter of the bill—“ Harry begins.

Diluc raises a hand, cutting him off. “I don’t believe your Knight is well enough to make the trip back. I insist on providing lodgings for the night.”

Harry’s eyebrows shoot up. “You think I’d leave one of our own under your care? This intoxicated?”

“I have a room upstairs just for situations like this,” Diluc says. He tugs you out of Harry’s grip.

“Tell the Church to fuck off,” you offer with another thumbs up. It’s probably not something you’d ever say sober, but you’ve enough alcohol in you to dull any reservations you’ve had about criticizing the Church.

“You fuck off,” Harry mutters, raking a hand through his hair. “Don’t come whining to me when the Inquisitors find out.”

“You won’t say a word?” you ask. You’re not far gone enough to ignore the warning he’s giving you.

“I never saw you here,” Harry grumbles. He turns on his heel, clearly irritated.

You don’t dwell on it. Diluc lets out a breath, and heaves you over one shoulder without a second thought for the onlookers around you. “To bed with you, then.”

———————

“Let me know if you feel like you might get sick,” Diluc murmurs, pulling a chair up to the bedside.

“I’m not that drunk,” you slur. Your head is throbbing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s the alcohol or the fact that you were hit in the head today. Twice, at that.

“Is the Church always so rough during training?” he asks.

You open one eye, peeking at him. He’s trying to act nonchalant, leafing through the book left on the nightstand, but his words are pointed enough. “Trying to use the wine against me, eh?”

He scoffs, but doesn’t glance up from the pages. “You’re sober enough to snark back, aren’t you?”

You sigh, rolling onto your side. “I’ve been injured more during training than I have out on the field.”

He looks up, finally, mouth pressed into a firm line.

You sling your arm back over your eyes, grumbling. “I don’t need your judgment.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he replies quietly. He doesn’t have to. You know better than anyone how twisted the Church’s “traditions” are. Severe injuries during training within the Knights are accidents. Severe injuries during training within the Holy Knights are standard practice.

You can’t even count how many birthdays you’d passed with black eyes from the Inquisitors. It never gets any easier.

Diluc says nothing more. There’s only the soft rustle of pages turning and the steady sound of his breathing to lull you into sleep.

———————

“Diluc,” you press. He’s irritatingly fast, stride just a touch longer than yours so you have to jog every other step to keep up with him. He either doesn’t notice the difference or doesn’t care. You’re not sure which one irks you more. “Have you decided to bring me on yet?”

“I’ve no intention of taking a Holy Knight under my employ,” he replies curtly.

You click your tongue. “I caught up to you. Shouldn’t you reward me?”

It wasn’t exactly easy to catch him just as he was exiting the city gates, especially given how early it still is. There’s also the lingering feeling that he could have left unnoticed, had he so desired. He could’ve left you far behind. It’s hard to decipher his actions, sometimes.

He made enough noise as he was leaving the tavern to alert you, hungover or not.

Diluc ignores your provocations in favor of raising a hand in greeting. You peer over his shoulder to see Elzer, waiting just beyond the end of the bridge.

“Good morning, Holy Knight,” Elzer says warmly.

You repeat the sentiment, but the nagging uncertainty in your stomach only grows at the sight of him. Diluc wouldn’t need his closest aid if he were merely returning to the winery.

“Tagging along?” Elzer asks, as much to Diluc as to you.

“Hardly,” Diluc grumbles. “But I suppose I’ve been left with no choice.”

“I’d rather not return for morning mass,” you mutter. Besides, there’s no doubt the Church has already caught wind of your little brawl in Diluc’s tavern. If you’re already going to be punished, what’s a few more transgressions for the list?

“You should do well to remember your vows. I have no interest in catching the Church’s attention just because they can’t keep their knights in check,” Diluc sighs, exasperated. “Especially after last night.”

Despite his complaints, he makes absolutely no effort to stop you from trailing behind him. Elzer, in all his good graces, slows his pace to match yours with a warm smile. Your hangover has slowed you enough to be a nuisance, but Diluc makes no comment of it. Besides, you’re sure your face is quite the sight, given all that’s happened.

Your little trip ends far sooner than you’d expected, only a ways down the road from the city. Diluc halts abruptly, arm shooting out to stop you.

There, a group of Fatui stand only a few yards off the path, obscured by the overgrowth of trees. It’s not exactly the most secretive of meeting places. It’s… it’s almost absurd, how easy it was to spot them. Anyone with their wits about them could catch sight of their ominous presence just beyond the green.

“Don’t speak,” he says quietly. You sigh, but you’re not stupid enough to disobey him. You trust Diluc far more than any order that could come from the Church. He knows that well enough.

Elzer steps in front of you as you approach. You’re certainly not wearing any favonius insignias, but the Fatui spend their share of time monitoring the Church. There’s no telling if any of them might recognize your face.

From bartending to meeting with the Fatui only hours later. Once again, Diluc’s intentions are impossible to understand.

It’s a small team, only three soldiers and a commander. They seem relatively low-ranking, given their badges. You stay obediently back, only nodding your head towards the group in acknowledgment.

“Sir,” the Commander begins, opening his arms wide. Diluc is pulled into a haphazard hug. You’ve seen the greeting enough between Snezhnayans, but the Commander should know well enough that Diluc is put off by the gesture. He must be testing his boundaries.

Diluc’s expression remains unchanging. You tune out most of the business talk the moment it begins. It’s not what you followed Diluc for, after all. You already know most of what they’re saying is likely coded beyond anything you’d hope to decipher.

Regardless, any intent you had to soak up the information from this little transaction of his falters when you see the weapons. The Fatui are all heavily armed. Every nerve in your body goes alight. Diluc seems strangely relaxed, given the situation.

Even Elzer doesn’t spare you a glance. He has that same, unfaltering smile, pleasant to the point that it’s eerie.

You don’t even have a sword at your hip. It’s utterly belated, but it’s only now you realized neither Diluc nor Elzer have a single weapon. Even all your training is nothing when faced with the sheer firepower each Fatuus holds in their hands. It feels like too obvious a trap.

The talks drag on for nearly an hour. Wine, grapes, mora. Simple business transactions, if taken at face value. But still… there’s something in the air that has your stomach in knots. Something about the way Diluc and Elzer are so utterly nonchalant, even when speaking with their supposed enemies.

The Fatuus just to the right of Diluc shifts. It’s hardly anything noteworthy at all, really, but you can tell from his stance.

He’s stiff, as if he’s preparing himself for something. Everything else drowns out. You can focus only on that rigid figure across from you. His arm shifts suddenly, and it’s—

Well. You can blame your stupidity on reflexes, at best.

You jolt forward, shoving Diluc to the side just as a bang resounds through the air. He catches himself easily, but the words don’t make it out of your throat.

You’re an idiot, truly.

Maybe being around Diluc has dulled your sensibilities. All you can focus on is how hard it is to catch your breath. It feels like you’ve been punched. You grapple blindly at your shoulder, and to your surprise your glove comes away darkened with blood.

An odd sound escapes your throat at the sight. Blood. You’re bleeding.

Whatever Diluc’s intention was, it’s clear you’ve utterly fucked it all up. The thought has your stomach lurching. Idiot. You’re such an idiot.

There’s a deafening commotion, a scuffle only a few feet away. You can’t focus on any of it. Your mind isn’t functioning correctly. Shot. You were shot. It’s hard to breathe. There’s so much blood.

You gasp for air, doubling over. Diluc shouts some distance away and suddenly Elzer is by your side, coaxing you down. You’re bleeding, but your hand grapples to your throat, slick with sweat, as you try desperately to fill your lungs.

“I can’t breathe,” you wheeze. Elzer leans you back, pressing you flat to the ground.

“There, just like that,” he soothes, pulling his jacket off. He folds the fabric over your shoulder with quick efficiency.

“Deep breath,” he instructs. You’re fucking trying. He puts his weight onto the mess of your shoulder, wincing as you sob in response. Your heels kick against the ground, trying to escape the pressure, but Elzer holds firm.

“I don’t feel well,” you manage. You sound like an upset child, voice unsteady and weak.

You can’t even focus on Elzer’s face. You feel hot and deathly cold at the same time, strewn between breathlessness and nausea and feeling like your heart is about the burst any moment.

Diluc comes into view, blood splattered across his cheek. He ducks down, replacing Elzer’s hands with his own. “Doctor is coming. Hold on a little longer.”

Oh no. Just seeing his face has your emotions welling up again, and you can feel tears prick at your eyes. “Diluc.”

“I’m right here,” he replies. Diluc’s fangs are out. You can see it when he speaks, that threatening glisten of ivory hiding just behind his rosy lips.

He should drink while he has the chance. Make good use of whatever blood hasn’t already spilled out into the dirt around you.

You repeat his name, but this time your voice catches on a sob.

He hushes you. He’s shaking. You can feel the way it vibrates through your body. Or maybe you’re the one shaking. It’s hard to tell.

“Elzer, go meet him halfway,” he orders sharply.

“How?” you ask. He seems to know what you mean. You were hit only… minutes ago? It’s hard to judge how much time has passed. Certainly not enough to fetch a doctor, even given how close the city is.

“I ran,” he mutters. Right. He isn’t like you. He isn’t human. He would’ve been fine, even if the bullet had hit its mark. How stupid and thoughtless could you be?

You swallow. “The Fatui?”

“Dead,” he answers dismissively. Diluc swallows. “You’ve lost a lot of blood already. Don’t waste your energy needlessly.” There’s something strange in the tone of his voice, but you can hardly mull over it. It doesn’t hurt as much as you thought it might. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. You just feel sick.

“It’s okay. Elzer will be back with the doctor soon. Just— just hold on.” Diluc almost sounds frantic. The pressure he’s putting on your shoulder is starting to ache, but it’s hard to focus on what, exactly, hurts.

“I’m going to be sick,” you manage.

Diluc shifts you onto your side just as you begin retching. Maybe it’s by the grace of the Anemo Archon that nothing comes up, but it’s no less embarrassing. Especially in front of Diluc.

When the fit ends he eases you onto your back once more, pressure firm over your shoulder. If it hit an artery, you’ve no more than a few minutes left, at best. The expression on Diluc’s face makes it hard to gauge just how bad it really is.

He’s pretty, at least. A nice view to die before. It’s a petty, shallow thought. Especially given how upset Diluc looks at the situation. Maybe you are an idiot after all.

——————

Getting put on house arrest seems rather unfair, given all the circumstances. Not dying should be celebrated under the Anemo Archon’s grace, according to everything the Church preaches to the masses.

Except, perhaps, when the whole “almost dying” happens because you directly disobeyed orders from the Inquistors. According to them, of course. You were merely helping out an acquaintance.

It only takes a day, locked in your room, for a bottle of wine to miraculously appear on the windowsill. It’s hard to tell if it’s a gift from Barbatos himself or the goodwill of a certain red-haired beauty. You don’t ponder it. Wine is wine, after all. And it’s a welcome treat to pass the hours and stave away the nasty ache in your shoulder.

You’re not one to question a heartfelt gift.

#deadass let me know if you catch mistakes because i only reread it once LOL #i didn’t feel like making a new banner soz #wyvernne’s ramblings #genshin impact #diluc ragnvindr #genshin impact fanfiction #diluc fanfic #vampire diluc #vampluc #ugh what tags #drabble #diluc ragnvindr fanfiction #genshin fanfic #vampire diluc fanfiction #snrjjddnksdjksjdfj

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grievedeeply · 1 year

Note

Can I request a Cal x reader, where they were both working for Saw but got split up during the job on Coruscant. So we know that in rogue one Saw was hanging out on Jedha, so what if reader is out in the descent hearing to Saw’s place but runs into Cal instead? Idk I just need some Cal in my life. Thank you so much 💜

i'm loving all of these cal requests!!! this is such a cute idea :") hope you enjoy!

gn!reader | tws: death, SPOILERS FOR THE BEGINNING OF JEDI SURVIVOR + JOIN MY NEW TAGLIST!!!

you're here, we're here — cal kestis

you wondered if working for saw gererra was the right thing to do. of course, he fought for something bigger than himself, but you knew of the consequences of this sort of thing. if you were to be captured by the empire, you'd be killed. they'd keep it quiet, but you knew your death would come swift if the imperials were to get their hands on you.

you were scared of death. wasn't everyone, to some extent? you wondered what the afterlife would hold for you. was there even an afterlife at all? the act of dying wasn't what scared you, not really. it was mostly leaving those you loved behind. gabs, the twins, bravo. you met them all through saw gererra, and that was your favorite part about working for him. the people. their kindness and generosity, their determination to make the galaxy a better place. not just for themselves but for everyone around them. it was good to see something other than hate and cruelty remained.

they were your family.

until they weren't.

the job on coruscant had gone horribly wrong, in the end. what was supposed to be a simple extraction of information turned into a firefight.. and before you knew it, more than half of your squad was gone. in the confusion, you'd gotten split up from cal, bode and bravo, and you could only assume they were all dead, too.

lately, saw had been hanging out on jedha. even before your mission, he had started setting up some operations there despite the ever growing imperial presence.

