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kanansdume · 2 years

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Love seeing people talk about how powerful Anakin is because like. It doesn’t even matter. Anakin fails at everything despite apparently being the most powerful force user in existence.

Is he able to become a good Jedi? No, he sucks ass at being a Jedi and kills them all, there is no argument to be made ever that Anakin was a good Jedi. Anakin himself says more than once he’s a suck-ass Jedi and while he’s an unreliable narrator at the best of times, the narrative itself supports that statement, so I’m willing to accept that one as truth.

Is he a good Sith then? Eh, I guess? He kills a lot of Jedi, that’s pretty much the defining aspect of being a good Sith, I suppose. But Palpatine never seems all that happy with him as an apprentice and he’s CERTAINLY less useful than Dooku was as an apprentice, despite Dooku’s constant attempts to overthrow Palpatine, he’s also arguably Palpatine’s most successful apprentice. And everything Anakin does to annihilate the Jedi could’ve been done by Dooku or Maul. Or no apprentice at all. Anakin comes up with no Sith-y plans of his own and apparently can’t even figure out how to open a Sith Temple to access a Sith holocron. So while he’s a PASSABLE Sith, he’s honestly not that good at being a Sith, either, I’d argue. Not because he’s a good person, he’s just... not that smart or capable in general and that remains true as much as a Sith as it did as a Jedi.

Is he a good student? Nope, sucks ass here, continuously goes against any teaching we ever see him given by the Jedi OR his mother. And then proceeds to repeatedly try to kill his own teacher after throwing him away like chopped liver to make sure his wife lives.

Is he a good teacher? Not really, he apparently is pretty unorthodox in how he trains Ahsoka who is already apparently particularly advanced in her skills and the times we see her taught patience, her biggest vice in early Clone Wars seasons, it’s actually through OTHER MASTERS like Plo Koon and Tera Sinube and Anakin is repeatedly called out for being the reason Ahsoka struggles with this he is absolutely incapable of teaching it to her. And then he repeatedly tries to kill her after throwing her away like chopped liver to make sure his wife lives.

Is he a good husband, then? No. He repeatedly ignores Padme’s set boundaries when trying to seduce her and emotionally manipulates her into feeling sorry for him and like she’s the bad guy when she lays out the very logical reasons why they shouldn’t start a relationship and then commits genocide on her behalf and asphyxiates her while pregnant when she’s not super happy about the genocide. I’ll also bring up he was demanding of Padme and didn’t like when Padme didn’t give him attention immediately on his schedule and can and WILL manipulate her into feeling like she’s the bad guy for trying to do her job or focus on literally anything else that isn’t him and will absolutely try to kill someone who kisses Padme against her will as a punishment for PADME because she let it happen. So no, he’s the world’s worst husband and we VERY rarely see a redeeming sweet scene between him and Padme because they’re so intensely toxic for each other.

How about a good father, since he presumably turns back for Luke? No. He’s a terrible father, too. Man chops off said son’s hand to try to torture him into turning Dark so he’ll rule at Anakin’s side. And let’s not forget that trying to save Padme from childbirth had jack all to do with saving the child he thought she carried. It’s PADME who has to ask about whether the baby lives or not and his response is basically to shrug because what does that matter if PADME’S dead. And then he proceeds to asphyxiate Padme while pregnant, which will absolutely kill any child she’s pregnant with too if he succeeds and when Obi-Wan says to let her go, he just DROPS HER. Yeah, I see so much care and love for his child there. He threatens to torture Leia if Luke refuses to turn down the line, he’s very intent on torturing his kids into going dark, it’s a major goal for him. And then the one thing he wants Luke to do after he dies is to make sure Leia knows Anakin WAS a good person all along, gotta make sure the woman he tortured knows that it’s actually all good now, just forget the torture stuff, Anakin really DID have some good deep down inside, he just chose not to act on it when asked to torture her, it’s chill now though!

Pretty sure that’s it, so. Lots of raw power? Sure. Doesn’t stop him from being an absolute fuck-up at literally everything in his life, though. Just goes to show, if anyone tells you natural talent will get you farther than hard work and training and dedication, just remind them that Anakin Skywalker exists as proof positive that this isn’t true!

#anti anakin #anti anakin skywalker #the one thing anakin skywalker succeeds at is genocide and even that isn't that special since it's someone else's years-long plan #and any other sith apprentice could've led a troop of mind-controlled soldiers into a temple to kill some kids

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eorzeashan · 1 year

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Kismet

“Nine won't kneel,” Eight says, the sickly sterile glass-bottle green of the interrogation room casting them in a garish light.

Keeper frowns, all hard lines and age. The lamp swinging overhead casts his sharp features in angular shadows, deepening the discomfort meant for detainees. Currently, the room was empty: it was just an old man and his spy. “They will, if they know what is good for them.”

