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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years

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Hell is just a beat away (5/9)

Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic AU | 8k | warning for limb loss, discussion of sexual assault of a teenager, body horror (implanted bombs)

If the kids are united

Ta-tap tap tap, tap ta-tap tap. He takes small steps by necessity—the buyer holds his hand and creates a pace he must match—small steps, but many of them, and quick ones, taking him ever further away from the palace of Xev Xrexus. It is little cause for happiness. He has been on this path before, twice, though not back then in the company of a twi’lek child, so young that if she was a boy even the Sisters would have left her to grow for a few more years. There is no point in looking at her, in growing attached—but her presence nevertheless settles his determination, step after step after step.

A street is crossed, and there is a bright sudden pain down there and—he does not yearn for his home. There is no point. But he knows he had thick calluses then, would walk through nettles and thorny underbrush barefoot as he is now and then he would stomp for the joy of it, and laugh. There is no point in missing that boy who lived then, unsoftened by captivity and so naïve that the worst he could imagine was the siring of his child.

That boy was filed down to nothing along with his calluses and his nails and his horns. That boy died.

Soon, so will he.

It is useless to mourn. Nothing is real in the world anymore, nothing but violation, and violence.

The new Master is short, and that will make it easier. They gave their name, he dimly remembers, but he can’t recall it and it will not matter soon. Even here there are maggots, and maggots don’t care for names. The slaver’s arm is bent upwards to keep hold of one of Savage’s fingers, and the twi’lek’s chain is tied to what looks like a necktie misused as a belt. She’s walking so close behind that she bumps into the slaver with every other step, which should further diminish their range of motion, and most crucially—the slaver stowed the bombs’ remote control device inside their satchel. They will not reach it in time.

Tap ta-tap ta-tap. Now all that is missing is a spot that is dark and unobserved. Something ebbs and bobs deep inside him, but it’s futile now to wonder whether it’s regret or relief or just more fear. If he does not act soon, he’ll arrive at a ship or a palace, and his one chance will be spent.

There. Alleyway. A few more steps, and—

I’m sorry, he thinks, I know I promised to try to come home and then he shakes his thumb loose of the Master’s hand and grabs their arm tight and he pulls them up and—

He slams them against the wall.

Again.

The necktie belt’s come loose, he notices in his peripheral awareness, and the twi’lek’s picking it up and backing away. The Master in his hand squirms. Shudders. Whimpers, in a voice that sounds higher than what Savage thought he heard in the palace but Savage wasn’t all there back then, not truly, hasn’t for a very long time been as present as he is now. The false roles and expectations have dropped away from him like dried mud. (He was bred to be a warrior, not a plaything. When his Mate looked at him She should have judged his lethality and not his body, his symmetry, his submission; She should have chosen a brutal fighter to fuck and carry the line of the night. He wouldn’t have liked it, either, but at least—he would have understood. This new Master looked and saw a broken toy and so they thought nothing of stowing away the remote that gives them power. They’re holding Savage by the hand, when he is an abducted son of Wrath.)

He roars in wild triumph and swings the Master over his head, one circle, another, for more devastating impact and on the second turn something dark swirls out against the wall, something that must have covered the face, because he gets a glimpse of—

He sees—

He—

He catches them in his other arm and—

He looks but his eyes don’t want to see. He blinks and blinks, but the face doesn’t change. It still looks the dreams he tried to forbid himself. It looks like his…

It’s the face of a brother.

Not a Master. This is a nightbrother, eyes shuttered and a face as red and powerful as Savage’s ever seen. A face as small as—no, he used to raise babies, it’s not that small, but the nightbrother is a young boy and so Savage cradles him in his arms, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.”

He wants to know his face, his horn pattern, wants to know whose brother this is, who sent him to Savage’s rescue, who sent a childto the hell of Nar Shaddaa—he desperately wants to see, but he almost killed this boy, almost killed this young nightbrother when he’s been so alone and bereft of purpose for years and now he almost killed—he wants to look, but his arms cradle the child and his mouth keeps repeating, “I didn’t want to hurt you, I’m sorry,” and whatever he may want to do his hands cannot let go. Savage’s body has acted against his wishes every day of every week of every month of the past few years, but this is the first time it feels sweet. He won’t let go. He is curious and shameful and shaking from adrenaline-drop, but his arms want to hold this child forever.

They are still on Nar Shaddaa, still in the slavers’ den, and any passing stranger could—but Savage waited until a dark alley to attack, and there’s no-one walking by. No threat, for a moment.

“I’m sorry, brother,” he mumbles, and his fingers slink over the back of the boy’s head—bruised, but no broken bone—and feel the breath that comes from his mouth and then he holds on tight, tight, but not so tight it’ll trigger any wound that Savage—oh Mother—that Savage just gave this miraculous small nightbrother child.

⁂

The shift was rapid, dizzying, but even in this Master has taught Maul well: the quick turn to violence and its even quicker end would certainly have terrified Maul if it was not exactly like the base pattern of his training. As it is, and with the living force bathing him in the zabrak’s intentions be they grim determination or, for minutes now, a soft and anguished terror soaked through with a strange emotion he cannot parse, but it eddies and bobs with the hand cradling Maul’s head and it doesn’t feel lethal, not even hostile…

He would have been scared, disoriented, he decides, if he was not Sith—but he is and so the sudden attack just made the world make sense.

Sense. His head aches and so does his arm but the world makes sense again, it makes sense, like it didn’t when he was leaving the palace holding onto a slave he didn’t know how to talk to, a zabrak slave that Maul desperately wants to like him—and the zabrak’s doomed, doomed, or Maul is, once they get to Master, but still he can’t help wanting to be liked—it was strange, and he didn’t know what to do except walk and get to the ship and then they would—and then they will get to Master and someone will die. That was all he understood. He didn’t want to think about it, but when he tried to focus on something else, focus on his desperate dream, he still had no idea how he could make the liking happen. Any of the small in-between interactions that people apparently have. None of the hololessons covered this scenario, and Maul didn’t have time to dream and re-dream about it until it felt perfect… He knew he’d dipped his toe in a world that didn’t make sense, and there was no guide as to what to do, before the violence.

And now he understands again. The world is back on its rails.

The darkside zabrak tested him.

There needs to be a hierarchy, obviously, and before it wasn’t clear where the zabrak stood compared to Maul, so they couldn’t really interact. That was the problem with Maul’s ideas of how to make them friends. They didn’t have roles without the hierarchy. And without the roles, nothing makes sense. Nobody knows what to do.

Except the clever yellow zabrak. He knew that the only thing they could do was find the hierarchy, and Maul’s grateful for his quick thinking, so grateful that he almost isn’t angry that he lost (even though he is Darth Maul! He was supposed to beat everybody!) and anyway, the zabrak, Savage, he decided that Maul should survive even though he’s weaker, he obviously has a purpose for Maul, and even if the purpose conflicts with Master’s and Maul will have to turn against him very soon—it feels nice, good, that Savage let Maul live. That he has a purpose for Maul. It’s so close—no, Maul decides, it’s exactly what he wanted. What else is liking but seeing someone’s purpose, anyway? (The zabrak is a darksider. He’s strong. He likes what matters. Only Maul likes things that are useless, like mangy old brachno-jags and droids made from trash, and soon he will learn to become better. Master will teach him. He’s been trying, has been punishing Maul for these useless likes, for so long now. One day it’ll stick.)

The zabrak beat Maul, and he let him live. He’s running his fingers—his bare warm-skin fingers—over the back of Maul’s head with more care than Maul would need soldering a tiny circuit, and when Maul turns his head slightly he can rest his cheek against a naked shoulder. It’s—it’s more contact with another living being than he can ever remember having. The few animals that found their way into the Mustafar complex would always scramble away from him, unless they were brought by Master and they hurt and he had to kill them. A warm pulsing neck under his fingers, hot blood—it felt nothing like this. This is gentle, luxurious, softer by a thousandfold than any robe Maul has ever touched. He almost can’t feel the leftover throbbing in his skull over the revelation that is touching, skin-to-skin, another being. A darkside zabrak, just like him.

“Sorry,” the zabrak keeps muttering. “Sorry, brother,” and Maul doesn’t know what he’s sorry for. Letting him live? It would have been honorable to die in battle, but selfishly, Maul is glad he didn’t die before he found out what resting his head against someone’s shoulder feels like. Sorry for holding Maul? He should have been. As a Sith Lord, Maul is above these animal comforts. But also—Savage would stop petting him, if he was sorry for that, and Maul is shamefully grateful that this guess, too, is wrong. It will have to end, and soon, and forever—when they get to Master either the zabrak will die or Maul—but he will carry this moment in his hearts as long as he lives.

Master will take the padawan and he will kill either Savage or Maul—wait—The padawan! Maul pushes his way out of Savage’s arms and cranes his neck. The padawan is gone. She’s—

“Brother, what is—do you sense danger?” Savage asks, but Maul has no time to think about him now.

The padawan’s gone.

Master will kill him.

Master was going to kill Maul anyway, when he found out that Maul disobeyed and used the force and brought back another zabrak, dark and much stronger than Maul, but now that Maul completely messed up the mission, Master’s going to extra kill him. Going off-script and buying the zabrak was bad enough. Maul can’t lose the padawan, the whole reason for his presence on Nar Shaddaa. He can’t botch the mission. Master is going to kill him, and he’s going to let Maul live by a thread and throw him in bacta just to kill him again. And again. And again.

And still, it’ll be better than what he deserves, because Maul just failed the ancient plans of the Sith.

He failed Master Sidious and he failed Darth Bane and he failed every single other Sith in the long lineage that led to Maul, stupid Maul who let the Jedi escape just because he thought the mission was going well and he was lonely. He failed—

But the Jedi can’t have gone far! Maybe he can salvage this!