so.. you returned to jedha completely empty handed, and down an entire team. your family. gabs, the twins.. you watched them die, struck down like they were nothing. they had names, they had lives and friends and they were loved. but no one understood that. all the empire saw was insurgency. all that inquisitor saw was cal, the one who had gotten away from her all those years ago.

you remembered the look on saw's face once you stepped inside. his grin immediately dropped and without a moment's hesitation, he took you by your shoulders and pulled you into his arms. you couldn't cry, not anymore. the entire time you were maneuvering through the streets of coruscant your eyes were welling with tears. the tie fighters shot at you as you escaped the planet and went into the stars.. and by the time you were in hyperspace, your face was soaked in tears. you sobbed the entire time, all the way up until your arrival at jedha, days later. you couldn't risk leading the empire back to saw, so you took a few rotations on some backwater planet to collect your thoughts— but what was left to think about?

you thought of gabs. her smile, her strange sense of humor that somehow always made you laugh. the twins and their insatiable appetite.. and the warm hugs they provided you when you were feeling down. bravo, who gave the best advice out of anyone on the crew. bode, your sparring partner. cal.. your best friend.

cal.. he was smart. 'he could've gotten out,' you told yourself. if he was captured he could've escaped. he was talented, he was brave. he was kind.. so kind. you remembered his hands on your arms, running them up and down your skin as a way to calm you, to ground you into the moment. it was a routine before you went out together. he would smile that same, big dumb grin, and reassure you that everything would be okay.

but that wasn't the case. not this time.

cal was gone. his beautiful.. gentle smile was gone. you would never see him again. he was dead or captured and you were the only one that made it out. he deserved to see the galaxy at a better state. he deserved to live. he deserved to grow old. thoughts of him and the rest plagued your mind like a curse, and no matter how many times you tried to push them and what happened away, they would come crawling back.

your work on jedha was light. saw was giving you time to recover, letting you decide if you even wanted to go back into the field in the first place. not only had his operation suffered a major loss.. but so had you. you had to watch it happen. until you made your choice, he had you doing whatever you needed or wanted. you could choose to sit around if you needed to. he had plenty of people to cover for everything. he knew you needed your space, so.. sit around you did.

you'd take walks occasionally, go to nearby cliffsides and listen to the stormtroopers beneath you chatter about whatever was going on in their lives. the familiar hum of their electro riot batons went in and out of your mind. they spoke of promotions, of their coworkers and their bosses, their plans, how much they hated jedha and wished they were stationed somewhere else.. but as they talked.. you envied them.

they were blinded to the empire's cruelty and injustices, but you? you had lost to them. these people knew nothing about the kindness your friends, your family, had shown. they would get what was coming to them.. but for now, you took solace in their stupidity.

this was one of those trips. you stood from your spot on the cliff, brushing off your pants with your hands, watching as dust fell from them back onto the sandy rocks underneath you. the stormtroopers were so oblivious to their surroundings, it almost made you laugh. you turned your back to them, ready to begin up the path you had come down before.

the trek was a decently long one. it was enough time away from base to clear your head and let your thoughts sit for awhile, and that was okay with you. you let yourself mourn through this walk.. and that was okay.

you groaned as you pushed yourself up onto the ledge, making steady progress towards base. you wondered if there was an easier way to get back.. but this distance was something you enjoyed. the silence was nice. it was good to be on your own sometimes, even if plenty of people had offered to come with you, you always turned them down. you knew they were concerned, but you needed time to be by yourself.

you brought yourself to your feet after climbing up, kicking a few of the rocks underneath your feet over the edge of the cliff. you looked down at the ground below you, wondering how far the drop was. you were surprised you hadn't slipped off, yet. you chuckled to yourself at the thought. you knew that, if cal were by your side, he would save you with his force magic. no matter how much strain it might put on him.. he would do it. there was no doubt in your mind.

but cal wasn't around.

a chirp in the distance, coming from the direction you were heading. you furrowed your brow. this path was supposed to be clear. who would saw send out at this time anyways? the sun was setting in the distance, the hues of pink and orange blending into the desert out beneath the cliffs. had he planned some sort of covert operation—

you stopped in your tracks. a droid..

cal's droid.

you'd recognize those colors anywhere. he stared up at you for a few moments before rushing towards you, climbing up your legs to rest on your shoulders. bd-1's head rubbed against your cheek almost as though he were some sort of animal. you grinned, leaning towards him as your hands reached for him. you took him off of your shoulder, holding him in front of you.

you frowned. how had he gotten here? did cal make it out? that wasn't possible. you would've heard something from him by now, anything—

"buddy, wait up!" you heard a voice call from down the canyon, and you froze, eyes wide. cal's voice. were you hallucinating? was this a dream or a nightmare? were you dead? why would bd-1 be here if you were dead?

before you could think on it any further, cal slid around the corner and turned to face you. his expression immediately softened as soon as he laid his eyes on you, and bd-1 slowly slinked out of your hands and back onto the ground, ready to watch your reunion.

he let out a shaky breath, one that even he could barely hear. his head felt so loud. after you'd gotten separated from the rest, he thought you were dead. he normally tried to stay as positive as possible.. you were clever, intelligent and knew just how to survive.. but it was a feeling in his gut that he couldn't shake that you didn't make it out.

he blinked a few times before he took a few hesitant steps towards you. your eyes filled with tears as you stared at him. he was real, he was in front of you. he was alive. before you knew it, cal's arms were wrapped around your waist, pulling you into his chest for a tight hug.

a soft sob escaped his lips, but he nuzzled his face into your neck, and all you could do was return the gesture. his crying pulled you back into reality. he was alive. he was okay.

it felt like an eternity, trapped in each others arms, soaking in the warmth that filled your chest as you reveled in his presence. you never wanted him to pull away, afraid that if he did he would disappear into the sunset behind him. but he pulled away, his hands resting on your shoulders as they always did.. and he stared deep into your eyes.

he pressed his forehead to yours, his fingers ran circles over your skin. what he always did to keep you calm.. and you couldn't help but cry. you let your eyes close, your hands reaching out for the fabric of his shirt. he was alive, and that was all you cared about. despite the insurmountable loss you'd faced that day, cal was alive and in front of you.

"i'm so happy to see you." you heard him say, and you nodded. his voice was coarse, rough against his throat. had he cried as much as you had? had he struggled with adapting to a life without you? without everyone? he'd mourned for you. you took his hands off of your shoulders, taking them in your own. this time, your thumbs ran over the back of his palms, caressing him as though he was about to break.

"cal.." you whispered out his name, your lips pressed into a thin line to prevent yourself from crying. his hands found your face, pulling you closer.

your heart ached in your chest, your breathing heavy. you let him touch you, both of you falling completely silent. finally, you opened your eyes, only to be met with his staring back at you.

he'd been looking at you all this time. desperation filled his vision, and his lips pressed to yours in a gentle, warm kiss. it didn't last for very long, and you resisted the urge to pull him back in as soon as his lips left yours. "i'm sorry," cal muttered, averting his gaze from you to look at the floor. "i don't know what came over me." he chuckled, breathless, feeling incredibly awkward as he sunk into himself. his cheeks were a bright red. he could feel the heat against his skin.

though, when he returned his eyes to you, you wore a smile. your face, still covered in tear stains, had a genuinely happy expression written on it for the first time in a long time.

you never thought you'd think of him in this way, but as you thought on it, you supposed you already had. you yearned for him in a way you did for no one else. you wanted him by your side. you swallowed, embarrassed.

"it's okay," you reassured him verbally before taking his hands in your own once more. they were rough, but surprisingly gentle. "i.. didn't exactly mind." you told him, glancing away from him as you spoke. it was strange to be this vulnerable, but you were glad it was with cal and no one else. he was so special.

he cared so much for people.. for you.

"really?" he asked without missing a beat, a youthfulness in his voice you had never heard before. you nodded, and he kissed your forehead, a sign of relief escaping his lips. he thought he had ruined everything between the two of you before even getting to talk to you.

"why.. why didn't you tell me?" you asked after a brief moments hesitation. of course, you were glad he was alive and in front of you, but you couldn't help but to ask. cal sighed, "i tried. comms were out. i tried to track you. i didn't find anything and i thought-" he paused, licking his lips. his throat suddenly felt dry. "i thought you were dead."

you couldn't even say anything, your mind focused only on the fact that he tried. he tried to reach out to you and that was all that mattered. you knew he would never leave you behind. "i had to.. find an old friend of mine. we had to fix up the ship." he swallowed, scratching at the back of his neck. "i'm sorry, i should've tried harder-"

"cal," you cut him off before he could say anything else, "all that matters now is that you're alive. you're here. we're here. you tried.. and that means more to me than you could ever know. believe me.. i tried to find you, too." you told him, eyes searching his face. "it's okay." you spoke up again, and his gaze finally met yours.

your breath hitched in your throat. he was beautiful. inside and out. he had a heart of pure gold. one that you hoped would never fade, that you knew would never fade.

bd-1 nudged at your foot before you could sink further into your daydream, and he climbed up onto his shoulders. you grinned at him, and then shifted your eyes to cal.

"come on," you murmured, taking his hand in yours. "i want to show you something."

the place you had mourned for him. yes.. but now, it was the place with a view you would share.

tags: @starwalkerwriting

#star wars #star wars x reader #star wars x you #star wars x reader imagines #star wars x y/n #cal kestis x reader #cal kestis x you #cal kestis x y/n

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frost-queen · 1 year

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On the edge (Reader!Skywalker x Cal Kestis)

Requested by: anon Forever tag:@missmelodramatic, @merlin-dahlia, @alex--awesome--22, @elllie-does-the-posts, @floatlosers, @merlieve, @queen-of-books, @glimmering-darling-dolly@denkisclown, @wildieflower, @meyocoko, @bubblybrianna, @justanothercoco@subjecta13-thefangirl, @m-rae23, @harleyquinnswifeyfrfr, @swampthing07, @melsunshine

Summary: You meet Cal on Tatooine where he asks if you are a jedi. You nod, setting off a union of adventures together. When you reach the inquisitors fortress, Cal and you kiss just in case. When Darth Vader appears are you heartbroken to see your brother once more. Escaping you meet up with him again where you start shouting at him with his given name by birth while he has a chokehold on Cal. Not wanting to interact with the feelings, he looses his grip. Before he can do anything the water sweeps in. Back at the Mantis asks Cal why you never told him about your brother. You tell he wasn't always like that as he comforts you.

With a deep sigh you stared at the writings on the wall. Painted in red marking the empire’s presence. Over it a black stripe painted over to cross it out. A sign of resistance against the first order. You didn’t blame them as this wasn’t the life. The few jedi left hunted down to be killed. All in order off Darth Vader. A subtle ache in your heart made you lower your head. Slowly shaking your head you didn’t want to be reminded of those old scars. Clutching your chest, you pressed your other hand firm against the wall.

Panting at the memory of the past. How it all could’ve been if things turned out different. Lifting your head up, you took in a deep breath. Needing to calm yourself before the panic attack would swipe you under. Glancing at your side, you caught a curious specie watch you from their doorway. Sucking in air, you straightened your posture. Moving your hood over your head as you turned.

No need for them to wonder about your business. Your business was yours and yours alone. The specie kept following you with his gaze as you went on. On guard, you kept checking over your shoulder that he wouldn’t come after you or alarm the republic of your strange presence.

You didn’t trust it, not one bit. Continue to watch over your shoulder, it was too late when you bumped against someone’s shoulder. The interaction made you take notice of his face, hidden underneath a hood as well. – “Sorry.” – he mumbled with a gesture. Both of you continued to walk each your way as you suddenly stopped. Head lifted up. Turning around, you were surprised the person had the same thought. Gaze caught staring at each other. The sensation of the force clear around him. He cautiously stepped closer to you. – “Are you… are you perhaps a…” – he was afraid to speak the word, afraid who might hear.

You slowly nodded catching a glimpse of a pair of shining eyes in the hood with him. He grabbed you by the arm without a warning, pulling you aside. You didn’t protest as it had been so long since you’ve met one of your own. A jedi. Your back got pressed against a wall as he lowered his hood. Revealing a droid on his shoulder. Hinting the pair of shining eyes staring at you. You chuckled pleasantly that it was only a droid.

It could be so much worse. – “I’m Cal Kestis.” – he introduced himself. – “You have no idea how long I have been looking for others.” – he continued keeping a hand pressed on your shoulder. He was curious to see who was under the hood as you could tell from the way he looked at you. He brought his hands up, gently moving his hands under the hood with you to move down your head.

He smiled at the sight of you. The droid on his shoulder bleeping loud. – “You are?” – he questioned. – “Y/n.” – you answered. He furrowed his brows. – “Just Y/n?” – he asked. Your gaze tore away from him. – “My last name is too much of a burden…” – you told him. Not pressing on, he simply smiled. – “Just Y/n then.” – he chuckled extending his hand out to you. You smiled shaking it back. – “So Y/n you here alone?” – he asked scratching the back of his head. You hummed loud.

The droid on his back bleeping loud as he wobbled. Cal shushing him nervously. You blinked confused. – “What… what did he say?” – you asked curious. Cal smiling sheepishly. – “He uhm…” – Cal started to rub the back of his head. – “He uhm…” – he repeated. – “Go on, you can say it.” – you encouraged him. The droid bleeped again, moving a bit higher up his shoulder. You smiled shyly down. – “Since you asked so nicely.” – you responded approaching the droid more.