“They won't. You taught them to be that way,” Eight points out with the needle-thin end of his pipe, sitting daintily atop the durasteel table as if it were a chaise lounge, “like a good little Imperial. But not enough to bow to the Sith. They have their pride. Their independence. That is why they are,” He pauses. “the best".

Keeper arches a fine brow.

His weekly talks with the Cipher before him were something he secretly looked forward to, though the subject themselves varied from political headaches to anything as mundane as the weather. It was perhaps the only time he was allowed to parse the mystery of the man who called himself Eight- an agent who wore the moniker of a dead woman, and all that the title carried.

Very few were afforded such instances. Fewer still could keep up with his machinations or his mind. His method bred more enemies than friends, and Keeper often found himself assigning the minimum personnel to Eight on account of his difficult behavior.

Insights like these were a gift.

“If I didn't know any better, I would call you envious, Agent. Why the sudden interest?”

“Is it considered strange to be interested in our counterparts now?” Eight smiles at him.

Keeper finds it reminds him of the false face of a poisonous insect: permanently at ease, painted on, artificial, yet a warning and an invitation all at once. The smoke curls from his pipe, accentuating the silence in the air.

“No. Perhaps not.” Keeper replies, his hands still clasped behind his back.

“I'm not going to interfere, if that's what you're asking.”

Keeper pinches his thin nose bridge, the inflection in Eight’s voice alerting him prematurely to what was heading into unpleasant conversational territory of the migraine kind. Eight always did know how to read between the lines, and years of dancing around one another had made him adept at knowing the old man’s silence better than his words. “Not directly. We wouldn't be having this conversation at all if you weren't. In fact, I’m ordering you as of right now to do nothing.” He locks eyes with him, leaving no room for argument in the steeliness of his gaze. They stare at each other until the younger gives in.

“Bah, you're no fun,” Eight whines, turning away from him like a petulant child.

Keeper shakes his head. Eight was a handful and liked to make it everyone else's problem; it was how he was. Yet beneath that slacking attitude was a blade more sharply honed than any other, and woe befall those who failed to recognize its glint before it was too late. It made him effective. Impersonal. His instincts were good, if not better than any other in their division, and this made him as destructive as a precision-guided missile yet as accurate to his goals as a dart striking center.

Something to do with his ecology, Keeper recalled, though the specifics escaped him; Eight was Near-Human, yet found the Empire's distaste for aliens a “waste of time” and so waved the human-passing card more often than not.

His appearance was once again, a falsehood. His identity, a convenient lie. They spoke of him in dead-end rumors and baseless whispers that made him more of a ghost story inside Intelligence than a service member, the most prominent of these stories being that he had once been a Chiss woman who surgically altered her appearance to escape her previous life.

Eight did nothing to discourage it.

He never was one to follow the rules amidst Imperial rigidity, bending them every chance he was given and otherwise. Keeper suspected this was why the higher-ups kept him most cycles on Dromund Kaas- fearing he’d stray far out of bounds the minute they gave him any length of leash. For that, he and Keeper came to know one another very well.

By the time he’d returned to the present outside of the quagmire of his mental dossier on the agent, Eight had ditched all decorum to lie flat on his back atop the durasteel table with his folded hands cushioning the back of his head. Getting bored, it seemed.

“Credit for your thoughts?” Keeper asks, surprised by his own pleasant tone amidst the emptiness.

Eight exhales lungs full of smoke in reply. He removes one hand from behind his shock of white hair to hold his pipe between two fingers- “like a Red Light District whore,” some of the more…derogatory members of their branch had said. Said members had since been disciplined and lectured on their poor choice of verbage, but Keeper was inclined to agree that even the smallest of his habits were quite suggestive- no doubt intentional on his part. He made no effort to hide it. What was taught had become second nature, and in Eight’s case, he saw no division between his personal self and that of a Cipher.

He taps the ash from the thin pipe on the side of the table, extinguishing the thin trail of smoke that indicated their time was up.

“Let's make a deal,” Eight says, propping himself up on his elbows to twist around and look at Keeper with a heady light in his fawn eyes. It was routine. He’d propose a game, and they’d play accordingly. It was easier than arguing over mission specifics where Keeper knew Eight would force his own way regardless, and so he appealed to his penchant for gambling and let chance decide what path the agent chose to follow.

“Go ahead.”

“If Nine doesn't kneel, transfer the investigation of Jadus to me.”

Keeper pauses, the words dying on his tongue as he looks at his agent with nothing short of bewilderment. “What are you asking of me, Eight?” What could you possibly want from a man like that? goes unsaid between them, but Eight hears it in the stressed twitch of his lower lip, and smiles still.

