#sith obi-wan is not as good at this whole deception thing as he thinks

[tennessoui]

democratic fic part four

(democratic fic masterlist) (2.5k)

“We should go,” Kenobi says.  His voice shakes as much as his hands do, and Anakin has the almost irrepressible urge to grab them and still them. Hold them. 

“You should never have come down here in the first place,” Anakin bites back, even though his anger is far from productive. They should go. Anakin knows this. Anakin should be leaping at the chance to whisk a willing Kenobi back up to the safety of the Upper Levels. Kenobi is being cooperative. He’s only known the boy for a few days, but he already understands that Kenobi is rarely cooperative at all.

Kenobi’s lip curls up into the beginnings of a sneer, but something freezes suddenly in his face. His eyes go blank as he looks around, and then they start to water.

Oh stars, the boy is crying.

Oh stars, the boy cries so prettily that it makes Anakin feel like a dirty old man to have his hands all over him like this.

“They—” Obi-Wan blinks tear-filled eyes up at Anakin. “They were going to—”

Anakin swallows rather thickly. “Yeah,” he mutters, letting his hands fall to rest on the boy’s shoulders. The Force sings around them, so damned loud Anakin can hardly concentrate. “But uh. You’re safe, alright? I, uh.”

He flicks his eyes back to the crumpled, still forms of Obi-Wan’s would-be attackers, and the reality of what he just did catches up to him like a tidal wave. “I killed them,” he says out loud, eyes widening. Oh fucking Sith’s hells, he just killed a sentient. He could be—arrested or lose his seat in the Senate—he took another’s life—Force, the Jedi would demand he be put in Force suppression cuffs again. Worse, he’d have to sit through their remedial lessons and the Council would lecture him for hours on proper use of the Force. 

At least if he’s behind prison bars, he’d be forced to pay attention this time around, he thinks rather hysterically.

A pair of slender arms wind around his waist, shocking him out of the spiral of his thoughts. “For me,” Obi-Wan murmurs, pressing up into his hug and resting his head on Anakin’s shoulder, face turned into his neck. He can feel the wetness of Obi-Wan’s cheeks from his tears and the softness of his lips brushing his skin as he speaks.

He fits so well into Anakin’s arms, like he belongs there. 

This thought is just as hysterical as his previous ones.

“You killed them for me,” Obi-Wan repeats, nuzzling further into his neck. The way he says it makes it sound like it’s all fucking good, a justification to explain the literal fucking crime Anakin’s just committed. 

A voice that sounds very much like Padmé is screaming at him in his head that no justification can explain away taking someone’s life, but then Obi-Wan pulls back from his one-sided hug and looks up at him again with wet eyes. His face is scratched up and bleeding. His hair is mussed up too from the creature’s claws gripping and twisting it.

It makes such a sense of wrongness well up in Anakin’s chest that he almost chokes on it. 

“They would have hurt me,” Obi-Wan says. “But you killed them before they could.” 

Anakin gets the very strange impression that if Obi-Wan were a loth-cat, he would be purring right now. Purring and rubbing up against him.

Though, he doesn’t have to be part loth-cat for that last part, which he’s already proven.

But it’s not as if the boy is wrong. The Zephrian would have hurt him. Anakin prevented that hurt from coming to fruition.

As if someone else is controlling his body, he raises his hand to Obi-Wan’s face and fits it against his unblemished cheek. They’re both shaking now. Adrenaline leaving the body perhaps. Residual fear from Obi-Wan. Maybe even shock settling in.

“We should go,” Obi-Wan whispers, even as he stands still, face cradled in Anakin’s palm. “This may be the lower levels, but eventually a Coruscanti guard is going to find the bodies.”

The bodies. The bodies that Anakin made.

Obi-Wan’s eyes flare for a second—a trick of the light making them shine golden as he huffs out a breath. “I’m cold,” he says, and he shivers again.

He’s cold because he’s wearing a skimpy little outfit among the shadows of the Lower Levels. He’s cold because more skin is showing than he’s got hidden away. He’s cold because he is not tucked away in his grandfather’s apartments where a pretty little bird like him should be.

Anakin’s nostrils flare even as he drops his hand away from Kenobi’s face to yank his cloak off and drag it over the boy’s shoulders. “We’re leaving,” he bites out, anger rising once more at the sight of the little princeling in front of him.

“That’s what I’ve been—Force!” Obi-Wan’s snappish reply turns into a surprised curse when Anakin takes his elbow and pulls him into motion. “Ow, Anakin!”

But Anakin knows now what Obi-Wan really sounds like when he’s in pain, the high, pitchy gasp he’s capable of making, so he does not ease up on his grasp. He just—he needs to get the boy back where he belongs, away from him, and then he needs to forget all about Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“You’re going home,” Anakin snarls, cutting through the crowd in the opposite direction. The smartest of the people around them get out of the way as soon as they see him coming. Kenobi makes a little noise of surprise when someone shoves into him, pressing closer to Anakin. “And then I’m never going to see you again.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Obi-Wan says, panting slightly as he has to walk twice as fast to keep up with Anakin’s strides. “My grandfather will hardly ban you from seeing m—”

Anakin swings them to a stop and pushes the infuriating princeling up against the closest wall. “That wasn’t an opinion,” he growls, using every inch of his greater height to loom over the boy. “That was an order.”

Kenobi’s eyes are round, wet. There’s none of that fear that had been present earlier, even though he is being held against an alleyway’s disgusting wall by a murderer. 

“You should be afraid,” Anakin mutters, tracing his eyes over the lines of Kenobi’s face. “Why aren’t you afraid.” This isn’t a question either; this is a demand. 

Kenobi blinks up at him and then relaxes into the wall. “You killed them for me,” he murmurs. “And then you gave me your cloak.”

As if that’s an explanation.

Anakn bares his teeth, feeling wild as the Force howls around him.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan adds, dropping his eyes away only to look at him once more from under his fucking eyelashes. “For saving me.”

Some newly awakened beast inside Anakin roars at this, though even he cannot tell if it’s from satisfaction, hunger, or rage.

“I am never going to see you again,” he repeats as firmly as he knows how.

“Yes, Senator,” Kenobi replies. His mouth curls up into a small smile. Anakin wants to bruise him. “But I can’t fly like this, Senator,” he bites at his lip. The cut on his face has stopped bleeding, but it looks wicked. His hair is still a mess. “Please take me home.”

Anakin scowls. The boy calls him senator like it’s some other title altogether. It makes his tongue feel heavy, his chest tight, and his face hot. “I’m flying,” he barks before turning out of the alleyway. He feels wrong-footed. Wrong. 

He killed a sentient today, but all he can think about is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s pretty little face looking up at him as tears beaded along his eyes. All he can think is that he should have kille the Zephrian faster, before they or their monkey could ever touch Kenobi. All he can think is that he wants to make Kenobi cry again.

Kenobi’s speeder-bike is where the boy left it, watched over by the same eager vendor. “No one touched it,” the man swears as soon as he sees Anakin approach.

“Good,” Anakin tells him. “Much obliged.”

He swings his leg up and over the seat grabbing its handles. It’s a new make, of course it fucking is. The little princeling would never fly anything but the newest speeder on the line. It makes him seethe, that Kenobi will never know the poverty Anakin came from, that he’ll never appreciate how fucking good he has it, that he’ll risk everything he has on a whimsical decision. He’ll leave a brand new speeder in a shit alleyway. He’ll parade around the Lower Levels in diamonds and sapphires. He’ll cry for others—

“Hey!” The vendor protests. “Hey, you said—”

“I lied,” Anakin growls back. Kenobi’s arms wrap around his waist again. The boy presses indecently, unnecessarily close. 

“You sleem—”

“You should leave,” Obi-Wan’s voice chimes in, lilting and calm and filled with such a heavy application of sheer power that Anakin’s feet automatically kick the speeder into low gear before he realizes that Kenobi wasn’t commanding him. 

“I…should leave,” the vendor repeats, sounding struck over the head. Anakin feels rather struck too. He’d heard of the Jedi mindtrick, most people had given the prevalence of the Jedi in popular culture, but he’d never seen it in action. He’d never heard it.

It sends a shiver of disgust down his spine in a way the popularized idea of the trick never had. To take control of someone’s mind—to enslave them to your will, even for a second….

Kenobi presses his face against his neck, turning so that his lips slide over his skin. “We should leave too,” he murmurs as if he has not just stolen a man’s free will from him, if only for a moment. 

But then—Anakin killed a sentient tonight. Does he have any room to be disgusted with Kenobi’s actions?

Padmé would despise both of them if she knew what they got up to tonight when they left the gardens. Wouldn’t she? Not that he’d ever tell her.

Anakin’s mouth forms a thin line as he pushes the speeder into motion. The engine purrs near-silently as it’s guided forward. Anakin almost wishes it were louder so he could not hear Obi-Wan’s inhales and exhales—but then, he’d still be able to feel them, plastered to his back as he is.

He flies, with Kenobi’s loose instruction, to the sector and apartments the Count is renting out. All the lights but the ones illuminating the docking bay are shut off, the quarters completely dark.

Anakin pulls the speeder parallel to the docking bay and waits for the boy to slide off and onto the platform.

“Is this the trade then?” Kenobi asks lightly as he dismounts, his hands clutching each other beneath the too-long sleeves of the cloak when he stands straight on the safety of the docking bay. “I keep your cloak, you keep my speeder-bike?”

“I will have one of my aides return it to this address tomorrow,” Anakin says flatly. “But you can keep the cloak.”

“I don’t want your stupid cloak!” The words burst out of Obi-Wan, much louder and more fierce than Anakin expected. The boy’s hands make fists at his sides. 

He recovers quickly though. “Then what do you want, Kenobi? Because I can’t pretend I have the slightest idea!”

“I want—” the boy cuts himself off an scrubs his hands over his face so roughly that the cut across his chin and up his cheek starts bleeding once more. Anakin watches it re-open in the moonlight, Kenobi’s blood appearing more black than red. “I just wanted you to like me,” Obi-Wan finishes with a sniffle, voice breaking halfway through his confession.

Anakin clenches his jaw and looks away, feeling awkward and confused and strangely sympathetic. ��You cannot force another into liking you, Obi-Wan,” he finally replies, cutting his eyes back to the boy’s pathetic figure. “It is not like one of your mind tricks.”

“I know that!” Obi-Wan says, “Of course I know that, I’m not a youngling!”

“You’ve been acting like one this entire night!” Anakin snaps back, sympathy draining away from him to make room for the anger.

Obi-Wan stills, and his eyes flash. “I can show you, Senator,” he says, tone changing completely. Becoming sultry. Dark with promise. He takes a step forward, allowing Anakin’s cloak to shrug off his narrow shoulders and pool around his feet. “I can show you I’m not a youngling…if you want…”

“What—”

Obi-Wan flicks his fingers through the air, and the speeder’s engine is sputters into idleness at the same time Anakin finds himself pushed roughly back on the seat, leaving just enough room for Obi-Wan to slither over his spread legs and sit himself in his lap.

“Kenobi—”

Obi-Wan’s arms wrap loosely around his neck. The only reason Anakin doesn’t shake him off is because he’d probably fall to his death off the docking bay just to be contrary.

That’s the only reason.

“I don’t want you to think of me as a youngling, Senator,” Obi-Wan murmurs, ducking his head and catching Anakin’s eye. “I’m not a youngling, and if we’re being honest, I’m not sure you’ve been looking at me like I’m one either.”

“Get off—”

“Exactly what I want, Senator,” Obi-Wan says, using his grip around Anakin’s neck to rock down against him. It feels good. Stars help him, it feels good.

And Obi-Wan must know it or feel his pleasure in the Force or something, because he smirks slightly, a crack of honest emotion in his seductress mask. 

It sends a pang of arousal up his chest at the same moment he finds the strength to raise Kenobi off of him and push him to the docking bay’s floor.

The little minx falls easily onto his back, spreading his legs wide as he props himself up on his elbows to pout up at Anakin. “Well now I’m just confused, Senator. Do you want me to act like a youngling or act like a man?”

Anakin exhales forcefully, hands clenching into fists on the speeder bike’s handles. His front feels cold; his lap too empty.

Palpatine was right. Kenobi is dangerous. Best avoided. Best to be put out of sight and out of mind. “I want to never see you again.” 

The words come out flat and robotic. He can’t even fucking blame Kenobi for laughing when he hears them. Anakin sort of feels like laughing at himself the entire flight back to his apartments.

When he wakes in the middle of the night, erection straining against the thin material of his sleep pants and Kenobi’s sweet face fading from behind his eyelids, he doesn’t feel much like laughing anymore. Perhaps more like sobbing, as if he were the young temperamental boy out of the pair of them. 

(Poll For The Next Part LIVE)

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I mean, I DO think Obi-Wan is one of his anchors towards selflessness and compassion because Obi-Wan is, quite literally, Anakin's guide to LEARNING selflessness and compassion and how to apply it in his daily life. Obi-Wan was his guide to understanding mindfulness, he's the one who would've been helping him be more tolerant of other people and behaviors and cultures. That's the whole point of him being Anakin's master.

And if you eliminate Ahsoka and Rex and just look at the main narrative of the films, it's pretty clear that while Padme is the catalyst for Anakin's choices in the end, it's Obi-Wan and Palpatine who represent the different paths available to him. Obi-Wan is the path of selflessness, while Palpatine is the path of selfishness. This is a position Obi-Wan has had in the narrative since 1977. Obi-Wan was the "good father" to Vader's "bad father." Obviously, in this case, the person making the choices was Luke, but you get a very similar set-up in the prequels between Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Palpatine.

So within the narrative, Obi-Wan is absolutely his PRIMARY anchor to balance, selflessness, compassion, and the Jedi way. Right up until he makes the choice to betray all of that, of course. It isn't ENOUGH, and that's the whole tragedy of it. Obi-Wan IS the anchor to balance, but the pull of the Dark side was just stronger, Anakin was too susceptible to it. That doesn't make Obi-Wan NOT an anchor nor does it mean that he was a bad anchor. It just isn't enough until Anakin is willing to make the hard choice. That's the whole parallel in the prequels with the Jedi, too. The Jedi aren't doing a single thing wrong, they're just not ENOUGH without the Republic stepping up to do its part and make the hard choices.

But I maintain that the reason we see Anakin still having moments of kindness and selflessness in AOTC, ROTS, and TCW, the reason Anakin is sometimes capable of mindfulness, the reason he's capable of making the selfless choice in ROTJ AT ALL, is because of Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan BEING that anchor keeps Anakin from falling completely even earlier. Without Obi-Wan having the connection with Anakin that he does, without the strength of it, Anakin would likely have been a Sith by AOTC if not earlier. We literally see Anakin REFUSE to obey Palpatine's orders in order to save Obi-Wan on the Invisible Hand. He puts Palpatine's life in danger for Obi-Wan.

I also tend to maintain that Anakin is often at his best when it's Obi-Wan's life on the line. In Landing at Point Rain, Anakin is capable of recognizing that he can't run off to go save Obi-Wan when his ship crashes because that would mean abandoning his men and not only does he recognize that but he recognizes that Ahsoka is STRUGGLING WITH THE SAME THING and is able to help her understand why he's making this choice. In the Deception arc, the first time he's sent out to arrest "Rako Hardeen" he is clearly upset and he kind-of slams "Hardeen" up against a wall a little, but he also explicitly says that he's choosing NOT to kill Hardeen because he knows Obi-Wan wouldn't have wanted him to. It's Obi-Wan's memory keeping him from doing something dark. He falls apart more later, yes, but this initial moment where he still believes Obi-Wan is dead and is arresting Hardeen in an official capacity still shows that Obi-Wan's training is keeping him MORE stable. Even in the films, if we look at AOTC, he runs off to help Shmi and abandons his duty, he is prepared to jump off of a gunship for Padme, but when Obi-Wan is captured on Geonosis, he has to be CONVINCED into going to save him and is more inclined to obey his orders and stay where he is. While you could potentially view that as him loving Obi-Wan less, you could also view it as his love for Obi-Wan being less toxic, less of an attachment, and more healthy than his love for almost anyone else.

So I think there's pretty sufficient proof in both TCW and the films that his relationship with Obi-Wan ultimately makes Anakin a better person, and the fact that it isn't enough doesn't mean that it didn't have an impact on Anakin at all.

[madamrynodm]

Clone Wars/Prequel Characters + Partner Pokémon

Screw it, I’m gonna do this. Gonna break this down by different star wars properties so this post doesn’t climb into the stratosphere...

Anakin + Talonflame - Everything about Anakin screams fire type to me. I can just see baby Anakin learning to podrace with an enthusiastic fletchling trying to keep up. A talonflame racing alongside his jedi starfighter would be sick as hell. Sadly, this pokemon would probably die in his transformation into Darth Vader, but I’ll deal with that later...