You rubbed his head, tilting your head. – “BD-1.” – you spoke out. – “You… you understand him?” – Cal questioned. You brought your finger teasingly to your lips. Cal swallowed nervously. – “Come on hot shot.” – you pulled him a bit forwards by his clothing. Him smiling dorky as he fell in line with you.

Cal touched your arm catching your attention. – “It’s going to be okay Y/n.” – he said catching your chin to move it gently a bit up. You smiled faintly back at him. Cal leaned in, kissing your lips tenderly. He pulled away brushing his thumb over your cheek. He smiled faintly back, leaning in to press his forehead against yours. Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes. Cal tilted his head back, kissing your forehead once. Slowly opening your eyes once more, you nodded. Cal nodded back.

He stepped back from you, taking a deep breath. He walked closer to the hatch. Holding your arm, finger to your lip you were slightly distracted. Pulled down deep into your own memories. Your old scars that you had hidden away for so long. – “Y/n!” – Cal called out extending his hand out to you. Taking a deep breath, you nodded as an encouragement to yourself. Joining Cal by the hatch, you had taken his hand. Both of you jumped into swim to the inquisitors fortress. Cal helped you up to your feet, keeping an eye on his surroundings. – “Come on.” – he whispered. You followed him into the fortress.

Cal and you drew your lightsabers greeted by a couple of stormtroopers. Cal motioned with his left hand as you went left. He took the right, jumping at the stormtroopers. They were blasting all around. You blocked their shots with your lightsaber. Letting it twirl behind your back, you brought it back striking a few down. Cal panted loud staring at the stormtrooper he struck down last. – “Where did you learn that?” – he asked wiping some sweat off his forehead. – “What?” – you asked huffing loud. – “That thing you did there.” – he pointed with his wrist at you, still holding his lightsaber.

You swallowed nervously. – “Someone I once knew taught me…” – you told him. Suddenly saddened by the idea. Brought back to the memory where he taught you. How much you had whined his ears off for him to teach you. You wanted to be just as cool as him. Eventually after a lot of persuading and doe eyes smiling his way, he gave in. Cal got the idea that the person you were referring to wasn’t around anymore. – “Sorry…” – he said joining your side. – “It was a long time ago.” – you replied motioning with your head to move on.

Cal took the lead, lightsaber up. A door swished open as more stormtroopers came in. – “Always the welcome committee.” – he joked, winking at you. – “That’s cause they adore you.” – you teased back with a flirty smile. Cal lived for your praises. If he wouldn’t be busy fighting off stormtroopers, he would’ve kissed you there and then. So hard you’d hardly feel your lips afterwards. He stretched his hand out, sending a few back. You ran over, taking a spin before striking them down. BD-1 hopped off Cal’s back, teasing a fallen stormtrooper to make sure he staid down.

Panting loud, you kept fighting them off. When more approached you blasted the entire group back with force. Cal knew you were powerful, yet it somehow still surprised him exactly how powerful you just were. He once witnessed you hold back a speeder in the air with one single grip of the force. Cal ran up to them, striking them down swiftly as BD-1 hurried over to you, jumping on your back as you were closer to him.

You cleared the way, pressing on deeper into the fortress. It wasn’t an easy run, but Cal and you made it out far enough. He stumbled into an open dark room. Eyes widening when Trilla jumped down. She removed her helmet throwing it aside. – “So we meet again Cal Kestis.” – Trilla said chuckling wickedly. Cal moved his hand back to make clear to you to stay out of it. Trilla’s eyes fell upon you behind Cal with BD on your shoulder. She smirked. Cal swung his lightsaber her way. – “It’s me you want!” – he called out deflecting her interest onto him.

He knew she would be cruel enough to hurt you just to get to him. Trilla grinned her red lightsaber buzzing beside her. – “That may be so, but the little bird seems interesting too.” – she said. – “Run!” – Cal shouted to you as he came at Trilla. Trilla clenched her jaw, moving her lightsaber up to block his attack. You ran back with BD-1 further away from them. Their lightsabers clashed. You watched with a pounding heart as they battled. Each time Cal fell, you felt your heart ache. Desperation in the tips of your fingers for him to be alright.

For him to win and claim victory. Not caring what happened with Trilla. As long as Cal survived. A few times you wanted to jump in and interfere hadn’t BD kept you back. Literally jumping in front of you and threatening to tease you if you dared to get up. With anxious eyes you hoped the battle would be over soon.

Sighing relieved Cal was on the winning hand. Trilla giving up with a change of mind. Then your eyes widened. A loud breathing sound echoing off the walls. From the depts of the dark he emerged. All suited up in black. Darth Vader. Your eyes widened more at how terrifying he was. Then you remembered the man behind the mask. You grabbed for your heart feeling it ache. Saddened you tried to scream in pain, voice caught in your throat.

Sobbing loud, you lowered your head. BD bleeping worried at you. Old scars bleeding right back open. So cold you felt. A deepness of missing him. Forehead resting against the ground, you cried. Trying to process the loss of your brother. How different he was from what you knew. Memories of old flushed in. Memories of before. When you were at the jedi temple with him.

How he slowly detached himself from you and others. Choosing a path of darkness, mind poisoned by the Sith. Lifting your head up you were a little bit happy. A little bit happy seeing him again. Hoping he might still be in there. Before you could fully process it, Cal grabbed you, pulling you up.

“We got to go!” – He shouted dragging you along. He started spurting through the corridors with you. It was time to head back to the Mantis before this would get you killed. Fighting Trilla was one thing, but facing Darth Vader was beyond what Cal imagined. He rounded a corner with you. He let go of your hand, taking out a few stormtroopers on his way. – “Y/n come on!” – Cal called out, grabbing your hand again since you weren’t that responsive. Almost numb, turned in yourself. Cal rounded another corner, eyes widening. At the end of the tube emerged Darth Vader. He rose his hand.

Cal moved his hands to his neck, struggling as he got lifted up. Feet dangling and kicking around. – “Anakin stop!” – you screamed out. – “Anakin! Let him go! Stop!” – you shouted using his real name. Cal tried to look at you as he was confused. Darth Vader’s gaze went towards you. You were panting loud moving your lightsaber away. – “Y/n.” – Cal squeaked out struggling against the grip. – “Anakin let him go!” – you ordered staring back at your brother. The man you once knew.

Darth Vader’s grip faltered around Cal’s neck. Cal dropped to the ground, gasping for air. – “Do you remember me?” – you asked taking a step closer to him. Cal tried to stop you by grabbing you by the ankle, but his strength was still weak. – “You do, don’t you.” – you continued. Darth Vader took a step back, moving his head away. – “Anakin… can you hear me?” – you said seeing that Darth Vader kept backing away. Shaking his head as he wanted no part in this.

“Come back to me… brother” – you whispered. – “Enough!” – Anakin called out raising his hand to you. You felt the slight touch of the force around you. – “Y/n!” – Cal shouted jumping at you as he fell down with you. Not a second later broke the glass, sending a flood of water inside the tube. Feeling Cal’s arms around you, the water current pushed you around. You had your eyes closed the entire time, not caring if this was the end. You didn’t know how you got back to the Mantis, but you were safe. Cere had given you a blanket to dry off.

You had distanced yourself from the others at the Mantis. You briefly acknowledged Cal entering as he knocked on the side of the wall. He entered the room, coming to sit in front of you. He took your hand to comfort you. Brushing his finger in circles to smoothen your skin. – “Why… why didn’t you tell me Darth Vader is your brother?” – he asked curious. You exhaled deep, avoiding his gaze. Too pained with the memory. Tears swelled up as you couldn’t keep them at bay anymore.

Cheeks staining wet as the tears poured down. Cal wiped a few tears away with care. – “My brother was a good person… Anakin was a good person.” – you told him. – “He wasn’t like this… he…he…he…” – more tears streamed down as Cal kept wiping them away. – “The Sith poisoned my brother’s mind… bringing fear to him… he was… I looked up to him…” – you continued to speak about your past. – “If you could see him like I did…” – you said with a saddened smile. – “You would’ve liked him….”

Cal brought you closer for a hug, calming you. – “I would’ve…” – Cal responded. He kissed your hand, then your cheek and finally your lips. You embraced him, feeling save in his arms. Where you could be a little bit happy once more.

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laerien · 2 months

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Some Quinlan Vos/Bad Batch speculation because it could fix/break everything (and I want my man back)

Was it established how Ventress found Omega and the boys on Pabu? We can pretend it was her force signature, but what if she got Fennec to give her something Hunter and Wrecker left behind (maybe some chipped off piece of armor, etc) and Ventress handed it over to her psychometric partner, who then narrowed the location down based on memories?

In any case, psychometry could be the turning point for the rest of the series. What if when Ventress was on the Marauder she nabbed some of Omega and Crosshair's former Tantiss prisoner uniforms, knowing something was going to go down? If the children in the Vault were already on the precursor-to-the-Path's radar, Ventress may have had other intentions seeking out Omega rather than just the M-count discussion.

So let's say Ventress gives Vos the objects belonging to the two who have been on Tantiss - if they find out the coordinates, great. But does psychometry work if the memory-holding-person is un/semiconscious? Imagine Vos seeing something in Crosshair's memories that Crosshair himself doesn't remember, referencing the dark past that Shadow Clone hinted at. What if that's how we find out CX-2's identity?

There are plenty of ways Vos's psychometry leads the batch to Tantiss, but you know what would do me in? If Ventress takes Vos to Pabu to debrief and look for clues, and he touches Tech's goggles, which we know are safe from the Marauder's destruction. We would instantly know what Tech's final moments were like, or if they were his final moments at all.

If Vos has been in hiding, which makes total sense considering he's not only a Jedi, but one that the Empire might see as prime Inquisitor material given his dark past, I feel like getting a chance to save the kids from the Vault might push him out. Not to mention Ventress being alive and clearly having a soft spot for Omega already.

It's pretty hard to imagine Vos not being reintroduced soon, given all the opportunity.

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perfectfangirl · 12 days

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notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep8

• maximus is once again on a [brotherhood of steel] vertibird. this time is much different though. he's no longer a nervous, inexperienced squire. he's a man with a mission. a completely different one from the start. he's going to dupe the brotherhood of steel and buy time. to help lucy. • as he stares at two knights, it flashes back to lucy telling him to find her after all this. they do. but they cannot stay. • as the vertibird travels to filly, the transmission on the vertibird goes "the locals put up a fight, but so did we". makes so much sense why cooper told lucy to leave the griffith observatory, the brotherhood of steel really probably would've killed her • filly has been uh "secured" by the brotherhood of steel and maximus presents the not actual head to elder cleric quintus. elder cleric quintus in an obvious move asks maximus "you're wearing the knight's red. where's your knight?" in this moment, it is [the still injured] dane who takes the head from maximus to give to elder cleric quintus. maximus makes eye contact with dane and i swear i felt a mountain move

• maximus divulges that knight titus is dead to elder cleric quintus. elder cleric quintus, ever the inquisitor says "this is not the first time a brother in your company has fallen into misfortune..." dane precariously climbs the stairs elder cleric quintus is sitting atop. worry and fear spreading across their face with every step. "is it?" elder cleric quintus finishes. • of course they check this fake head and it does not register anything in it when a device is used on it to detect the resource. maximus has been had. "i fear you lied then. just as you lie now." elder cleric quintus accuses. "no artifact, m'lord" • maximus is visibly going into shock, his deception having been rooted out swiftly, easily • the problem here is that accidentally getting the wrong head is plausible. but coming back without your knight and possibly being the one who sabotaged another member are all red flags. elder cleric quintus is left with no choice but to assume here tbh

• as maximis initiates a speech check to begin bargaining for his life, two knights who escorted him in now hold him down. priests or whatever start chanting. a third knight with a gun walks up behind a kneeling maximus. ah ok this is an execution now, got it • "please listen to me! i can get you the real head!" maximus begs, the barrel of this large gun touching the back of his dome. the terror is visible and palpable but only on maximus' and dane's faces. "confess." elder cleric quintus hisses. maximus pleads again "don't kill me and i can lead you to it!". fair bargain to me, nobody else in that town knows where it is except maximus • in this same line, the camera is on dane. such fear in dane's face. • as maximus yells "i can help you!" dane drops to their knees, breaking the thick tension with a confession of their own, "please, m'lord. my injury was my own doing. not his." before dane can continue, maximus once again reminds, desperately "please... please, i know where the head is!" with dane next going "for the sake of the brotherhood, please listen to him!" • elder cleric quintius says something interesting to me. he says "such a display of loyalty. don't see that much anymore." elder cleric quintus is not talking about the brotherhood of steel. elder cleric quintus is talking about dane's loyalty to maximus. remember back with episode 1 where i said dane is maybe in love with maximus? yeah

• in this scene we learned that not only did elder cleric quintus still suspect maximus gave dane that foot injury despite having him squire for knight titus but that dane also self inflicted that injury • maximus is let go, almost assuredly having pissed his pants 😭 • notice how elder cleric quintus was elevated above everyone else in this scene. he was atop the stairs in filly and anyone who spoke to him kneeled. his position and his rule in this faction is of interest to me for sure • the next shot with elder cleric quintus and maximus is very star wars and i'm going to explain that • in a dimly lit private meeting, elder cleric quintus asks maximus "you think you're the first squire who coveted his knight's armour?" he then asks how knight titus perished. "he died running" maximus says almost in a disillusioned way. upon hearing this, elder cleric quintus replies "the brotherhood has lost its way." i wonder how many other knights are scared

• "we once ruled the wasteland... and yet power is taken. not given." oh, fallout--- • "a lesson you seem to have learned." yes and no, i love how maximus taking the armour of a [terrible] dying man wasn't so bad to me, it felt like self preservation, that man was going to get maximus killed otherwise • "so, if what you say is true, and you can lead us to the relic, then together, you and i, we will have power. and with it... we will start a new brotherhood." here is exactly where i see some star wars. anakin. anakin and palpatine. the circumstances are only a little bit different. orphan, raised in a cult, never given opportunities they desire, vulnerable so an old manipulator is in their ear trying to gain power. practically twins. • listen... i only now understand elder cleric quintus runs a chapter and not the entire thing. mans wants it all. not a bad bargain for maximus and the fusion core can do this. • elder cleric quintus reminds maximus that his entire life he wanted a home. there are flashbacks to maximus surviving the shady sands incident and him seeing a knight. he asks maximus simply this "build one with me."