“Brother, wait! Don’t leave—” Savage shouts when Maul starts running down the alleyway in the direction away from the slaver palace, but whatever problem he has, if he can’t stop Maul he will have to live with it. This padawan is important for the grand plans of the Sith. Maul will find her, come what may. He will not fail Lord Sidious again.

⁂

Eldra’s almost finished wedging herself into an alcove hidden three meters above the ground in the cul-de-sac of massive windowless skyscrapers—hiding’s the only thing left, there’s no way out—and that’s when the pain comes.

It’s a piercing, shrieking sort of pain; the kind of pain she last felt when her Master sagged atop her, riddled with holes and gurgling her last unkept promises through bloodied lips. It’s mixed with dread, with the certainty of failing the one you wanted to protect. It makes her sob and tremble. It wants to drown her, at once the maelstrom and the tendrils of the beast old beyond time that hides inside. It’s dark. It’s heady power. It’s madness. It’s the pain of an unshielding force user.

It’s the zabrak.

Shit. The zabrak. He provided the distraction that let Eldra get away. He gave his life for hers. Eldra could have lived with that, with knowing he died so she could run. She thought she could, anyway. A good Jedi would have. He was just a slave, a force-sensitive found too late for anyone’s good, a desperately angry and scared young man. Perched on the very edge of the dark side, at best. Fallen, maybe. Too late. She is a Jedi, and she knows that sometimes, a life must be given for the greater good. If someone had to die, maybe it was for the best that it was his life: he’s just a darksider. She has been raised to give her own life, and the zabrak’s a civilian—a slave, a slave just like she is now—but this is the way the world works.

Eldra had to survive, because she must tell the council of the return of the Sith. That’s what matters. A single life is nothing to that, even if the zabrak’s death is agony. The good of the many comes first.

There is no death, there is the force, Eldra mumbles. There is no death. I accepted that he would die, when I ran away instead of helping him take down the Sith. I accepted his death. I must stay calm.

But this isn’t death. This is torture.

What the fuck is the Sith doing to him?

Maybe it will be over soon.

Maybe. Please. Don’t let him suffer too long. Eldra stays sardined in her hideaway, concentrating on not whimpering too loudly and on releasing the secondhand pain into the force, because what else is there to do? She can’t escape. She can’t save him. No-one can. It’s a decade too late for that.

There’s no way out of this dead end, no decent footholds for climbing and even if she managed—there’s no way she won’t get tired, half-way up these hundreds-of-meters tall buildings. Thousands of meters. She can’t guess well right now. She doesn’t remember the last time she ate, though the slavers must have given something to her, and her arms still ache from a day of immobility. Spiritually, she’s weak, too, and even reaching into the force to unlock the damn manacles had almost destroyed her. Had almost made her Fall.

Eldra is terrified. She can’t pretend not to be, can’t meditate it away. She’s scared. She’s angry, at Woobudg and at her Master and at the Jedi and more than anything, at herself. She’s an escaped slave, perched on the brink of the eternal dark—she is no better than the zabrak, and it freezes her heart—and her Master is dead. She can’t use the force. She can’t be a Jedi. There’s no way in fucking hell she can be calm enough for that.

There’s no way out.

The only way is back.

The only way is… how long until the Sith walks into the mouth of her cul-de-sac? How long until he’s finished torturing the zabrak? How long until he comes looking for her?

‘cause that’s the only thing that’ll happen. He’ll get bored eventually, and then he will find Eldra. There’s no way out for her. She’s dead.

She could… okay, she could count on staying hidden, and probably starve to death in her alcove, or be found anyway. There’s no way out of this cul-de-sac, and if he’s watched her run into it, it’s game over. The way her luck’s gone, for the past days, Eldra should definitely be expecting that he saw her. Which… if she goes back out, she might run into his open arms. Or he might be gone, after all.

Or she could help the zabrak. He’s still alive: she can feel his pain.

She shouldn’t, though. The Sith have returned. That’s what matters. Eldra must stay alive and return and bear witness.

⁂

Master will kill me. Master will kill me. There’s no space for anything but this truth, as Maul runs through mazes of skyscrapers in search for the padawan he almost successfully brought back to enact the nebulous ancient plans of the Sith, head pounding and the stuffed satchel bouncing against his back. No space for anything, not even the firestorm of pain that suddenly filled every square meter of asphalt. No time to think about what it means. Whose it is. Master will kill me. I lost her.

(I lost her just because I didn’t want to be alone.)

Master will kill me.

⁂

The zabrak’s only a few meters off the mouth of Eldra’s dead end. Maybe that’s why the echoes of his agony are so strong. The alternative, a juggernaut strength in the force she’s never before seen, only makes his fate more tragic. More wasteful. He could have been found as a baby. He could have become a Jedi. And now he’s lying there, and he is alone, in the very eye of his pain storm.

Alone in a puddle of blood.

Is he dead?

No, he can’t be, Eldra can still feel how much he’s suffering, but he’s—she staggers towards him and stumbles, tumbles down and catches herself with weak and shuddering arms. He’s—she looks and what she fell over was a foot, a sentient being’s actual severed limb, with charred raggedy bone and meat where a shin should be but the rest is intact, as intact as an amputated foot can ever appear, and the yellow and black skin is stark against the grimy floor. It’s the zabrak slave’s foot. She stumbled over his actual real torn-off foot, a few meters from where he’s lying, and she’s covered now in dry and tacky and congealing blood. It’s all over her once-cream padawan robes, and the zabrak’s missing a foot.

An entire foot, just gone. The zabrak’s curled up in agony and his hands are clutching the stump of his left shin.

He looks up, though, when Eldra climbs to her feet. Not unconscious, then, though that would be kinder, and Eldra must find a way to contact the Council about the re-emergence of the Sith, she must remember the bigger picture, but surely, surely, if it’s her duty to warn the galaxy then it’s also her duty to ease the pain of this one person who helped her, as much as she can. She was reprimanded for ignoring the unifying force so often in her education, but surely it would be just as wrong to walk on by. Not even Master Fyaar would have told her to walk on by. She could have, but she’s dead now,Eldra remembers grimly, she died, and I can’t just let her be my conscience anymore.

“Help me,” the zabrak begs.

It’s enough to chase off her absent teachers. Who could leave him to this desperation? Who could ignore this all-consuming tornado of pain?

“I’m not a healer,” Eldra warns, kneeling down next to him. “They steered me away from that, but I can do enough to stop the bleeding, I think.”

The zabrak coughs. No, he laughs, that was meant to be contemptuous painful laughter, and he says, “Not that. I won’t bleed out.”

“There’s an artery in your leg—"

“It was just the first warning. There’s coagulant released after it explodes. I have seen it before. This bomb is not supposed to kill.”

“Bomb?!” But she heard that inside that loathsome palace, she remembers, though she was too terrified to pay close attention—Master Fyaar would have been disappointed again—but the zabrak’s slaver said something about bombs, and a remote, and oh kriff is that what happened?! A slave control bomb blew off his foot? Oh force, they discussed planting bombs inside me, too, Eldra remembers. Default procedure, they said. But they thought it was too expensive for a standard blue twi’lek, and she’d been angry back then but—oh force, oh mercy, she’s so glad she’s not worth much.

“He ran away so quickly I lost him, and then the radius—” he swallows. “It does not matter. I need to find my brother, and I can’t walk. He’s just a child. Please. I need your help.”

A child. A child in danger, and this poor man in pain, in so much pain the very air aches and shivers, and yet—Eldra is a Jedi, and her duty is to the whole galaxy. She must warn the Jedi Council. She doesn’t have time for this. She mumbles, “I’m sorry, but I have to—”

Quick as a viper, the zabrak pushes her down and crawls on top of her. He drives his forearm into her neck and pushes her head down, not with so much force it hurts but a definite threat, a definite herald of… of something, with his muscular naked body pressing against her clothes. Something. Something bad. She doesn’t want to lure it in even by thinking the word now but it’s been the danger all along—and then he growls, “You’re going to help me, understood?”

“I’ll fucking bite off your dick,” Eldra hisses. “Try it. I’ve still got my teeth.”

“You…” The zabrak eases off a little, lifting his whole torso off her with trembling arms though not far away enough that Eldra can get the leverage to fight her way free, and he frowns. Confusion, or thought, but not—not lust. The force swirls less blindingly bright, for a second. He doesn’t look as scary anymore, even though he just easily overpowered Eldra. He also looks really young, when she peers up at him from this close, like he’s maybe one or two years older than her, and his shuddering grows more and more worrisome. “I need to find my brother. Please. He’s just a child.” And then, he shutters his eyes and swallows. His face does a strange thing that looks almost… sultry? Though not appealing at all, not with the sweat and the wide eyes of pain and the fact he’s an actual mutilated terrified Fallen teenage slave. “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll do anything. Anything. I’m—good. But he’s just a kid.”

Anything, with a cadence like… And he’s basically naked, because someone wanted him that way, and Eldra saw perverts feeling him up back at the market. He’ll do anything. He’s trying to look appealing. Oh force. Oh fuck. “I am a Jedi. A guardian of peace and justice in the galaxy. I’m not a rapist. And you’re not, either—”

He nods, baffled.

“Glad we got that straight. The thing is—I have a very important task to do. The fate of the galaxy might hinge on me talking to the Temple as soon as possible.”

“He’s a just child. A tiny nightbrother child, on Nar Shaddaa.” His grey eyes are feral and pleading. He plainly doesn’t care about duty, or the galaxy, when the price is a child, and it’s growing harder and harder for Eldra not to agree. Master Fyaar, give me strength. Harden me, Master. Let me bear this dreadful hope I can’t fulfill. I mustn’t, I won’t, and yet he keeps arguing, “You’re a twi’lek. You know what that means.”