Padme + Ninetales - I almost said milotic here, but I think Padme’s got some spirit to her that matches a ninetales. All pretty and elegant (a ninetales would compliment her wardrobe nicely), and vulpix could be common enough that her handmaidens could all have one. Also a fire type to match Anakin :)

Obi-Wan + Gardevoir - Gardevoir just screams “so uncivilized” to me, it’d fit his vibe. Obi-Wan, as The Negotiator, strikes me as the type to have a fairy type. Something classy, maybe cute, but it can KICK ASS when the cards are down

Ahsoka + Grovyle (later Sceptile) - It’s all in the dual-wielding, baby. I think back to Gen 3/Advanced Battle when grovyle would use leaf blade like Ahsoka’s reverse grip. It could evolve later when she gets her white sabers in Rebels, showing how she’s come into her own since leaving the Order

Rex + Shiny Nidoking - Old school clone needs an old school king. He strikes me as the more grounded heh counterpart to Anakin’s high-flying antics, but he’s got the cunning to utilize a poison type well. A shiny to match the 501st, of course

Qui-Gon + Sawsbuck - He’s got grass type energy to me, and it matches his lightsaber. Also, his “go with the Force” vibes fit how sawsbuck changes with the seasons

Plo Koon + Noivern - This is one part “he would totally have a big softie of a pokemon” and one part “great pilot needs a great flying type”. You know this thing would dote on Ahsoka’s grovyle like how Plo dotes on her

Yoda + Kecleon - It just kinda fits. It’s a pokemon that I can see him taking to the Council but also thriving on Dagobah later down the line. It’s deceptively good in battle for looking like a funky little lizard

Wolffe + Lycanroc (midday form) - I mean, this one explains itself. Woof woof

Ventress + Weavile - Another aesthetic choice with this one. It wouldn’t be her original partner Pokémon but one she gained after starting her training with Dooku. Ice type just feels right for her and she can freeze opponents when she runs away

Greivous + Aegislash - A FINE ADDITION TO MY COLLECTION. Seriously though, a steel type that is a sword just... it fits too good

Count Dooku + Roserade - A Pokemon that’s got that regal drip but can also drag your ass. Dooku would have raised this guy from his jedi days and stayed with it when he left the Order. Maybe it wouldn’t have evolved until after he left, representing his rebirth as a sith

Maul + Banette - The man that refuses to die needs a ghost type. Also, the pokedex states that banettes are pokemon that were cast aside and now come back with a vengeance. Sound familiar?

Palpatine + Persian - Definitely referencing Giovanni with this one. But, also, I think Peepaw Palps would probably have a really unassuming normal type while doing his whole chancellor thing. With Order 66, I’d imagine that this persian would die/be removed in some capacity. Then, I’d give him Darkrai

Satine + Milotic - The elegance and outwardly gentle nature of a milotic fits. Milotics are real dangerous in battle, but I can see Satine raising one as a statement about her pacifist ideals. Deliberately choosing not to fight with one hell of a water type. They’ve kicked my ass before so that informed this decision

Hondo + Sableye - Got that cunning of a dark type with an eye for PROFIT! Would definitely discover mega-evolution by accident

Jar Jar + Magikarp - C’mon. Them both being aquatic beings helps too

Note: The Bad Batch will have their own list. I’ll put Echo in both lists. Maybe I’ll have to make a clone list because... gee whiz there’s a lot of them

[whetstonefires]

heavier than a mountain, lighter than a feather

[my take on @misskirby's not-prompt about obi-wan beating palpatine to death with an office chair]

-

Obi-Wan had once touched the cold-burning edge of the Dark Side to give himself the extra edge he needed to cut down the Sith who had cut down his Master. He had fought with rage pushing him, he had fought with all the fear that Qui-Gon lay expiring on the reactor floor, that he might yet win and find himself seconds too late to bring the emergency med-treatment necessary to survive a lightsaber to the chest.

(Not that it had mattered; all he’d gotten from his desperate, hasty win was a few seconds of farewell bereft of comfort, and the burden of Anakin hung around his neck, and oh, he wished his padawan was not a burden. There had been no option but to take him and thus taking him must have been right, but no one should take on a student they did not feel ready for, and he had.)

If he had fought that way this time, he would have lost.

The Sith Master would have done what the apprentice could not, and twisted the Dark Side within him as it rose, and snared him in it, so he could not find his way back to the Light, and used that grip to bear him down with Sidious’ greater power, because the Sith said the Force will free me but it was the way of the Dark to place one will over another by pure force, so even what narrow freedom there was on the dark path was offered to one alone. Even in the best case, he would have been overwhelmed too heavily to fight for more than long enough to finish him.

Perhaps he would not have been killed. Perhaps he would have been kept alive to be used as leverage against Anakin. But assuredly he would not have been able to win.

Obi-wan however had what he would have thought of, if he had allowed himself to think about it, a trick for using his attachments and the desire not to lose them as fuel without reaching into the destabilizing, consuming whirlwind of the Dark Side. It was a dangerous, stupid trick, really, at least the way he used it, although Obi-wan thought of that way as fundamental to being a good Jedi, which would have explained a great deal about him if anyone had known.

The trick was this: it was easy to push yourself to where your limits should have been and beyond using your attachment to a person, without falling into the hungry selfishness of the Dark Side, if you simply did not intend to survive.

When he was thirteen, he had tried to persuade Qui-Gon Jinn, who had not yet been his Master, to use the bomb in his recently fitted slave-collar to blow open a door, killing Obi-wan but allowing him complete the mission, which was not Obi-wan’s mission

It was not difficult to return to that place, that space in himself where serenity came easy because soon there would be nothing left to go wrong or to lose—Anakin had made it difficult, for a long time; Anakin he was obliged to raise and train. Anakin who needed him.

All his obligation to the war and the Council and all the men under his command had not pinned him to himself the way his duty to Anakin had, and—knighting him had been helpful. It had been a relief, to finally cast off that weight. There is no death, there is the Force was much easier to believe of oneself than of those one grieved, and some weeks Obi-wan breathed it in and out with every breath, and there was no fear.

He knew several things, as he entered the Senate through an entrance that was technically, perhaps, a window. One that did not open, at that. That the Chancellor had some kind of failsafe embedded in the GAR’s brains. That the Chancellor was a Sith Lord. That the Chancellor had been using his access to Anakin all these years to hurt his Padawan.

That if he took the time to assemble the rest of the Council and try to stage this as a proper arrest, word would have time to reach Palpatine of Obi-wan having been publicly informed, because Maul was the least subtle sentient Obi-wan had ever had the misfortune of meeting more than once, and that if Palpatine knew the jig was up he would use his fail-safe.

So Obi-wan needed to do this alone.

It was possible, of course, that it wouldn’t be difficult. Sidious was a creature of stealth and insinuation. He spent most hours of his life maintaining a posture of harmlessness. When could he have found the time to do regular lightsaber drills, let alone practice live combat?

But Maul probably feared the man for a reason. So Obi-wan was going to do this as quickly as possible, but he wasn’t going to be hasty.

Spring the trap.

He’d closed himself down in the Force before he got near the Senate building, jumping through the hole he’d sliced into the window with only his physical strength and no Jedi edge, and only when he got near the Chancellor’s office did he reopen his senses just a thread, to make sure there was no one in there meeting with Palpatine whom he needed to keep alive. The Force didn’t slam into him with a warning, which would have to be confirmation enough.

Obi-wan yanked the door open, hurled five primed thermal detonators in the direction of the great ship-like slab of an occupied desk, slammed the ornate portal shut again, and threw himself to the ground at the foot of the wall, as far away as he could get, head tucked under his arms. He was fairly sure he’d seen Mas Amedda in there, standing beside the desk as the Chancellor in his thronelike chair raised his head with a gratifyingly startled look on his face.

Pity. The Vice-Chancellor could probably have explained so much of what had been going on behind the scenes, all this time.

The blast left the office door half-shattered, belching smoke, but Obi-wan escaped with just one splinter, not terribly large, in the back of one calf. His robes and boots had absorbed the rest of the shrapnel that had made it that far. He tugged it out as he got up—no time to do anything more, it wasn’t bleeding much. He drew a deep breath of half-clean corridor air and dashed into the opaque ruin that had been the Chancellor’s office, senses fully unfurled now that the time for stealth was over. Though in the interest of not being an irresistible target, he did not ignite his lightsaber just yet.

The Force guided him through the smoke, and he brought his sword to light even as he swung it through the murk.

It stopped, humming, against a bar of red light that hissed into being at the last instant, and that felt equally inevitable.

“You.” Sheev Palpatine’s face looked like a Sith Lord’s now, twisted with hate and lit red from below. And, gratifyingly, somewhat scorched. His hair had sizzled from the heat, and his left arm seemed to have something at least mildly wrong with it. Obi-wan hoped the explosions had affected at least one of his legs, as well, since his own maneuverability was cut by the shard of door to the calf.

“Me indeed, Chancellor,” he said, taking advantage of his two-handed grip to bear down against the block with extra force. Palpatine bore up admirably, but as his snarl tightened it was clear that it was not without cost. “Or should I say, Lord Sidious?”

The smoke was starting to thin, leaking away out of the shattered room. Sidious was still behind his ruined desk with its weakly sparking console, which seemed to have taken much of the impact for him—he was standing, anyway, sadly. Mas Amedda’s corpse, on the far end of the desk from the one Obi-wan had circumnavigated, was one of the things that was still smoking. Most of the brocade and other decorative fabric in the room must have been thoroughly treated with fire-retardant, but he had not been.

“I thought you might have learned my true name,” Palpatine said, far too complacently for someone whose long deception had been uncovered and who was staving off death one-handed. “But what brought you racing here in such haste?”

“Well, you see, they used to call me Sith-killer because of Maul, and since that’s been proven regrettably in error, I thought I had better—” Sidious tried to fling him back against the opposite wall with a sharp jerk of his wounded hand, and Obi-wan had to push back with the whole of his will and stance to slide back only a few feet.

This had freed their lightsabers, though, and Sidious chopped low with a terrible speed. Obi-wan leapt clear, knowing the blood soaking into the pale fabric of his pants was betraying the weakness in his leg—Anakin had had a point, he admitted grudgingly, about black hiding all kinds of stains.

For better and for worse.

He tried to catch Sidious with an overhead slash while he was up, to keep that red lightsaber busy for the most part, and when it was intercepted used the force of that impact to somersault back in a momentary return to his master’s old Ataru style—not too far, though, at all costs he must prevent the Sith Master’s escape.

Sidious wouldn’t need to get far, just to a room with a working holo transmitter, to destroy everything.

He flung himself back in.

Palpatine sidestepped his next attack, parried another, stepped back with the third. His single arm was telling against him, and while he was regrettably fast his movements were stiff enough that he had clearly taken at least one other hurt. Probably somewhere in the right hip. Obi-wan stayed on the offensive—it was how he’d beaten Maul, after all, though he was at pains to avoid overreaching to the point of recreating Anakin’s loss to Dooku.

His attacks did more damage to the sparking desk, bisected the thronelike monstrosity of a chair, which turned out under all the gilt, padding, and chromium to be mostly of durasteel, got close enough to put additional charred rents in Palpatine’s ornate sleeves. Nearly a minute had passed since he threw those detonators, and Sidious was still alive. Too long.

“Really,” said the politician, dropping his stance to one that would allow him to parry more from the shoulder, his first hint of fatigue. His style was not quite Makashi even as he adapted to the one-handed approach that was clearly not his preference, but there were some notes to it that rang so strongly of Dooku they could come from nowhere else. “What do you hope to achieve?”

“You won’t have Anakin,” Obi-wan said, the plot that had been in retrospect laid so horribly bare with just a few sentences from Maul, supported by a few more from some of their most trusted troopers, put together with a hundred hints and oddities and he should have guessed on his own.

Sidious grinned, the amiable wrinkles of his face lying deeper and more correct, somehow, in this attitude of wild, infinite gloating. “Possessiveness, Master Jedi?”

“No,” said Obi-wan, and it was true because he had given Anakin up, given everything up before he came here. He was holding onto nothing, he was an object in free-fall but not falling, because he was at exactly the right place and momentum at the outer edge of a gravity well that would let him remain at a constant height.

Orbits degraded, given time, if not carefully maintained. And if they were disrupted sharply enough it meant a violent, flaming spiral down into explosive doom, or sometimes out into the fathomless dark. This was not a true, secure serenity like a Jedi should strive for. But it would serve. For today, it would serve.

He fell on Sidious again in a flurry of blows, pushing his physical advantage, but although the Chancellor was clearly straining to keep up this defense, his stamina continued to fail to run out or even noticeably decline, as though he had learned to subsist on some constant well of the Force alone.

Probably he had, because it was welling up out of him, filling the room, an endless pit of the Dark that had lain concealed like a trap under pinned canvas and scattered leaves all this time. He was drawing heavily upon the Dark Side now and that wasn’t precisely goodbut it was promising.

He was beginning to develop something that was not quite optimism or confidence but approached both by the time the progress of the humming, crashing process of the duel took them past the far end of the desk, back into sight of what had been Mas Amedda. Palpatine angled his next fractional retreat toward the corps, away from the cracked and blackened windows, avoiding the treacherous footing of a shattered vase that had probably been a valuable antique.

Obi-wan tried to take advantage of the change in angle in the next rapid, whirring clash of lightsabers.

Unlike every other time they had crossed blades this duel, Sidious simply—shut his off in the moment before contact.

Obi-wan had committed a little too much of his weight to the blow to abort it entirely. Sidious ducked away from the remainder with a sinuous grace even as he activated his weapon again, now on the inside of Obi-wan’s guard—trakata, executed with terrible excellence.

The need for the dodge was the trakata maneuver’s great weakness, and gave Obi-wan time to avoid the worst of the stroke, but even still the red lightsaber clipped him across the wrist—not a clean sweep slicing off the hand entire, but a glancing blow, that seared through the skin and flesh and took a significant bite out of the ulna.

Obi-wan didn’t try to repress his strangled scream, and Sidious leaned into it in the Force, pressing at the pain, stoking it and encouraging it to drag him down into the Dark, where he would be the Sith Master’s plaything. He was smirking now, more deeply and honestly than ever, a laugh rising into his mouth, for if Master Kenobi had had a slight edge in their fight with two hands to one, with the Jedi’s primary weapon-hand incapacitated, the Sith would surely dominate.

In that moment, Obi-wan moved to rebalance the odds. His blue lightsaber chopped down—not onto Sidious’ flesh, which it was clear he guarded with the preternatural awareness of a being whose own self was as valuable as all the Galaxy else, but to sheer through the emitter end of the crimson lightsaber.

It spat and burst but, unfortunately, tragically failed to explode.

As Sidious raised his eyes from the ruined weapon looking like he might explode in its place out of pure outrage, Obi-wan brought his sword back up to go for the decapitating blow now that the Sith had no weapon to block with, but in that moment Sidious’ burnt and broken hand jabbed up, and shot a gout of lightning into his face.

His back arced so violently it threw him off his feet, and it was all Obi-wan could do to keep hold of his lightsaber in his good hand and deactivate it as he went down, to avoid doing himself a worse injury than Sidious had yet managed. The lightning followed him down, scouring its way from just beside his left eye down every nerve ending he had in a screaming, jerking chorus of pain.

The deep lightsaber burn on his right wrist somehow hurt more now than it had to receive, but the force of his constant convulsions kept him from screaming again.

Then it stopped. He had no idea how long it had been, and wondered if Palpatine had become too fatigued to keep up the electrocution. There had to be a limit to how long he could maintain that kind of power output. His chest was heaving, trying with animal need to make up for lost oxygen. Smoke and the scent of dead Chagrian weighed down his sensory world, since his eyes declined to open and most of his body would only say pain.

The whisper of expensive Senate slippers crunched toward him over the rubble of the ruined office with a surefootedness that no one would have expected of the elderly Chancellor. At least he was still here; Obi-wan had angered him enough to bother sticking around to kill him rather than running off to activate the troops.

Or maybe he was confident he could spin this whole event to his benefit—Obi-wan had destroyed the security cameras that would have recorded his Sith activities, after all. Maybe he would say Master Kenobi had been tragically killed defending him from the dreadful Sith Lord. Maybe he would ask Anakin to become his constant protector in Obi-wan’s memory. Anakin would do it.

He was struggling to turn his lightsaber back on and raise it, though getting it between him and the next round of lightning seemed unlikely when he was exposed in a supine position, when Palpatine kicked it. Kicked his hand, actually, so hard at least one bone cracked and the lightsaber went flying.

This weapon is your life.

“Should I summon it back and use it to kill you?” Palpatine murmured, with a deadly, vicious good humor that suggested he knew very well Obi-wan had no backup coming, that the only interruption they could expect would be Commander Fox and his men in red, here to protect the Chancellor. “Or should I step on your throat until you breathe your last? Or should I keep you alive and put you on trial, and drag the name of the Jedi in the mud through you, so that when your Order falls it will be your name that the Galaxy uses to call the killing just?”

Horror twisted in Obi-wan’s chest and Palpatine chuckled, a whispering foul sound that still resembled his polite politician’s laughter. “Yes, very good. I’ll make young Skywalker believe you tried to kill me out of pride and greed and because you despised him, until he curses your memory. Everything that happens now will be your doing.”

The rage and the fear that he had left behind when he entered were flaming up now in Obi-wan, the orbit deteriorating, the gravitational pull of abandoning them and letting the Order down and ruining everything and too little, too proud, the same hopeless arrogant padawan and of that terrible, world-tearing no dragging him down to shatter in fire against them, like he had on Naboo all those years ago but so much more utterly and irrevocably and--this wasn’t all him.

He sucked in his breath, shaking through teeth still clenched too convulsively tight to pull apart for a witty retort to all that poison, and melted away inside himself.

Over him, Sidious frowned, feeling the Jedi escape his grip in the Force. “Are you dying already, Master Kenobi?”

