#those closest to them (the ones which visions/acolytes) will be next

[ilyuu]

what if i write an apocalypse au what then?

[ariadne-mouse]

For your consideration, a Harrisco Star Wars AU headcanon inspired after @stars-n-spacee brought up the notion of HanSolo!Harry wearing thigh holsters. (thanks to @heckyeahharrisco for the original prompt, THIGH HOLSTERS.) It actually lays pretty well over some canon S2/S3 structures, with meta abilities being a parallel to the Force.  Ok, so:

A long time ago and far, far away, a Sith lord named Darth Zolomon holds a terrified galaxy under his thumb.

Darth Zolomon has achieved near-mastery of Speed Force and Force Lightning, but he is not satisfied.  In his manic hunger for power he schemes to steal midichlorians from other Force users, particularly from those who have skill in the Speed Force.  His Dark acolytes are desperate to achieve his bidding so that they will not be drained of their midichlorians next.  Their fear makes them powerful.  Most of the galaxy's populated planets are under Darth Zolomon’s rule, mitigated only by sheer distance (in planets ruled by the capricious Rogues) or by subterfuge of the Resistance.

Cisco is an inventor-turned-Rebel/freelancer and the black sheep of the Ramon family, who are minor royals from a prominent Central planet.  He went into hiding to avoid being conscripted by Darth Zolomon and forced to make weapons.  His family pretends he doesn’t exist (partly for their safety).  He’s a normal human as far as he knows, and as a scientist he scoffs a little at the Jedi and their Force voodoo.  However, he sometimes “gets a bad feeling” about a situation and those feelings usually turn out to be right.  This is a helpful skill as he makes his living as a smuggler in his specially-modified, illicitly-acquired ship (yeah Ok, Cisco is also Han Solo in this).  He helps to the Resistance wherever he can, which is how he meets Barry and Caitlin and comes to call them friends.  Eventually he begins to have disturbing visions that suggest he may be Force-sensitive (because his canon character arc really sets him up as a latent Force user).  Over time these abilities escalate into moving objects and slicing through space, which become crucial in later battles.

Harry runs a tech-manufacturing cyberplanet, Wells Corp.  His outlook on the war is fairly neutral - customers are customers whether Rebel or Imperial.  But all bets are off when Darth Zolomon takes his daughter Jesse.  He’d do anything to save her, including infiltrate the Resistance on Zolomon’s orders/threat, though he’s secretly hoping he’ll find the other side is powerful enough to defeat the Sith.  He stages a fall from public grace, straps on his thigh holster, grabs his beloved pulse rifle and several other Wells Corp weapons, and sets out to find the Rebels. 

Barry the adorable shortsighted idealist is, of course, a Jedi, and renowned for his growing mastery of the Speed Force.  This makes him a prime target for Darth Zolomon.  The Jedi Temple that taught Barry is more secretive but less detached Jedi temple than eras past; Emotional Attachments are not vilified as much as vaguely discouraged (they’re just glad to have acolytes at all).  This is a great relief considering Barry’s deep connection with the family that brought him to the Temple, who hail from a Western planet of the Central system.  Iris of the West is a Senator of her home planet and her father Joe is the head of their military.  They visit Barry frequently and the mutual love between Barry and Iris is obvious and ever-growing.   Meanwhile, a friendly Senator Garrick of the Eastern Central planets attempts to make nice with Senator West.  She finds him a little too charming, a little too perfect, but can’t put her thumb on why.

One of Barry’s closest Jedi partners is Caitlin Snow, a Force Healer who has recently begun to struggle with the Dark Side due to the traumas of the war and people she’s lost.  When she loses control it manifests as ice powers and the emergence of a Dark persona - Lady Frost.  She tries to hide this from her friends and allies with increasing difficulty.