“I don’t…”

“A zabrak. He’s a zabrak,” and that doesn’t explain anything more to Eldra, but the man—the boy—above her will not leave her be, even when she shakes her head wildly, beseeching, “There’s no such thing as a free zabrak on Nar Shaddaa. As soon as they see him. Please. He’s just a child. He’s just my little baby brother.”

“But I—”

“No such thing as a free tailhead either. You won’t reach the Temple. They’ll just take you back to the slave market.”

“I’m a Jedi. I’ll manage.”

But his tearful eyes turn shrewd. “I have been here for years now,” he whispers. “You’re new. You’ll never find your way around without me,” and fair enough, these streets truly are a maze. “I’m not leaving a nightbrother on Nar Shaddaa. I am not leaving a child here. I am not leaving my brother. But I’ll help you after we find him. It’s your only chance. You can cooperate, or I can abandon you here to get caught again. Your choice.” He tightens his hold on Eldra’s neck.

It’s a hollow threat, and they both know it. The zabrak can’t leave her. He can’t walk, the best he could do is crawl away slowly until someone puts him out of his misery, or, more likely, picks him up and sells him again, as he just predicted for her.

The worst he could do is kill her, and since that wasn’t the threat…

She must warn the Jedi. She must warn the Jedi as quickly as possible, but. A child. He’s begging for the life of a child. And Eldra… No matter how many lectures she got, she never managed to get the unifying force. The big picture. It’s so remote, and it just makes sense, that the certain immediacy of present pain always overshadows the possibilities of the future. In the future, there are the Sith, grim and ancient and the foresworn enemies of the Jedi; but the Sith haven’t yet hurt her. Even the Sith she met hasn’t. He was the least horrible of all of them.

In the present, there are slavers. A whole planet of them. In the even more present, there is the offer of a temporary alliance, made by the one person she’s met in the last few days who doesn’t see her as meat.

She is so tired of being on her own.

“I’m Eldra,” she says. “Let me up, or I won’t be able to carry you.”

Stormy grey eyes turn bright and then they crumple up in pain again when he must’ve accidentally bumped his stump somewhere while he rolls off her. He’s seriously, seriously hurt. Well, of course, Eldra, he just had his foot blown off, she mocks herself. Obviously, she mocks her mocking self back. But we both need to move, so I probably need to carry him, so knowing how much pain he’s in, what movement he has left… that’s useful. And if I could lessen that pain…

Eldra can’t reach for the force while she’s afraid or angry, or she will Fall. But she’s not as scared now. She just wants to help him. That’s not evil, right? How can compassion for a slave be evil? Master never expressly said it was, so surely it can’t be that bad?

“Wait. Let me touch it,” and the zabrak presents his burnt stump without question. “I’m not a good healer. But I think I can… shut up the nerves?”

What the zabrak mumbles in response sounds suspiciously close to Witch, but after the first flinch, he allows her to touch him again, resolutely refusing to shudder though he definitely looks like he wants to, and refusing to tell her what he meant, too. He does look slightly less agonized after she feels her way into his synapses and cells and tells them to heal, heal, and that their warnings are great but no longer needed.

Now she just needs to heave him upright and hold him, somehow, while she walks, so he can hop along.

“How did this leg-be-gone thing happen, anyway?” she asks right before she pulls, because a distraction might make this easier on him.

“He—” The zabrak’s breathing heavily, but not accidentally fighting her or crying or anything else she feared. He’s doing much better than she would in his position, that’s for certain. “My brother. When he ran off, he still had the remote. The bombs trigger when it’s away over a certain distance…”

The remote? The one that the slaver gave the Sith? How— “How did your brother get that remote?!”

“He put it in his satchel. Must have forgotten about it. It’s not his fault.”

Wait.

Satchel.

He put the remote in the satchel.

Is his brother the…

“The Sith?!”

The word means nothing to the zabrak, she can tell. If he recognized it, he would have shuddered in fear and the force around him would turn frigid, because the Sith are the very worst threat in the galaxy, but instead he looks gently confused again and says, “No, he’s a nightbrother. A zabrak. Like me.”

That’s not a hindrance, as far as Eldra knows. There is a Sith species, but towards their fall—and now in their resurrection, presumably—Sith could be of any sentient species in the galaxy. “I meant… Is your brother that tiny person with a mountain of black clothes who bought both of us?”

“Isn’t he clever?” There is nothing on the zabrak’s face but deep adoration. For a second, even his pain seems forgotten. Even the smog clouds seem to have lifted, for a second, but no—that warm breeze. The sudden pure air. That’s the force. The force, lit up by love for this brother, and yet, he’s talking about a Sith. The embodiment of evil. The ancient enemies of the Jedi. It doesn’t make sense. “If they’d seen his species, he would have been captured immediately, but he made the perfect disguise and he fooled all of them!”

The love doesn’t make sense. But even worse… “You are talking about the weirdo in three dress shirts and that handmade leather balaclava and winter sports sunglasses combo?! The tiny ragged black ball?! That’s a perfect disguise?!”

“It worked,” the zabrak replies, as if that’s all the proof he needs. “My brother’s a genius.”

It’s impossible to love a Sith. They don’t feel affection. They can’t; all they process is dark possessive urges and hatred and so on. Maybe Eldra was wrong about the buyer’s aura, though. She’s never met a Sith before, after all, so how should she know what they feel like in the force, and she’s only met a few corrupted force sensitives before too and most of them in the presence of Master Fyaar, who may well have dampened their impression on Eldra… Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there is no Sith here. After all, she can feel the zabrak is dark and Fallen, too, but he’s not a bad person. His life just sucked. Wait. ‘The zabrak’…

Eldra prods his navel with a finger. She’s holding him up by now, his chest half-propped up on her shoulder and head, and it’s as high as she can reach with only minimal danger of dropping him. “You never said your name.”

“Savage,” he says, and hops to catch up to her one step.

“A pleasure to meet you, Sir. I’d bow if I could, but you know…” Eldra grins, and he does too, and it’s… nice? Despite the general horror of, well, everything, this is nicer than anything else that’s happened on the mission so far.

She puts her foot forward again and waits for him to catch up. And again. This will take forever. But the alternatives are all worse. Hopefully the little brother knows how to stay hidden until they manage to steer their three-legged train wreck to… “How are we going to find him? He could be anywhere. You can’t walk, and I can barely keep you upright—”

“He’s close,” Savage says.

“How do you—”

“I wouldn’t be alive if he wasn’t.”

Of course. Eldra feels stupid. How could she have forgotten… “The bombs.”

“Yes. Stop for a…” Eldra braces herself, and he leans against her head, cold and trembling finely. He’s heavy, even though she’s never been the weakest in her age-group by far, both as a twi’lek—not the frailest of species anyway—and because she always feels better when she’s moving. She adjusts her grip on his waist so he doesn’t slip. His hearts beat loudly against her lekku. “Second one’s at two hundred. In the stomach. Takes a while to bleed out, and even if I don’t the sepsis… The last Master took real pleasure in explaining it. Not gone off yet. He can’t be more than two hundred meters away.”

Eldra won’t ask where the fourth bomb is. She won’t. “But in which direction?”

“Not in that dead end.”

“Worked that one out myself,” Eldra snaps.

“So… sorry.” Heavy breathing. “I…”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t—a Jedi would not take their fear out on you,” Eldra whispers. “Okay. Good. Two-hundred meters, that’s manageable. We can do that. We’ll find him.”

A few more steps. Then: “The stomach,” Savage whispers. “It’s—you should probably get your head away. It’s a strong one, I think. You might get hurt when it goes off.”

Great. Her head is right next to a bomb. Got it.

“You’re heavy, Mister. Can’t carry you otherwise.”

“You might be quicker if—if you promise you’ll look for…”

He’s proposing she leave him behind.

“Maybe I’ll lose an eye,” she suggests bravely. “Some massive scarring would be nice. I’ll look so fucking ugly that every fucker who’d fuck me throws the fuck up instead.”

Savage grins, weakly but genuine, as if it’s obvious she’s never been much of an out-loud swearer before. As if he’s gently mocking her. It’s nice, though. It’s nice.

Hop. Walk. Hop.

Savage’s gone quiet, and Eldra pauses and pokes his abs again. “If you pass out, Mister, we’re both screwed. Motherkriffing fucked and utterly pfassking scraggled, even. Cruddlingly fucking boondoggled,” because it made him laugh the last time.

“I am used to pain.”

Eldra doesn’t want to know more. She really doesn’t. If the whirlwind in the force is anything like he’s feeling right now, there’s no way she could’ve been as calm as he seems. Whatever it took for him to learn that separation, that control… “Fine. As long as you’re sure… and it’s not macho posturing that I wouldn’t believe anyway… Hey, do you want a distraction?” It’s always helped her at least, having something small to fiddle with her fingers or turn over in her brain. “You know how I helped your wound with the force just now? You can do that too. You have the—I don’t know how to explain it for beginners, you have those midichlorians in your cells that interact with the force that flows between every living thing,” she prattles on, needing to gasp for breath less and less as the force grows less immediate, “and it’s basically interoception with another sense, healing yourself. You might even—maybe you can feel where the bombs are!”

“I saw them go in. Won’t bleed out for a while anyway, not even when the stomach bomb goes off.”