He thought Sidious had mentioned summoning his lightsaber through the Force to encourage him to try it. It wouldn’t be impossible. He knew the feel of it in the Force like he did few other things in the Galaxy; he didn’t need sight to reach for it.

But it was too small, and too far away, and his senses were too scorched and blasted by that awful lightning. Long before his weapon could make it to his hand, Sidious could kill him, even with no working lightsaber of his own. He couldn’t win that way, or even (that far lesser goal) live.

Instead, Obi-wan grabbed for the closest large object he knew to look for that wasn’t a corpse: the sliced-loose upper half of that baroque monstrosity of a desk-chair, conveniently bulky and only a few long steps away, just behind the desk he’d fallen from behind.

It came, and in coming swept Palpatine’s legs from under him, knocking him not quite sprawling, and then the curve of it had smacked into Obi-wan’s outstretched left palm, jolting the broken bone which did not matter in the slightest, and he rolled up onto his knees, graceless but fast, the slab of steel and leather still moving with the momentum that had dragged it to him, and clobbered the sitting-up Sith Lord across the face with it.

One of Obi-wan’s many faults was his tendency to take a vicious glee in striking low his enemies, but he did not think he had ever taken quite the joy from any beautifully executed maneuver that he did from watching Palpatine knocked to the floor by a slab of office chair. Obi-wan lunged after him, not bothering with niceties like getting to his feet, and brought the chair-slab down on his face again, this time with the strength of both arms—his right hand was mostly numb but for hurting, only the thumb and forefinger would move at all, and it was very weak, but none of that interfered with placing his whole forearm against the upholstery and slamming the searing-hot, bare metal inner side down.

There was a crunch, probably nose, and then instead of diminishing the awful seething presence of the Dark Side rose like a hurricane, and Obi-wan felt his throat close as from a powerful phantom hand, cutting off all breathing.

This caused him not an instant’s hesitation, because he had come here fully intending to die.

He raised the sheered-off slice of chair, adjusted the angle so the sharp edge where he’d cut the durasteel was pointing down, and aimed for the throat.

The ensuing explosion threw him after his lightsaber, and he knew nothing after hitting the wall.

[crispyjenkins]

JangObi soulmate mark au where all Mandalorians know/can sense when someone is marked with their Mandalor [with Jango leading Mandalore as Mandalor after Jasters abdication and no clan wars]

(this is late because it turned into A Thing. and i love the Thing, but it’s still late.

i combined these ‘cause i got them within a day of each other and i thought, what’s better than an undercover meet-cute? undercover meet-cute with soulmates (ノ*´◡`) also this is a meet-ugly. anyways.

just want to touch on that this ‘verse absolutely includes poly soulmates of many forms and numbers, jangobi just happen to have a mono relationship in this based on the prompts 😌)

 “Your sur'gaankar will not share your symbol, you cannot simply look for a match, kih’vod,” Arla teases, poking at Jango’s bare chest where the head of his roughly-drawn mynock leers at them from over his heart. “Marks are companions, not twins; no one soul should be more important than another, so the Ka’ra gave us two. Who knows what your sur'gaankar's is, it could be of something that hasn’t even happened to you yet.”

  Seven year-old Jango wrinkles his nose down at his soulmark like it’s personally offended him. And it has. “Why the kriff do you get a beskad from your sur'gaankar and I get a bloody mynock?”

  Arla bursts into laughter and hopes their parents aren’t listening.

-

  “I beg your pardon.”

  The woman’s grin only widens, leaning right into Obi-Wan’s space, and he hadn’t really counted on running into any supercommandos until Sundari. “‘Haven’t seen your crest before,” the woman repeats, knocking on the painted crest on his chestplate. He had let Master Nu pick it for this assignment, he didn’t want to accidentally end up with a known clan symbol and have to explain any familial relation; she had said it hadn’t been used since before the Coruscant Temple was built, so there shouldn’t be any confusion. 

  “And,” she had added, tapping two fingers on the side of his neck, “it matches you rather nicely, doesn’t it?”

  And he supposes it does, a crane wrapped around a spike of wheat, but he now wishes it were something perhaps a bit less memorable.

  “My clan hasn’t been back to Mandalore space in a few generations,” Obi-Wan lies with his best apologetic smile, easily charming the other Mando as he tucks his helmet under his arm and tries to turn back to the ration stall he’d been restocking from. The Keldabe marketplace bustles around them, and Obi-Wan thinks it’s a miracle the woman had even spotted his armour through the crowd, with how tightly species of all sorts press together and jostle them along their way.

  “I’m Kryze clan,” she announces, wriggling around an Esperion to plant herself next to Obi-Wan, giving the rations a passing glance before focusing back on her captive audience.

  He holds back a sigh, pulling up his mental clan map that he had studied on the jump to Mandalore. “I’ve only been planetside for an hour,” he admits with that same smile as he pays for his box of jerky and taps a little salute to the stall owner. “I thought the Kryzes were further up towards Sundari?”

  Kryze bounces along behind him, red hair catching the sunlight quite nicely; Obi-Wan can’t fathom why she’s still following him. “Most of the family is, yeah, I’m the only supercommando. Where’re you from, burc’ya? Your accent sounds funny.”

  He gives a bewildered laugh at that; had she never been to the Core? Both ducking into a dimly-lit tech shop, Kryze waves at the Mon Calamari behind the counter like old friends. 

  “‘Family’s split between Coruscant and Odos,” Obi-Wan decides on, which would explain both his Core accent and why his Mando’a is more slurred than what’s spoken on Mandalore. “You got a first name to go with that clan?”

  Kryze’s smile turns playful, not quite flirtatious, and Obi-Wan wonders if she’s already found her starmark. “Bo-Katan, but Haat’ade can call me Bo. And are you?”

  He raises a brow through a shelf of droid parts. “Am I what?”

  “Haat’ade,” Bo-Katan grins, staying closer to the door while Obi-Wan collects a few upgrades for his speeder. “You don’t seem like a Journeyman Protector, but you’re clearly a fighter. So. Haat Mando’ade?”

  “Can I be Haat’ade if I haven’t answered my Mand’alor’s call even once?” It’s an amusing thought, to be seen as Mando enough to qualify for the ruler of Mandalore’s supercommandos; he doubts Bo-Katan would be quite so kind if she knew he wears their armour in deception. “No, burc’ya, one cannot pick and choose from the Resol’nare. I’m as good as dar’manda out here.”

  Humming in thought, she skips to join him at the counter to watch him try to haggle a lower price on his goods. “To be fair, you said your clan hasn’t been around other Mando’ade in a while, ‘lek? Hells, do you even know who the current Mand’alor is?”

  Obi-Wan doesn’t answer until he knows he’s not being ripped off by the Mon Calamari, and slips his new goggles around his neck. “Only his crest,” he says, and it’s only slightly a lie: the Republic has little to no sway in Mandalore space, he doubts anyone further than Concordia knows the Mand’alor’s full name. “Tell me, are you part of the recruiting committee?”

  Bo-Katan throws her head back to laugh, and it’s a good laugh, bright and sincere, still a little childish at the edges. “No, but I liked the look about you,” she teases, leaning on the counter. “You seemed... warm.”

  He lifts a brow again, wondering if maybe she’s Force sensitive. “I’ve never been called that before.” Which also isn’t exactly a lie.

  “Mm, maybe I just liked finding another redhead.” She smiles and wrinkles her nose cutely. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you didn’t give your name, stranger. Secrecy will only get you so far here.”

  “And if I wasn’t planning on staying?” 

  “Then you should still tell me your name because I asked so nicely.” Batting her eyelashes, she sets her helmet on the counter to cross her arms, the Mon Calamari grumbling but not telling them to leave just yet. 

  “Vhett,” Obi-Wan laughs, securing his new parts and his credit pouch in his pack so he doesn’t lose them to the sticky fingers in the marketplace. “Benyamin Vhett.”

  When he looks back at his new companion, her smile has disappeared for a troubled sort of blankness, as she looks at him even more critically.

  Then her surprise and glee is a flash in the Force, so bright it’s blinding as she launches back to her feet, grin returning with such a fury that Obi-Wan doesn’t even stop her from getting right back into his space.

  She must find some sort of answer in his face, because she puts a hand on his cheek with her eyes positively shining. “Utreekov!” she exclaims gleefully, “How could you string me along like that?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It figures you’d be just as difficult as him,” she says, spinning around to snatch up her helmet before grabbing his arm and yanking him back onto the street. “You should have told him when you got here, he— Corellian Hells, is this why he’s been disappearing off into Hutt Space?”

  Something in the Force tells Obi-Wan to hold his tongue, to let Bo-Katan guide him through the market as quickly as the crowds allow — some citizens even bounce out of their way once they get a good look at Bo-Katan. Obi-Wan’s been a Shadow too long to get lost even in a busy city like this, but he still has to concentrate to memorise the path she takes him, out of duracrete into clay and wood buildings that bake under the sun and whisper history far more alive than Obi-Wan is used to.

  She kicks open the door to an ancient-looking cantina that Obi-Wan doesn’t have time to read the name of before Bo-Katan is dragging him bodily inside and shouting over the din, “Mand’alor! I’ve got your sur’gaankar!”

  Something like terror lodges in Obi-Wan’s throat as every commando in the cantina freezes and stops talking all at once, staring at them in the sunlit doorway like the second coming of the Sith. Then all heads snap just as quickly towards a table near the back — all except one man lounging at the table who still stares at Obi-Wan with more than surprise, and this is where Obi-Wan’s entire mission falls apart. This is where every commando realises Obi-Wan isn’t whoever Bo-Katan seems to think he is, this is where they call his bluff and he blows his entire cover, and Quinlan is going to make dick jokes at his funeral.

  Bo-Katan smirks and marches right for the man, pulling a shell-shocked Obi-Wan through the cantina until she releases him to lean over the man’s table— the Mand’alor’s table. Obi-Wan wonders if he can somehow make it out one of the windows before anyone grabs him.

  “So, ori’vod,” Bo-Katan drawls, clearly far from meaning it affectionately, “when were you gonna tell the rest of the Haat’ade that you’d already found your soulmark, hm?”

  Ohh, and there goes Obi-Wan’s breathing. 

  This “ori’vod” blinks, first at Bo-Katan, and then at Obi-Wan, and he just had to be attractive, didn’t he. The Force couldn’t give Obi-Wan one break and make him someone, anyone, that didn’t shine quite like he does in the low-light?

  “I have never seen this man before in my life.”

  Obi-Wan lets out his breath, mentally preparing himself for the whole cantina to descend on him. 

  But Bo-Katan just stares back at the Mand’alor and, Obi-Wan looking around at other commandos, everyone seems to be in disbelief of him, and not— not Obi-Wan. Which is just a strange cherry to top his already frankly ridiculous day, especially when Bo-Katan leans closer to her Mand’alor to squint at him.

  “So he’s just some other ‘Vhett’, then?”

  Obi-Wan licks his lips. “Bo—”

  “No, no, I wanna hear what excuse he tries to come up with when we can all feel it.”

  Embarrassment prickles Obi-Wan’s neck, and feels even less in control than he had a moment ago; he doesn’t remember learning anything about commandos being able to feel things about their leader, but to be fair, he can’t remember much of any of his lessons right now.

  A Mando in gold armour across the table from Jango takes off their helmet, revealing a Rattataki that stares him down with a meaning far deeper than Obi-Wan is privy to just then. 

  “Mand’alor,” they say, tapping their first knuckle over the left side of their chest, and Obi-Wan’s neck prickles again. 

  And then every commando in the cantina does the same, tapping the chest of their beskar’gam and nodding towards Jango, as if one entity, as if they had rehearsed it; the prickle turns to a burn, Obi-Wan darting a hand up to his throat as something shifts in the Force.

  Bo-Katan finally seems to be catching on that they truly don’t know each other, but instead of angry, she perks up and yanks Obi-Wan closer to the table. “He’s from Odos, he has no idea what’s going on,” she says as Obi-Wan stumbles over his own feet. “Congrats, Mand’alor, I found your sur’gaankar for you.”

  Obi-Wan winces before he allows himself to finally meet Jango’s gaze, and doesn’t know what to make of what he finds: a curious sort of trust, disbelief but acceptance, and it’s only when Jango gets to his feet that Obi-Wan realises no one had said his name. That the wheat fronds over his collarbones and around his neck have never bothered him before. 

  That he’s probably going to have to call Quinlan to finish the job in Sundari. 

Mando’a: sur’gaankar — “soulmate”, lit. “picture heart” from sur’gaan “picture” and kar’ta “heart” kih’vod —”little sibling” (’vod’ most often used in fandom as “brother”; ‘kih’ intentionally used instead of ‘ika’) Ka’ra — an ancient Mandalorian story, ruling council of fallen kings, “stars” beskad — traditional Mandalorian curved saber made of beskar. burc’ya — friend (also used ironically or sarcastically) Haat’ade — lit. “true child of Mandalore”, True Mandalorians (slang shortened to Haat'ad/e)  Mand’alor — “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore. Resol’nare — “Six Actions”, the six tenets guiding Mando life ‘lek — “yeah”, short for elek, or “yes” utreekov — “idiot,” “fool,” lit. “empty head” ori’vod — “big brother”, either older sibling or a special friend (used here ironically) beskar’gam — Armour made of beskar, “Mandalorian Iron” that was actually probably a steel alloy

[space-girl-and-droids-art]

Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark- Book Review

“Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark” Is an anthology of stories narrating some of the arcs of the clone wars from the perspective of the characters. It gives more details and depth to some episodes, as well as giving us information that makes us have a different view of the events.

This is not exactly a review, but mostly my reactions to reading the book. I do recommend it, if you loved the clone wars and want another perspective on some of the arcs this will be a good read. That said, this does contain spoilers for the clone wars.

#1 “Sharing the same Face” -Jason Fry (from the episode “Ambush”)

Okay this was once one of the most light-hearted episodes of the series and now I ended up crying. I did not expect an order 66 reference here. Every time Yoda addresses Dooku is painful. Seeing how Yoda perceives the clones is really heart-warming, but knowing how it all turns out in the end is really sad and during the whole text you are really aware of that. In the show you kind of forget about what’s going to happen for a while, but this text just keeps you thinking about it constantly. It was a good read, I loved it. I found it really interesting knowing Yoda approaches the clones the same way he approached his students at the temple, and knowing what his opinions on the clone army it was a good detail. Loved this one.

Did I care that much about this episode before? No. But watching it right after reading this made me cry for half an hour. (I am a really emotional person, so take this with a grain of salt.)

#2 “Dooku Captured”- Lou Anders (From the episodes “Dooku Captured” and “Gungan General”.

This was a funny read, and the fact that the events are narrated by Dooku Himself made it even more hilarious. It’s supposedly a holorecording Dooku was doing for Sidious, and you can tell by his words that he was so done. Poor Dooku deserves a meditation day after it. You can tell how annoyed he was by the whole situation and his perception of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. They really are bothering for the count. I’m surprised he didn’t retire after this event, man’s gotta be really tired. Also, when they were tied together, they just shared a braincell and most of the time, Dooku was the one carrying it. The love he had for Qui-Gon does not extend to rest of the lineage, clearly.

At first it was really slow, but after they get captured by the pirates it just gets funnier. Good story to read after the sadness the previous text gave me.

Also, the fact that Dooku canonically records himself venting to Sidious is hilarious to me. Like, can you imagine being Palpatine and receiving daily vlogs from your apprentice ranting and complaining about Anakin and Obi-Wan? Dude was tired, of course he would let Anakin decapitate him in the end.

#3 “Hostage Crisis”- Preeti Chhibber (from the episode “Hostage Crisis”)

For an Anidala shipper this is a must read, because you will know exactly what Anakin thinks of his wife and how he views Padmé. This text was more Anakin centric (I believe the next one is Padmé centric) and it was a delight. I haven’t read much in canon about stuff that involves Anakin’s feelings so this was really good.

The scene from the beginning of the episode? Is hotter when you read it, trust me. For a clearly SFW text, this was intense. I’m pretty sure I can guess all of Anakin’s kink only by what was implied in his thoughts. Is also really sweet to see how much she cares, but also know why everything went downhill at the end. Good retelling.

#4 “Pursuit of Peace”- Anne Ursu (from the episodes “Heroes on both sides” and “Pursuit of Peace”)

I really love Padmé Amidala. My favorite senator. If you have seen my review of Queen’s Peril you KNOW How much I love her, and even when this text was written by another author, I still got the same feeling about her. Padmé is amazing. This arc is one of my favorite of the Clone wars because it’s the arc that let you see that it wasn’t a black and white kind of situation, both sides were being played. An none of them were really worrying about their people, they were in it for the money. I love reading Padmé’s thoughts on the whole situation. Also, the way this story is written makes what went down with Padmé and Anakin in the third episode make more sense and more in character. She is a strong, good, and smart politician. But she is also motivated to see the light in the dark and preserve the light, it gave me major Qui-Gon from “Master and Apprentice” vibes. It did make me tear up a little, because when I finished it, I realized everything she did was for nothing. She was too kind in a galaxy already so corrupted.

Also, Palpatine stop calling her “my child” you disgusting sith lord, I know you are responsible for her death and so do you, so shut the f up. Padmé was doing everything right and she hasn’t done anything wrong in her life whatsoever.

“Just because there’s darkness in something does not mean you do not love it. You show it love, you show it light, and you hope it chooses the light”.