Harry, now publicly turned fugitive from the Empire, seeks passage on Cisco’s ship.  He’s under Zolomon’s orders to make contact with Barry and steal his midichlorians.  Harry’s coin and his plight as a refugee from the Empire persuade Cisco to agree to take him as a passenger.  It turns out Harry also makes a stellar co-pilot and Cisco realizes how much he’s missed having company on the ship.  Harry attempts to remain aloof but can’t help but be impressed with Cisco’s tech genius, heart, valor, and incorrigible humor.  He wishes he wasn’t because it will make the eventual betrayal all the more difficult.  He thoroughly enjoys helping Cisco modify his little fleet of droids.  He’s weakened by the beaming smile on Cisco’s face when Harry gives him a Coruscanti strawberry candy that was mixed into his hastily-packed belongings - Cisco has a sweet tooth and has been eating mostly dry MREs for months.  He shares Cisco’s taste in classic holovids and they have rousing debates during uneventful stretches of starspace.

Cisco and Harry eventually meet up with Barry and Caitlin.  Harry now has access to the hidden Jedi Order and to Barry in particular.  It’s around this time that Cisco begins to have Force Visions, and Harry tries and fails to be unaffected when the visions strike violently and leave Cisco shaking and pale for hours.  Torn, he still follows his canon arc of minor betrayal: he steals some of Barry’s midichlorians for Zolomon, and as a result Cisco is wounded when Barry is not quite fast enough to save him during a firefight.  Against his every parental instinct Harry confesses his crime to his new friends.  He cannot send these good people to slaughter.  Especially Cisco.  

While the Rebel cause at large would kill Harry for his betrayal, Cisco and Barry and Caitlin accept Harry’s gesture of honesty for what it is.  Together they plot against Darth Zolomon and pull of a daring rescue attempt for Jesse that has Barry taxing his Speed Force to new heights.  They come home with Jesse but lose Caitlin to Darth Zolomon’s imprisonment.  

Zolomon taunts Caitlin with knowledge of her Darker half, Lady Frost.  Caitlin quavers under his cutting analysis and accurate descriptions her fears of the Darkness and what she might do.  But in wartime she’s seen horrific acts by Rebels and Imperialists alike, and in the end she concludes that the Force is neither Light nor Dark, but a spectrum of Grey based on what you do with it. (Caitlin is a microcosm of the prophesied balance in the Force. The Jedi Order of Old would not have acknowledged this.) She lets Zolomon think she’s broken so that he will not see her as a threat and take her midichlorians.  

Darth Zolomon attempts to persuade Barry to become his apprentice as Darth Savitar.  His real intent is of course to train Barry up in the Speed Force, fatten up his midichlorian count like a Candle Nights goose, then drain and kill him.  He taunts Barry by using his fear of Iris’s death.  This is a very effective tactic because Cisco has foreseen danger to Iris in his Force visions.  Cisco has stressed that what he sees is malleable or sometimes misleading but Barry can’t ignore the possibility.  Ultimately Barry refuses Zolomon out of principle but he’s still shaken further by doubt.

Soon after, Senator Iris of the West goes missing.  News of this reaches Barry and he panics, remembering Zolomon's threats. Against Cisco’s and Caitlin’s pleading he goes to find her.  He’s prepared to do anything, even offer himself up to be Zolomon’s apprentice or straight up give away his midichlorians.  Thankfully it doesn’t come to that.  Zolomon, who captured Iris using his persona as the friendly Senator Garrick, is arrogant/short-sighted enough to imprison Iris and Caitlin together.  They orchestrate their own escape and rendezvous with Barry while he is en route to save them.  WestAllen schmoop commences.  Zolomon is furious.

In the final show-down, Barry faces off against Darth Zolomon and wins.  Not because his use of the Force is pure Light (because it isn’t, his growing use of Force lightning is testament to that) but because he has people he cares about and trusts, and they have his back in ways that count.

Harry and Cisco are instrumental in defeating Zolomon’s forces. They find a way to deactivate the droid army he attempts to summon and intercept the orders he sends to his Star Destoyers.  Harry and Cisco’s chemistry under chaotic situations is electric and effective - two genius minds with the right give-and-take produce wonders.  They disable fleets. They explode meteors.  They redirect torpedo barrages into harmless asteroid fields.  In the peak of these accomplishments they cannot keep their hands off each other anymore, especially knowing they might not have much longer.