“No. We are absolutely not doing that, asshole,” Eldra hisses, because she doesn’t like that ‘when’. Why is she even bothering to lug around his heavy body when he acts like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll die. He’s with a Jedi now. If that means anything at all, it means Eldra’s not going to let some slavers turn him into flesh goo from kilometers away. “There’s a warning before it goes off, right? We’ll walk in the other direction then, get back into the distance you’re allowed to be. You’re not dying on my watch. Just try the healing, okay?”

“I’m a male,” Savage whispers. “I have no magicks.”

“You definitely have midichlorians. I can feel them, you know—I could feel your bomb go off because you’re broadcasting your emotions. You’re doing it now. You’re definitely a force-sensitive.”

“But it’s forbidden!”

“Uh, yeah, probably.” This is something Eldra should have considered. Master Fyaar would have told her right away. Savage’s too old, way too old for Jedi training. He’s Fallen. She can’t just teach him how to access the force. That’s probably as bad as helping a Sith, right? But now she’s unwisely mentioned it, he seems to like the idea.

“Will it help me protect my brother?”

“It will.”

And that’s it. He won’t let her drop the topic, and Eldra can’t really hold out, not when he starts talking again about what could happen to a baby zabrak. Not when she already compromised this far. He’s already Fallen anyway, so what is the harm in teaching him something? It doesn’t matter if he’s able to be careful or not. He won’t Fall. He’s already Fallen.

“The Jedi way won’t work for you because, well—it’s complicated. But there’s something my teacher says, that fear leads to anger, and anger to hate, and hate to suffering, and that’s the path to the dark side. It always sounds really easy to slip down that path, so you’ll probably be able to do it. And get that power. Just promise me you won’t become evil, right? Just a little bit of power, to close your wounds.”

Savage shudders against her lekku. A face swirls before her eyes for a fraction of a second, a memory he probably didn’t mean to spew all over her. “I am afraid. I’ve always been afraid, and angry, and… But I don’t have power.”

“You do. I don’t know how you do it, exactly, for the dark side… They only said not to do it, they never said what not to do. Or how to avoid it, in detail. But it’s about using the force when you’re already feeling awful emotions, and reinforcing them through the force. I think, if I was Falling… I’d feel everything bad, really hard. I’d feel the things that have hurt me and the futures I dread. And then I’d feel the force in everything around me—or inside my body for healing—and I’d just—concentrate.”

“I’ll try.” Savage takes a few more shaking breaths. “Maybe once you put me down? I’m—I’m less afraid, now you’re here. We might have to…”

There’s a gable in the road. Two paths to follow, and if they take the wrong one, the bomb goes off.

“What do we do now?”

“My brother’s still less than two-hundred meters away,” Savage says.

“Should we… shout?” Even as she asks the question, Eldra wants to punch herself. Not so much because it’s a stupid idea—they do need to find the brother quickly and not go down the wrong path, for fear of accidentally triggering the distance-bomb—but because of how quickly she’s fallen into the habit of asking Savage what they should do.

It should be the other way around. She is a Jedi—was, anyway—and Savage’s a slave. Freed, maybe. Probably. Definitely, because he’s been rescued by his brother—by the Sith he’s insisting isn’t one. Eldra has to believe that this probably-not-a-Sith freed him. The fact remains, Savage was just a slave. That’s not a slight to his ability. It’s not a judgment of his worth, or not anymore. It’s just that she was trained for these situations, and Savage… he’s not even that much older than her. Four years, at the total absolute most. He’s barely an adult. She hopes he’s an adult. These slavers surely wouldn’t have paraded him around like that if he… Oh, who is she kidding. They totally would. Might even prefer it, the fucking pigs.

There is no emotion.

Eldra tries to calm herself. It was nigh-on impossible when she was alone, and with Master Fyaar’s guidance she still slipped so often, but now… it’s easier, now she has Savage to carry around. She can focus on the beat of his hearts against her squished bruising lekku, da-dam-da-dam. Da-dam-da-dam. He’s here, in the mouth of a badly lit empty street on Nar Shaddaa. He’s real. So is she.

“—Eldra.” A finger knocking against her head, gently. “Eldra. Listen. Can you fight?”

“Better than you, anyway.” It’s a good idea, though, to be ready. Eldra drags both of them towards one of the buildings and lets Savage slide to the ground where he won’t get in the way. No cover, but this’ll have to do. “Stay here. I’ll shout and if anyone—”

Savage shakes his head. “He’s my brother. He’ll listen to me. And if someone else comes, you can surprise them.”

“You want to sit out here, immobile, and shout for whoever hears it to come to you.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I don’t.” Eldra takes a deep breath and tries for a last moment of levity. “If the wrong people come, at least your resale value is lower now. You wiped several thousand credits off of Nar Shaddaa’s gross domestic product.”

“I got them where it hurts.”

“Yeah. Last chance to back out,” Eldra says. “Sure? Your funeral.” And it may well be: Savage’s clever enough to know that she probably won’t fight, when a slaver comes. That’s just being realistic. They’ve spent too much time on Nar Shaddaa to still cling to comforting illusions, and a shocked and starving thirteen-year-old has little change against a group of armed slavers, Jedi or not. Instead, this way, there’s a chance any attackers will only notice him, and she’ll be able to flee. It’s broadly the right tactical decision. Savage alone and one-legged could never make it, while Eldra’s at least got the ghost of a chance. She pats his shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Could you—”

“I won’t let you die,” Eldra says. “You like my jokes. You’re practically an endangered species.”

Savage laughs softly, and then winces. He’s hit his stump again.

“Sorry. But. I’ll find your brother for you, if you don’t make it. Promise.”

“Thank you.” Savage doesn’t shout just yet, and somehow, Eldra is inordinately grateful for the reprieve. Soon enough, she might have to run. She might lose her only ally. Or she’ll have to fight, and she has no weapon but the force. She’ll Fall. But if she must… If she doesn’t, Savage will die, and she’ll be alone again. If she runs, she’ll die to. She’ll die, because there is no way off this planet for her alone and if she’s found she’ll be enslaved again and she’d rather die. Soon. Any second. Falling or death. Falling or…

“Eldra.” Savage indicates a shadowy corner. “There. Don’t be afraid.”

“I don’t want to die.” It just bursts out, even though she’s meant to be the Jedi, the serene agent of the force. She trained so often and for so long, and yet, she’s terrified of death. There is no death, there is the force, and Master Fyaar would make her meditate on this for hours but she just can’t stop, can’t calm down. She wishes she was still carrying him on her back. That she still felt the solid drum of his hearts.

The response is quiet and deeply gentle. “That’s good. They haven’t taken everything from you yet.”

It’s so much kinder, more understanding, than anything Eldra’s ever thought or heard in her life about her random outbursts. So soft it raises her hackles. “Thanks for the condescension. That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to die. More than anything, I realized. I’ll fight. I’ll use the force if I must.”

It’s almost as if Savage anticipated her anger. He grins. “Don’t be afraid, Eldra.”

“Very funny, asshole. I’m ready now. I’ll go hide, and you shout.”

When she walks away, she hears a mumbled promise, too quiet for most humanoids but still clear for the auditory senses of a twi’lek. “Don’t be afraid. I’m here. You told me that trick. I’ll fight anyone who wants to hurt you.”

He can barely hold himself upright. Still, she has no doubt he means it. Asshole.

⁂

Master is going to kill Maul. He’s not found the Jedi, and he should probably have kept running down the street except he wasn’t sure whether it’s the one the Jedi took in the first place, and down in the distance, he could see people, a lot of people, and many houses lit up bright, and the echoes of pain have grown fainter but they’re still there, and he doesn’t know how to interact with these people because he had no time to prepare and what if they’re oily too and Master’s going to kill Maul but the Jedi probably didn’t take this road and so he turns around and runs back.

The pain in the force grows stronger, and soon enough, so does a voice. “Brother, brother!” it shouts.

Maul has half a mind to turn around again because it’s the zabrak probably, the zabrak that Maul wanted to be his friend and that he ruined the whole mission for, and he doesn’t have time to stop, but Savage’s stronger than Maul so he might make Maul stop anyway—but he already turned back once and he can’t go back. (He can’t turn around without admitting it’s only because he’s scared.)

“Brother, brother,” and it is Savage sitting down on the ground, and Maul cranes his neck for a good path to slip by him and there’s the Jedi, the yellow zabrak brought him the Jedi, Savage saved him from Master’s wrath, he fulfilled the sacred mission, but as quickly as the old mantra drains from his mind a new one takes its place.

The zabrak’s left leg just stops slightly below the knee. No, it doesn’t, there’s an edge of charred bone peeking out and Maul knows what happened, suddenly, he remembers the slaver—"four explosive charges within your zabrak, set to go off at staggered distances. The first one will slow him down if he runs.”—he remembers the zabrak’s alarm when Maul ran away—“Wait for me, brother! The bomb will explode!”—he remembers the pain, the endless pain exploding in the force

And he remembers the hand carefully stroking his head.

Seeing the first person in the world who is like him.

He staggers and—

“Don’t be afraid, brother.”

He gets within striking range and—

(this is a trap this is a trap)

“Come here, it’s okay.”

He kneels down next to Savage, eyes screwed shut, and he waits for the punishment to come. He waits.

“It’s okay, little brother.”

It isn’t, though. The leg is gone. The leg is gone because of Maul. It’s gone because Maul forgot about the remote and because he almost lost the padawan and because Maul was stupid enough to buy the zabrak in the first place. Maul maimed the one single person in the galaxy who ever might have liked him.

#darth maul #savage opress #savage oppress #eldra kaitis #dimtraces makes things #hell is just a beat away

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spell-cleaver · 4 years

Text

DAY 17: WHUMPTOBER: I Didn’t See That Coming - Dirty Secret @whumptober2020

The Pirate Son AU Masterpost. This is an immediate sequel to the previous ficlet (The Song).