She was talking about the senate but you just KNOW she isn’t really talking about the senate.

This story re-telling broke me, just as the first one. I am not ready for the next one. Do I have to? Man, I really don’t want to go through Umbara again.

#5 “The Shadow of Umbara” -Yoon Ha Lee (from the episodes "Darkness on Umbara," "The General," "Plan of Dissent," and "Carnage of Krell”)

I was, indeed, not ready for it. It doesn’t really add much to the story… except pain. Rex’s pain, to be precise. Let my man mourn Hardcase :C I just wanted to give him a hug, him and all of the clones to be honest. Fives was as good as always, but re-reading his lines knowing what happens to him made me sad. I hate Pong Krell, get you dirty hands off my babies. I don’t think this re- telling made me sadder, but that’s only because it was just as painful as the episodes.

Dogma my beloved, you deserve everything.

I love how this arc develops Rex character and his attitude towards the war in general.

#6 “Bane’s Story”- Tom Angleberger (from the episodes “Deception”, “Friends and Enemies”, “The Box” and “Crisis on Naboo”.)

Is Cad Bane the Regina George of the Bounty Hunters?

The answer is yes. Yes, he is.

I wasn’t really excited to read about Cad Bane at first, I felt that everything that had to be said about the guy had already been stated in the show. He was just a mean bounty hunter in space. But this was actually pretty funny to read, specially because it’s narrated in first person from Bane’s perspective on what happened with Kenobi. And it’s hilarious.

He is basically re telling the events to Boba and Bossk while he is in jail again. During his story you can learn a few things about him as well, specially what his thoughts are in relation to some important topics. You would think he is only concerned about the money and blasting people, and you would be right. But he also does have an opinion on what’s happening on the galaxy at large, on the jedi, on Palpatine and Dooku. But those opinions don’t affect how he gets the job done. It was really interesting seeing him internally judging Kenobi for being a liar, and knowing something is wrong with the jedi order if they pulled that off. He knows everyone is being deceived, but doesn’t know how. That’s why he doesn’t care, and doesn’t get involved on anything unless you offer to pay him. Money moves him, but not the people who has it.

It was a good story, and I also liked to see how Bane respects Boba and sees him as the one that’s going to take his place eventually.

We know from the deleted episodes that Cad Bane was supposed to be killed by Boba Fett, but we haven’t seen that in canon yet. I really hope they answer what happened to Cad Bane in the current canon, I would love to see that in a comic, or in a book.

#7 “The lost nightsister”- Zoraida Cordova (from the episode “Bounty”)

I love Asajj Ventress for a million reasons and this story just made me love her even more. It’s the same story from the episodes but with an insight of what Ventress is thinking about. Which is unsurprisingly very depressing but the story itself turns out to be pretty uplifting.

It’s about her thoughts on what happened after the massacre of her sisters, her family, and how she deals with everything she had already lost. How lonely and worthless she feels. But during the course of the story, we see her reconnecting with who she is, and learning her value. Learning she is a powerful person, master or not.

It was also really sad to see how she compared herself to others. She was really sad and angry that nobody cared about what happened to her people, no one that cared about her. She saw how people wanted the girl in the box back and thought about how nobody would ever do the same for her and it was sad.

I also find very depressing that she couldn’t mourn her family.

But then she said this:

“What made her so special? What made her worth—No. She couldn’t think that way. This girl’s worth didn’t diminish her own. “

And like, I’m 100% rooting for her here.

Also, I love that once she realized the girl from the box was being smuggled to be essentially a child bride, she didn’t hesitate to scam the old creep. She may be an assassin, but during the course of this story you learn that she is disgusted by men who take advantage of female beings. I also love her internal monologue after the guy was bothering her in the cantina and how she just knows that if she can defend herself, she will do it with no hesitation.

Lovely story, I love knowing more about Ventress. Beautifully written.

#8"Dark Vengeance”-Rebecca Roanhorse (from the episodes "Brothers" and "Revenge")

It’s so on brand for Darth Maul to have his entire story be about Kenobi. It’s narrated by him, but directed towards you, like he is telling the reader a story. That in some stories could be like an awkward thing, but here it was well done. I love Maul and like, I could picture us having that conversation, well, me listening to him monologuing.

I really liked that he started telling the story from the events that happened on Naboo. You get to really see what happened from his perspective and understand why his hatred of Kenobi only grows over time.

Also, Darth Maul was like “I can excuse murder, but I draw the line at being rude”. Which is so morally wrong, but very fitting to his character. He is really upset at Kenobi for not caring about what happened to him. From what I gathered of the info that he let us know, he would probably like it more if Kenobi killed him instead of having to spend all those years in the garbage. Nobody cared for him enough to go and check up on what happened to him. That doesn’t excuse murder though.

The interactions he had with Kenobi let us know that it was not very jedi like the way he treated Maul, ignoring his rage and letting it consume him. Obi-wan just kept adding fuel to the fire because he was also really angry at Maul for the murder of Qui-Gon, not realizing that that would only make Maul be even angrier. And we know how that ended up for Satine Kenobi.

Final thoughts: Savage, I love you.

#9 "Almost a Jedi"-Sarah Beth Durst (from the episode "A Necessary Bond")

I thought this story was going to be from Ahsoka’s point of view. It was not.

I’m not mad at it though.

The story itself does focus on Ahsoka but it’s narrated by Katooni. It’s basically about how much she adores Ahsoka and wants to be like her, but also doubts herself a lot. She thinks she is not good enough to be a jedi. But her experiences both with Ahsoka and with Hondo Ohnaka makes her change her mind.

I want to say that I love the fact that it’s canon that she drew a poster of Ahsoka for her room because she really admired her that much it's so wholesome. It’s cute, and also let us see the perception the younglings had of Ahsoka.

Also, the bond between Hondo and Katooni is really wholesome. This also made me realize that this encounter with a young jedi is the reason he is immediately friendly with Ezra in Rebels. Ezra and Katooni do share similar personality traits sometimes.

Deep diving in Wookiepedia after reading this I found out that Hondo’s ship in Galaxy’s Edge is called “The Katooni” and now I’m sad thinking he was probably devastated when he learnt about Order 66 and what Vader did to the younglings. Great now I’m angsty about a chaotic evil space pirate.

I think it was confirmed by Dave Filoni that those kids are dead now. May the force be with them, they were good enough jedis.

#10 "Kenobi's Shadow"-Greg van Eekhout (from the episode "The Lawless”)

This is the re-telling of one of the saddest clone wars episodes. The episode just lets you think that everything’s going to be alright, that they are going to survive together, lets you hope that they take off just in time… and then it doesn’t happen. I’m still not over Satine’s death. And this made it even sadder. There were so many points their story could’ve gone differently, but their story was already at an end.

This is in third person but heavily focusing on Kenobi’s thoughts along the way. He really was close to turn to the dark side, but his love for Satine and his grief made him not surrender to it. But he felt an anger, a justified one, but an anger that I have never seen in a jedi other than Anakin Skywalker. And we all know what happens to him.

It was a good but sad reading. I won’t be reading this one again. It’s too much. I knew what was going to happen and it still hit me hard. I wish things would’ve gone differently for the both of them. I wonder if we will get flashbacks to this in the Kenobi show.

Also, I really need an Obi-Wan Kenobi and Satine book of their time on the run.

#11 "Bug"-E. Anne Convery (inspired by the episode "Massacre”)

I can’t talk openly about this story because it’s not actually featured on the clone wars. It’s a really good story, specially if you want to expand on the lore regarding Dathomir and the Nightsister in the new canon. It’s perfectly executed, and even when the story isn’t about any of the main characters it hooked me from start to finish. Definitely one of my favorite stories of the book and If I had to pick one story from this anthology to read again it would be this one.

It has more gruesome details than the others and the atmosphere is dark, and I loved it. I would read a whole Dathomirian Nightsister novel written by this author if it was in this exact same style. I really liked it a lot.

In summary, I really enjoyed reading this Anthology. I would really recommend it to anyone who is fond of the Clone Wars or the prequels era. Adults, Kids, Teens, Young adults. I think I would’ve enjoyed this book as a kid as well, and I enjoyed it a lot now in my early twenties. It contains a little bit of everything and that makes it a really complete anthology.

[joganpie]

A bit of Plo Koon

This is for a friend​ who has fallen into The Clone Wars cartoon and entered the hell of stanning a minor PT-era Jedi.  So here’s a little bit of extra Plo Koon content for you.

(And if anyone wants to jump in with canon or fanfic recs for Plo Koon, I thoroughly invite it.)

First of all, I’m sorry to tell you this but a lot of Plo Koon’s most prominent modern content is from The Clone Wars cartoon, in part because Dave Filoni was a huge fan of the character.  

And by a “huge fan” I mean that he actually cosplayed Plo Koon to the premiere of ROTS. (Sidenote: That’s Giancarlo Volpe on the right as Kit Fisto who was also a director on TCW, as well as ATLA and GLTAS.)

Dave also apparently campaigned various “Plo Lives” stories to George Lucas:

TFN: Do you have a plan for why Ahsoka doesn’t appear in Revenge of the Sith?

Henry: Hmmm. Are you asking about the ‘theatrical’ version of Revenge of the Sith or the ‘Special Complete Perfect “Plo Doesn’t Die” Edition’ Revenge of the Sith? Psssst... You guys have no idea how powerful Filoni is getting at the Ranch.

Dave: There is some truth to what Henry is saying. I once pitched George the idea that Plo had a parachute and that he bailed out of his fighter before it crashed. Then George said he would only continue the scene and make Plo’s death more painful, I think his parachute was going to catch fire and he falls on something sharp. I even pitched Plo being added at the end of Return of the Jedi as a Blue Ghost but that didn’t go over either. As for Ahsoka’s future... I have ideas, even outlines that answer your question very specifically.

But yeah, multiple people have joked that he’d try to sneak Plo into an episode any time he could.

Actually, returning to the concept of Plo Koon and Kit Fisto working together, that’s actually an established thing that has happened a couple times, and it does show up in TCW as well. (And yes, they are shipped.)

There’s also a tie-in for the 2003 Genndy Tartakovsky series, Clone Wars Adventures, which has a teamup with these two in issue #6 that is about Kit and Plo dealing with a prison riot.  The characterization of Plo is a bit more violent and angry than in TCW, with Kit having to talk him into giving one of the prisoners a second chance, but he is pretty badass.  (Also, I like the Saesee Tiin story in that volume in particular, to rep another minor Jedi character.)

If you want good, extended TCW Plo and Kit content though, what you really want is the Clone Wars: In Service of the Republic comic, and I can easily say that it’s my #1 recommendation to you as a fan of TCW and Plo Koon since it is a tie-in story to the cartoon.

No, seriously, if you want more TCW!Plo Koon content, you want to read this comic.  There’s a running gag about Kit and the clones trying to guess Plo’s age.  I feel like I don’t need to say anything else about the story.

However, Kit Fisto is not his only Jedi Bromance.

In Jedi Council: Acts of War we get his friendship with a Jedi named Micah Giiett.

This one may be an odd one for you coming from TCW though because it was released in 2000, which was after TPM but before AOTC/ROTS, and some of what is presented in this comic (as well as some of the other comics from the period which I share) doesn’t quite mesh up with what we see in the rest of the prequels regarding the worldbuilding.  I wouldn’t put it as a must-read for the story either, but there are some sweet moments between Plo and Micah and it’s an interesting read to see how they extrapolated the universe out from only what we see in TPM.

Which also leads me to another point, which is that after Micah died, Plo Koon stepped in and helped finish training his padawan-- Bultar Swan.  Who is a huge badass herself and I am Forever Haunted by the fact there seems to be no actual content of the two interacting because this fact seems to have been the product of retcons but PLEASE, I NEED IT.  (There is exactly one fanfic in the universe about these two grieving Micah and it’s less than 500 words but I owe this author my life just for it existing.)

She’s also listed as his padawan in the most reliable of canon sources: Gurihiru’s illustrations for the Star Wars English-Japanese Dictionary

Now here’s where I admit that my reading of the Republic comics is a bit fuzzy because of having limited access to them and reading the series in bits and parts over the years.

With that said, on the subject of masters and padawans, I don’t think current canon/TCW has established any clear lineage for him but in legends continuity Plo was trained by a wookiee named Tyvokka.  Some of that relationship is in the focus of the “Stark Hyperspace War” story in Star Wars (1997) #36-39. (Also, baby Obi-wan and Quinlan is nice too.)

Plo also has a bit of a role in the “Emissaries to Malastare” story in  Star Wars (1997) #13-16, in which they give him Special Font to make him really cool and mysterious.  (Also, a fun Depa & Mace teamup in that story and A’Sharad Hett, the Tusken Jedi.)

In more modern comics, there’s some nice little appearances in the Clone Wars- Battle Tales, especially issue #2 which has him rescue the Wolfpack.

Beyond this, he absolutely shows up in the background of a lot of things because he’s a cool and recognizable alien, as well as part of the Jedi Council, but he doesn’t really have much of a role beyond exposition.

This is focused on the comics, but that’s the part of the EU (outside of TCW) where he’s gotten the most chance to shine.  He hasn’t played any substantial role in any of the PT-era books I’ve read, let alone video games or other media. (Playing as him in Lego Star Wars doesn’t count, although I do appreciate it.)

He does show up in a couple of James Luceno’s books in particular, but not in a particular substantial role. I saw Cloak of Deception mentioned when I was poking around to see if I was wrong about this, but that really does seem to be about it when it comes to his book appearances.

(They also visit his homeworld, Dorin, in the first Fate of the Jedi book: Outcast, and while that’s Post-ROTJ EU and while I can’t recommend the series as a whole, the first book does have some sort of interesting stuff about his species/planet.)

I’m also sadly short on fanfic recs since I don’t regularly read a lot of Star Wars fanfic except for when I’m needing a very specific niche filled and I haven’t really gone looking for a lot of Plo fic.  (Outside of the time I scoured the internet for Bultar & Plo content.)

I’ll end by making sure that you know about the existence of the “Plo’s Bro’s” gunship.

As well as the fact he adds the Wolfpack symbol to his gauntlets later in the war.

BUT ANYWAYS.  WELCOME TO MINOR JEDI FANDOM HELL. 

[seasidewriter1-writes]

Replying to @elizabeth0020 for: Hello!! I’ve always wondered how you decide what arcs/episodes you’re going to write? There are sooooo many, how do you know what’s a good one for your story vs one that isn’t? And a second question (if you feel like answering lol): how do you picture all the details you wrote? Like lighting, movements, facial expression etc? You’re so good at that and I’ve always been amazed at how you come up with them!

I love answering anything and everything, so never worry about sending me too much! I don’t often get to talk about the technical stuff (like the questions you’ve asked), so I love getting any chance I have to talk about them! (So hold on tight, ‘cause this is a ramble! 😂)

So, for the first question regarding the arcs... I picked out what episodes/arcs I thought were beneficial when I did my first watch through of the Clone Wars this past summer. I had a google doc that I wrote down all the episode names in, then jotted down the preliminary ideas. Let me tell you, with a show that has seven seasons of 20+ episodes, it was... so daunting to even think about narrowing down what episodes and arcs to use. It was what initially deterred me from using any of them at all. So I started to look for things that I felt would directly impact Elara, her character, and her development. For example, I didn’t really use all of “Cat and Mouse” because the episode, on a whole, wouldn’t have Elara much involved in it. It did, however, provide a wonderful backdrop for her time on Christophsis, which is why I didn’t nix it entirely. Aside from forcing Obi-Wan and Elara to be tied together, “Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General” were used to introduce her to Hondo, whom both allows her to be more playful, and showcases her knowledge of the seedier side of the galaxy. And there are plenty of episodes that I love and adore that I just... don’t think would fit. For as much as I love “Senate Spy” and the introduction of Clovis, there’s no way for me to put Elara into that episode and not have it feel forced. That’s another huge thing I look for when picking episodes; if Elara doesn’t feel like she would naturally fit into the storyline somehow, even if it’s indirectly, I’m not going to force her into it. That’s when I do things like mention the events of the episode in a chapter (like with “Clone Cadets”) instead of doing a whole episode. So Clovis is obviously going to get a mention (she’s Anakin’s sister and Padmé’s bestie, of course she’s going to hear about the debacle), but the whole episode won’t be written out.

Then, of course, you have the arcs. The ones that I had immediately chosen are (and these probably come as no surprise): Ryloth, Mandalore, Mortis, Slavers, and Deception. The arcs I find easier to choose because you have a chance to work with more surface area so to speak. It gives me a chance to really flesh out Elara’s part in the story, focus in on her and her emotions and how she’s tied to this particular plot. With the Mortis Arc, for example––Elara is a Skywalker. She is strong with the Force, and in the “Balance” verse, considered a Chosen One. That ties her into the Mortis Arc very interestingly, since it’s not just Anakin going God Mode. It’s going to lend me the chance to really dig deep into Elara, her connection to the Force, to the Light and Dark (the Daughter and Son), and her relationship to being a Chosen One. At first I was like ‘holy shit I’m never gonna be able to do this arc,’ and then when I buckled down and really thought it over... I realized it’s going to be really important for her as a character, and particularly her relationship with Anakin (stay tuned!). It also probably comes as no surprise that a lot of the arcs (and episodes) that get picked are influenced by whether or not Anakin or Obi-Wan are in them. Which is why I almost turned a blind eye to the Umbara Arc until someone brought it up. I did a rewatch of it and knew I had to include it, too. Because that’s going to be an awesome opportunity to flesh out how close Elara is to the 442nd, and be able to contrast her ideals as a General against those of Krell. A lot of the picking of episodes and arcs ends up being trial and error. I wrote the first four-ish pages of “Clone Cadets” before I realized it just didn’t flow right.