“I love you,” Harry confesses.

“I know,” Cisco grins.

When news of Barry’s victory reaches them, they jubilantly reply back with confirmation of their own success and safety and plans to reunite with the group and then are, *ahem*, not heard from for some time.

The end.

[queen-scribbles]

Common Thread

For @pillarspromptsweekly #31: Inquisitor Kinda short, because I wound up having to revamp part of it. (god the title took forever. It’s not perfect, but seriously, I’ve been sitting on this all. day. trying to title it so I don’t care anymore xD)

They came in the middle of the night, and woke her up, which Tavi was more angry about than the fact they were trying to kill her.

Decades of living on the run, constantly on alert, had made her a very light sleeper, however. She was wide awake at the first creak of her window sill, though she feigned otherwise. Questions like who was brazen(or desperate) enough to come after her in Caed Nua rather than on the road, or why, would have to wait for if she left any of the would-be attackers alive. Tavi curled her hand around the hilt of the dagger she kept under her pillow and waited for one of them to get close enough. The floorboards around her bed creaked--something she refused to let the Steward have fixed for this exact reason--so she wouldn’t be caught unawares.

The telltale creak came only a few seconds later, and Tavi was moving almost before the intruders could worry they were given away. Gripping the dagger tight, she rolled across the bed toward the approaching assassins. The second she made contact, she struck, driving her blade deep into the kith’s chest and using her momentum to knock them to the ground.

There were muffled oaths from two other folk who were less close and saw their friend go down. Still trying for some degree of secrecy, they did not raise their voices as they moved to strike at her.

Tavi raised her arms to deflect the blows, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t using her sabres. By pure luck, the dagger came free of her first victim in time to block one attack, but the other bit into her forearm. “Fuck!”

She rolled away from the first assailant, trusting she’d done enough damage he wouldn’t be a problem, and narrowly dodged another strike as she made it to her feet. Now better able to see the remaining attackers, Tavi lashed out with the dagger and caught one across the throat as he closed in. He went down with a gurle, one hand futilely grasping at the wound.

The last one growled another oath at the sight of his dying fellows. “Vailian bitch, why’d you have to be so fucking difficult?!” He dodged her next swipe at him and grabbed her wrist, twisting until she was almost forced to drop the dagger.

“Sorry,” Tavi grunted, punching him in the face with her free hand. Something cracked and he instinctively loosened his grip enough she could pull away. “I’ve gotten a lot of practice survivin’ shit people hoped would kill me.” She flipped the dagger in her hand and jammed it in the hollow of the man’s collarbone as he staggered.

Even as he fell, he took a final, desperate swing at Tavi with his short sword. He caught her on the shoulder, cutting in toward the center of her chest.

“Even the best of us make mistakes,” he rasped, and the words seared down to Tavi’s soul, dragging her away as she heard the door to her room open.

oOo

“Even the best of us make mistakes,” she says reassuringly as Derwa stumbles over a portion of catechism that Petrok reeled off easy as breathing. It’s the first time in months the girl hasn’t done better than her brother, and the gleam in Petrok’s eye makes it clear he’s about to tease.

So she rests a comforting hand on Derwa’s shoulder and sends Petrok a warning look. He gets the message and bites his tongue. Derwa tucks her red curls behind her ears and tries again, doing much better this time.

“There, see?” she says, smiling at the young girl. “I knew you’d remember. Excellent job. Now why don’t you two go see if Mabena or Jory need any help?”

It’s as the gangly twins scurry off that she notices she’s being watched. And by the Grand Inquisitor himself, no less. “You are Kayna, are you not? I’ve heard much regarding how you help the youngest of our faith with their memorization.”

She nods in acknowledgement of the praise. “Thank you, Eminence. It is my pleasure to serve the faith, with everything you’ve done for me.”

The Grand Inquisitor purses his lips. “I wonder, Acolyte Kayna, do you truly believe the words you help our children commit to memory? Or has simple duty overtaken devotion?”