Luke was still sitting in a small puddle on the floor of his room when Vader returned, staring into space. Vader just sighed, knelt down next to him, took the towel and wrapped it around Luke’s shoulder, starting to rub at his hair.

Luke looked up at him. Now dressed in a complete departure from his usual black ensemble, some ragged brown trousers, a beige shirt and a scrappy dark jacket, he looked totally different from the monster who’d hunted him for so long. That, and—

“Your…” Luke swallowed. “Your mask.” He wasn’t wearing it at all.

His father smiled at him—it was a quick, bitter smile, more a flash of the teeth, as though he hadn’t bothered with letting anyone see him smile in a long, long time. “It was getting rusty, and cold. I took it off for now.”

“Oh.” Luke was still staring.

Vader looked… He’d been right, Luke thought, all those years ago when he’d first met his father and worried that they looked alike. They did look similar, from the colour of their hair to the clefts in their chins to the shapes of their eyes. Vader’s were a vicious yellow though, and Luke found it uncomfortable to make contact with them for too long.

His father was deathly pale, too, with his skin clinging close to his skull and faint blue tinges at his temple. His hair was cut severely short, shorn close to his head, only adding to the harsh effect, enhancing the blue, and Luke couldn’t help but compare it mentally to his own hair, getting long enough that Leia had starting braiding it in the few days before his capture. He wondered what his father would’ve thought if he’d shown up with that. He wondered if he could try and braid his own hair, now that it wasn’t like he had much else to do…

He wondered why he kept distracting himself.

“What…” His voice was hoarse, his back ramrod straight—he wanted to lean into Vader, but he couldn’t—as he whispered, “What happened, then…?”

Vader paused in drying Luke’s hair and laid the towel around his shoulders again. “When Palpatine inherited the crown of Coruscant and started expanding his Empire with the promise of eradicating piracy from the seas, I joined him wholeheartedly. I hated pirates—they carried the slave shipment that my mother died in—and he promised he knew a way to make sure they never stained the seas again. My wife, Padmé, the light of my life… She was pregnant. I had a family to protect—scouring pirates from the face of the seven seas was certainly a way I was going to achieve that. So I joined him, as one of the most powerful sorcerers to sail the seas, and when I confided in him that I was worried about one day dying in battle and leaving my family alone, the way my father did to me… He told me there was a way to stop myself and others, from dying.”

Luke swallowed, and tried very hard not to think of the way that bullet three years ago had punched right through Vader’s chest, yet still he’d continued on. “That way was to become undead?”

“It was to strip you of your humanity, in the long run,” Vader said, his voice flat. “Taking your mortality is a vital part of that. I cannot eat—not that I need to—and nor can I die. Padmé was horrified by what I’d done to myself—and…”

Vader hesitated. He stood up, to open a drawer and pull out a change of clothes for Luke, so his back was turned to him when he said, “Horrified by the implication that this sort of half-life was what I’d been planning to give my wife and child, as well.”

Luke sucked in a breath.

He felt like he’d been punched.

“You…” He took several heaving breaths. “You— you want me to live like this!?”

“No,” Vader said. “I had not asked Palpatine for the details of the curse, and nor did he offer them. And it is a curse—one that was passed onto all my men, once he gave me a ship with which to serve him. I am bound to him so long as I am in this form, he can sense me and track me wherever I go, he can control every aspect of my life, and I will serve him.”

Luke gaped. “And you agreed to that?”

“No. I did not know what he was offering me—Padmé was right to object to foisting this hellish existence on our child as well, but…” He straightened up again, a nightshirt in hand, and half-turned back to Luke. His eyes were closed.

“She left,” he whispered. “She left me, when she was still pregnant. I searched for her for months.”

“I thought you said you killed her.”

“I searched for her for months,” Vader reiterated, slightly more harshly—then calmer, again, when Luke flinched. “I did not find her until I boarded and inspected a small fisherman’s craft, which she had paid for passage to Alderaan on, with our baby. She’d… she’d set up a life in the hills of Naboo, as far from the sea as she could be, in the months she was away, she’d said, but then… But then you had got sick,” his throat was tight, “with some illness, something magic-related that she couldn’t understand… Sorcerer children get it, frequently. She was travelling to Alderaan, where she would find Kenobi, an old friend who’d turned her against me when I was first cursed, who’d convinced her to leave me in the first place—”

“I know who Ben is,” Luke said shortly.

Vader took a breath. “Yes.” He turned around fully to sit cross-legged opposite Luke, and passed him the nightshirt. Luke put it on with scepticism, but it was dry and warm; he felt slightly better. “She had been travelling to him, to get advice, leaving her home in Naboo under the care of her sister.

“I told her that I could help you. I offered all my services, all my training—magic-related illnesses are tricky, but they are rarely fatal, and I could have found something—so long as you both came back to me. I wanted you back. But she refused and… we fought…”

Luke clenched his fists in the towel and didn’t meet his father’s eyes—suddenly, suddenly he had an idea— “Tell me you didn’t… No…”

“Pirates attacked.”

Luke jerked his head up. Vader continued, “Pirates attacked the ship we were on—bold of them to, but the Executor was separated from their little schooner by the fisherman’s ship, and they couldn’t easily fire on it without fearing to hit me… They boarded the schooner. I ran out to fight them off. But it was only me and a few of my men… You were in a crib on the other end of the ship, watched over by the fisherman, and…”

Luke bowed his head. He… could see where this was going.

“I tried to fight them. But they knew you were my son—they threatened you, they took you, and in the heat of the battle, I— I pulled out my pistol and I shot—”

Vader let out a breath.

“She was in the way,” he said. “I should have been more careful. I should never have argued with her—not to the extent that she made sure you were separated from us, away from our spat. I shouldn’t have ever driven her away.

“The bullet caught her in the chest. She died in minutes. And by the time we were able to hunt down the pirates… We caught up to them days later, but they said they had thrown you overboard and laughed as you drowned.”

Luke… didn’t know how to react to that.

That was awful.

“I… I knew that Ben rescued me from pirates,” he said shakily. “That he saved me as a baby. And he told me that you were my father, several years ago, and that my mother had made it clear to him while pregnant that if anything were to happen to her, she wanted him to look after her child rather than let me go back to you.”

Vader clenched his fists at that, stiffly, but said nothing.

“I made,” he said, “a grave error. And I have lived with it, and my curse, ever since.”

Vader looked away violently, for a second, voice choked. “They took you, son. I was haunted by dreams of a little ghost boy wandering the seas for years. I— I watched that ship retreat and knew that I had lost everything, and when I learnt your name—”

“When you learnt my name,” Luke said, “you decided that anything was justified, in order to get me back?”

Vader let out a breath. “Yes.”

“Killing my friends. Hunting me. Nearly sending me to the gallows—”

“I cannot disobey my master—he ordered that you join us, or be hanged, and I had to tread very, very carefully—”

“You sent me to my death!”

Vader said, “Yes. I did. And I am going to make sure that that is something that will never happen, ever again. I am going to break this curse.”

“How!?” Luke gave him a sceptical look. “It’s a blood oath, isn’t it? It has those hallmarks. Only Palpatine can break it, unless...”

“It is not quite a blood oath, no. It was his adaptation of an old myth—about pirates who stole the wrong person’s gold. Once you took a single coin from that chest, you were cursed for life, until it was broken. He adapted it to swords—there was an old creed of sorcerers, the Sith, who forged a thousand sabres and hid them in a cave on the island of Mustafar. The perfect killing weapons, imbued with the sort of magic that sees its wielder become the ruler of the seas, but once you fasten your hands around the hilt, the curse sets in. You cannot die—but neither can you truly live.”

Vader met Luke’s eyes again, for the first time, and somehow the yellow even had a tinge of red to it, now. “He married it with a blood oath, to make it especially binding. I am his immortal servant, forever.”

“And how do you break it?”

Vader was suddenly very interested in the hem of his shirt. “It is a steep and difficult price,” he said. “Now rest. You need it—your back—”

His back had been in agony the whole time, yeah, but that wasn’t what was important here. “What is the price?”

“We will find a way,” Vader promised, and then he left the room.

Luke listened carefully, but there was no tell-tale click of a lock. He wasn’t locked in, this time.

How did his father plan to break the curse?

Blood oaths… blood oaths often required, well, blood to be broken. The death of the person bound, or the person binding. Or…

Or of someone who shared their blood.

Luke swallowed.

His father had killed his mother.

But he wouldn’t do that, would he?

Luke didn’t know. He didn’t know the man at all. Everything… everything he told him could be a lie. Everything he did could be a lie.

Had he saved him from the sirens just so he could sacrifice Luke himself, later?

Luke didn’t want to die. He especially didn’t want to die like that.

He didn’t sleep very well that night at all.

#the pirate son #thepirateson #luke skywalker #darth vader #for darkness shows the stars #my writing #random words on a page #flash fiction #flash fiction: star wars #whumptober2020 #whumptober

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padme-amitabha · 4 years

Note

Ok so the new Vader comics gave me an idea. Can u write an AU where everything’s same except Padme is alive and doesn’t know about Vader and we still get the dramatic family reveals!

Hi Nonnie! Sorry for the late reply 😅 Anyways I hope you like it.

~*~

Was she an illusion or an apparition? The Sith Lord couldn’t decide. Either way, it must be a cruel trick from an enemy or perhaps one of his Master’s tests. He could not trust his eyes as he took his time staring at the woman who wore the face of his deceased wife.

And yet, she was not the Padmé he remembered – the Padmé he had hurt on Mustafar. This ‘Padmé’ looked much older, just as beautiful though, and weary. ‘That makes the two of us,’ he thought bitterly.