• lucy freshly laundered, hair laid, clear skin, with the stinking, rotting head lands at the observatory where moldaver is. armed femme guards greet her at the gate. • crazy scene! as lucy strolls through the observatory, there's crops, farmers, children playing. and even ghouls. a ghoul she saved at the super duper mart recognizes lucy, "it's her." the person next to them puts an arm on their shoulder. i am not crying! • getting sick to my stomach realising the brotherhood of steel descended on this place with children 😞 • meanwhile, the cowboy ghoul we all know and love slinks across the wasteland, trailed by dogmeat. this flashbacks to the day cooper's life turned upside down. the day he spied on barb at vault tec • billboard on the side of where cooper and dogmeat are walking is for sunset sarsaparilla, a consumable item in fallout: new vegas

• cooper having to put on a mask and pretend [act!] like he's not spying on his wife by driving her to work [wonder if he "bungled" that oil change on purpose] • "you know, most guys with a ride this nice, they wouldn't be willing to get their hands dirty." foreshadowing, metaphor, a thing, front and center • this was the last time cooper told barb he loves her and still meant it • cooper is spying on barb in the parking lot, the military taught him nothing 😭 • here come bud askins! enough! i hate him! go away 😭 • the car bud is driving is the messerschmitt kr200 • because cooper is actively spying, barb has yet to enter the building, fiddling with the prototype pip boy. but all the while, bud interrupts cooper's espionage to have another rambling business meeting type conversation with him. cooper is once again nice to this evil man

• barb states after being asked by bud what's wrong "uh my pip boy. it's been acting strange. the transmitter is always activated..." cooper looks spooked. he's been listening in a lot, i see • bud suggests taking it to it but barb says she can fix it herself. wonder if she did finally figure out where the pip boy was transmitting to before... • lmao cooper's like "i'm heading out. i promised janey that i would teach her some roping [😢] and bud, who cooper is not fucking talking to responds to this statement anyways "oh, yeah? i don't have kids myself. but i do have a training program for up and coming executives and that's basically the same thing." bud spilling the vault 31 thing right there yet another time • once again, someone else is trying to talk to cooper but all he is thinking about and fixating on is barb. i am hurt but i am also amused 😭 • no, barb has not told cooper 'bout no junior executive program, bud. bud calls this shit "bud's buds" 😭. bud explains "the basic idea is that the biggest obstacle to achievement has been the brevity of the human lifespan. it's prevented us from working on projects that require centuries, maybe even millennia, to see through. so ideally, bud's buds will keep my project on track centuries into the future." the ravings of a madman, your honour ☝️

• cooper's face through this spiel is comedy but also barb having to pull this man off her husband is too, like get off of him 😭 • bud's statements about architecting programs that run centuries into the future being paired with cooper telling lucy her life was planned hundreds of years ago... oof, chills • because of the frequency and distance, cooper is starting to hear static. barb and her pip boy are getting too far away. cooper overhears barb ask bud if his pip boy has been acting up before it is consumed by static. copper rather softly says "fuck." to himself. now parallel this to the bait scene where he loudly yells it lol • i guess cooper goes there a lot because cooper decides to walk in the building to get closer to hear better and there's no issue there

• lucy enters the observatory and it's very beautiful inside like a painting of a decadent ruin. you can see the sky because there's a huge hole in the roof. • hank is there or whatever, trapped in a cage like a damsel in distress. there's a new california republic flag on what's left of the wall, you can hear the hissing and groaning of feral ghoul rose before she is panned to. this is hank's worst fucking nightmare, huh • i just realized... hank has a ring on his ring finger on his non dominant hand. a gold band. he disgusts me so much omg • moldaver welcomes lucy to this unnerving and gothic abode. moldaver is having uh dinner, freshly made, warm on the table. there's fruits, bread, stuffed meat. hopefully she's been starving hank this whole time and he can only look. moldaver's hair is also laid and billowing in the wind • feral ghoul rose is tied down with rope in the chair ☹️

• "join us. it's my turn to host, isn't it?" sick! moldaver offers lucy a chair. lucy expressed her pre reveal rage "i've had a lot of time to think about this moment. you wouldn't believe the things that went through my head. one night, i actually tried to stuff an old grenade into the neck hole. i guess i was gonna walk in here and blow everybody up. but it's not really how i was raised." oh lucy. it wasn't how hank was raised either. and look at what he did. twice. • lucy then says "so, if you don't mind, i'm gonna keep things civil!" and then plops siggi's head on moldaver's food 😭 she said civil, she's still gonna be petty rotf • rose roars at lucy as moldaver takes the cold fusion capsule out of siggi's head, at last retrieving free energy and releasing it from the shackles of this man's cranium. thank you, siggi ❤️

• lucy then asks for hank back. "very well. but first..." moldaver has put the small capsule in a vial and holds it up to observe it "what if i tell you how i know your father? who he really is?" this has got to be the juiciest episode. hank objects immediately. moldaver is about to ruin this man's whole career. • as moldaver tells lucy that lucy thinks hank was born in a vault like her and her brother, it changes back to norm coming up on vault 31's whole thing. norm finds bud but he's different. this weird guy is now a brain. in a jar. on a roomba. and he's stuck. trapped behind a fallen broom or something 😭 this is funny because back in the vault tec meeting scene, while cooper was spying, they showed bud tripping up the stairs while talking to barb gldgldlf • while stuck before norm helps him, bud keeps saying "no, no i'll get it this time." and "the key to the future is humanity." [parts of his little speech from the vault tec meeting] i'm howling, how long has he been stuck like this? • bud tells on hank quick because bud tells norm once he recognizes "wait, you're not betty. or hank." like oop them the two main villains right there, huh

• lmao ok but when bud sees that norm is like, someone outside vault tec knowledge has found out what's in vault 31, bud decides to idk kill norm?? 😭 • bud's like "initiate protocol 53" and takes out a syringe. the music is menacing. but he's a brain in a jar on a roomba 😭 • norm just dodges bud but bud cannot stop showing his hand "the secret must be guarded. don't go in there. don't you go in there! don't read anything in there. or turn on the lights. don't you access the info tree or look at the terminal." like omg shut uppp 😭 • back in the past, cooper is assisted to a waiting room at vault tec where his film posters are on the walls. he is brought there by a pre war betty. • in the same scene, we get another drop. henry works with barb and asks to meet cooper. he's a big fan. henry is hank.

• ugh this next scene makes me ill but we need to speak on it because it's realistic, it's damning, it's indicative, it's abject. and it's the secret meeting all the powerful entities have while cooper listens in • they got the legion of doom down there, y'all. they got robco, west tek, big mt, repconn, and vault tec. everybody in here is menacing af. barb less so. on the surface. • lol mr. house telling fred of big mt that he could lose money running a casino amuses me, that's so fallout: new vegas • "sure, rumours of the peace negotiations have set us back, but we're here to offer an opportunity." and the opportunity is nuclear annihilation and crimes against humanity • it almost seems like every conversation bud was having with cooper felt like a business meeting because he was using cooper as a practice board for this meeting here. cooper can do two things at once because just because he always thinking about barb doesn't mean he didn't hear every word bud has said

• bud tells the companies at this meeting that the vaults are capable of being sufficient for centuries. but then bud said something i hadn't noticed first watch. "meanwhile, our competitors... you know, every other human who isn't us... will be dead on the surface." very big what the fuck, how did the competition become vault tec versus everyone else • they cut back to cooper listening intently and his brow is becoming more and more furrowed • "because after all, what is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction? time. time is the apex predator. and in the event of an incident, time is the weapon with which we will defeat all of out enemies." whoa whoa whoa when did "competitors" turn into "enemies"? the fuck? • "this is how we will win the great game of capitalism. not by outfighting anyone. but by outliving them." the company's representatives are still not very sold on these vaults. because they all start arguing after bud's monologue

• something happens next i have so many questions about it [and so do others] because next what happens is that barb [who hasn't spoken yet] looks at her pip boy then looks up. there's a shady figure observing all this. who on earth is that? i personally thought it could be the president of the us. others i have seen say they think barb knows she is being listened in on but not by cooper but by this person? i guess this is for future seasons • you know this is the scene where cooper is so sweet and trusting. before barb speaks, he goes "come on, barb. set 'em straight" 😞 he would've put his life in her hands if she asked him too, he would've faced god and walked backwards in hell for her. • barb starts "when i think about the future, i think about my daughter... janey. how do i provide her with a better future? that's what we've invited you here to discuss." cooper was on bated breath and prematurely says "yes" thinking barb was doing something right. but little did he know 😢 • norm walks deeper into vault 31 and sees that it is different, it's smaller than vault 33 or even vault 32. brain on a roomba tells norm this is indeed the vault hank is from. but not before telling norm "you'll never find out." and norm simply pushing a button for lights "oh he's gonna find out" lmaooo • norm has found the plot twist of the century. it's a vault full of people in cryostasis. norm's expression mirrors lucy's upon figuring out exactly what hank has done [though norm doesn't know the full extent of shady sands, he now knows hank is lying] • for whatever reason, bud finally decides to spill "these are bud's buds. my buds. america outsourced the survival of this country to the private sector. but it would have been insane to keep a failed nation alive. so, we kept vault tec alive instead. a well trained staff of highly supervised junior executives from my own assistant training program. because the future of humanity comes down to one word: management." bud's evil speeches are uniquely corporate management but we must listen to his ravings to get a glimpse of the scope here

• it appears it was bud's idea for 31, 32, 33 "because it was the spirit of competition that made our companies great, and i propose we bring this same spirit of competition to our solutions." barb says, adding onto the deal as vault tec vault locations light up on a map behind her and bud • barb tells the representatives that vault tec has over one hundred vaults spread across america. and that any company in the meeting could take some to experiment on and play out their own ideas for how to create conditions for humanity to survive. barb simply adds "whatever you want to do, no one needs to know" who is this man married to? • norm responds to bud's revelation "so what's vault 32 and 33? just people to be controlled?" [yes!] "what? no! when you put it like that, it sounds downright morally questionable." and then bud continues on to talk about eugenics but managers 😭 • "they're our breeding pool, the ultimate expression of hr r&d. genetically selected to breed with my buds to create a class of super managers. people with positivity. people who make lemonade. people who inherit the earth after we've wiped the surface clean." cannot believe fallout made management, already a horror genre, into something even more frightening. norm repeats but in question "we wiped the surface clean?"