All this being said, I like to envision Elara is around for all of the Clone Wars episodes, so I’ve got lots of fun little random snippets for things that I’ll probably never write, but figure would happen in some part of a CW episode.

And after all that, here we finally are at your second question! ☺️

Coming up with all those small details is actually an amalgamation of things at work. I do attribute a lot of it to my training as an actor/theatre artist. I think about how, if I were directing it, how I’d want the movements to look, and how that would translate on both a small scale, and a large scale. A touch of a hand for Obi-Wan and Elara can feel like a world shifting movement––but come off as nothing but a simple, friendly gesture to their fellows. On a small scale, what makes the difference is the way the touch happens. How light the pressure of the touch is, how long it lasts, how slowly their fingers brush against the other person’s hand... all those things help me figure out the mood of that touch and how they’d respond to it. Also, when choosing words to describe movements I often think about the attitude attached to it. A ‘turn of the head’ when Anakin’s being moody may end up being a ‘swivel,’ or the ‘arch’ of an eyebrow from Obi-Wan is more sarcastic than a gentler ‘raise.’ I often agonize picking out those sorts of words. I’ll sit there and try them over and over again, then put them all into a Thesaurus website because I worry I use the same words too much. The thesaurus (particularly when writing Obi-Wan), is my best friend.

When I write mannerisms for canon characters, I use a lot of reference for. I’ll literally just scroll through gifs, watch movie clips, or rewatch the scene I’m writing to pick up on character-specific mannerisms. A couple chapters ago I was describing Anakin’s angry face, and I just looked at images of him from Revenge of the Sith (him alone in the Council room, him being knighted as Vader, his expressions on Mustafar, etc.) I’ll also do this for vocal ticks/inflections. I will also unashamedly admit I will sit there and compose my face into whatever expression I’m trying to describe. Sometimes feeling it physically, or physically composing it helps me come up with words or ways to describe the look. Same thing with touches AND with vocal inflection. Do I sit by myself and read what I’ve written aloud in my best Obi-Wan Kenobi cadence? Yes, yes I do. And has it helped me figure out what words/phrases do and do not work? Yes, it absolutely has!

Also, a lot of describing the details of motion/facial expression/touch gets affected by music for me. Like, if you listen to “Stairway to Heaven” as played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra while reading, say, the scene in “The Gungan General” where Obi-Wan and Elara wake up pressed up to one another... that song is just THE feel of that moment. Listening to the right music when writing (the little details especially) is big for me. Kinda like how “Blue Monday” is the music that works best for the bunker scene in “Storm Over Ryloth.”

There are also a lot of details that I pull from real life. I remember when I wrote Elara seeing Naboo for the first time—and consequently grass, trees, and flowers, too—it was summer time for me. I was staring out at the trees and the way the light filtered through them, watched how they swayed... the grass had just been cut and the breeze smelled sweet... and I was like ‘god, imagine experiencing this all for the first time.’ So I took what I felt and elevated it a little, tried to add a kind of wonder to the things that we all, for the most part, kinda take for granted. I like pulling on experiences I’ve had in real life as a basis.

I ask attribute a LOT of my detail work to my training as a theatre artist. I think about lighting now differently than I did a couple years ago; because I learned what kinda of light fit different moods. Like the scene of Obi-Wan at Dex’s would feel completely different if I’d described the light as cool toned. It would lack a sense of hope. His reminiscences would be sadder, it would feel more stark. The warmer tones suggest that there’s still heart and hope, a possibility for things to get better, and that reflects his inner life better than colder, bluer light. Or how I used light when I wrote Elara seeing Watto again after 10 years to describe her struggle between Dark and Light in that moment. She stepped out of the sun and into the shade because, for a moment, she almost gave in to the Darkness. (Inspired by the scene in Force Awakens where Kylo asks for Han’s help and the light shines down on them... with hints of red low lighting to hint at the struggle... only to have the light disappear as he overrides his own vulnerability, reverts to the Darkness and kills his own father).

I also love using physical objects as emotional triggers, like is done in theatre quite a bit. A good recent example being Elara’s lightsaber. Obi-Wan having it reminds him of his worries regarding her safety, and his struggle with choosing what path to take in regards to his feelings towards her. Or Elara with the Snow Blossom. These things have the ability to spark different emotions depending on the situation. On a good day, the Snow Blossom will make her smile; on a bad day, it may make her feel more sad than happy. And sometimes they don’t have to be objects—they can be bruises or scars or healing wounds. Having something physical spark an emotional response can be really helpful, and has actually helped me though rough spots in my writing.

I could literally go on for hours about all of this kind of stuff! So thank you for asking about it and giving me a chance to discuss it even a little bit! ☺️

[jedi-order-apologist]

Hello there! Could you maybe put together small SW novels recommendation list? You reference books often and I assume you can suggest a few good ones that shed light/give more insight into the Jedi culture. Thank you for your blog and have a good day 💗

Thank you! I hope you have a good day too.

I actually haven’t read that many Star Wars books, all things considered - there are a lot, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the prequel era stuff, let alone the rest of the franchise. I only recently started getting into the books, and there’s probably a lot more really good ones out there that I just haven’t had the chance to get to yet.

What I could do is go through what I have read and give my opinions on those. So far, in no particular order, I’ve read:

- The novelizations for the prequels and some of the original novelizations for the OT. More on my thoughts on those here (and specifically for the ROTS novelization here), but in summary: TPM novelization is a bit weak, AOTC novelization is decent and really helped sell the romance to me in a way the film fell flat for me, ROTS novelization is nothing short of phenomenal, ROTJ novelization is also pretty good, I don’t remember the ESB novelization enough to say anything on it, and I never read the ANH (or technically just Star Wars) novelization. I’d say they’re worth checking out at least once.

- Shatterpoint. I really like this one, it deals a lot with Mace struggling with the dark side, and it captures the idea of falling to the dark side as something rooted in defeatism, which really resonates with my interpretation. There’s quite a bit of discussion of Jedi philosophy and why they do and believe the things they do (or at least how Mace Windu sees it) - I’ve cited it before in my meta because I think it lays out pretty well why they resist the dark side. It also deals a lot with the costs of war - especially psychologically. There’s also a decent element of Jedi as family through the father-daughter relationship of Mace and Depa. On top of all of that, it’s very well written (same author as the ROTS novelization). I strongly recommend this one, though be warned that it is a very heavy, brutal book - oh, it’s not completely bleak, and it has it’s moments of humor, but it is not a happy story. It ends in victory, both in the immediate situation, and with Mace coming to terms with some of what he’d been struggling with, but I wouldn’t call it a happy ending, more that…well, as Mace says, he’s the last one standing.

- Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. I read this one most recently, and I made a long post on why I absolutely loved it. It’s not perfect but I think it’s the best portrayal of the Jedi in the books that I’ve come across so far - this book really goes hard on the “Jedi as family” idea, which I love, and there are really good conversations on (and inspiring examples of resisting) the dark side, and working through but not giving into grief. Everyone should read this book, it shows the Jedi as an inspiring people with so much tenacity and compassion, doing their best. And it eviscerates every bit of nonsense about the Jedi (and especially Yoda) being “emotionless” or “loveless”- it’s full of amazing passages that are absolutely perfect responses to these notions, direct refutations of them even (as well as refutations about the idea of the dark side having any kind of merit at all) because they get slung around in the story by a lot of the characters. If I could only pick one Star Wars book to suggest someone read, it would be this one, absolutely.

- Kenobi. Do you like Westerns and a sad Obi-Wan with a chronic hero syndrome that doesn’t help him with the whole ‘staying under the radar’ thing? If yes, you will probably like this book. It doesn’t really get much into Jedi culture, since…well, they’re dead, and most of the book is written from an outside perspective, not Obi-Wan’s. I think that was a good choice, because while he’s understandably going to be very sad during this time (it takes place during his very early days on Tatooine), constant exposure to that, in my opinion, would overdo it and wear out the audience. So the outside perspective of how sad and weird he is, where the characters don’t understand the context behind his behavior, but the audience does, works really well. I have some issues with it - for instance, while it’s kind of hilarious how much everyone wants to jump his bones in this book, I do wish that they’d kept the chemistry between Obi-Wan and Annileen strictly platonic (and the language around romance in this book rubs me the wrong way). And how people find out his last name is a bit contrived. But it’s a decent read that I’d recommend.

- Jedi Apprentice (series). I’d recommend this with the caveat that you have to go into it keeping in mind that it’s written for younger readers. Which absolutely does NOT mean it’s all fluff and sunshine and rainbows, very far from it (I call this series “Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Collection of Childhood Trauma” for some very good reasons, and the fact that he tries to sacrifice himself to suicide-bomb a door open with the slave collar wrapped around his neck before he even gets taken on as a padawan is just one of them), but there’s a lot of stuff that…doesn’t feel like it was explored fully to an adult reader’s satisfaction. It has a lot of the usual kind of fridge logic that often comes into play with kids’ media, and while it was written to be favorable towards the Jedi, that fridge stuff gets taken by fandom as reasons to criticize the Jedi quite often. More on that here.

- Cloak of Deception. This one’s…okay? It does spend quite a bit of time with the Jedi, but it feels pretty surface level. Luceno’s strength is in the fantasy space politics; for whatever reason his character interactions always fall flat for me, though I’m not sure if I can articulate why they’re so unsatisfying to me outside of a handful of good moments. But if you’re looking for a look into the politics leading up to TPM (or at least, Legends take on it), this is (one of) the books to look at. I say one of because I actually read Darth Plagueis first, and there is a bit of overlap.

- The Approaching Storm. This is the lead-in book to AOTC. It does a decent job with a look at the Jedi, I think, with a few snags (Barriss straight-up heals brain damage/mental illness to the point of complete personality changes, which seems way outside Jedi abilities to me, and there’s a bit of “maybe we shouldn’t take people from their families” angle instead of the Jedi as family angle). Also for some reason it refers to Barriss and Luminara as humans. And while the book tells us a lot about how important it is that the Jedi negotiate this conflict, most of their actual obstacles are getting places, with the negotiation itself getting glossed over. But it was a decent read, I think.

- Labyrinth of Evil. This is another Luceno book, this time for leading up to ROTS. The character interactions worked a little better here - or at least they had more of their moments - Anakin basically going “Marriage what marriage I don’t see a marriage” in front of Obi-Wan was pretty damn funny…and everyone knows the “infinite sadness” line that follows off of that. I’ll be curious as to what the current continuity gives us for what set off the invasion of Coruscant, because this (as part of Legends) gave us a pretty good reason for it. I’d recommend it, again, for the examination of the political situation, and there’s some decent action in here too. There’s a few insights into the Jedi but it’s hit or miss whether I agree with them, and they’re not the focus.

- Darth Plagueis. This one’s probably the best of Luceno’s books (that I’ve read), but it’s not Jedi-friendly. Most of that’s because, well…it’s from the Sith’s perspective, so they’re not going to be very pro-Jedi. I’m mostly okay with that because a lot of their criticism of the Jedi is very clearly coming from an obviously bad faith position (”the Jedi let the Republic decay” the Sith say as they devour a man’s heart and talk about how the Sith need to make all the problems of the Republic worse), although there’s one scene at the end that I really don’t like because it appears to really claim that the Jedi would’ve told Anakin to never talk about his mother, which doesn’t match up with, well, AOTC, for one thing, or just my impression of them in general. But what this book does do well is a look at how the Sith influenced the political situation, and a lot of midichlorian lore (seriously, this book feels like a middle finger to prequel hate - “oh you thought the fantasy space politics were boring? You thought midichlorians were stupid? Here’s why you’re wrong”). Luceno’s way of doing character interactions actually serves this book really well, because the Sith are able to be written as the focus characters without making them sympathetic in the least. If you’re looking to get invested in characters, probably not the book for you, but if you’re looking for fantasy space politics, it’s pretty good.

- Rogue Planet. This one has a good interpretation of the Jedi, I think, though you do have to contend with the “written before AOTC” issue of authors not realizing that Jedi weren’t supposed to get married and have children. But I liked the look at how they handled discipline - Anakin gets in trouble, and he’s brought before the Council, and the whole process is about questioning him to get him to realize and admit what he did wrong, not punishment. They then make the decision to redirect his energy into something productive by sending him and Obi-Wan on a mission. Also, Anakin sees a Jedi therapist at the end of this book, so it’s a good one to throw back at anyone who claims that the Jedi never helped him or that the Jedi don’t do therapy. But…plot-wise…it’s a little weak, mostly in that not much is resolved because it’s mostly setting up for stuff that won’t pay off until much, much further down the line (as in, whenever the Yuuzhan-Vong show up). The ship-growing thing was cool though.

- Wild Space. If you’re looking for a ridiculously dramatic Obi-Wan whump fic that’s one step away from sticking Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Bail in a foursome, this is the book for you. If you’re looking for things like accurate characterization, an interpretation of the Jedi consistent with the films, believable interpersonal communication, or an actual plot…you will be sorely disappointed by this book.

- Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth. This is the sequel to Wild Space. It has a second part, Clone Wars Gambit: Siege, which I have not been able to bring myself to read, which probably tells you all you need to know about my thoughts on the first one, though you can read more about them here. In short, I strongly do not recommend this book at all, and find it to be pretty terrible characterization (even though it’s played for sympathy) of the Jedi and especially Obi-Wan. Wild Space at least has absurdity going for it. Stealth does not.

And that’s it! That’s all I’ve read so far. I’m sure not everyone will agree with my opinions, but in terms of my personal recommendations/non-recommendations, this is what I have.

[tennessoui]

☕️ SERIOUS OBI-WAN THOUGHTS PLZ?!? 🥺

alright here are some non consecutive poorly worded Obi-Wan thoughts:

I think he’s really an amazing character. He’s not perfect and it’s very clear he’s made mistakes in the past, decisions he wouldn’t make again if he could go back in time and fix them.

But I think most of his mistakes are the sort of things that weren’t wrong in the moment, but led to unfavorable outcomes that he hadn’t expected at the time with the information he had. Yes, his not allowing Anakin to go to tatooine when the padawan was dreaming of his mother was a mistake because Shmi died and perhaps Anakin could have saved her, which then would have also saved the lives of the entire Tusken village Anakin slaughters. But at the time I’m not sure Obi-Wan knew exactly what those dreams entailed, or how deeply they were weighing on his padawan, seeing as how Anakin’s next line of dialogue is about how he’d rather dream of Padmé instead, a very blasé statement to jump to if you want your mentor to really take your dreams of your mother being hurt seriously in my opinion.

I think the same goes for the Deception arc too, tbh. It was a lie, it was a mistake, it forced Anakin further away from him and into the arms of the Sith, but he was also trying to ensure the life of the Supreme Chancellor, one of Anakin’s dearest friends. So like. It was a mistake but it was also....not a mistake I’m sorry 🙈

I think Obi-Wan is a deeply tragic individual and that’s one of things that makes him my favorite character, because he’s also intensely compassionate and witty and heroic. He’s a really, really good Jedi, who has obviously suffered loss and moved through the loss while carrying it with him.

Also I love exploring his capacity for guilt it’s literally a bottomless pit no one thinks Obi-Wan’s made more mistakes than Obi-Wan, but he did his best. I love AUs where Obi-Wan is a Sith (I even have a couple it’s a fun idea) because it’s cool to play around with the darker aspects of his character, like his anger and his outward perfectionism, but I do think every sith AU is a big AU because I think Obi-Wan never would have fallen. I love how much he loves the Jedi and being a Jedi, even when he disagrees with them or is angry with them.

Anyway there’s probably more but just. This whole infinite sadness thing, The Chosen One’s Master is Never The One Chosen? tragic. painful. favorite.

[letitrainathousandflames-archive]

loved that ending. still think its kinda controversial that they brought back satine and handwaved it away by saving maul had put her in a force-induced coma, but i'll accept it.

yeah it was kinda forced, but it worked. Oh, and Anakin just rushing back to padme after killing palpatine before he issued order 66, just in time to be with her while she gave birth to the twins? lovely

(a MASSIVE list of headcanons things that actually totally happened below)

I was especially fond of the scene where the clones were granted human rights and Cody was elected as a senator representing the clone army as a people. His speech with demands for reparations for their time as slaves of the republic made me cry and i LOVED seeing Fives (who never died, duh) Dogma, Echo and the rest of Torrent Co., as well as several other clones moving out to live in Mandalore and Concordia. Soon they’ll be healing from the damage in their bodies and minds. Not completely - you can’t recover fully from such a thing. But soon there will be singing, and cooking, and laughing. There will be a much belated search of what makes them happy, of what they can do other than fight and bleed and wait for death to come. It’s scary, but the best type of scary.

I was happy to see the mandalorians recognize the clones as part of their people. Satine’s sister was doing an amazing job as their ruler by setting these things straight. Her sister was proudly watching, now acting as her advisor - the gentle Satine addresses peaceful negotiations when needed, leaving the warrior Bo-Katan to handle any threats that can’t be negotiated with. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing is, right?