He stepped closer to examine her face. Her face was slightly lined but it was just the same, even the beauty spot she had on her cheek. It had to be her. He might have not seen her in years but he could still recall every feature of her lovely face.

“Padmé..?”

Even the vocoder, which made his speech harsher, failed to conceal the uncertainty in his voice. Her eyes widened just a fraction as she loosened her hold on her blaster.

“How do you know my name?”

She had her voice too. He wasn’t certain how she was alive but at that moment it didn’t really matter.

“Come away with me, help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can.”

She had pleaded on Mustafar and he had hurt her in response. For years, he had believed that he had killed her and their child. But now that she stood before him, he didn’t really know what to say. Should he apologize? Should he tell her how much he had missed her? That he loved her just as much as the day he had met her all those years ago in Watto’s shop? Or should he adorn the mask he always put on before others and pretend he’s someone else so as to avoid hurting her all over again?

“I love you.”

“Liar!”

The thought of hurting her again was unbearable. He chose to drop his lightsaber. It hit the ground with a thud, startling her.

“You…why did you drop your weapon? You realize I can still shoot you?”

He made no motion to reply for half a minute.

“You can but I don’t think you will.”

She had not clearly not expected this answer either for she was no longer concealing her bemusement.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I know you would never hurt someone unless they gave you reason to…Angel.”

It’s her turn to drop the weapon.

“Anakin?” she whispers.

He thinks of all the apologies he wishes to make but the more he attempts to form the string of words, the more tangled they get in his mind.

“I thought you were dead,” she says so quietly that without the enhanced hearing devices in his helmet he might have never picked it up.

“I thought you were dead too.”

All he wants to do is crush her in an embrace and never let go. He doesn’t know if she might appreciate that after all that has happened so he chooses to extend his hand slowly. Even after all these years, it seemed they could read each other’s thoughts as if it were their own. They had a unique connection; words need not be spoken. She places her hand in his gloved one.

But that moment is interrupted by two loud voices. He looks at them and recognizes them instantly. The force-sensitive twins who had destroyed the Death Star - who the empire was currently on the hunt for. He had dueled them both on several occasions but every time they had slipped from his grasp. They had a smuggler and Wookie as allies and Vader had been tracking down this small band of rebels. He had set bounty hunters in trying to find their identities but the pair had been adept at evading them.

“Back off from our mother, Vader,” says the blonde boy.

“-if you know what’s good for you,” adds his sister.

Mother? He could hardly believe it. If Padmé was their mother, that meant their child…children had survived. And they had been right in front of him all along. He had hurt them too, albeit unknowingly. Their ages added up as well. Not that he had any doubt, now that he knew he could recognize their force signatures. He felt a range of emotions from surprise, apprehension, relief, to happiness – emotions he had suppressed for a long time. He couldn’t help but feel a little proud about how capable they were in deceiving the empire. There was still guilt and sadness but at that moment they receded to a distant corner in his mind. After all these years of guilt and torment, he had a family.

“Look he’s unarmed! Now is the best time to strike him down,” says the girl fiercely as she raised her blue lightsaber. The boy raises his green one. He makes no move. All he can think of is how he had never noticed how much they resembled him and Padmé.

Padmé intervenes and stands between him and the twins. “Kids, no! Don’t attack him.”

The twins look outraged.

“But Mom! He’s an Imperial. He is with the Empire,” says the boy. “He’s the one who cut off my hand.”

“And gave me this scar!” adds the exasperated girl as she points to the scar on her forehead.

Padmé turns around. “You did what?” It seemed they had not told her the source of their injuries. She looks at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“I-” he couldn’t exactly deny it.

“I didn’t know they were-”

The boy interrupts him. “Mom, why are you defending him anyway? Ben said he killed our father!”

He realizes this was the best opportunity he would ever get to reveal himself to them.

“No, I am your father.”

The declaration is followed by collective gasps from the two, and a plethora of unintelligible curses from the girl. She resembled Padmé very much but she seemed to have inherited his temper.

“Mom, tell me this is a horrible lie,” she says with eyes narrowed at her mother.

“I’m afraid it isn’t, Leia. I didn’t know myself until now. Your father is alive.”

He is lost in his reverie. Leia…he had always wanted to name his daughter Leia.

“But why would Ben lie to us?” asks his son. He doesn’t look as enraged as his daughter; he just looks overwhelmed.

“I don’t know Luke. I would like to know the answer myself.”

Luke…he remembered Padmé had wanted to name their son Luke. Luke and Leia. He looked at them as if for the first time, for he was not looking at them as rebels and traitors, but as his children. They were his and Padmé’s and they were perfect.

Padmé turns to him. He prepares himself for a confrontation. He wouldn’t protest against any accusation; she had every right to despise him.

“Now that we know you’re alive, Anakin, what do you plan to do?”

He realizes she was giving him a choice. The same one she had offered him on Mustafar. He didn’t deserve it but he accepted it all the same.

“I…I can return and never speak of this to the Emperor. I can help you in your rebellion and make sure you are safe from the Empire,” he suggests.

“Or you could do all that and more by coming with us.”

He glances at his children. The initial shock had worn off and they were looking at him expectantly. Especially his son. He saw hope reflecting in his eyes – very much like Padmé’s. He felt a sense of déjà vu. It was as if he had been asked to make the same fateful choice between Padmé and the Jedi Order. It hadn’t been much of a choice back then and neither was it now.

“I- I can do that. I will spend the rest of my life making amends for all the wrongs I have done...to all of you.”

For the first time since their meeting, Padmé smiles. It’s a familiar smile.

They walk back to the ship silently as everyone is processing the events that came to pass. The children walk ahead and share mirrored looks of uncertainty as the parents follow close behind.

“I am sorry,” he says simply.

“I know,” she says as if she had known it all along.

#ask #prompt #my writing #padme lives au #anakin skywalker #darth vader #padme amidala #luke skywalker #leia organa #leia skywalker #padme skywalker #anidala #vaderdala #skywalker family #skyfam

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bexterbex · 4 years

Text

A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 67

Warning, PLEASE CHECK TAGS IF YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THEN DON’T READ. Tag lists are closed

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Will tag as I go along, Will update tags, Slow Burn, Influenced by Star Trek and other Sci-Fi themes, References to We Happy Few, Tons of References and quotes to George Orwells 1984 see if you can find them all, The First Order is the new Big Brother, but who is really surprised, Blatant Nazi Symbolism, Interrogation Themes, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Really just drawn out Slow Burn, Don’t repost without permission, Torture themes, Suggestive Themes, Execution themes, Disturbing Themes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Controlling Kylo Ren, Physical Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Possessive Kylo Ren, A character shamelessly based on Zelda

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 67: Planning a Wedding

This was the first time in a while that you had woken up completely alone. You were thankful that the sleeping pill put you to sleep because if it didn’t you were pretty sure that falling asleep would have been hard since Kylo wasn’t wrapped around you. The bed felt empty, but you weren’t alone for long. Adlez and Olivia-Rose were there a few minutes after you became conscious.

You went about your usual morning routine of getting dressed, having breakfast, learning your schedule, and so on. Somehow it all felt rather monotonous. This repeated for the first few days until you were informed that the dressmaker would be arriving to take your measurements and to design your dress.

You were expecting to meet a man but were surprised to see a rather older looking woman greeting you, “Good morning Lady Ren, I am here to design your ceremony gown.” Her voice was that characteristically sweet old lady voice that always comforted you.

“It is nice to meet you, I trust my lady-in-waiting sent you some of the designs we need to beat. This is a rather important dress and I would like to get it right.” No, you had to get right, and she knew that.

“Of course, the dresses she sent over were some of the best ones worn by Queen Padme Amidala . Are they something you would like to emulate or are they just something to compare to?” You watched as her kind gray eyes watched your face, they were rather comforting.

“Something to compare to, I also believe she sent over some dresses from my planet as well, some dresses that royalty have worn .” You had seen some of the royal wedding dresses splashed across tabloids at the supermarkets. You knew people always loved them, and you had to admit that they were rather pretty.

“Yes, the main theme from those dresses that I could see were white lace gowns that were modest and featured long trains. Is this something you would like to start with?” She seemed to read you very well, in many ways she seemed like another person you could trust.

“Yes, I want a white dress as it is traditional where I come from. But I would like to include something from Naboo if possible.” You had seen the dresses Adlez had sent over, none of them were really your taste, but you knew Kylo’s grandmother was famous for her fashion sense. And he had a deep devotion to his grandfather, so you wanted to honor his wife.

“We could include some specialty embroidery or lace, Naboo is famous for it unless you would like to have a stuffed bodice?” You did not want the horrid puffy sleeves of her dresses, nor did you want the rather elaborate hairstyles she favored.

“No embroidery or lace will be fine. I am not a fan of large puffy sleeves. I sort of want something sleek and timeless. Something that will be spoken about for millennia.” You hoped the galactic fashion trends were similar to Earth’s in that some things were considered timeless.

“May I ask where the ceremony is being held?” She started to take out her sketchbook and jot down some notes.

“The castle on Mustafar,” you stood by your agreement to have it there, even if a small part of you wished you could have it back on Earth.

“Ah, so I must make you stand out from the architecture. It features a lot of harsh lines and symmetry. And you must stand apart but yet together with the Supreme Leader. I trust the Supreme Leader will have something special made by one of the First Order tailors.”

She started sketching design after design, eventually; you settled on one. Something that would make you look feminine and delicate against the architecture, but yet regal and powerful. It would feature lace from Naboo, and a long train and veil combo that would bring in the royalty vibes you were hoping for. She took the final design and informed you she would be back in a few days with the dress.