• the companies in the meeting start rattling off ideas as follows "we could intentionally overcrowd a vault so people have to compete to survive inside it.", "we have been developing a robot that delivers milk to the front door. it's quite intelligent. i would like to see a vault governed by it.", "what about using a vault to develop super mutants soldiers using illegal immigrants.", "we could pump psychotropic drugs into the air supply.", "we could separate parents and children and only the smartest kids reach adulthood." each more diabolical than the next • cooper is in disbelief overhearing this, his expressions and mannerisms looking like mine • mr. house's evil ass chimes in "there's a lot of earning potential with the end of the word. but we're talking about making a significant investment based on a hypothetical. how can you guarantee results?" barb then goes on to respond to this by saying the most earth shattering plot twist implied in this entire game and show series. "by dropping the bombs ourselves"

• the very next scene is a shot of cooper. looking at it again, i almost want to say his eyes were very well welling up with tears moments before barb's evil reveal, like any normal person would at the thought of people talking about overcrowding a vault to see what people would do or separating children from their parents, all for fun and all after an apocalyptic situation. so if cooper wasn't divorcing over what barb said then, he was sure to start them papers when she suggested they do unethical and cruel vault experiments on innocent people • it's a close up of cooper's face. his expression is so soft. the hurt and betrayal written all over it. he married a monster. and she works for the devil. • not unlike lucy or norm's reactions, cooper is barely processing and is supposed to be meeting hank in that waiting room. three times in the same episode hank is at the scene of the crime. • barb continues on "a nuclear event would be a tragedy... but an opportunity. perhaps the greatest opportunity in history. because when we are the only ones left, there will be no one to fight. a true monopoly." her delivery here almost seems forced, i do wonder if she was prompted. but she still said it. and regardless of her motivations, nothing about this can be good. i do know the statements could be interpreted as vault tec dropped them themselves or vault tec having influence and indirectly doing it. either way, barb looking real unfamiliar and like a divorcee now

• we're zapped back to moldaver talking to lucy • funny hank likes the anticommunist propaganda film cooper made, "the man from deadhorse", and particularly the killing joey, "feo, fuerte, y formal" scene, the scene cooper ain't even like, the scene his principles started to waver. hank found adoration and kinship in that. funny. • all these moments in time are happening at once, they are dropping plot twist after plot twist after plot twist • moldaver informs lucy that hank has walked the earth far longer than she realises "...part of an organisation that thought they had the answers to all of the world's problems." • "this is our chance to make war obsolete, because in our current societal configuration, which took shape without intentional guidance, we have friction. we have conflict, and we have war. and war, well... war never changes." cooper is hanging onto her every damning word, growing numb in front of hank [who is fanboying incessantly]. pair this with lucy finding out who hank really is and what he did to shady sands • i was dissociating like cooper was the first go around so i barely registered hank asking for that autograph in the waiting room, makes cooper's line about it later in the observatory a hilarious drag

• hank... does not not attempt to stop moldaver from these divulgements. only towards the end does he. and by then, lucy already knew them to be true • "he never told you where he's really from. when he's from. he never told your mother, either." the "when he's from" is so?? • lucy asks moldaver what she knows about rose. "she was like you. she was kind, loving, curious." fully onboard with the theory moldaver and rose were together after rose left hank btw • the brotherhood of steel is preparing an invasion of the observatory. maximus and dane meet up here and idk. i think the direction given to the actors here was "look like you want to kiss but don't" • maximus thanks dane for saving him. but by telling the truth, a still injured dane is being sent out to fight too as punishment for self inflicting. dane apologizes too. they never meant to get maximus in trouble • actually started tearing up seeing maximus tell dane about lucy. that maximus thought he was meant to go on that mission with lord titus. "i'm leaving with her. i am going to where she came from. a vault. it's a place that's peaceful... and safe, where nobody ever goes to war." maximus trusts dane so much, he's telling them all this with such a big, wholesome smile. personally victimized again.

• "there's nowhere safe, max. and there's no leaving. i wish there was." i said before that dane is right. and about the brotherhood of steel. there is no leaving. they would find him. not only that, most vaults and especially the one lucy came from are experiments. he wouldn't be able to go even if he wanted to anyways ☹️ • ironically, hank and his cohorts could not control what was going on on the surface so eventually, rose correlated the siphoning of water from vault 33 with activity on the surface. ok but compare this with norm discovering hank and the vault's secrets--- lucy and norm are just like rose omg • in the same moments we learn that a. rose ran away and didn't succumb in a famine b. that she ended up in shady sands with her children c. that lucy only vaguely remembers this time but she was there d. that yes their was thriving communities and e. hank hated what rose had done so much, he destroyed shady sands with a bomb • "that's how vault tec deals with competition" and it's nuclear annihilation

• lucy is aghast. she cannot believe what she is hearing. her face gently contorts into tears. hank keeps saying moldaver is lying. it is all he is saying. • we receive flashbacks of lucy's memories. as they become clearer for where they were, it flash's back to when maximus showed her the giant crater. they have been brought forth with new contexts • the more moldaver speaks, the more it makes sense that hank is in a cage, like a wild animal • as lucy is shown searching through her memories, moldaver and hank begin to talk at the same time. a post apocalyptic cacophony. a song of good and evil. • shady sands is shown with streetcars and some still standing buildings. hope. all gone. • in between lucy's memories is something else. not entirely sure if they are hers. but. it's love. love is the only explanation for why you'd keep a shambling ghoul for twenty years.

• they're talking over each other but i have slammed their words as one. "lucy? she's a murderer. lucy, look at me. she invaded our home. lucy? she killed out people. do not listen to her." hank says. "lucy? what you brought me is cold fusion. it's limitless energy. and we can build our own world. it could be a better world. it has clean water and medicine and power. but for everyone. because when vault tec bought my research, they made it proprietary, so only a trusted vault tec minion can activate cold fusion. all i need is for him to give me the code" moldaver says. • after moldaver says this last part, something in hank shifts. he yells and smacks a stool against the bars of the cage, startling lucy. "lucy, look at me! look at me! lucy!" • ignoring hank, lucy after all this asks through a whimper "my mother. what happened to her?" "i think you know." moldaver responds just as pained • earlier they showed in flashbacks rose wearing a necklace. the camera pans to the ghoul sitting at the dining room table. it is wearing the same necklace.

• the weight of revelation after revelation culminating in the harshest cruelty of lucy's story, that her own father bombed shady sands in such a way that her own mother became a ghoul and was here this whole time on the surface, is breathtaking agony. how could he? how could he? • never mind norm not being there to know or to react, that's a story for another season • imagine being moldaver and being the gift to humanity, starting communities of light, beauty, and goodness at least three times over--- being snuffed by evil almost every time but still dusting yourself off and trying again every time too. moldaver could've filleted hank alive. but didn't. moldaver is a saint. • lucy gazes at her feral ghoul mother, the last vestiges of her old life blowing out of her like the wind blowing through her hair. there's no going back. this is what it is.

"just give her the code. give her the code. giver her the code, dad." me? i would've cocked a gun on the second ask, not asking him a third time • the code is "101097" and that is the exact date the first fallout game dropped 🙂 • mechanisms and machinery whir as moldaver's stolen technology is assembled and cold fusion strikes to life through the apparatus. this is the only good thing hank has ever done. • speaking of crises, norm is still at vault 31, gobsmacked, he walks over to a panel showing everyone who is reactivated and everyone who is dormant. or at least i think everyone--- i just know we do not see barb or janey here • during this time, bud's annoying no body havin' ass scoots his roomba in a compartment and shuts the door so norm can't leave ☹️ • "well, it was great meeting you. i actually have to get home." 😭 this is the first time norm has sounded or acted like a little boy, so i'm crying, this is a thirty year old man in real life so i am pained 😭 • "so you're just... you're gonna keep me here?" norm asks bud. "just until we're all ready to go to the surface." bud says. or rather bud's disembodied brain says. "that could be hundreds of years" norm replies "true. that's why i'd suggest you wait it out in your dad's pod. unless you want to starve to death. not much food in here. except the occasional very large bug." not norm's options being starving to death or cryostasis--- let him out pleaseee 😭

• "i did what was necessary to save our people. and that woman over there... she's no different than me." first of all, he doesn't get to play that game. second, i'm sorry but did moldaver bomb the world twice? hank is a megalomaniac • before moldaver can give the wasteland cold fusion again, some other power hungry and power thirsty entities are arriving. the big [fucked up] fight of the brotherhood of steel versus the nice folk down at the observatory • i now see the full picture of why moldaver is worshipped--- she is the energy messiah. she's been the second and third coming of energy christ • lucy is still stunned so isn't talking or moving much. but hank makes attempts at excuses for what he's done. "lucy? i loved your mother. but she stopped being your mother when she left home. when she took you into danger." lucy is looking at hank like she doesn't even recognize him. hank is looking real unfamiliar right now.

• it is sunset. and the brotherhood of steel is flying down on the observatory. but not before getting fucked the fuck up a little by some strategically placed cannons. one guy even falls out of a vertibird directly into the propellers of another vertibird. these people are in hell • in between invasion shots, hank tries last ditch efforts to get through to lucy "you've seen what it's like up here. everyone equally afraid, equally miserable." a knight uses a gatling gun on people running away. seems familiar, doesn't it? "forced to do horrible things in order to survive. lucy, i had to make a choice. between their violent world and our peaceful one. and i believe, lucy, i know i made the right choice." moldaver waltzes out of the observatory badassedly with a gun. to defend her life's work with her life.

• listening to a man defend committing genocide twice is core shaking. the way i know hank is crazy because minutes before he says him and moldaver are no different but turns around and says he made the right choice. hank, if the choice you made was so right, then how are you no different than moldaver? someone you just said was a murderer, a liar? you're a much worse murderer and liar, hank • this is the first battles for maximus and dane so they go in not knowing what to do exactly • blood spills on the fruits of someone's labour, bullets and rockets shoot by everyone as a fight happens for yet another resource battle in a long line of resource wars • people are being crushed, thrown, stabbed--- you name it. they goin' crazy out there • "if the problem with the world is factions endlessly fighting, endlessly at war, then what is the solution but to get rid of the factions? to make the world us, only ours to shape" in need him to shut up. like enough 😭 lucy is not on this planet, she somewhere else

• as some knight mows down people of moldaver's group, the baddest ghoul in the west has arrived • "i'll bet that outfit makes y'all feel like a big man, don't it? well, i know, cause, well, i used to wear one back in the day. there was only one problem with it. there was a flaw in the welding just below the chest plate. i wonder if they fixed that in the new model?" cooper takes a shot and mortally wounds a knight in said defect. "i guess not" 😭 • everybody's fatal flaw with cooper is letting him talk, people be so focused on what he sayin', they never notice what he's doing. he had a whole speech while loading a gun and the brotherhood of steel let him, his speech stats is maxed out oh my god 😭 • so every knight in this scene fears for their lives and nobody but cooper's brain works so he tricks one of them with a big gun into shooting i guess a circuit breaker. because them lights turn off and then it's chaos lmao

• "did you get him?" "i can't see shit" nameless and faceless brotherhood of steel fellas ask ldgldlg • cooper starts taking these knights out. one by one. through the power suit chestplate defect. in the dark. • "find the fucking ghoul" oh not today, buddy lmao • cooper, playing with these men like it's just another tuesday, takes out a hand grenade. in the dark. and pulls the lever. in the dark. on a hand grenade. • cooper throws it like, on or inside the power armour and the blast is crazy, i simply would not fuck with this man • hank is begging lucy to let him out so they can go home. lucy in tears peers back at her feral ghoul mother still strapped to the dining chair. • a headless armour suit uh walks into the place where they are. then it's maximus behind it. probably the only survivor left in cooper's wake. maybe that's on purpose 💀

• maximus wants to do the right thing but i definitely hate he wasn't putting pieces together [i mean how could be, he just survived by the skin of his teeth] because damn he turned hank aloose 😫 • hank looking at maximus like "who is this?" but maximus is making the mistake of listening to hank because hank immediately turns this into a medium of escape "i'm her father. can you get us out of here?" • lucy's trance is only broken when she is being forcefully removed from the observatory • lucy having to break it to maximus her own father was the cause of his suffering too ☹️ • before maximus can turn into disillusioned lucy and cooper before him, well hank has up and got in a power suit ughhh • kinda think maximus would've either killed hank or given him to the brotherhood of steel so hank trailing along with cooper, maximus, or lucy was a dead start. he has burned every last one of them and now they all know

• "lucy. you're coming with me" hank says in the armour. maximus tries to take a swipe at hank but hank takes a swipe at him and maximus is knocked out. lucy falls to her knees trying to awaken him ☹️ • lucy, having enough of this shit, takes maximus' gun and pulls it on hank. "you see what this place does to people? i'm your father, lucy. you came all this way for me. you're not gonna hurt me." but you know who is? cooper mothafuckin' howard. • "oh, you want another autograph, young henry?" "hell, this kid used to pick up my wife's dry cleaning" get him again for me! flame his ass, cooper! • bear with me while thinking about how lucy has her corpse finger and can't pull the trigger on hank but lucy's trigger finger on cooper's hand did. she did hurt him. • i don't know if lucy was listening but i wonder if she truly registered this ghoul is the movie start cooper howard • the sky is so pretty in these last scenes btw • cooper repeating hanks favourite line from one his movies back at him but with contempt and disdain lmao • "now, i've waited over 200 years to ask somebody one question. where's my fucking family?" cooper triumphantly implores to hank, gun raised. y'all i think he dropped the accent right here for a moment on the last sentence omg • hank still bleeding from being grazed by cooper, says nothing and flees. he leaves lucy behind. he leaves rose behind. again.