It’s hard not to stare at the dashing suitor she’s holding hands with - a certain Obi-Wan Kenobi, former jedi general currently looking for peace of mind, and to make up for the years lost in the war. Sometimes he wonders if he’s doing the right thing. A jedi’s job is never done, even with the defeat of Sidious he thinks he could be more useful somewhere else. At these moments, his girlfriend smiles at him and Obi-Wan understands that, right now, he’s exactly where he needs to be.

Maul stayed in hiding at the outer rim, reevaluating what his life was now. He was no longer enslaved by his former master, or the tragedy of the chosen one. Even his hate for Obi-Wan Kenobi had begun to fade. It felt peaceful at first, and it hurt. Peace felt wrong for the zabrak, that had known nothing like it for his whole life. The mandalorians eventually reached out to him, reassuring him that they weren’t looking for a fight, that they just wanted to give him something back. Something they had tended to for a long time in an attempt to gain his favor when they needed, but the opportunity never came.

The “something” is his brother Savage, his chest melded with wires and plastisteel where Sidius’ lightsaber had stabbed him. And when Maul hugs his brother one more time, he realizes they had suffered enough. And it was time to start living. They eventually became the most notorious bounty hunters in the galaxy.

Ahsoka is constantly busy. Between her adventures with her girlfriend Trace and her sister Rafa Martez, she keeps a steady schedule as a teacher at the Temple’s crèche. The rules had been changed, and the younglings would now be allowed to visit their family on occasion. After seeing what an affection-starved child with the weight of great expectations on their back and a sith lord’s praise and grooming as their only source of reassurance and understanding could turn into, they realized that it would be too dangerous to keep raising children in such an environment.

Of course, the best thing of it was seeing the Jedi and Younglings going back into their purpose of seeking enlightenment and aiding every people in need. Doing so was made more difficult without the aid of the senate - which, after all that mess decided to no longer support with any lightsaber-wielding types until the whole sith-jedi deception was properly investigated.

this was for the best, master Yoda mused over tea with commander Gree and his squad. The Jedi weren’t meant to be generals, or to serve to a single planet or leadership. They were peacekeepers. And it was time they acted like it again.

After taking the much needed breather, the friends eventually reunite at the temple to celebrate their victory and explain their plans for the future. Anakin and Padmé arrive, each carrying very small babies in their arms and beaming like the two idiots in love that they are. Anakin barely has time to leave baby Luke in Ahsoka’s arms before he is bodily tackled into a most delightful pile of clones sobbing “we missed you, general!”

Aayla is giggling and declining the champagne offered by Obi-Wan, a hand over the bump on her stomach suddenly explaining the broad grin on Bly’s face. “Looks like everyone’s deciding to make this family bigger” Obi-Wan smiles before being similarly dogpiled into a clone hug by his boys from the 212th. Plo Koon and the Wolffpack is already drunkenly singing a very off-key “vode an”, and Satine is cooing over baby Leia, telling Obi-Wan she wants a baby as well. Obi-Wan speaks, voice muffled under the clone pile “very well. Cody, pick one of those and run as fast as you can.”

Hardcase and Echo are comparing their prosthetics, and Anakin says he just absolutely has to give them a few improvements here and there, and Hardcase is just delighted at the thought of having a small blaster cannon on his knee joint when Padmé reminds him there’s no need for the clones to have weapons on them anymore now that the war is over. Hardcase pouts and Anakin winks at him, promising a legitimate blastin’ knee.

Fives and Jesse are singing along with the wolffpack now, and they’re even more tone-deaf. Meanwhile Ahsoka climbed on Rex’s shoulders and they’re just running around the temple making battleship noises. It’s adorable.

Everything is good. There were losses, and there was pain, and grieving. But it’s all over now, and all there is to do is laugh and enjoy each other’s company, knowing that things will only get better from now on. Once and for all, the Force was with them.

[belanekra]

That one where Padmé is a sith lady and that makes all the difference:

Previously:

She finds him in a garden at the Jedi Temple just before dusk, two days after she commanded the execution of Order 66. She can tell by the look on his face and the set of his shoulders that he’s already been inside. All of the bodies have been removed and properly cremated, but there hasn’t been time for a full clean-up. She knows the hallways of the Temple are still littered with smears of blood and the scorched rubble left behind by blaster fire.

The area is completely deserted; the only two lifeforms around are herself and the man collapsed on a set of steps like a puppet with its strings cut. He doesn’t look up as she approaches, but the subtle way his body twitches as she gets closer indicates his awareness of her presence. She halts a few feet in front of him, skirt swishing against the ground as she stops. They remain like that – she, calmly standing before him, gaze sweeping over his dirty robes and soot-stained auburn hair, and  he, slumped on the concrete steps, eyes locked dazedly on the ground – for a few aching moments.

“Obi-Wan,” she finally says when it becomes clear that he is not going to be the first one to speak.

“Padmé,” he spits out. He at last tears his eyes from the ground to look up at her, avoid her eyes, as he asks, voice harsher than she’s ever heard it before, “Or is it Empress Amidala now?”

“Obi-Wan,” she sighs out his name, the way a mother would address a child who was being particularly difficult. “Please don’t –”

“Stop saying that!” he shouts, cutting her off. “Stop saying my name like we’re friends!”

“We are friends,” she reminds him, gently.

“You’re a Sith, Padmé!” he scoffs and jolts to his feet, lurching toward her. Though she does not step back, knowing better than to show any weakness by giving ground, she cannot stop her hand from twitching toward her waist, where her lightsaber is concealed beneath her cloak.

His eyes do not miss the motion and all the fight seems to drain out of him, abruptly. The brief bout of anger is gone as quickly as it came, leaving behind nothing but weariness and sorrow. He staggers back and falls once again onto the steps.

“How could you?” he whispers, “Padmé, how could you?”

There are a thousand different things she could offer in response, explanations and justifications, lies and appeasements. But the only thing she says is, “Because I had to.”

It’s not enough. “Why?” Obi-Wan cries. Tears are slipping down his checks now, making twin tracks through the dirt and grime. His despair is palpable in the Force; she can feel it radiating from him. She has her own emotions locked down tightly behind her mental shields. One of them has to remain calm.

Slowly, she moves forward and lowers herself to sit on the steps beside him. While he flinches slightly as she reaches out to cover his hand with her own, he doesn’t move away from her. He still won’t meet her eyes, but that doesn’t surprise her. When the truth had come out between her and Anakin, she had stopped concealing her eyes in front of him. He’d spent the first few days unable to look into them for more than a few moments at a time. She has to admit, even she’s still occasionally unsettled by their eerie yellow glow.

They sit quietly for some time, each lost in their own thoughts, both longing for the days when words and affection alike had flown easily between them. Finally, she knows they can prolong this moment of fleeting tranquility no longer.

“I am your friend,” she reasserts, squeezing his hand. She counts it as a small victory that he does not outwardly protest it this time, though inside he must still have his doubts.  

“I know that you don’t understand,” she tells Obi-Wan, voice a soothing hum. “I know that you’re scared and confused, and you feel betrayed. I could promise you that I’m not evil and I haven’t gone insane, that I am still the same woman you have called friend for years now, but I don’t know if you would believe me.”

He doesn’t deny it, and she smiles at him, sad but unsurprised. She had known before she’d come here that pacifying Obi-Wan would be no easy task. That was why she’d left Anakin at home, even though he was anxious to make sure his former Master was safe and unharmed.

She can feel that his anger and fear have abated. He is terribly sad, so very lost and unsure. Sensing his weakness, she allows hope to bubble up inside her, hope that she still has a chance to sway him to her side, that she will not lose yet another of her friends to their own stubborn refusal to yield.

Resolve strengthening, she rises gracefully to her feet and turns to look down at him. “Come home with me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” she implores, holding out her hand. “Let my husband treat your injuries, meet my newborn children. And let me prove to you that our friendship has not been a lie.”

He slowly lifts his eyes to meet hers, gazing into the tangible truth of her nature for the first time. After a long moment, he looks down at her deceptively small and gentle hand. It trembles ever so slightly as, heart pounding fiercely in her chest and longing a sickening twist in her stomach, she waits to see if he will take it.

What happens next:

Padmé is unsurprised to find Anakin pacing furiously just inside the door to their apartment when she returns. As she unlocks the door and enters, Anakin looks up and meets her eyes desperately. “Padmé!” he shouts, “Are you okay? Is Obi-Wan okay? Where –” He cuts off as he notices the hunched form of his Jedi master shuffling into the apartment behind Padmé. “Obi-Wan!”

“He’s alright, Ani,” Padmé says gently. “He’s just in shock. Why don’t you get him a glass of water?”

As Anakin hurries off to the kitchen to do just that, Padmé leads Obi-Wan over to the couch. He’s disconcertingly quiet, has been the whole way back from the Jedi temple. As soon as he took Padmé’s hand, he stopped talking, stopped projecting in the Force. He’s quiet now, inside and out, and Padmé’s honestly a little worried she might have permanently broken him.

Anakin rushes back into the room with a glass of water. He passes it to Obi-Wan, who clutches it between his fingers like a life line. Anakin resumes his frantic pacing, back and forth in front of his former Master. Obi-Wan resumes his empty staring, slumped in the corner of the couch.

Padmé leans against the wall separating the living space from the entry way, watching her husband and her friend, trying to think of what to do next. Getting Obi-Wan to the apartment without bloodshed was a good first step, but keeping him here might be harder. Luckily, she has a plan.

First, she has to deal with her anxious husband. His slightly hysterical pacing is doing nothing to bring down the tension in the room. “Anakin,” she says, “Where are the babies?”

He turns to her. “Sleeping. In the bedroom. With C-3PO and R2.”

Internally, she snorts. He left their newborn children with a high-strung protocol droid and a belligerent astromech. Of course, he did. This man she loves, honestly.

“Why don’t you go get them?” she suggests. “Obi-Wan should meet his niece and nephew, don’t you think?”

Anakin brightens immediately, stormy emotions buried under a wave of love: for her, for their babies, for the Jedi on the couch who is like a brother to him. The smothering tension in the room finally abates a smidge as Anakin bounds off toward the bedroom to gather the children.

Padmé makes her way over to the couch and settles down beside Obi-Wan, gently nudging the hand holding the glass of water. “Drink, Obi-Wan,” she encourages. After he’s drained the glass, Padmé takes it from him and sets it down on the coffee table. Then she grasps his hand in hers, running her thumb soothingly over the back of his hand.

She starts gently gathering up the psychic impression of love that Anakin has left in the room and nudging it toward Obi-Wan in the Force, trying to draw him out of his shell. It works, more or less, and by the time Anakin comes back in, holding an infant in each arm, Obi-Wan is the most present he’s been since she first confronted him at the Jedi temple.

“Master,” Anakin says. Obi-Wan winces, and so does Padmé. Maybe not the best word choice there Ani, she thinks. She’s really going to have to give Anakin some lessons in tact before they commence her take over of the galaxy.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin amends. “I’d like you to meet my children. This is Luke. And this is Leia,” he says, placing the children in Obi-Wan’s arms. Obi-Wan stares down at the slowly waking babies in his arms. His grief and pain are still bright and present in the Force, but underneath it, just as she expected, she can feel his resistance breaking down. She can feel a shining spark of love slowly growing, and for the first time all night, she allows herself to feel something she thought she’d given up on years ago. She feels hope.

Or maybe...?:

The lavas of Mustafar leave the whole planet glowing ominously from orbit, a red and black ball drifting through space. “We’re sure this is where he is?” Anakin asks the clone trooper beside him.

“Yes, sir,” the trooper says, “He triggered an alarm when he landed here two days ago. No idea why he came here of all places, or why he stayed, but he’s definitely here.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Anakin says grimly. “He won’t be leaving. Prepare a landing shuttle.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Anakin stalks through the corridors, troopers and Imperial soldiers alike hastening out of his path, as he makes his way toward his quarters. Once he’s closed the door behind him, he pulls out his personal comm and contacts his wife. A little blue holograph of Padmé pops up in front of him.

“Ani,” she greets him.

“Padmé. We found him. He’s definitely on Mustafar.”

Padmé’s expression is grave. “Right, that’s good that you found him…Anakin.” She hesitates for a moment. “Ani, you know what has to be done?” she asks, very gently.

Anakin’s body is tense, his face tight with grim determination. “I know. You don’t have to worry. I know exactly what I have to do. I won’t let him leave this planet alive. Not after …” he trails off.

On the hologram, Padmé’s hand drifts down to press against her abdomen, where he knows an angry red slash covers her side from her hip all the way up to her rib cage. Bacta could easily have erased the vivid scar, but Padmé has chosen to keep it, as a reminder, she said.

He thinks she probably meant a reminder for herself, but it serves just as well as a reminder for him. A reminder that the world is different now, that the people who were once his friends, his family, aren’t any longer. He has a new family now, a wife and children, and they’re all that matters. Anything and anyone that threatens that family has to be eliminated. It’s why he’s here on Mustafar.

“Ani,” Padmé draws him out of his pondering, “Please be careful. Do what has to be done and then come back to me. I love you.”

“I love you too, angel,” he says. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t. You never have. Signing off.” Padmé disconnects the call and Anakin spends a few moments staring at the space where her image was, thinking about the future. The past. About the scar on Padmé’s side and how she got it. About Padmé extending her hand in friendship, and the man who met her offer of a place in their family with furious words and a saber to the gut.

He snaps out of it when a trooper knocks on his door. “Sir, the landing shuttle is prepped and the men are ready when you are,” the trooper announces before marching away.

Anakin nods once, decisively, and squares his shoulders. He clips his lightsaber to his belt, and holsters a blaster for good measure. He can’t take any chances. He has a mission to accomplish.

For his angel.

For his wife.

For his Empress.

Long live the Empire.

More Sith Padme: 1 and 2 and 3

[stonefreeak]

Here we go, an update!

All things considered, I am looking into moving CK over to AO3 because tumblr is kind of nonsense rn and even though it didn’t immediately absolutely go under, I’m not willing to assume that it’s going to stay afloat indefinitely after this either.

enough about that tho, update!

Returning to the Temple seems almost unreal. Despite everything going on in the galaxy, the Temple has always been a point of calm, the eye of the storm. But now when Anakin walks these familiar halls again—his second home, the one not build of sand and stone in the hottest of deserts, and not the one in an upper Coruscant apartment that smells of perfume—it seems as if the very air of it has changed. The sense of peace of tranquillity that usually suffuses the place, even in the midst of war, has been shattered and the pieces lay around his feet.

Ahsoka's presence at his side is not as grounding as it should be. Her shields are up high, held so tightly around her he cannot sense her emotions at all. He can see that she shivers and she has her arms wrapped around herself. They've spoken many times since he brought her the news of... of Obi-Wan... but she has been unusually tight lipped. She won't meet his eyes, and the spark he saw in her when they sparred—one blade against two—is gone completely.

She won't speak to him. Why won't she speak to him? No matter how much he presses, she stays silent, and the more he tries the further back she retreats.

Perhaps he should have tried harder, more, used his status as her master to make her tell him—it's Ahsoka, his padawan, he loves her so much of course she must tell him—but he's been... distracted. Unable to keep his own thoughts centred and away from Obi-Wan.

He's heard no more news from Master Windu. No updates. Neither good nor bad. Master Windu promised to contact him if something happened... But it's been days. Nothing. Is Master that badly off? Is he really...?

He catches the briefest glimpse of Master Billaba down a hallway—she looks pale and drawn and for the briefest of instants his stomach clenches in dread. He knows that she's a friend of Obi-Wan's, even though she's much older, if she looks like that, has something—?

Beep beep beep

He startles at the sound of his comm signalling an incoming voice-comm. He struggles to get it off his belt, and fumbles with it, nearly dropping it several times before he finally has it steadily in his hand and ready by his mouth.

Ahsoka would normally have laughed at him. Why isn't she laughing? If she can't even laugh...

"Skywalker," he says once he's answered the comm, casting his thoughts of Ahsoka aside again for now.

"Yoda, this is. Arrived on Coruscant, you have, yes?" The old Jedi's voice should be calming in its familiarity, but in the current state of everything, it just sends a spike of anxiety through Anakin. Please no.

"Yes, we have." Please don't say something has happened. Please.

"Come to the Halls of Healing, you should, once rested you have. Awake, Master Obi-Wan is not, but feel your presence, I think he would like."

Anakin only just barely refrains from expressing his relief loudly, but as he relaxes, in the corner of his eye he can also see some tension leave Ahsoka's frame.

"Do you want to rest first, Snips, or do you want to go to the Halls immediately?" He says, turning to her.

She bites her lip and still won't meet his eyes.

"I'd like to go now, Master," she says, voice unusually subdued. Anakin frowns. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like it at all. Still, it will have to wait, Obi-Wan is more important right now. Ahsoka seems mostly fine, it's probably just the whole thing with Obi-Wan that has her out of sorts. That's probably it.

With a start, Anakin remembers that Master Yoda asked him a question. "We'll head over immediately, Master," he rushes to say, nearly blurting out the words.

"Wait for you here, I will." Amusement is clear in Master Yoda's voice, and... if he sounds calm, then... Maybe there's no reason to worry? Maybe Obi-Wan really is fine.

Anakin changes direction, heading right down a corridor instead of going straight, to move towards the Halls instead of the living quarters.

"You keeping up okay, Snips?" He keeps his voice calm and collected through sheer force of will, even though he's still worried. Still upset.