His current fascination with Jadus was nothing new, but ever since he’d missed the debacle of the elusive Sith arriving at headquarters he’d been quiet. Moody, even. Planning something was an understatement- whatever was brewing in his head had been for weeks. Keeper almost didn't want to know.

Eight doesn't elaborate. That was how the game was played. Rules and rewards. No questions.

“If Nine doesn't kneel,” He repeats slowly, “I won't lift a finger.”

Keeper sticks him with a look that could wither water. “You are making me bet against the house.”

Eight shrugs. “It was your call.”

Keeper sighs- a deep one that comes from the depths of his diaphragm. Loathe as he was to admit it, Eight was right: Nine shone as a figure free from the manipulative claws of the Sith. Officers respected them for keeping their head unbowed- their quiet dignity made them the pride of Intelligence and that of the Imperial military. Those who stood up to their superiors were few and far in-between, and Keeper made it a point that Nine’s autonomy was to be protected. He had made it his life’s work to keep them free of their influence, in the hopes that their Empire could grow beyond their reach.

So why was Eight asking this of him?

“I don't want you anywhere near him.” Keeper shoots him down, the risk too great to be worth considering. He would not lose two Ciphers to a megalomaniac.

“Keeper.” Eight’s tone takes on a deadly gravity, one that Keeper recognizes as the calm before the storm.

“No, Eight.” Keeper holds his ground, his eyes stormy. He jabs an accusatory finger at the younger operative. “I bit my tongue when he came. I let him into our operations. He took our best- I will not give him more.”

Eight goes nonverbal. When he meets his unchallenged gaze again, there is darkness dawning in his eyes.

“A warrior protects his people from those who come from beyond the stars,” He speaks in the familiar purr of Cheunh, alien from the throat of one who lacked their blue skin, and Keeper sucks in a sharp intake of breath at the horror that overtakes him.

“Do not bring her into this!”

“To fight those who mean our way of life harm,” He continues, steady, like a mantra. His eyes bore into Keeper, seeing beyond him, digging beneath his skin and gently cutting him open layer by excruciating layer with all that they see in the twist of his aged features- all that he does not say.

“Keeper.” He repeats, sitting upright with his legs dangling. One hand grips the edge of the table, the other- to Keeper’s surprise and dismay, is extending his pipe to him in an offering for peace. He lets it swivel on the balance of his finger around, the mouthpiece facing Keeper. All the while, the set resolution of his gaze never leaves him, and Keeper glares at the item as if it offends him grossly.

Not out of anger towards his agent, but towards these Force-damned circumstances and the games they must play.

Keeper bites back a swear, taking the pipe from Eight’s outstretched fingers and stuffing it hastily into his thinly pressed lips. He inhales with all the professionalism of one exposed to far too many questionable substances in his youth and the desperation of a man who needs it for the days to come.

“I will use him, as he will use me. But if we do not take this chance to earn his trust, we risk losing the most powerful of allies we could gain.” Eight speaks smooth and low, his voice as delicate as garrote wire and twice as cutting to Keeper. “I will join him. It matters not whether he cares to have me by his side- only if I can turn his power into ours. Nine will not have to give themselves up.”

Keeper ruminates, though he hardly needs to. When it comes to risk and beings of immense danger, no one is better suited. He saw the way Nine stiffened at Jadus’ selection, the way the pain and suffering of the rest of Intelligence affected them. Jadus would break them.

Eight on the other hand, had nothing left inside to break.

He spits out a stream of smoke through the corner of his mouth- quick and unpleasant, to show his dissatisfaction. Keeper turns the pipe back over to Eight. His eyes speak of regret. “Damn you. Damn you and him.”

“Curse me later,” Eight says, lighting a weak flame beneath his pipe, “you haven't even seen how the dice rolls.”

—-----------------

Nine limps out of Jadus’ office smelling of burnt fabric and ozone. Their pride is in tatters, for what good they did to preserve it.

Eight watches from afar, hidden as blue collar personnel melted into the backdrop of the Sith sanctuary.

He touches a finger to his private comm.

“It’s my win, Keeper.”

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #oc: orradiz #imperial agent #cipher eight au #if you dont know what the fuck going on im sorry #I started thinking of what cipher nine represents to others in the imp military. a lot of soldiers look at them with awe #and it got me thinking that so many agents have their pride that they wont bow to the sith #and then I started thinking how Eight fit into all this and it spiraled #in short: I kind of like the idea of Eight as the shadow of Nine since thats what he was conceived as #Jadus is the biggest mystery of his life and he intends to play his game excellently #who is nine here? well that's whoever you want it to be #also keeper was the original dad you can fight me #random character study is random #admin writes #i had to suffer writing this half asleep in a k bbq and now im posting it at shit hours #you're telling me theres a big hotshot sith and no one wants to be a mole to spy on him personally.#eight: outta my way gayboys im boutta get it

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