All the excitement of designing a wedding dress dissipated after a bit. You were then left to your regular routine of learning, going to meetings, and meeting with your staff.

Kylo had been gone five days before you heard from him. He had yet to make any real headway in finding the scavenger.

“I’ve missed you,” you said as you saw his face appear on the holocall.

“I’ve missed you too, Kitten.” Gods how you missed his voice. You hoped all of this would end soon because you couldn’t take it for much longer.

“Are you lonely without me?” If he asked you that question back you would beg him to come home. But he didn’t.

“Terribly, the bed is cold, I miss my morning kisses. My nightly showers are even worse, as there is no beautiful woman to climb into bed with afterward.” He gave you a wink that had you blushing all over. You were glad the holocall gave you a blue cast as you were sure he would tease you about it. “As much as my knights are my brothers, they are no replacement for you. I also don’t think Ushar and Cardo would appreciate playing with me like you do, Kitten.” Now you were fully beat red. “Although Cardo does seem lonely himself. Maybe you could talk to that lady-in-waiting of yours to message him, to cheer him up?”

Of course, Adlez was up to shenanigans when you weren’t with her. “I know nothing of their relationship. If he is feeling lonely, then he can message her himself. “You truly didn’t know anything, and you kinda preferred it that way.

You heard a chuckle come from his deep resonating chest, only muffled by the audio of the holocall, “You are lucky you don’t hear their talks about her then. I am afraid your lady-in-waiting might tarnish my knights.”

“Hey now, she is the one you picked for me. I think she’s just whipping them into shape.” He did pick her out for you, a decision he should probably regret.

“Literally,” he said with a smirk. You could see the playful water swirl in his cauldron eyes. Eyes that you really wanted to drown in.

“I did not need to know that.” Now the image of Adlez with a riding crop popped into your head, an image that would scar you presumably for life.

“Well, Kitten, it might be something we can experiment with too once I get back.” And for the first time since you’ve met him, he actually winked at you. You had no idea where this truly flirty side was coming from, but you hoped it didn’t leave.

Your face was now completely on fire. In an attempt to change the subject, “How are you advancing on your mission?”

His face turned into a scowl. “She has been difficult to find, It hasn’t been easy. Once Rey is dead, my mother will hand herself over quietly. But for now, I have to go, we will be dropping out of hyperspace in a few minutes and we will be searching the planets in this system.”

“Where are you off to again?” You haven’t heard directly from him in the last few days, but you have been receiving updates. But you had still yet to learn about the galaxy and its many planets.

“Pasaana, we have a lead that she may be headed there. I will call you when I can.” You could hear some of the knights moving around in the back of the call. You hoped he would just finish what he needed to do soon so he could come back to you.

“Return to me in one piece, please.” If he got hurt or killed, you wouldn’t know how to handle yourself.

“I will.” You watched as his image faded from in front of you. The call ended. And you were alone once more. Alone to face the next few days by yourself.

In the rush of being able to talk to him again, to see him. You had completely forgotten about the need to chew him out for not actually proposing to you. To just leave you in the hands of the rest of the First Order to plan a wedding. But you missed him, you were lonely.

The last few days you had just been eating dinner by yourself. You knew Adlez was eating with the knights and that Olivia-Rose and Mitaka were probably together. All in all, you felt rather more alone. Everyone around you seemed to have a life outside your chambers. Not that you didn’t, but you hadn’t the true freedom of being able to walk the halls or to meet new people to just be friends with.

You had been keeping tabs on your friends back home on Earth. Hayden and Carter both seemed to be doing fine. Hayden had applied for the ‘trooper corps that would be stationed on Earth and Carter seemed to be excelling at work. You knew that calling them wouldn’t be the same as before all this happened. All of you had changed. You dreaded knowing what they were like after the education had fully set in. You were different to but in ways you could not describe. For better or worse you were a different woman than when you first met Kylo. You were becoming more like him every day, and it should bother you, but right now it comforted you. He was gone but was still with you at the same time.

You also did not want to call your parents or siblings. Your parents had been disrespectful to you before you left. You wondered if they would attend the ceremony, your wedding. Or if they would just watch the broadcast like every other First Order citizen. Hux would know, but you didn’t really care either way. Kylo was your family now, and maybe one day you would make one with him. In many ways, Olivia-Rose, Adlez, Mitaka, Hux, Phasma, the Knights of Ren, and your staff were your family. But Kylo was home, and no one could take that away from you. Not Rey, not his mother, no one.

You got yourself ready for bed, as you had been for the last few nights. The only person who saw you was the doctor as he administered your sleeping pill. You took less time to get ready as really; you had no one to get ready for. There was no Kylo to warm the bed or to wake you up. It was just you.

Once the doctor left after you received your dose you rolled over to Kylo’s side of the bed. His pillow still smelled like him and it helped ease the loneliness as the blackness of sleep took over. No dreams to disturb you.

The next few days were as monotonous as ever. The same routine day in and day out, until the general informed you that the ship had arrived at Mustafar two days ago but that they were having trouble preparing the castle.

“So this isn’t a First Order controlled planet?” You assumed it was when it was suggested in the first place.

“It technically isn’t but we haven’t had a problem here in the past, but I suppose that might have to do with the Supreme Leader’s presence at the time,” responded Hux. You were joined by all your staff as you were planning more details for the ceremony.

“So they will continue to be hostile, and the place where my wedding is supposed to happen will be in ruin?” Just what you needed. Your match was out trying to kill someone to protect you, but you were sent off to a battlefield where you were supposed to get married and be crowned Empress.

“Well, the castle isn’t necessarily in the best of conditions in the first place,” said Captain Mitaka.

“Then why was it recommended?” You had yet to receive any information on your wedding venue, really. You had no idea what it looked like, not that you could really change it now.

“Because it was Lord Vader’s personal residence and his influence on the Supreme Leader’s life has been significant. He holds his grandfather and his legacy in high regard,” responded Hux. You knew the answer but were just frustrated at the current situation. Nothing felt like it was going to plan.

“So who is attacking the ground troops?” No one had told you who, just that they were being attacked.

“Alazmec of Winsit, Sith cultists. They believe Lord Vader to be a deity,” said Hux.

A lightbulb clicked in your brain. “Do they know that the Supreme Leader is a direct descendant of Darth Vader? And that he would like to have a wedding at his grandfather’s castle?”

“No, they do not,” said Mitaka.

Why is it that you occasionally felt like the smartest person in the room? “Can we reason with them, inform them of this?”

“We have tried, the troops we have sent have been defeated.” Hux was starting to look easily frustrated. You had no idea how many people they had sent down or how many of the cultists there were, but surely this couldn’t keep on going when you had a wedding to plan.

You had made a decision. “I shall go reason with them.”

“I don’t think that is a good idea. I don’t believe the Supreme Leader would approve of you putting yourself in harm’s way,” said Hux.

“Is the Supreme Leader here?” You have had enough.

“No,” said Mitaka. And this is why he was one of your favorites.

“Exactly and did he give explicit orders to keep me from going to the planet’s surface?” You were determined to get this whole thing over with.

“No, m’lady,” said Hux. You could tell that he knew he was going to regret saying that.

“Then I am going down to the planet to reason with them. I will have the knights and Captain Phasma with me. The only way I could be safer is if the Supreme Leader was here himself, but then again if he was we wouldn’t have this problem.” You were starting to understand how a Bridezilla was formed but was it really that unreasonable to get your ceremony space in order? You had promised that you would have your wedding on Mustafar and come hell or high water, you were going to have it there. After all, you were going to be the Empress of the entire galaxy one day, so you should have a wedding to remember.

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo x reader #kylo x you #a soul to mend his own #star wars #first order #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #sw first order imagine #star wars first order

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bedlamsbard · 6 years

Text

Some concept writing! This is a continuation of the cage fight AU from some months back, with a time skip between that sequence and this one. Alas, no more actual cage fights.

About 4.6K below the break.

Doriah woke instantly at the sound of the door sliding open, but the familiar sound of Xiaan’s footsteps followed immediately afterwards. He was already slipping back into sleep when she stopped by the side of the bed and said, “Hera’s gone.”

Doriah sat straight up. “What?”

Xiaan was dressed but looked tired, regarding him like she couldn’t quite decide whether or not it was worth panicking. “Hera’s gone,” she repeated. “She took Chopper and the Imperial shuttle and she left.”

“When?” Doriah threw the blankets off and looked around for his clothes, which Xiaan dutifully handed him. “Where?

“Just now. I followed her to the hangar.”

“And the deck crew just let her go?”

Xiaan shrugged. “She’s Syndulla.”

Doriah could have screamed, but that was undeniably true. The deck crew were all Syndulla clansmen, none of whom would have even considered refusing Cham Syndulla’s daughter anything unless given direct orders otherwise. “But where did she go?”

Xiaan just looked at him, frowning.

Doriah slapped a hand to his forehead. “She went after that human of hers,” he realized. “The one being held at the secret Imperial base in the middle of nowhere.” He stared in horror. “She went alone?”

“She took Chopper.”

“He doesn’t count!” Doriah yanked his shoes on with more violence than necessary, then strode across the room to the door.

Alecto’s room was next to theirs, Cham’s across from it. Doriah banged on first one door, then the other, and was standing in front of Cham’s when the door slid open, revealing his uncle. “What is it?” he demanded.

Alecto’s door slid open behind Doriah. “What?” she said blearily.

“Hera left,” Doriah said. “Xiaan says she took Chopper and the Lambda not half an hour ago.”

“She what?” Alecto demanded.

Cham was already striding back into his cabin, reaching for the comlink on his desk. When the officer on the bridge responded, he demanded, “Did the Lambda just launch?”