He can't help but worry... What if they arrive in the Halls and it's just Obi-Wan looking disappointed, and the Council telling him he failed the test? Even though he had to fail it. For Ahsoka.

It... it seems absolutely overkill, and he doesn't think they would do such a thing to Anakin's entire battalion, but... But what if they do?

He tries not to think of the anxiety churning of his stomach as he keeps walking, but it's hard.

What will happen if he has failed some sort of test?

~~~~

The only sound in the room when Anakin and Ahsoka enters is the gentle hum of machines, and the only light source the blueish glow of the bacta tank.

Master Kenobi seems somehow... smaller, than usual. It's hard for Ahsoka to put into words properly, but he seems diminished where he floats in the bacta, eyes closed—probably sleeping. She can't decide what she should do, or say. Part of her feels like she’s intruding, she's not as close to Master Obi-Wan as Skyguy is, so being here feels... Wrong, maybe?

Or perhaps that her guilt. The knowledge that she'd felt something, sensed that something would happened, and despite years of training, years of being told that she should trust her emotions and search her feelings... she ignored it. She assumed that it was simply a flight of fancy, something she was imagining.

And now Master Obi-Wan nearly died in an explosion.

She's afraid of what would happen if she tells Anakin about it. Would he be mad at her? Renounce her? She doesn't think so, normally she wouldn't even contemplate it, it's not who Anakin is as a person, but... But... This is different, isn't it? Master's been different ever since he got the news. She's been different.

She looks around the room, Master Yoda is sitting in a hover chair, eyes closed and his head is resting against his hands, leaning on his gimer stick. He seems so calm, so peaceful.

Is everything really okay?

"We're here, Master Yoda," Anakin says, drawing Ahsoka's attention to him for a brief moment.

"Hmmhmm, here you are. Welcome back, you are."

"Thank you, Master..." Anakin trails off, and looks at the bacta tank. Ahsoka bites her lip and doesn't say anything.

"Wonder how he is, do you?" Master Yoda still hasn't opened his eyes, and seems to be humming something under his breath in between speaking.

Ahsoka wonders what he's doing. Is this some sort of master thing that she can't hope to understand yet? Or maybe it's just a Master Yoda thing...

"Yeah... I've been worried" Anakin doesn't usually admit to anything like that, so the words take Ahsoka by surprise. She finds herself staring at him openly. He really doesn't usually talk about his feelings this openly, at least not when it comes to things like worry or fear.

"Worried, we all were. But live, he will. Despite the Sith Lord's last attempt."

The Sith Lord?

Ahsoka draws in a sharp breath, and her heart starts pounding in her chest. She can feel and hear her own pulse in her ears. The Sith Lord.

"What?" The anger in Anakin's voice is almost frightening in its sudden intensity. He seemed calm just moments before, but now... Ahsoka finds herself shying away from him, just slightly.

"Attacked, he did. Spirit to spirit. But here, we were, and repel the attack, Master Vokara Che did."

Ahsoka feels cold, like something dark just washed over her. She freezes in place, her eyes trained on her master's almost deceptively still body.

"The Sith Lord tried to kill Obi-Wan?" Anakin's voice wavers, it sounds fragile in a way she doesn't expect from him. But the situation they're in is so far from the norm that she's almost not surprised.

"Believe he orchestrated the bombing at the senate, we have reason to," Master Yoda says, his voice still calm. He still hasn't opened his eyes, Ahsoka can see from the corner of her eyes. She wonders what he's doing, is he meditating? But if he is, why here?

"So the Sith Lord is deliberately targeting Obi-Wan?"

"Believe so, we do. Hate him, they do. Why, we know not. Secret, it must stay. Deserve to know, you do, but speak of it, you must not."

Ahsoka stares at Master Obi-Wan where he floats in the bacta tank. He's not safe, not even here, in the middle of the Temple.

Even the Temple isn't safe.

She stops paying attention to the conversation going on, their voices become just background noise as she stares at the master of her master. Could this have been avoided, if she'd only said something? Would the Temple still be safe, if the bombing had been stopped?

"Is this my fault?" The words fall out of her mouth softly, without thought.

The sudden silence in the room is almost oppressive.

"Ahsoka, why would ever think something like that? This is the work of the Sith Lord! Unless you're secretly them, this is not something you did." Anakin's voice seems far away, but it's stronger again. Less frail. As if he suddenly found new strength.

"But I... I felt... I ignored the warning. The Force warned me that something was wrong, that something would happen to Master Obi-Wan... and I ignored it. I told myself I was imagining it! How is it not my fault that Master Obi-Wan was hurt? If I'd followed what I've been taught since I came to the Temple as a child I would have told someone! And then, and then—!"

"Knew something would happen, we did," Master Yoda interrupts her. His voice breaks through her panicked litany and leaves her head ringing with confusion, with the sudden silence of her thoughts.

"W-what?" Anakin's voice is dripping with disbelief. "You knew something was going to happen and you didn't stop it?" Anger. Familiar.

"Sense something, Obi-Wan and I did. Muddled, diminished, our view of the future is. Sense it well we cannot. But sense something we did. Prepare, we did. Ready, the Halls were. Brought troopers with him, Obi-Wan did. Had we not acted as such, survived, he would not have."

Ahsoka stumbles into a seat.

"Your fault, this is not, Ahsoka." Master Yoda's face is solemn, his eyes finally open, as she looks at him. "Sense the future before, have you?"

She pauses, struggles to think of a time when she's felt something like that before.

She comes up blank.

"No..."

"Late, it is, for blooming prescience, but unheard of it is not. If never felt it before, have you, recognise it, how would you?"

A heavy hand lands on her shoulder, and she looks up to find Anakin staring at her.

"I, uh, had something similar. I started having dreams... Ultimately those dreams led to a vision. I've never had anything before or since, though." Anakin seems reluctant to mention the topic at all. "They're hard to recognise when you don't know what they're like, Ahsoka. I'm not sure I would recognise it if it happened again."

"But I... I didn't trust my feelings! I should have!"

"Careful, one must be, when sensing the future. Chasing vague feelings, foolish it is. Your fault, this could never be."

"If it happens again... I will tell someone." She makes the promise to them as much as herself. The guilt she's carried since she got the news, thinking that maybe she could have changed it somehow, is hard to let go of. But there's a sort of relief in knowing that she wasn't the only one. That Master Obi-Wan didn't stand or fall depending on her choice. That would have been... too heavy.

Too heavy.

"That's good, Ahsoka. That's all anyone could ask of you. Master once said that you often don't recognise your first visions as visions, even if you have them often."

She nods, unsure. She's had some instruction about visions, everyone does, since anyone can have one—though some are more prone than others—but she still feels wrong footed with how she did not recognise it. She should have, shouldn't she?

"Speak to a mind healer, do you wish?" Master Yoda's face is kind, but she can sense some worry.

"No!" she blurts, unable to stop herself. "No. It's not that bad, I've just... felt a bit guilty. I'm fine. It's not bad enough that I'd need to talk to a mind healer!" She's fine, just fine.

"Serious, to talk to mind healer, it need not be." Master Yoda suddenly looks sad. "Shameful, to speak with a mind healer, it is not."

Of course not. She knows that. She just, doesn't need to. She's fine.

"I used to go to a mind healer," Anakin suddenly says.

What?

Ahsoka finds herself staring at him. He doesn't even like going to the regular healers, but he went to a mind healer?

"I, uh, came to the Temple in an unusual way... And I was part of the Battle of Naboo." He scratches the back of his head. "Everyone just... Wanted to make sure I was okay, give me a helping hand if I needed it." He shrugs one shoulder.

"Oh. Yes... See Master Hestish, you did, yes?" Master Yoda looks... sad. Even more so than before. And Anakin, his eyes turn to the ground, and she can feel the sadness coming off him too.

"I did, yeah. Until she died."

Oh.

"She died?" It must have been a long time ago, because Ahsoka doesn't really recognise the name.

"Yeah, I was around twelve at the time. She went on a mission and just... Never came back. I was given the option of grief counselling and finding a new healer to talk to, if I wanted to, but I decided not to."

"To help mediate a conflict, she went. Traumatised children, there were. Calm, it was supposed to be, but wrong, something went. Renewed, the hostilities did, and caught in the crossfire, Master Hestish was." Master Yoda's ears droop slightly.

"Oh... I see," Anakin says, looking far away. "They never told me what happened, really, just that she'd returned to the Force."

Ahsoka feels oddly like an outsider, as if she’s listening to a conversation she shouldn’t be hearing, as if she was eavesdropping. She curls in on herself, unsure of what she should do.

"Master Obi-Wan went for grief counselling right after Master Qui-Gon died, so we went to the mind healers together, the first few months." Anakin nods to himself. "There's... really no shame in going to talk to them, Ahsoka, and it doesn't have to be bad for you to do it. Sometimes, it helps to talk to someone who's been trained to be objective... I even developed an affinity for the sound of someone writing with a britsel pen on flimsi, because Master Hestish would always take notes like that. I find the sound comforting, really."

He laughs, rather awkwardly, but it does make Ahsoka feel better. Maybe... Maybe she should. But later.

She looks at the bacta tank again, and her chest hurts.

Even the Temple isn't safe.

~~~~

Anakin feels kinda bad. Here he is, telling her how good it can be to talk to a mind healer, even when it's not something big, even though he's been avoiding it since he was nineteen and mom died.

He should probably go, Master Hestish would probably think it would be beneficial for him, but... Mind healers take notes. They probably share those with the Council. How could he possibly talk about what's really bothering him if the person he's talking to will report it to the Council?

If it'd been Master Hestish... Well, he could probably convince her to keep it secret, but... Anyone else...

No.

It's better if he just keeps it to himself. He doesn't want to be kicked out of the Order. He doesn't want to lose his second home. While he knows that his home with Padmé would still be there, how could he possibly do his best for the Galaxy, the kind of thing that drew Padmé to him in the first place, if he's no longer with the Jedi?

Leaving Tatooine, leaving his mother, he left the culture he was raised in. Sure, it was the culture of slaves, being who don't even own their own bodies, but it was theirs. Secret and precious.

Having to leave the Jedi... The life he's had for most of his life...

He can't bear the thought of losing it.

Just like he can't bear the thought of losing Padmé.

He wants all of it; his place with the Jedi, his friendship with Obi-Wan, his marriage with Padmé... Losing any of it would be intolerable. And if that means that he can't go talk to a mind healer and instead has to keep his worries on the inside, then so be it. Better to carry some worry around with him, and struggle with his emotions on occasion, than lose everything he has and loves.

—

(Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi masterpost)

[swhurtcomfort]

Fall Apart, Fall Together--- Chapter 6

Beginning   ---  Previous Chapter   ---   A03

------

Naboo is warm in the early spring. The sun rises early and Padmé opens a window to breathe in the smell of warm rain.

The babies are sleeping through the night now—at least, most of the time. Presently Luke had fussed and cried until at least two in the morning, when Anakin had gotten up to take over and sent Padmé to bed. She notices Leia is awake, and still alone in the crib.

“Well, good morning, birthday girl,” Padmé trills, scooping the baby up and twirling around as Leia giggles. Together they make their way to the living room, where Anakin is dead asleep in an armchair with Luke sprawled out on top of him.

Padmé ruffles Anakin’s hair a bit as they walk past into the kitchen. “Daddy’s sleepy,” she says to Leia.

“Dada,” Leia agrees.

Padmé cringes when she sees how many messages are waiting on her work comm, but she’s taking the day off today. Soon they’ll have to talk about her splitting her time between Naboo and Coruscant, but working from home has been alright in the interim.

While Padmé is fixing Leia a bottle, they hear Luke waking up in the living room, followed by an adult-sized groan.

Anakin enters the kitchen with Luke on his hip.

“Good morning, my favorite ladies” he says, giving them each a kiss before setting Luke down on the kitchen floor so he can crawl after a plush toy. “Here, I’ll do that. Do you want to comm Sola, and make sure they’re still coming over later?”

Leia whines to be put down too, and Padmé obliges. They aren’t walking yet, but Leia is getting quite good at shuffling along when she has a low piece of furniture to lean on. Luke’s taking a little longer to get the hang of it, but there’s no hurry. By all accounts, the twins are thriving. A stranger might mistake them for younger than a year, but otherwise no one would be able to tell they’d been preemies.

“When did he fall asleep?” Padmé asks.

“Sometime after me, I think,” Anakin admits.

“Maybe we can get him to nap before the family gets here.”

Anakin snorts skeptically.

It’s to be a quiet gathering – it’s not as if the twins even know what a birthday is anyway. As they get the house ready, Anakin blows up a few balloons (which Leia greatly enjoys) and puts Leia’s hair up in two matching clips (which she absolutely hates, and an hour later he finds one of them stuffed between the couch cushions). Luke is visibly exhausted, and gets cranky whenever he’s not in Padmé’s arms.

After midmorning, Padmé puts Luke to bed, hoping that he will get some rest, but within twenty minutes they hear him start to cry.

Anakin gets there first. “What’s wrong, little man?” he asks. The Force around Luke pulsates not with pain, but frustration.

“Moo,” cries Luke.

“Mommy?” Anakin guesses.

“Moo!” He sounds utterly devastated.

The doorbell rings. He glances at the clock—Sola and the girls shouldn’t be arriving yet, but he hears Padmé moving to answer it so he returns to the crisis at hand.

“C’mere,” Anakin tuts, lifting Luke out of the crib, but the baby pushes back against his chest and demands ‘moo’ again. “It’s alright, sweetheart,” Anakin paces up and down the room once, bouncing a little.

“Anakin,” calls Padmé in a bit of an odd voice.

“Busy,” he calls back, now trying to console Luke with the plush Loth-cat he’d been playing with earlier.

“Moo,” Luke breaks into a fresh peal of sobs.

Neither baby is really communicating with the Force yet, but sometimes Anakin tries. All he gets from the little storm in Luke’s Force signature is a despondent sense of lost, missing.

“Anakin—”

“Padmé, what’s ‘moo’?” he asks down the hall, interrupting. “Have you heard him say that before?”

Padmé appears in the doorway and nearly steps on a beanbag toy on the floor. She picks it up and starts to put it back in the crib, but Luke shoots out a hand towards her.

“Moo!”

Padmé and Anakin both look at the toy, then at each other. Luke whines and reaches further.

“It’s a bantha. Moo,” says Anakin, face splitting into a wide smile.

“What a clever little man,” says Padmé, reuniting the bantha with Luke, who immediately puts its horn into his mouth. “Here, I’ll take him Ani. You should go see who’s here.”

Standing awkwardly by the bannister in the toy-strewn sitting room is the last person Anakin expects.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan clears his throat a little bit.

Anakin doesn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry to turn up unannounced. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

There’s no judgement in his gaze - as far as Anakin can tell his curiosity is genuine. Anakin doesn’t know how to feel about that. There’s a sense of loss for the life he’d left behind, as well as a dull anger swirling up in him.

“We’re all healthy and happy,” he finally replies.

“I’m glad,” says Obi-Wan quietly.

Padmé shifts Luke on her hip and herds them all to the armchairs in the living room.

“I’ve missed you,” Obi-Wan confesses.

Three responses avail themselves to Anakin’s mind, the first a desperate I miss you too. The more bitter side of him, Oh go kriff yourself with that. The last, which he says out loud as he takes a seat, “I can’t go back.”

Obi-Wan nods his acceptance of that fact. They awkwardly meet each other’s gaze. Anakin still hasn’t decided whether he is angry. Obi-Wan’s shields are a blank wall, but he knows the man well enough to tell that he is conflicted too.

Leia crawls over and tugs on Anakin’s pant leg until he puts her on his lap. Obi-Wan studies them both, a pensive look lingering on his face.

Luke makes eye contact with Obi-Wan and laughs, still clutching Moo to his chest.

“Would you like to hold him?” Padmé offers.

“Ah, no thank you, I don’t exactly…” Obi-Wan shifts uncomfortably in his chair at the thought.

“Come on, Obi-Wan. Say hello.” Anakin’s voice holds a note of teasing.

Obi-Wan looks panicked as Padmé passes Luke over. He supports the baby stiffly as Luke squirms around to get comfortable. With the look on Obi-Wan’s face, you’d think he’d never seen a baby before.

“You’re doing it right,” Padmé assures him with a smile.

“You’re getting so big,” Obi-Wan says to Luke. “It’s someone’s birthday today, is it not?”

“Two someones,” Anakin croons, brushing the hair out of Leia’s face.

Obi-Wan pats Luke’s back a bit awkwardly as the conversation lapses again.

“I resigned from the High Council,” Obi-Wan finally reveals.

“Why?” Padmé asks.

“Depa has been reinstated in my place. The Mind-Healers are quite pleasantly surprised with her recovery.”

“That wasn’t my question,” she presses.

Obi-Wan sighs. “The fall of the Sith raised a lot of uncomfortable questions,” he says. “I wanted time to devote myself to meditating on the war and its consequences, and seek some answers of my own.”

That sounds like a perfectly Obi-Wan thing to do. Padmé glances at Anakin, who’s smiling a little.

“The Jedi were naïve, and vulnerable. Anakin, we ought to have been able to spot Sidious’s influence over you before it all went so wrong.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that part, Obi-Wan,” says Anakin. “But look, when I tipped Master Windu off, it wasn’t because I thought it was my duty or my job or the will of the Force. I was scared of what might happen to you and Padmé if the Sith came to power. I was attached, and I had something to protect.”