• maximus is out cold and lucy can't wake him up, she shakes him and everything ☹️ • as death and destruction is once again in wake, cooper says the iconic fallout line too • "war never changes. you look out at the wasteland, looks like chaos. but there's always somebody behind the wheel. and that's who i want to talk to. that's where your daddy is headed." "but you let him go!"--- ok so first of all, i've been speculating when cooper starts being nicer, softer, more vulnerable around lucy and whoaaa this conversation is as open heart as it gets for this, i mean he already explained he's been looking for his family for 200 years. i get why he told hank that but the monologue about war... i know this comes from a deep place of being a veteran and maybe even flashbacks. but him not keeping that to himself is incredible character development to me. lucy being upset with cooper for letting hank go sends like girl you had the gun locked on him first, maximus was the one who let him out anyways like 😭 • "well, it's easier to track a stuck pig then to ask where it's off to." he's right but can cooper say stuff in regular ways fldgdlgldf •"you want to know how i know your daddy, don't you? let's just say that everything about your whole little world was decided over 200 years ago." must be crazy for all this to happen to lucy and norm in two weeks • "now you can stay here with him, but when his tin can soldier friends take this place... and they gone take this place... they will kill you and everybody here. or you could come meet your makers." whew. the brotherhood of steel is just. not great. • cooper has his back turned to walk off, leaving him open to lucy's gun [again!] but this time, she's not shooting or aiming at him. she's aiming at rose. a mercy kill long overdue. • cooper really thought. i guess he trusts lucy. i don't know. but he lets out a deep breath upon seeing where she actually shot. wow. wow

• "you coming?" 🥹 • lucy all but has to leave maximus behind. they can't be together. not here like this. "i'll find you" lucy whispers as she kisses maximus one last time on the lips [vaultknight, one last time] • lucy arises and has made her decision. "okey dokey", she says, resigned, she will follow cooper to meet the makers • moldaver says "rose" as she returns back to the room. moldaver is wounded. but she is still thinking about rose 😞 • moldaver activates the cold fusion. it begins to light the ruins across the landscape. moldaver lovingly caresses rose's now unmoving hand. and says "we did it, rose." yes. you did it moldaver. you saved the world again, queen • in her last moments, moldaver asks maximus "what do you suppose your brotherhood would do with infinite power? maybe you can stop them. maybe you can't. maybe all you can do is try." moldaver succumbs to her wounds. • dane decides for maximus that maximus must have killed moldaver. dane raises maximus' hand. a chant is started in his honour. maximus looks like he wants to jump out of his skin. "all hail knight maximus" • it is night and we are shown a scene of cooper, dogmeat, then lucy emerging from an entrance and heading past the hollywood sign. "me three (my echo, my shadow, and me)" by the inkspots plays • it takes until sunrise but hank finally makes it to his destination while a deathclaw skull lays before him • we're in new vegas, baby! 🎲

#fallout #fallout show #cooper #the ghoul #barb #lucy #maximus #text post #my meanderings #the beginning #dane

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darkladylumiya · 1 month

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My thoughts on Tales of the Empire

I'll start with my overall thoughts - the animation is really good, though at this point the contrast between more standard Clone Wars-style models and the more realistic ones who look like they could be from a video game is a bit jarring (though this could easily be a just me thing, I've not seen anyone else talk about this), the Barriss arc was way better than the Morgan Elsbeth one, which I doubt was a surprise to anyone, though I still have some issues with both. My big thing is that, compared to Tales of the Jedi, where we get little excerpts and character moments to fill out the characters and their progression through time, here Tales of the Empire is more or less our only source for info on these characters at this point in time. We know what happens with Dooku and Ahsoka in between their episodes - we have no clue what happened to Morgan to get her from Dathomir to running a planet for example, or how Barriss went from inquisitor to hermit healer (though this example is much less extreme).

Anyway, into the arcs proper. Get excited everyone, other force witch clans are back! Like the... checks notes Mountain clan. Not Singing Mountain. Just... Mountain. Cool, thanks Filoni. A decade later you finally make other Dathomiri clans canon, but you just shave a word off a name and now it's totally your own original idea, right? And don't worry, we'll have more totally original ideas from Filoni later, but first. Okay, the first episode is kinda like... a nothing episode. We end the episode with Morgan in the same position as she was halfway through, with a strange plot where Morgan immediately tries to seduce people to the Dark Side because... I don't know, she can? And again, we have no clue how she made it off planet. Dathomir doesn't exactly get a lot of space traffic, and apparently there are droid gunships still scouring the planet looking to kill literally any Nightsister left. Surely the first episode should have dealt with her getting off-planet? And not her sowing some dissent in a clan we've never met before and never see again? Some dissent which immediately ends and goes nowhere because most of them are now dead.

Anyway, next episode, she's in charge of a planet now because she has to be for The Mandalorian to still work - surely her getting to be in charge of a planet should have been an episode? Have the first one be her family getting killed and then her getting off-planet with some scavengers or pirates or whatever, the second episode is her rise to power over this planet and then the last is her meeting Thrawn? But sure, whatever, she's in charge already, cool. She's the designer of the TIE Defender, because they love beating my boy down. I'm not even going to ask how a Nightsister who has probably never even seen a starship before her clan got murdered figured out in the however many years it's been now knows how to design one of the best starfighters out there. Let's actually address that though - how many years has it been? The Battle of Dathomir was 20 BBY. The episode starts with a shot of Coruscant, where we see six Venators before finally an Imperial-class Star Destroyer appears. This implies to me that this has to be early on in the Empire, right? The first five years or so maybe? But then in Rebels season four there's an episode where they steal a TIE Defender prototype. So it took the Empire, or I guess Thrawn more specifically, at least seven years to go from design to a single test model? That's just strange to me, but who knows, it's been forever since I've seen that Rebels episode so maybe I'm just misremembering how they talked about it there. Anyway, the thing that truly got me was Pellaeon and Rukh. Fucking Rukh. But yeah, why was Eli Vanto not here but Pellaeon was? New canon more or less replaced Pellaeon's role with Vanto, so why is he not here now but Pellaeon is? My guess - because Filoni wanted to cover all the Thrawn bases. He read a brief summary of people and things associated with Thrawn in Legends and he put them all in one episode. We have Pellaeon, we have TIE Defenders, we have fUCKINg Rukh. I genuinely do not know why the FUCK Rukh is here.

Okay, let me explain. In the original Thrawn trilogy from the 90s, Rukh is Thrawn's personal bodyguard. Rukh is a Noghri, a species who regard Darth Vader as the savior of their people because their planet got nuked during the Clone Wars (it was an accident) and Vader came in and promised to help rebuild the planet, which he did. Very slowly, so the Noghri would always be indebted to him, because as it turns out they're very good assassins and commandos. But the important thing to note is that they're sworn to Vader, and serve him. Now in the books they work for Thrawn because they're more broadly sworn to the Empire, and after Vader is dead they end up working for Thrawn once he's in charge of the Empire. But Filoni doesn't care, the Noghri are associated with Thrawn and so here Rukh is as his bodyguard testing whether Morgan can fight. As soon as she got attacked, I immediately guessed it was going to be a Noghri, but once I saw the face of her attacker I was much less sure, because the head is completely wrong for a Noghri by the way, their head looks nothing like that. But anyway I lost it when Pellaeon said Rukh's name, because I knew I was fucking right. We're just pulling out all the sick Thrawn trilogy references, but not actually using these characters in any meaningful way - Rukh is here so his character page on Wookieepedia can have a canon tab now and so Filoni can show off his cred of pretending to have read a single book in his life. Oh yes, there is another thing Rukh is famous for by the way. KILLING THRAWN. I'm sure Filoni just forgot that little detail. Or who knows, maybe he'll just recreate it word for word at some point because he cannot do anything but steal from other people's work but do it in a worse and more amateurish way. I was so upset with Rukh being here with no explanation or justification I really did not care about anything else that happened in the rest of the arc. Thrawn shows up and recruits Elsbeth and then the third episode is just her killing a diplomat and burning a forest for no reason, yeah sure whatever who cares. I simply wish at some point there would be a notable character from Legends who is just... left there, and doesn't get dragged by cowboy hat man into whatever nostalgia bait ploy or attempt to pretend he has ever read a book, because the nostalgia bait doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't - it simply pisses me off. You're reminding me of better stories while I watch your lame shows, Filoni. Is that really what you want?

Ugh. Anyway, Barriss. I have a lot less to say because it's actually pretty good. I think it's way too short and she deserved way more screentime, or at the least not having to share an equal amount with Morgan Elsbeth (who I honestly forgot was even in the Mandalorian, I genuinely thought she was made up for the Ahsoka tv show for a while she's so forgettable). Anyway, the fundamental flaw is still that Barriss's massive heel-turn change of heart came out of nowhere and makes little sense with her character as established, so while this does a decent job at building upon that, it doesn't change that her arc in The Clone Wars makes no sense and was obviously chosen so that Ahsoka could be emotionally devastated by her best friend betraying her. A different complaint I then have is like... when did Barriss, woman who killed over a dozen people in a terrorist bombing, at least one of whom was someone she knew and liked, Barriss who murdered a woman in cold blood and purposefully framed her best friend so she could get away with this bombing, Barriss who convinces a wife to make her husband into a living bomb, Barriss who kills three clones with her friend's lightsabers to set her up even further and leads her purposefully where she has stashed more of the same bomb material, and indeed Barriss who kills someone who seemed to be her friend with the same technique she used to kill the woman who was about to rat her out - you want me to believe she suddenly has an issue with killing a village full of people? I'm sorry, but you have to actually explain how she sees this as different. Because you don't actually address at any point how she might feel about her terrorism now, or even what exactly her moral compass is. Killing innocents is good when she does it bad bad when it doesn't make the political statement she wants to make? I just don't get it. Anyway, final episode is the best of the series because it does the most to actually have a moral and message and actually does something pretty interesting? Whether she dies or not (I doubt she does personally), it's still an interesting setup for something else, either another season of this or a comic or book or whatever, to come back to and follow what the hell Lyn (and probably Barriss too) does now. I'm also glad Filoni finally remembered Barriss's specialty was healing actually, and not terrorism, even though we don't actually get to see her do any healing, with the Force or otherwise. Oh also, why does she look so old? It's like she aged 50 years over the course of 10? Like Lyn looks exactly the same but Barriss looks like she's 80. Idk, that was weird. Anyway I've rambled long enough, Filoni is still a hack who's never read a book in his life, but the Barriss stuff here was pretty good, at least somewhat enjoyable throughout. If you watch anything, watch that - all the Morgan Elsbeth stuff is terribly forgettable or outright frustrating.

5/6 edit: I’ve fixed Eli’s name (sorry Eli) and while it’s been pointed out to me that Rukh is in Rebels, a fact I was unaware of, I’m going to maintain the rant as it stands with this disclaimer here at the end - Rukh was in Rebels and was not originally added in this show. However, I still think his design sucks.

#star wars #star wars legends #tales of the empire #thrawn #morgan elsbeth #barriss offee #sw #I really wish Filoni would get out of the executive chair at this point he's so clearly up his own ass #it's to the detriment of every project he works on #also like holy shit almost every show that's come out in the last two decades has been by him #the two main exceptions being Visions and Andor #And guess what! Andor was good! While Ahsoka was mediocre at best #Each season of the Mandalorian gets worse and worse #I guess also maybe Resistance? That probably wasn't him but I genuinely don't know #Did anyone watch Resistance?#But anyway like please for the love of all that is holy let someone else cook I'm begging you #If Filoni ever had it he sure as fuck doesn't now

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theheraldsrest · 9 months

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“Romanced!Companions reacting to the Inquisitor’s Death”

Are yall ready to hurt? No? Good! It’s a bit long so hang in there.

(Psst. If you really hate your soul, you should read this with the song Stuff We Did-Married Life or Experience by Ludovico Einaudi. It hurts.)

-(Sad) Lord Lex

TW: Blood, death, slight gore

It was during battle, a battle that had been planned thoroughly to the last detail yet the enemy surprised you. You were strong, that was true of all the things you’d accomplished and how many near-death experiences you survived. But as you were overwhelmed, you were taking one too many injuries and wounds, one right after another. It didn’t help that whatever magic was leftover from the anchor was slowly starting to seep into you, weakening you. For the first time, you were falling in combat. Not the usual “I’ve been knocked down but I’ve got health potions aplenty to bring me back up.” No, this time, you ran out and your compatriots were too far from you. You could hear them yell for you, trying their damndest to get to you. You could feel your grasp on your life slipping away when they came running to you…

Cullen

His blood ran cold as he watched you hit the ground, not moving an inch. The world seemed to slow down around him as he struggled and slashed through the enemies lines, not even hearing his own voice as he called for his men, to help you, to save you. Finally, finally, he reached you and pulled your body into his arms. Cullen’s hands immediately went to your potion pouch and, finding it empty, went to his. His fingers clasped around nothing and he could feel his stomach dropping as he looked back to you, watching the light shine dimly in your eyes. “Please. Please no, don’t do this.” He pleaded, clutching your hand to his heart because that was yours, that was what he had to give you and he would give anything if he could somehow just give you some of the strength or blood from his heart to yours. But he couldn’t. And he knew he couldn’t do anything, it was too late. That small smile on your beautiful face as your reassurances fell on deaf ears, trying to reassure him that he’ll be alright, that you love him, that you always have- that light in your eyes that he always admired died out, the remnants of your smile left on your face and your hand falling limp in his own grip. You were gone but he remained, holding you and staying by your side as he had promised so long ago. Even as the battle seemed to be concluding and his soldiers tried to comfort their commander, he sat there holding your lifeless form close to him, mumbling prayers that he knew deep down wouldn’t find anyone. “Please Inqu-My love, please. Come back. Y-You can’t- I-I need you. I-I can’t-”

Josephine

The most broken-hearted, chest clenching scream you’ve ever heard. She had been traveling with your group in case there was a chance of negotiations, immediately being pulled to cover when the fighting started. Now, Josey struggled against her own guards to get to you, no care for the danger around her. As your forces pushed back the enemy, she finally got herself free and ran to you, one hand flying to your heart and the other to your wounds. She’s yelling over her shoulder for a healer as she feels your faint heartbeat, barely there but enough to reassure her. To make her think you’ll make it. Because if you don’t then you’ll- She can’t finish that thought. She’s hoping against hope that it doesn’t come to that. She doesn’t even notice the tears on her face as a healer runs over and starts to try and save you. You try to talk to her but she hushes you, telling you “Do not push yourself. You can tell me once they heal you and we get back to safety.” That idea is quickly taken away as she looks at the healer who gives her a sorrowful look and shakes their head. It feels as if all the air is taken from her lungs as she looks back at you, her eyes terrified and sad. She’s begging the healer, almost demanding that they try everything but even she knows they have done all they could. Josephine can only clutch your face, tears falling onto your cheeks. When she finally talks again, it’s to talk about the future she wanted to share with you. A sad smile on her face as she tells you how she wanted you to officially meet her family, of all the places she wanted to go with you, the things that you two could’ve done. How she wanted a family with you. Even as life drains from your body and your eyes glass over, she’s still near you, laying against your chest with her head where your heartbeat would be. “Goodbye, my dearest. Be safe, wherever you go.”