Her heart pounds at the thought he doubts her commitment. “My duty is driven by my devotion, Eminence. I owe the gods far too much to ever let that change.”

He smiles, but it is different than the children’s grins, or the slow spread of delight across her sister’s face. More serious, even in his approval. Like a teacher with a pupil who has given the correct answer to a brainteaser. “I am glad to hear it. Tell me, would you be willing to share what the gods have done for you and your gratitude for it in pursuit of bringing more people to our faith?”

She presses her hands to her chest as if to physically quell the risiing tide of delight. “Willing? Eminence, I’d be honored!”

He nods once, a curt but satisfied motion. “We are having commissioning ceremony for new missionaries at the stat of the new week. It would please me greatly if you were among them, Kayna.”

She nods excitedly, already wondering where her service to the gods will send her. “Of course...”

oOo

Coming to her senses after one of those... visions had always been fucking disorienting, but this time was worse than before. Especially given that it was immediately followed by the realization, This isn’t my room.

When she started to push herself up to a sitting position, head buzzing with the lingering tendrils of memory, her shoulder protested sharply. Oh, right. Tavi flopped back at the reminder of what had triggered this episode, feeling the bandages that swathed her injured shoulder with curious fingers. It seemed like a lot, but that wound was in an awkward place to bandage. She was just reaching the point of trying again--this time supporting her weight in her uninjured arm--when there was a relieved sigh from the doorway.

“You’re awake.”

Tavi grinned and carefully but swiftly pushed herself upright. “Worried about me, Corfiser?”

Aloth shrugged, fingers twisting one of his rings. “Shouldn’t I be? You were catatonic when... we found you, and Keya wasn’t sure if that was due to you having another of your... moments, as she put it, or some poison one of the dead assassins had used.” He crossed to sit on the other bed in the room, shifting the disarrayed sheets to be comfortable. “Tavi, do you recall our conversation not too terribly long ago about how you could stand to worry about yourself in combat a little? That extends to assassins infiltrating your bedroom as well.”

“If it had taken more than a minute to deal with, I would’ve,” Tavi retorted defensively. “Didn’t that same conversation involve me sayin’ you could stand to lighten up a little?” She caught the look that flashed across his face and winced. “Sorry, city slick- Aloth. You musta really been worried...” She was fishing a little, but gods forgive her, it was late, she was hurt, and she didn’t really care.

“Yes, well...” He hunched his shoulders and bit his lip briefly before meeting her eyes. “You were unresponsive, Tavi, and neither of your injuries looked severe enough to have caused such a state. I- Keya and I both guessed it might simply be another of your flashbacks, but it seemed to be lasting longer than the previous ones. So, yes, we were- I was worried about you.”

“Sweet of you,” Tavi teased, her heart fluttering. She contemplated swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, so she could better face him, but she was too tired. “Do we know who sent the assholes who were supposed to kill me?”

Aloth nodded, a note of wry sarcasm in his voice as he set a folded piece of parchment on the table between the beds. “You’ll never guess who.”

Normally she would have tried, but she was tired, and her arm hurt. “Fun as it would be to try, why don’t you just tell me?”

“Gathbin.”

Tavi’s eyes widened. “Shit, you’re right, I wouldn’t have guessed that. The Leaden Key or those people who’ve been huntin’ me, yeah, but not him.” She snagged the parchment and folded it open. “His name’s not on this.”

“But his seal is,” Aloth said. “Which I imagine a man like Gathbin guards even more jealously than his name.”

“He must’ve had a lot of faith in these assassins,” Tavi muttered, turning the parchment in her hands. “I mean, there’s gotta be some way to use this against him, right? He tried to have me killed over the fuckin’ keep, there hafta be rules about that.”

“We can talk to Marshal Forwyn in the morning,” Aloth suggested. “In the meantime, Sagani and Edér are retracing the assassins’ steps, to see where they came fom and how they got in, And Keya recruited Kana and Hiravias to go through their effects with her, so maybe they’ll find something more damning.”