“I know,” says Obi-Wan. “The world is changing, and many feel that our Order needs to change with it. There has been a lot of talk about the prevalent analysis of the Jedi Code over past centuries decades, and whether it is…appropriate.”

Padmé and Anakin both try to hide their surprise.

“I only wish we could have had these discussions sooner,” says Obi-Wan slowly. “Perhaps…”

Perhaps you could have stayed.

Anakin shakes his head. He slips his hand into Padmé’s, their fingers intertwining with a supportive squeeze. Padmé knows that Anakin’s decision was a difficult one, but it’s been made. Neither of them want to think about what might have been.

Padmé hopes that Obi-Wan will see what she sees. Anakin loved being a Jedi, loved the idea of saving the galaxy, but the galaxy was always too large and too broken, and he didn’t know how to handle it. Anakin is thriving here, where he can need just a few other people and be needed by them in return.

Leia is getting restless. Anakin brushes the hair out of her face again and smooches the top of her head before he lets her clamber off of his lap.

“I wish my mom could have met them,” he says suddenly. “I just know she would have loved being a grandma.”

Padmé rubs his shoulder supportively.

Luke starts yawning again and snuggles into Obi-Wan’s cloak. Obi-Wan gives his parents a helpless look. “He’s exhausted,” Padmé whispers.

“Is it finally naptime, Luke?” Anakin tuts, and the baby reaches out both arms towards him. Anakin scoops him up.

Obi-Wan follows them down the hall to the bedroom and watches Anakin put Luke down for a nap.

He turns around and sees Obi-Wan smiling. “I never imagined that this would be the path that you chose,” his old master says suddenly. “Maybe I just got Qui-Gon’s plan for you stuck through my head, and if that’s true, I’m sorry. But you seem happy here.”

“I am,” Anakin affirms.

Obi-Wan nods. “You both seem happy.”

A year has gone by with hurt feelings weighing heavily on them both. Some things, it’s too late to change, but perhaps not others.

Obi-Wan retrieves his cloak and starts to put it on.

“Padmé’s sister and her two girls are coming over for cake later,” says Anakin. “Why don’t you stay?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head sadly. “I have business in Jan-gwa this evening, I’m afraid.”

Anakin initiates the embrace, but Obi-Wan returns it wholeheartedly. When they break apart, he leans over to give Padmé a one-armed hug as well.

“It was good to see you, Obi-Wan,” says Padmé.

A year has gone by since Anakin described their lives as being on the edge of a knife—caught between personal crises and a war of deception that scarred the galaxy. But what has been broken is not beyond repair. Anakin was never made to fight the whole galaxy, but his world now revolves around two twin suns. Padmé’s fight has only paused—with her own health recovered, she will soon return to the front lines of the reorganization of the Senate. But whatever that challenge brings, she knows deep in her gut that they are standing now on stable ground.

----

Fin.

[padawanlost]

re: Obi-Wan and Anakin's communication issues. I can think of a couple of times in tcw where Obi-Wan does make an effort to reach out to Anakin. during the Clovis arc he tries the whole "this is like me and Satine" and Anakin is not having it for a few reasons, and on Utapau he outright asks if Anakin wants to talk about Ahsoka and when he doesn't, he brings it up again anyway. both times, he does pretty much tell Anakin to "get over it" but it's also Anakin that puts up walls and shuts him out.

As yousaid, Obi-wan’s “reaching out” is about telling Anakin to get “over it”. That’sno a healthy exchanged by any means. Obi-wan does try to reach out to Anakinto understand him and listen without judgment, he does to try to convinceAnakin to do whatever he believes Anakin should be doing. And I wouldn’t count their conversation about Ahsoka’sdeparture as a healthy communication either because Obi-wan waits WEEKS beforehe “reaches out” to Anakin and he only does it after Anakin slips and saysAhsoka’s name.

To beclear, this is not Obi-wan’s fault in the sense he is doing on purpose. Obi-wanis simply unequipped do deal with Anakin (or anyone who is not a Jedi) in ahealthy way. Communication is an exchange, a process. Imagine a world wherethere’s only two languages (A and B). Then, imagine Obi-wan was taught onlylanguage A and that language B is inherently bad. Now, Obi-wan has to train achild who speaks nothing but language B to learn language A AND completelyforget language B. Also, Obi-wan cannot understand language B and is notallowed to learned it. Do you see the problem? It’s not that Obi-wan is tryingto hurt Anakin, but is inability to understand Anakin hindered Anakin’s abilityto understand Obi-wan which created a relationship where neither side iscapable of fully understanding the other because they are not speaking the samelanguage.

As forAnakin putting up walls, the same way it’s unfair to say this a result ofObi-wan’s cruelty, it’s also unfair to put this on Anakin because he was thechild. It was, regardless of why he failed, Obi-wan’s responsibility to raiseAnakin. Anakin shut down Obi-wan’s attempts because after 13 years together Anakinknew better than to expect Obi-wan to understand.

[Obi-wan] heard himself - that tone of voicethat Anakin had always resisted. Obi-Wan waited for Anakin’s sharp response… then realized it wouldnever come. [Jude Watson’s The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission]

Anakin had always hated sand. It was one of the many things about hisPadawan that Obi-Wan understood better now that Anakin was dead. That was thehorror of losing someone: Understandingcame too late. [Jude Watson’s The Last One Standing]

 “I just…” Anakin stopped. He took a ragged breath. “I thought you wouldbe proud of me.” I am proud of you.Obi-Wan wanted to say the words. They were true. He was proud of so much inAnakin. But now was not the time to tell him that. Or was it? [Jude Watson’sJedi Quest: The School of Fear]

‘I thought I’d lend a hand to Doby and Deland. They’re from Tatooine.’Anakin looked uncomfortable. ‘If they win, they free their sister. She’s aslave.’ ‘I see.’ Obi-Wan nodded at the two brothers. 'I wish you good luck.Anakin, may I speak with you a moment?’ He drew Anakin aside. 'You know this iswrong,’ he told his Padawan with a frown. 'I’msure you are helping for the right reasons. But this is not our mission. Wehave more important things to do.’ [Jude Watson’s Jedi Quest: DangerousGames]

‘Why do you like to go fast, Anakin?’ The dreamy, shuttered look cameover Anakin’s face. 'Because I can leave myself behind.’ he said, his eyes onthe ship. Garen glanced at Obi-Wan. He raised one eyebrow. It was not a Jedianswer. Obi-Wan frowned, troubled by it.There were still places in Anakin he could not reach. [Jude Watson’s Jediapprentice - Special Edition: Deceptions]

Such a dichotomy. [Anakin] is the most fearless man I have ever foughtwith … yet a part of him remains that small, frightened boy who left Tatooineeleven years ago. The boy [Obi-wan]knew, to his shame, he’d sometimes failed to reach.[ Karen Miller’s Star Wars:Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth]

When they’d met,Anakin had been a warm-hearted nine-year-old boy with an open nature. He wastwelve and a half now, and the years had changed him. He had grown to be aboy who hid his heart. [Jude Watson’s Jedi apprentice - Special Edition: Deceptions]

 “Get away from me,” Anakin said, as the edges of his vision rippledscarlet and black … and the rage that dwelled inside him drew itsbreath to scream. “I don’t want you here. She’d be alive if you’d believedin my dreams. She’d be alive if I had freed her. Get away from me, Obi-Wan.Leave me alone!” But Obi-Wan wouldn’t. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, Anakin. Youdidn’t dream she was in danger. You didn’t dream she’d die. If you had—if you’dtold me—” Anakin looked down at Obi-Wan’s hand on his shoulder and shrugged,trying to dislodge it. “Don’t touch me. Are you deaf? I said leave me alone.” StillObi-Wan ignored him. Of course. Because that’s what he did. He gave orders, henever listened. “Anakin, you have to know it wasn’t deliberate.” All he hadto know was that this man had failed him. Sickened, trembling on the brink oflosing self-control completely, he reached out to pluck himself free ofObi-Wan’s grasping fingers …[Karen Miller’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars:Wild Space]

Obi-wan and Anakin’s relationship between TPM and AOTC was not the cozy,loving, friendly thing the fandom likes to pretend it was. It’s not hard tounderstand why Anakin would shut down all Obi-wan’s attempts after the tumultuous10 years they had spent together. Anakin’sreaction is pretty normal for someone who grew up like he did, when everytime you express your feelings you get told you are wrong to feel them you stopexpressing yourself. Again, it’s not that Obi-wan was intentionally trying tohurt Anakin, he simply didn’t know what else to do.

After 13 years of feeling misunderstood, is it really that surprisingthat Anakin doesn’t trust Obi-wan with his deepest feelings? I mean, that’s whyhe doesn’t tell Obi-wan about Padme, their marriage or his dreams. It’s notthat he thinks Obi-wan will hurt it, it’s because he doesn’t believe Obi-wan iscapable of understanding what Anakin is going through.

 [Anakin] turned away. “I’m notsure [Obi-wan]’s on my side.” “Your side? Anakin, what are you saying?”“He’s on the Jedi Council, Padmé. I know my name has come up for Mastery—I’mmore powerful than any Jedi Master alive. But someone is blocking me. Obi-Wancould tell me who, and why … but he doesn’t. I’m not sure he even stands up for me with them.” “I can’t believethat.” “It has nothing to do withbelieving,” he murmured, softly bitter. “It’s the truth.” “There must besome reason, then. Anakin, he’s your best friend. He loves you.” “Maybe he does. But I don’t think he trustsme.” [Matthew Stover. Revenge of the Sith]

And onObi-wan’s side:

“You think Skywalker won’t be able to handle this?” Mace Windu said. “Ithought you had more confidence in his abilities.” “I trust him with my life,” Obi-Wan said simply. [Matthew Stover’s Revengeof the Sith]

Both Obi-wan and Anakin feel the same about so many things but they don’tspeak the same language so they don’t communicate effectively. So much of itgets “lost in translation” and it puts them in a situation where they both knowthey care for each other but they don’t really *know* each other. And, as Ialways say, that’s the tragedy of their relationship. Everything they neededwas right there all along, they just couldn’t see it.

[wingletblackbird]

How Should Padme be Remembered?

I think Padme should be remembered best for her compassion. It is the driving force behind all her actions for better or for worse. Many people seem to take exception to it, as if caring for others, choosing to forgo violence whenever possible, and always endeavouring to give the benefit of the doubt makes Padme weak and foolish. The opposite is true. It is an undeniably difficult thing to hold kindness above all. Most people find it easier to hold a grudge than to forgive. Certainly, Padme’s compassion has caused her hardship placing her in dangerous situations like Geonosis, and many Clone Wars battles, and even indirectly lead to her death. Yes, it can be a vulnerability, and be taken advantage of. However, it is also the fount of her greatest strength and is what saves the galaxy. 

Compassion: Why She Became A Politician Who Touched Millions

Padme chose to become a politician, because she saw so many refugees die when, as a child, she helped her father who was president of the Refugee Relief Movement. He and Senator Farr addressed the Senate to petition for support, and Padme decided she wanted to be able to help people like that too. Everything about Padme’s journey began because she couldn’t turn a blind eye to suffering. It was not power she dreamed of in and of itself, but the ability to influence change for the good. This may be dismissed as naive, but if no one dares hope for it, it’ll never happen. Her compassion and faith made her one of the most trustworthy and reliable politicians in the galaxy.

Compassion: What Saved Her People From Occupation

Padme’s compassion for two people, two people everyone else overlooked, allowed her to save her planet. The first is Jar Jar Binks. He was a Gungan who, on her planet, faced a great deal of specism. Indeed, Padme had never even talked to a Gungan before. However, she cared about Jar Jar whom everyone else was ambivalent to at best and hated at worst. As a result of her compassion though, Padme found out about the Gungan army, and was able to form an alliance with them. Moreover, her care for both her own people and the Gungans was enough for her to a) consider an alliance, and b) humble herself enough to ask for one. She was the first ruler to ever truly make peace with the Gungans.

The second is Anakin Skywalker. She took the time to talk to him and get to know him: A slave boy most everyone would have overlooked. As a result, she won Anakin’s loyalty, and he brought them home for the storm, and won a podrace for them. If this hadn’t happened. Padme would almost certainly have been stranded on Tatooine for a long period, if not outright killed by Maul whom they would have been unable to escape on a broken ship. Then where would her people be? How much more quickly would the Empire have risen? Compassion, folks, it did a lot of good. Finally, Anakin blows up the spaceship. If he hadn’t been there, if Padme hadn’t been kind to him, the whole battle, had it even been able to take place, would likely still have been lost.

Compassion: What Drove Her Into the Senate

Padme planned to ease off on politics for a bit after she stepped down from her position as Queen. After being in politics since she was eight, she wanted a bit of a break, possibly even to start a family. However, when she hears about the tensions within the Senate due to the CIS, she immediately accepts the Queen’s request to become Senator. She feels she has to so she can ensure that all possible is done to prevent war. She does this out of a sense of duty driven by compassion. What will happen to the citizens of the galaxy if there comes a war? Who else can she trust not to be a warmonger? To do all they could to prevent it? Her passion and compassion drive her to even ignore the death threats on her life that come as a result. Not a strong character, you say?

Compassion: What Drove Her to Geonosis

Padme goes to Geonosis, against orders to help Obi-Wan and hopefully stop a war. She fails in the latter. However, it speaks greatly of her courage, (driven by compassion), that she was willing to do it. As for the former she is driven by compassion for Anakin and Obi-Wan to go there for them specifically too. Had they not gone, Obi-Wan may have been placed for execution sooner. He may have even died: Not good.

Compassion: What Drove Her Peace Talks

Padme is not foolish enough to believe that “All Separatists are evil.” She sees the enemy as sentient, and does whatever she can to end the war and make peace with them. She even goes behind enemy lines to meet with an old friend to get peace talks on the table. It almost works too. Unfortunately, though, the Sith were pulling the strings...but that was hardly Padme’s fault. If the Clone Wars hadn’t ultimately been a Sith ploy, she could have spared the galaxy a great deal of suffering with that one brave act.

Compassion: What Drove Her Speeches

Padme also did her best to alleviate the people’s suffering even if she couldn’t stop the war. She frequently spoke to not forget the innocent civilians paying the price of the war. She spoke tenderly with her handmaiden, Teckla, and because she chose to listen was able to, albeit temporarily, stifle Palpatine’s ambitions. She was also able to, if only a little, help ease suffering during the course of the war. She cared.

Compassion: Why She Headed the Delegation of Two Thousand

Padme, even when pregnant, was willing to take the risky move of creating a petition to have Palpatine’s powers diminished. She did this in the hopes of sparing the galaxy of a cruel dictatorship, but also in the hopes that Palpatine wasn’t the man she was starting to realise he was. When she realises what he is. She tries all the more harder.  Her actions here lead to the founding of the Rebel Alliance. A group that later took down the Empire. 

Compassion: Why She Ran to Mustafar After Anakin/Darth Vader

Padme has been called foolish in that she ran to Mustafar after her husband. Many have said it ruined her character for her not to have brought a knife, and tried to kill him like in concept drawings. (Kill him under a deception of love and loyalty no less!) However, that is not Padme’s way. She loved this man, and chose to believe he could be saved. It is always better to save a man than to kill one. Padme believes this firmly. Is she wrong? Luke, her son, redeemed her husband decades later, so had Obi-Wan not interfered perhaps the Mustafar reunion could have gone better. If only Anakin could have been influenced for the better, things would likely have been much different. 

Even if he couldn’t have been saved, Palpatine would have been killed sooner, likely by Vader, and Padme would still have retained some beneficial influence. Killing Anakin though, while it might avenge the murders of many, would have done the galaxy little long-term good. The Emperor could have just gotten another apprentice. A saved Anakin though, would not only be a life spared, but, through all the good he could do with it, many more lives saved as a result. Who was she to execute him; what gave her the right? Padme’s compassion lead to her death here, but she was willing to take the risk to save the man she loved, and, indirectly, help the galaxy in doing so. It is a brave thing to go into a dangerous situation with nothing but love, and Padme is all the more admirable for it. (People admire Luke for throwing his lightsaber away, but condemn his mother for the same attitude: Why?)

Compassion: R2-D2

Padme refused to erase R2′s memory and then gave the droid to Anakin. Who knows how bad the galaxy would have been if that little droid hadn’t been there with his ingenuity, born of decades of experience, to flee the Empire with the Death star plans? If he hadn’t been there to fly with Luke? With Anakin? For all those crucial missions before, after, and during the Empire? All this because Padme even cares about droids. 

Compassion: It’s Reverberations

All in all, Padme’s compassion, even after her death had consequences. Her concerned and sincere advice to Bail when the Empire was formed enabled him to found a Rebellion. The delegation of two thousand she lead helped with that as well. Her many peace-talks with the Separatists were not as fruitful as she would have liked, but I’m sure they never forgot the woman who helped found the Rebellion once wanted to make peace with them and treated them with respect. This likely helped with the rise of the Rebellion, and the forming of the New Republic, if only a little. She became a martyr who inspired many--no matter how much the emperor tried to erase her memory. Her compassion left ripples that became waves.

To conclude, remember Padme for her compassion. It was her greatest strength, even if it was also her greatest vulnerability. It was what made Padme, Padme. It is what made her truly great.