Solas

Solas had been watching from a distance, as he always did, trying but failing not to worry about you. He loved watching your battles, coming out victorious and celebrating with your companions. But this time, he was holding his breath. He knew you could get yourself out of even the toughest of situations. But more and more enemies appeared and soon you were lost from his sight. His eyes flickered over the masses, trying to stay where you were as he tried to stop his hammering heart. She’s alright, he told himself, she’s fought worse. As the last of the enemies are killed, soldiers and your friends alike are panicking, calling out for you and searching. He has to stop himself from going down there, not for them but for you. It’s always been for you since that first moment with you. And there amongst them he can see Varric, who has completely stopped and was staring at the ground a few feet in front of him. No trace of a smile or laughter upon his face that Solas had come to associate with him. Varric, who trusted him and had encouraged Solas to speak with you…was completely frozen. It was minutes before Varric yelled something, the others rushing over. Another moment, angry yells and horrible cries coming up from your small group. One of them picked you up, to take you to a healer. At least, that was the lie that played in his head. He could see you weren’t moving, you weren’t speaking to the others, joking about the tough battle. No, you were slumped against them, your arms hanging limply. Even from where he stood, he could tell that the brightness that would light up others was gone, leaving a dark bleak gray cloud over your party. The strings of his heart tugged and he knew but refused to admit it. Solas turned, blocking out the cries and saying his last goodbye. “Ir abelas, ma vhenan. Ar lath.” Because he was leaving, nothing more. He would see you again because you weren’t gone. You can’t be. You said you wanted to prove him wrong, to come with him. Then prove him wrong. Move.

Cassandra

Cassandra was trying her hardest to protect everyone, calling out orders and putting herself into danger to stop a fatal blow being delivered to your companions. Her thoughts kept flickering back to you, trying desperately but failing to not worry about you. You were the Inquisitor, after all. You’ve been through the fade and have even fought an arch demon. What could possibly stop you? Your recklessness popped into her head and if it was any other situation, she might’ve laughed. Screams and shouts came from further away and she saw some of your soldiers being overwhelmed before you burst through and started to help defend them. She almost turned away, almost. One of the larger demons was bearing down on you, swinging its ax around and towards your body. She thought it missed. It didn’t. The splatter of blood on the ground and your pained cries as it buried its weapon into the shoulder of your good arm. It pulled back and was ready to chop at the rest of you when a shield hit its head. The demon turned into time before it was cut down by a raging Cassandra. She stood over you, trying to protect you from further harm. “Heal yourself, Inquisitor! I am here!” She fought off more of the creatures not noticing that you weren’t moving to drink a potion. When she glanced down at you, she called over her shoulder again “Inquisitor! Hurry! You’re losing blood!” Still you didn’t move. You couldn’t. Your arm could barely twitch and, even if it could fully move, you knew you were out of health potions. Seeing you simply staring at her made her grow concerned. As she stepped back and a soldier took over, she whipped around to you and kneeled. Noting the blood rushing down your arm, she tried to get you to move it but stopped when you winced. When she noticed your empty potion bag, she reached for hers but remembered she had given the remainder to those who were near her. “The Inquisitor needs help! Get him a potion or a healer! Quickly!” She was jolted from her commands as your hand touched her cheek, turning to look at you. Your hand was shaking and your face was scrunched up in pain but there was a smile on your face. You made a comment on how beautiful she was and how you were honored to be a part of something with her. To be married to her. To love her. Cassandra’s breath caught, not because of the lovely things you said but because it sounded like you were trying to get your last words out. “Inquisitor, you’re talking nonsense! Stay still, I’m going to try and patch up the bleeding-” But you shake your head and you asked her something. Does she love you? “What?! Do not be talking about such ridiculous things right now! We have to-!” But you cut her off, almost pleading with her to answer you. It was a moment before she said quietly “Yes. Yes, I do, my love.” Could you please say it, you asked. She hesitated, her voice shaky as she spoke. “I love you.” If only you hadn’t been in the middle of battle, she would’ve been blushing furiously at the big smile on your face. That’s nice, you said as your head leaned forward, laying it against her shoulder. You told her how you wanted to make sure she was happy before….before you….She waited but you said nothing. It was another moment before Cassandra turned her head to look down at you, eyes closed and a smile on your face but unmoving. She was completely frozen, unmoving and not wanting to believe the reality that was in front of her. “Dear heart? Inquisitor, I-” She could only bring her shaky hands up to your back and your head, gently petting it down as the battle around you both raged on. “...Thank you, Inquisitor. Just…rest. I will protect you.”

The Iron Bull

“Anyone seen the boss?” Bull was starting to feel something in the pit of his stomach, the uncommon emotion of worry. You were at his side fighting and then gone the next second. Your other companions and the Chargers were searching the battlefield, trying to find any sign of you. He didn’t even notice his hand fidgeting with the dragon tooth you gave him so long ago. It was taking a damn good long time for you to pop up. Perhaps you had tried to flank them? A million ideas came to his head, trying not to picture the worst. His name was called out suddenly and he turned, relief coming over him as he looked at your silhouette, a smile and a cheeky comic coming to his lips. It was stopped, though, as you stumbled down the hill before falling. He moved quickly to catch you so that you didn’t hit the ground. Trying to hold you up, he could only watch as you leaned further into him. Bull tried to question, to examine you, but as his hand touched your side he could feel something warm and wet. His hands were covered in your blood, spilling from a stab wound to your side as well as from an injury on your head. “I’ve got you, kadan. Let’s get you to a healer and we can-” You stopped him, your hand on his cheek to keep him looking at you. You told him you weren’t gonna make it, you’d taken too many hits and the magic in your body was tearing you apart. He stared at you, his one good eye looking between both of yours, eyes that he had come to adore. “Are you sure?” His voice was quiet, low, stiff. Never had you heard him take this tone before, as if he didn’t want to believe you but was still just a soldier listening to their commander. He wanted to argue against it, tell you that you’re being dramatic. But he knew better. You nodded, tears welling up in your eyes as you asked him to look out for your friends, to be safe while you were gone and not to push the Chargers too hard. He chuckled but it was stiff as he held you up, keeping you from fully falling to the ground. He could only hold you safely in his arms as he asked him not to forget you. “That’ll be a bit hard, boss. Not possible to forget someone like you. You’ve done too many crazy things for me to just forget you.” You could feel your time was coming and you asked the Iron Bull one more thing. Just a kiss, that was it. One more for the road, you joked. This time, his laugh was anything but him. It was sad, full of grief but he fulfilled that promise and tried to make it as gentle as possible, one of his rare ones as if he was trying not to break you. You were gone before you could feel the teardrop on your face when he pulled away. He tightened his grip around you, as if he could still protect you from harm. “Until I join you again…kadan.”

Dorian

Both him and Vivienne were keeping up the front, trying to slow their ascent. He was able to keep most foes away from him, a good distance of magic throwing them around and stopping them in their tracks. At the same time, he was trying to keep an eye on you, to make sure they weren’t getting too close to you. It was what he always did, just to make sure you were safe. Both mages were having a bit of banter as they fought on. “Dorian, dear, if I didn’t know any better, I would say your casting seems a little off. Been putting off practicing? Or losing your touch?” He knew it was just her way of trying to keep both of them going and clear minded. “Madame, you wish.” A pained yell could be heard, a voice so familiar to him carried across the battlefield. No, he thought, I only turned away for a second as he whipped his head around and looked to spot where he had last seen you but you were gone. Vivienne said something but he was gone, running through the enemy lines and pushing them away, electrocuting anyone who got in his way. As soon as he reached you kneeling on the ground, he threw up a barrier and knelt next to you, reaching out to help you up. Another scream of pain came from you as he looked down, a deep cut into your abdomen and an arrow in your leg halting your escape. “Amatus, be strong for me. I’m trying to help you.” His body was growing weary from the magic he’d been using up, but he put what he had left into trying to heal you. As soon as he felt the spell end, he looked back to you….but nothing was fixed. You were still in pain and you were falling, growing weak. “No, that was supposed to help you. Why didn’t it-?” He looked into your face and could see you growing pale, green marks gracing your cheeks from your neck. Magic like that of the anchor. It was stopping him from healing you, from keeping you alive. “Someone, help! The Inquisitor is down! Please!” He didn’t even notice that he was begging as he struggled with his emotions, trying to find anything to keep you alive, to keep you awake and looking at him. “Don’t do this, dearest. You’ll be fine. You’re strong. You can fight it off.” As you grew tired, you could only clutch his hand and thank him. Thank him and tell him you loved him. “No, stop that. This isn’t goodbye. We still have much to do. I-I can’t…I can’t let you go like this. You don’t deserve this.” As he held your head in his lap, he could feel your hand come up and try to brush the tears away from his eyes. “Please, Amatus. I love you. You need to stay. You make these stupid things possible.” Dorian holds your hand to his cheek, one of the only people he let close to him in his whole life slipping from his fingers. “Don’t leave me.”

Sera

“47! Watch it, you shank spool arsehole!” It had started as a game for you two, counting how many enemies you both would take down. It made it easier for you two, taking out the enemy as fast as possible, as well as allowing Sera to focus on the task at hand. “How you doing, Inky?” No response but that was ok. Sometimes she got a bit aways from you in battle. Just gave her more idiots to take out. Eventually they started falling back, Sera pleased with herself at a high 132 mark. She started turning this way and that, looking for you, but the longer she searched the more her smile started to fade. “Inky! Where the hell you go?” It was starting to grow irksome that she couldn’t see you among the soldiers and your companions, walking around and talking. Maybe you had already started on your way back to camp? She was considering the idea, passing through the bodies when something caught her eye. One of the bigger brutes she had shot was moving but not normal like. Almost as if someone was- “Hold on a bit,” She grumbled as she pushing on the hulking mass, Finally their body rolled over and there was her Inky in all their- “Thought you left me over ther-” You were lying in a pool of blood. Her first thought was that the brute bled all over you. But the arrow hadn’t pierced that far through and the sword that was in her side seemed to- You could see her face flip through emotions so quickly, from confusion to surprise to panic. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Sera scrambled to try and stop the blood, looking to your potion pouch for a potion, but saw it empty. She never carried any with her. She always had you or Dorian near her just in case. She was starting to regret that decision as she tore some cloth from one of the enemy's clothes and used that to try and stop the blood. “Come on, wifey/hubby. We’ve been through worse, yeah?” She hadn’t even noticed her hands were shaking, blood covering them and her dumb little band of gold that you gave her. It startled her when she noticed you were chuckling, mumbling about how your body count was 168. It was out of pure shock that she startled laughing, saying how stupid you were. She didn’t even notice as she tried to tie off the bandage around you that your hand had fallen from hers, her laughing at how dumb your guys game was as your smile remained on your face but your eyes closed. When the others finally find you both, she’s clutching your hand that has a stupid little matching band on it, crying and laughing. “You can’t just do that, you know? You can’t just try to make me laugh and then just-and then just leave. Regular folk don’t do that…they don’t…they…come back.”

Blackwall

He had tried to stay by your side, knocking any enemies away that got past your defense. He was your shield, after all. Both of you had lost sight of your forces and companions as the enemy line advanced, yet you stayed by each other’s sides. He had kept throwing his potions to you and putting himself in the way to make sure you at least would get out of this safe. As one enemy slipped past you and swiped their sword toward your side, it felt as if Blackwall moved in slow motion. He tried to throw himself between you two, raising his shield and bashing it against the foe’s sword, knocking them off balance. Why did it seem slow, though? Why did it feel like he failed? He turned to look back at you, to make sure you were ok. Your eyes were wide and mouth slightly agape. He couldn’t understand why you were surprised, he had done this many times before. You stumbled forward and fell against him and there in your back was an arrow, piercing through your armor and skin. He could feel the rage and terror building deep in his bones but it seemed…numb. Something hit his shoulder, something flowing down his back but he couldn’t care. He wrapped his arms around you, making sure his shield covered what his body couldn’t. If the enemy hit him, he couldn’t feel it. The yells around him seemed to fade away as he held you, your hands clutching the front of his armor. You were saying something but he couldn’t make it out. Instead, he continued to hold you tightly as if he could take away the pain, as if he could fight off death itself. Because he knew it was coming, he wasn’t gonna deny it. Perhaps he could keep it away just for a bit longer if you couldn’t be seen. He could feel you getting weaker, falling with you as you went to the ground. It almost seemed like no one was around either of you now. No more danger, you’re safe. You’re safe, he lied to himself. “I’ve got you, love.” Blackwall brought his face down and kissed the top of your head, making you turn your own face up to his so that he could steal one more gentle kiss from you. It was soft, gentle, sweet…and a goodbye as you pulled away and laid your head against his chest, your whole body relaxing into him. He simply placed his chin on top of your head, gently swaying to music only he could hear, humming as his thick beard hid his tears. “I’ve got you.”