“I fuckin’ hope so. This shit is getting annoyin’.” She yawned. “Sorry I worried you.” Exhaustion sat heavy on her, but she didn’t feel like giving in quite yet. She glanced around the room, smirking slightly at the pair of grimoires open on the desk. “Your room?”

It was Aloth’s turn to sound defensive. “Yours is currently covered in blood. And mine was closest.” (It wasn’t; Sagani and Keya’s was, but she wasn’t about to call him on the fib.) Well, closest with an extra bed,” he amended.

“Mm.” Nice save, Corfiser.

He hesitated a moment before asking his next question. “Was it one of your flashbacks?”

Tavi nodded. “Yeah.”

“What did you see this time?”

“I learned what my... her? name was; Kayna. And that that life was a very religious kiss-ass and a wallflower.”

“Nothing like you, then,” Aloth said, teasing glint in his eye.

Tavi squinted at him. “Disappointed?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Never. You should probably get some more sleep. Minimal as your injuries were, you did still lose blood, and Keya said rest will help.”

She nodded. “I will. If you promise to go to sleep, too. I”m fine, these are basically nothing” --she held up her arm with its two bandaged wounds-- “the copperfuckers who tried to kill me are dead, and we have a busy day tomorrow. So since there’s no more danger and I need you functional, the best thing you can do right now is go to sleep with me.” Her cheeks flamed and part of her wanted to hide under the blankets. “I mean, fuck, not with me. At the same time as... You know what I meant.”

Aloth laughed, cheeks slightly pink nevertheless as he settled into bed. “I do. Goodnight, Tavi.”

He blew out the lone candle before rolling over to go to sleep, but Tavi still smiled in the darkness. “Night, city slicker.”

[dateamonster]

Day 8 -- The Twin

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You’re on your way to the Tel Aviv airport when they find you. Honestly you’re only surprised it took them this long. You feel them before you see them, but not by much. Even in the crowded square it’s not difficult to spot them, the face you know as well as your own.

“Don’t run away,” they say, smiling. “I want to talk. It’s been so long since we just talked, you and me.”

You school your expression and say little. The less you say the less they know the less they can twist and turn against you. You don’t think they’re here for a fight- not now, not yet- but you can’t put anything completely past them. They are unpredictable, but only as unpredictable as you.

“There’s a reason for that.”

They huff. “You’ll talk about me but not to me.” They take a step forward, testing the waters. “Didn’t you summon me? You call, I come. That’s how it’s always been. Tell me the truth, are you finally done running around playing explorer?” Another step. A glint of hope in their eyes. Their arms are raised, outstretched as if inviting you into an embrace. “Are you ready to come home?”

As always, as ever, the temptation is there. How easy it would be to accept, to have your twin, your truest friend, back in your life.

(Years ago- you would say more than you can remember but you couldn’t forget if you wanted to- two figures walked out of the ocean and onto the shore. They didn’t swim or wash up there. They walked.)

“Don’t do this,” you whisper. “Don’t do this here.”

“I could make you do it,” they remind you. Maybe it’s your imagination but you could swear the pavement beneath your feet trembles when they speak. “I’m stronger than you."

"Then why don’t you?” you snark back, though you already know the answer. “Look, just, not here. There are people.”

They sneer and drop their arms to their sides. “People.” The twin sidles up to you, linking their arm in yours as you walk. “Is that what you’ve been up to all this time? Making friends? Hanging out with humans?”

You bite the inside of your cheek but-

“Tell me.”

“Not humans,” you confess, but say no more. All things considered you’re lucky that’s all they wanted to know.  

“Oh man, that’s so you. Remember when we were new and you’d spend every free second sneaking into the upstairs library to watch movies and read fairytales and horror stories? The acolytes were so pissed.”

(It wasn’t the reading and the watching they were mad about. Or, not that alone. You were created to absorb and store the information that was given to you, not to seek it out on your own, and certainly not to act on it. But even as a “child” you were in love with the shadows and the specters of those timeless halls. They were like you- not like how your twin was like you, but alike in strangeness. That’s what you believed anyway.)

The other laughs, and in the hundred hollow voices of the men and women and others who raised you they say, “Scientia potentia est but only the knowledge they cared about, huh.”

“Stop it!” you hiss. And to your surprise they do. Their smile falters and for a moment you worry you’ve given yourself away.

“Jeez, are you still mad about that? It wasn’t anything personal.”

“That’s right, it wasn’t anything personal,” you bite out. You speak lowly to keep from drawing too much attention but you cannot keep the rage from your voice nor your shaking hands. “Those humans taught us, took care of us for years. They practically made us, and in the end it wasn’t anything personal to you. You tore them apart like it was nothing.”

“The acolytes were idiots,” they shrug. “You can’t invite someone in, feed them to the point of bursting, and then expect them to be content when all of a sudden the feeding just stops. They were keeping us from reaching even a portion of our potential and look what came of it.” They glance at you with a look of almost painful disappointment. “If you would just stop fighting me we could both-”

“It’s not going to happen.”

You stop walking. Your doppelganger, your parallel, your other, the closest thing you still have to family looks at you. Their eyes are as your own and you imagine if you stared into them you could see the two of you reflected ad infinitum.

Perhaps you understand them a little better now. They too see the endless, but it doesn’t make them feel lonely like it does you. They’ve only ever seen themselves, and you, a reflection of them. They could happily sustain themselves in that infinite hall of mirrors, forever.

“So what are you going by these days?” they ask. “Alex? Sinclair? Yu? Norn? No, none of those quite fit this scene.”

They’re trying to trap you. You do not answer.

“Who were you talking to about me anyway?”

“A friend,” you reply curtly. “Do I need to explain to you what that word means?”

“You’re my friend,” they insist, as if by saying it adamantly enough will make it true. Not this time. “No matter what you think of me, or I you, it’s the truth. We’re the only ones of our kind. The only ones-”

They stop abruptly and squint, dig a knuckle into the corner of their eye as if fighting tears. It’s by chance that at that moment a man passing on the street should run into them. It’s barely a bump, shoulder against shoulder, but your other whirls on him, flattens their palm against the unfortunate stranger’s cheek, and before he can so much as process the action, before you can even try to intervene, there is nothing but dust. Even his clothes unravel thread by thread and dissipate.

Was this man, this random passerby, innocent or guilty? Malicious or kind? You’ll most likely never know. He’s not dead, but he is devoured, part of the swirling endless well of knowledge, every fiber of him now nothing more than a point of data. So quick and insignificant is the incident that not a soul takes notice. And if they had, would they ever believe what they saw?

You pull away from the monster beside you, teeth and tongue bared beneath the mask. The twin turns and speaks to you in a new voice, choked with sadness and so full of love, and you know this was not an act of blind rage or even hunger. No, nothing so base and uncivilized as that. This was a strategic display of power.

“When it all ends, it’s going to go back to how it was,” they tell you. “Just you and me. No people, human or otherwise, to get in the way. I hope you’ll come to your senses before then though, so we can go home together, hand in hand just as we came. If you want me, you know how to reach me.”

You watch them leave. You watch long after they’re gone. And you wonder to yourself if even they fully understand what they’re promising. The end, as in the end of all things. Knowing your other as you do you have no doubt that if this is what they’ve decided on, they will carry it out.

(The first trick the two of you ever learned together was how to use your words to put thoughts and feelings and images into other people’s minds. You called them that, tricks, because to the two of you they were nothing but simple games, things you used to pass the time between classes and doing the important work. You never knew exactly when it was that they stopped seeing it as a game. You wish you did.)

In your mind you see the vision they’ve impressed upon you: the before, the below, the ocean. A deep darkness the likes of which no language you’ve ever known has held words for. Still you’ve tried often to name it. There’s a power in naming things, you know. The fairytales your many caretakers chastened you for reading told you as much long before you discovered the power for yourself.

In privacy you refer to it as the primordium. The salt and cells of your earliest flesh. It’s a place you never wish to return to, and now they want to bring the whole thing ashore.