#dai #dragon age inquisition #cullen rutherford #commander cullen #angst #dragon age josephine #josephine montilyet #dai solas #fenharel #dai cassandra #cassandra pentaghast #the iron bull #iron bull #dorian pavus #dai dorian #dai sera #blackwall #thom rainier

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mrs-gauche · 2 years

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Fire, blood and ouroboros...

So the other day, I was thinking about this "almost ouroboros" artifact thing again that was shown in the netflix Absolution trailer...

I’m calling it “almost ouroboros”, because usually an ouroboros is depicted with one serpent eating its own tail, rather than two eating each other, as it’s also seen in the title of the netflix show.

But as some people have already pointed out, the ouroboros symbol also appears in a few other places throughout the series. For one, it is seen on the ground in the scene with Flemeth and Kieran in the Fade. Note that it is drawn in blood, almost like it’s part of a ritual, especially with how they’re both standing in its center when Flemeth takes the Old God soul from Kieran (keep this in mind! I’ll get back to this in a minute 👀).

When I noticed that this symbol in particular also looked a little familiar to me... So I went back and took another look at the scene at the Temple of Mythal, when the Inquisitor drinks from the Well of Sorrows, an act that inevitably binds them (or Morrigan) to Mythal's will.

(Putting the rest under the cut, because.. you know the drill, I’m incapable of ever writing a short post. 😂💀)

So I took my beloved flycam tool, to try and get a closer look at the symbol that appears for only a second on the Inquisitor's face, the moment Mythal’s will is forced upon them after they drank from the Well.

Which got me so curious that I eventually went into the files and searched out the exact texture asset that was used in this scene (which btw took me way longer than I want to admit 😶)...

And lo and behold, it actually turns out to be the same symbol! Or rather... one of them, because the symbol actually seems to be part of a set of three different symbols that can all be found within the same file.

And there it is!

Additionally, in that same scene with Kieran in the Fade, the symbol is also yet again seen when Morrigan is about to attack Flemeth, which she can easily prevent by forcing the Inquisitor to grab Morrigan, as Flemeth seems to have full control over the Inquisitor’s (or Morrigan’s) body now.

Later on, the Inquisitor can also tame and bind their own (or rather Mythal’s) dragon in order to defeat Corypheus, showing the symbol again.

Solas will be furious if the Inquisitor drank from the Well, despite calling Mythal "the best of the elven gods". He’ll also explain to us how the Inquisitor is now "Mythal's creature" and that everything they'll do from now on will be, “whether they know it or not”, in her will. Which is to say, the very definition of enslavement.

(Someone speaking from experience here, Sir? I mean, if the “Solas was once himself a slave of Mythal” theory is true (“He did not want a body, but she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face.”), it would definitely give his reaction to the well and how he values free will above everything (as well as his entire flippin rebellion and all of his dialogue regarding binding for that matter) a whole other layer. Especially when being asked to drink from the well himself, when he’s like “No. Do not ask me again.” so instantaneous and snappy, as if to say “For f*ck’s sake, I’ve been through this once, I’m NOT doing it again??” 😂)

I guess, what I’m trying to say is.. what if the scene we saw at the Well of Sorrows was something very similar to the ritual that was performed in times of Elvhenan by the Evanuris, in order to mark their slaves with their vallaslin and bind them to their will, just like the Inquisitor or Morrigan were bound to Mythal?

And all that got me thinking...

If this ouroboros symbol, that is somewhat magically "branded" on the Inquisitor at the Well of Sorrows, is not just some random asset, but actually supposed to resemble ancient slave markings... Isn't it curious then, that the word "vallaslin", which, as far as we know, was already used back in ancient times, also translates to "blood writing", when the ritual we saw at the well doesn't actually involve.. any blood?

(And for the sake of clarification, for the Dalish this term does make sense of course, as the practice used to apply the vallaslin in present Thedas is likely to resemble that of traditional tattooing (unless some kind of magic is involved?). In real life, some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks for example. We’ve actually seen a glimpse of this practice in the latest comic series.)

Going back to the ouroboros however, because this is where it gets interesting!

Remember how the ouroboros symbol was drawn in blood in that scene with Flemeth and Kieran in the Fade, in which the setting is also displaying a generally super bloody, gruesome scenery of someone (apparently a statue of Dirthamen, but I’m not sure if that’s supposed to hold any deeper meaning) being stabbed in the back with a sword. A reference to Mythal being betrayed and murdered maybe, given the context of this scene?

(That’s a lot of effing blood.... Sneaky BioWare using level design to tell an untold story?)

And while we’re at it, I just want to point out the level of symbolism on display here, like, literally the first thing you’ll see when entering this part of the Fade, is this giant hand holding the ropes of some hanged corpses like little puppets. It’s quite literally Mythal pulling the strings, directing the course of history and controlling people behind the curtains for ages like a puppeteer. 👀

But let’s go back to the bloody ouroboros on the ground, because that same symbol also appears in relation to someone else's blood.

The Magrallen, a magical device dating back to ancient times, used Maric's Great dragon blood, which he is said to have because many ages ago, his ancestor, King Calenhad made a bargain with a "mysterious witch", *cough* Flemeth *cough*, to drink the blood of a Great dragon, granting him immense powers. Thus making the Theirin bloodline so special (and also part of the reason why Flemeth was so invested in saving Alistair’s butt at Ostagar? lol). BUT.. There is another certain ancient artifact that, if used in a ritual with fire of a Great dragon combined with a source of lyrium, will also grant special powers.

The sarcophagus seen in the latest Blue Wraith and Dark Fortress comic series, which was not only used on Fenris to brand him with lyrium infused markings...

...but also on Shirallas in combination with red lyrium, turning him into something like a mad berserker, that was pretty much invincible as long as he was in possession of the sword produced by the red lyrium idol. It also caused them both to lose almost all of their memories prior to the ritual.

Fenris recalls that the sarcophagus would drew in whatever source of lyrium was being placed onto it (in their cases, lyrium-laced weapons) and carve it into their skin.

Take a closer look at this sarcophagus. Maybe I'm just seeing things, but.. doesn't that design look KINDA familiar?

*takes deep breath* The sarcophagus was also specifically built only for elves, seeing as it will turn humans into walking lyrium time bombs, who will literally blow up minutes after the ritual is performed.

So, to reiterate real quick, in order to perform this ritual and create elven super soldiers, you need what? - a LOT of lyrium (with the color of your choice lol) - a Great dragon (/blood?) and a LOT of FIRE

And I know someone who conveniently had access to both of these things... Mythal, who was not only the first to kill the Titans and mine their blood in HUMONGOUS amounts, as we've seen in the Deep Roads section in Trespasser, but also just so happens to be always depicted as a flippin dragon.

"They made bodies from the Earth. And the Earth was afraid."

"He did not want a body but she asked him to come."

"The lyrium sang thought into being."

"The blood of dragons is the blood of the world."

Why was Mythal called "the Mother"?

Because she was the eldest of the pantheon? Because she was the leader and actual mother of some of the other “gods”? Because of her caring and fierce nature, representing Justice and the “Great Protector” of the People?

OR was it because Mythal was the first to kill the Titans, giving her access to mine their blood and use their lyrium combined with her fire to somehow create bodies for spirits to manifest, essentially "giving birth" to their physical form and binding/enslaving them. But you know what that would also imply? The vallaslin is called “blood writing“ and again, as far as we know, that term was already used back in ancient times. If bodies were created in a similar ritual with something like this sarcophagus, then I feel like lyrium - Titan's blood - was more essential to the elves than we think... Was the vallaslin of ancient times more like infused lyrium markings like we’ve seen on Fenris or Shirallas? Or was it even more than that?

...Leaving it at that for now (because initially, this was the part where it would dawn on me that BioWare must’ve taken a ton of inspiration from Greek mythology and I would go into excruciating detail about that subject for some reason... before I realized that I was going waaay off-topic and decided to make it an entirely seperate post for another day 😂). So.. anyway. *deletes twenty paragraphs of text* lol

Instead, let us look at some other mentions of the serpent in DA lore, or rather different meanings of the ouroboros symbol in mythology and how this could connect to the lore.

In one Dalish legend for instance, Mythal takes the form of a great serpent to fight Andruil, who had fallen to madness from the Void, at the base of a mountain.

Belenas, the mountain which is said to have stood at the center of the world, was destroyed in the battle between Korth the Mountain Father and the serpent Nathramar in a tale of the Avvar, leaving only a vast crater behind which would later become Lake Calenhad when the Lady of the Skies “filled it with her tears” (which I believe was actually Mythal whose blood dripped in the lake, but that’s a whole other story for yet another day.. 👀).

And of course, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about serpents in DA would probably be the very banner of the Tevinter Imperium.

The serpent itself is also often associated with immortality, when it’s biting its tails to form a circle and a spiral when it’s coiled. Both circles and spirals were seen as symbols of eternity.

On the contrary, it can also represent the cyclical nature of life and death, life feeding on itself in the act of creation.

The Chantry believes lyrium to be the emerald waters of the Fade, the very substance of creation itself, from which the Maker fashioned the world.

In Tevinter Nights, the Dread Wolf says this: "You use my Idol carelessly, to vandalize the sea of dreams, and in doing so, you threaten all creation." The red lyrium idol is very likely depicting Mythal’s death. Not to mention the whole creation of physical forms we’ve talked about earlier.

In Nordic myth, evil was symbolised by the serpent (which was actually a dragon) Nidhogg, literally the “Dread Biter” (*wheezing* no kidding), who coiled around one of the three roots of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life.

Mythal’s vallaslin resembles tree branches and in visions of her victory over the Titans in Trespasser, it mentions flourishing vegetation that would make habitability/colonization of the earth possible.

“In this place we prepare to hunt the pillars of the earth. Their workers scurry, witless, soulless. This death will be a mercy. We will make the earth blossom with their passing.”

“For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire.”

“For one moment, there is a vivid image of two overlapping spheres; unknown flowers bloom inside their centers. Then it fades.”

And yet again, fire and blood is being brought up in Mythal’s conquering.

And finally, in ancient Greek mythology (which, as I mentioned before, was very likely the inspiration for a lot of stuff regarding the ancient elves), the ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol not only for the cycle of life, death and rebirth, but also the transmigration of souls.

In most beliefs involving reincarnation, the soul is seen as immortal and the only thing that becomes perishable is the body. Upon death, the soul becomes transmigrated into a new body to live again. The term transmigration means passing the soul from one body to another after death.

Hmmm... Doesn’t that sound familiar? 👀 Looking at the Archdemons.. and Corypheus.. and Mythal.. and the secret of effective immortality...?

I’ve talked a little bit about it on here before, but if we take into account Solas’ very suspicious use of the word “soul” in relation to spirits and everything having to do with the Void/Abyss, also called the “Well of all Souls” in the Canticle of Andraste, the same place where, according to Solas, spirits are reborn and the whole creation of physical forms... then I feel like I’ve found yet another argument for why the spirits are the souls that Solas wants to save by tearing down the Veil.

And if we go back to the very beginning of this post with all of this in mind now... isn’t it interesting how Flemeth and Kieran are standing in the very center of the ouroboros symbol, in a place where the entire level design could be a reference to Mythal’s death, when Flemeth takes the Old God soul from Kieran?

If I ever get around to write my ultimate tinfoil theory on what I think the Old God souls and the Blights truly are, and any of that turns out to be true.. then hoooo boy, let’s just say, Mythal is. s h a d y.

So to conclude, whether it’s intentional or not, no matter what myths or piece of lore we’re looking at, the ouroboros symbol can be connected to so many aspects of what we know of Mythal and the ancient elves (and I feel like this whole post can be summed up with this one meme 😂)...

I know there aren’t any grand revelations here, but I think it was fun to just gather all these tidbits in one place and if you really read all of this, thank you so much and feel free to tell me what you think of all this? 😁

#dragon age #dragon age absolution #mythal #solas #blue wraith #dark fortress #tevinter nights #tinfoil time #writing this post at 1am resulted in me picturing dragon mama Mythal in an apron..#..putting her little spirits into sarcophagi like cookie dough on a baking tray..#..roasting them with her fire on her ancient oven powered by lyrium..#..and out come freshly baked elven bodies lmaoo #I should probably get some sleep....

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