Sounding confused, the officer said, “Yes, Syndulla, about twenty minutes ago –”

“And you let it?”

“Were we not supposed to?”

Cham swore viciously and cut the connection.

Alecto had followed Doriah into the room. “We’re going after her,” she said, and when Cham was silent, added, “Cham, we’re going after her. We can’t let her go to an Imperial base on her own –”

“Or at all,” Doriah added.

Cham’s expression was haunted. “I can’t take the fleet to Mustafar,” he said. “Hera – she took the Lambda, she knows Imperial protocol. She’ll be able to slip through the blockade. Nothing else we have can.”

“They’ll catch her,” Alecto said, appalled. She turned back towards the door; Cham was there suddenly, his hand on her arm.

“We have to trust her,” he said, low-voiced. “I can’t risk the fleet.”

“You bastard,” Alecto said softly, but she didn’t move, the agony of that moment clear on her face.

Xiaan put her hand into Doriah’s, her fingers gripping with desperate strength. “She can do it,” she said. “Hera can do it.”

Please, Hera thought as Chopper finally got the door open with a muted warble of success. Oh, please.

The cell was dark when she peered into it, but she could hear breathing, slow and labored enough to make her lekku twitch. Hera fumbled her handlight out of her pocket and shone it down into the cell, illuminating a lump on the floor that after a confused moment she realized was a person.

Not just any person. Kanan, it had to be Kanan. It had to be.

Hera hurried down the steps into the cell, Chopper following her, and fell to her knees beside the lump, which was lying curled up with its – his – back to the door. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt him flinch away before she whispered, “Kanan, it’s me, it’s Hera.”

He went still beneath her hand.

“It’s really me,” she promised him. “This is a rescue.”

“Hera?” he finally whispered, his voice hoarse.

“Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to throw herself on him and weep. “It’s me. You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get you out of here.”

He finally twisted around to look up at her. Hera almost swore; he had clearly been beaten at some point recently, one eye swollen nearly shut and dried blood caking a cut high on his cheekbone. His long hair hung limply around his face, strands of it caught in the shock-collar around his throat.

He was also manacled hand and foot, with a chain that passed through a ring on the floor.

“Hera,” he breathed, squinting at her through his good eye. “You can’t be here.”

“That’s tough, because I am.” She caught his face delicately between her palms, careful of his bruises and the cut, and kissed him. Kanan reached for her with a soft clink of chains, his hands resting on her forearms as though he couldn’t bring himself to embrace her, like he just needed to touch her to know that she was real.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she said again, then turned to call softly over her shoulder, “Chopper, get down here and do something about this.”

Kanan regarded the droid’s approach with confusion. “Am I hallucinating or is this the drugs?” he asked.

“He’s real,” Hera assured him. “They gave you drugs? Interrogation drugs?”

He shook his head and winced. “Not interrogation drugs. Hello there,” he added to Chopper. “Friend of yours?” he asked Hera, sounding mildly plaintive.

“Kanan, this is Chopper. I built him – rebuilt him – when I was little; my father found him at the colony and brought him with him to the fleet. Chopper, this is Kanan. Can you do something about those chains?”

Kanan nodded solemnly to Chopper and held up his hands as Chopper extended his laser cutter, not even blinking as sparks flew from the metal. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he told Hera.

“It’s a little late for that,” Hera pointed out dryly.

The manacles on his wrists fell away and Chopper switched to the ones on his ankles. Kanan rubbed at his wrists, casting a wary glance at the door. Hera took one of his hands in hers, frowning at the welts there where the skin had been rubbed raw. “Have you been in chains the whole time?”

He shrugged, then winced.

He must have fought, Hera thought. Even after they had brought him here. She couldn’t think of any other reason that a relatively harmless young human would be shock-collared and chained to the floor in the midst of a secret Imperial base.

It was the shock-collar that was worrying her. She wasn’t certain that Chopper could cut it off, not without setting it off and certainly not without hurting Kanan, but she didn’t want to leave it on Kanan until they got back to the stolen shuttle either. There was too much chance that someone would realize he had escaped and trigger it before they reached the ship. They would have to risk it.

“The collar –” she began.

Kanan reached up with both hands and yanked at either side of the collar. It came apart with a crackle of failing electronics and he slipped it off, grimacing as he tossed it aside. “It shorted out a while ago,” he said to Hera as she stared. “I didn’t feel like letting them know.”

Hera frowned, because she could have sworn he hadn’t actually touched it before he had pulled it off, but that was impossible. Either way, she didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

“Can you walk?”

He nodded. “I’m not sure I can run, but I can walk.”

That was better than Hera had hoped for. She helped Kanan to his feet and handed him one of her blasters, then kissed him quickly for luck.

“Please don’t tell me you came here alone,” he said.

“Of course I didn’t, Chopper’s here.”

Since it was too late for any meaningful protest, all Kanan did was give her a long-suffering look. Hera put her shoulder under his and wrapped an arm around his waist, drawing her other blaster with her free hand. She had to help him up at the stairs to the corridor; he was trembling a little, his face set with lines of strain and grim determination that aged him prematurely. The trembling went away as they made their way down the corridor, Chopper rolling after them, but the strain on his face remained.

He cocked his head a little at the distant sound of the alarm klaxon, which he must not have been able to hear from his cell. “Was that you?”

“They teach you how to build bombs at the ISB Academy,” Hera said.

Kanan sighed. “Hera, do you know what this place is?”

She frowned up at him. “It’s a secret Imperial base. The Empire has a lot of them.”

“It’s the headquarters of the Inquisition.”

That explained why Hera hadn’t seen any stormtroopers. “Then why are you here?”

“Because he is a Jedi.”

Hera jerked her blaster up with a gasp. The Pau’an Inquisitor who had captured Kanan on Naboo was standing in the corridor junction in front of them, watching them with a faintly bemused smile on his face. Hera hadn’t even heard his approach.

It took her long moments – too long – to register what he had said.

Kanan was already pushing in front of her, putting himself between her and the Inquisitor. “Leave her alone,” he said, his voice coming in harsh, panting gasps. “Leave her alone. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

The corner of the Inquisitor’s mouth curled a little.

“Leave her alone,” Kanan repeated stubbornly. “I’ll – I’ll do what you want. Just leave her alone.”

“Kanan, no!” Hera hissed, grabbing his arm. She didn’t know what the Inquisitor wanted from him, but whatever it was she didn’t want him to get it. She raised her blaster and fired, close enough to Kanan’s ear that he flinched.

The Inquisitor swayed easily out of the way of the bolts and went on as if nothing had happened. “I think not,” he said. He considered the two of them, then added, “She doesn’t know, does she? You’ve never told her what you are.”

Kanan bit his lip. “Just let her go,” he begged. “You can have me – I’ll do whatever you want, you can do whatever you – just let her go.”

Hera dug her fingers into his arm. “Stop that. I’m not leaving you.”

Kanan was still holding the blaster Hera had handed him, but he didn’t make any attempt to raise it. His expression was sick with nerves and fear; he was trembling beneath Hera’s hand.

Three weeks, Hera thought. This was the being who had probably tortured Kanan every day for the past three weeks. She didn’t want him to have another hour with Kanan. She didn’t want him to have another minute.

The Inquisitor ignored her words the same way he would have ignored a child’s pet tooka hissing and strolled another few steps forward, making Kanan flinch back against Hera. “I believe I have you already, my boy.”

Kanan shuddered all over like he had been doused in ice water and Hera thought suddenly, It wasn’t just torture. He had done something else to Kanan too, hurt him somehow in a way that wasn’t physical –

Behind her, Chopper prodded at the back of her leg with one arm. Distracted, Hera glanced down at him, and saw him extending –

A detonator. Of course he’d held onto one when she had been planting charges earlier. Hera had a few extras in her satchel, but the Inquisitor wasn’t paying any attention to Chopper. He was barely paying any attention to her for that matter, but she couldn’t risk it. She gave him a slight nod.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Kanan told the Inquisitor, utter desperation in his voice. “I won’t fight you anymore. Just let her go, please, let her go.”

The Inquisitor’s yellow eyes suddenly lit up, his lips curling in a horrible smile that revealed his sharpened teeth. Kanan flinched back against Hera, his whole body radiating despair and dismay.

“Fight me?” the Inquisitor repeated. “Now that would be a sight to see.” He reached behind himself – Kanan flinched again – and removed something from the back of his belt. “Fight me,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t a question, “and I will allow the girl to flee until our duel is concluded.”

“Yes,” Kanan said before Hera had even had a chance to process the Inquisitor’s words. He was still shaking, but he forced the words out in a snarl. “I’ll fight you. Hera, run.”

“What?” Hera said, still trying to keep up with what had just happened. Chopper was still prodding at her too, which didn’t help matters either. Between her blaster and her grip on Kanan, she didn’t have a free hand to take the detonator he was trying to give her.

“Hera, run,” Kanan said, low and earnest, then slammed both hands forward in a shoving motion.

Taken by surprise, the Inquisitor went flying backwards, landing in a crouch a dozen meters down the corridor. Hera grabbed the detonator from Chopper, hit the trigger, and threw it without bothering to check what kind it was; it exploded in a cloud of smoke and she swore.

“Chopper!”

The next detonator he passed her was heavier.

Kanan, startled, said, “What are you –”

“We’re leaving!” Hera snapped, depressed the trigger, and flung that detonator too.

Kanan thrust his hand out towards the cloud of smoke; something came flying into it, then the detonator exploded. Her ears ringing, Hera stumbled briefly, then grabbed Kanan’s hand and dragged him down the corridor, hoping that there was an exit down here somewhere. “Come on, love, come on –”

She hadn’t been sure Kanan could run, not the way he had been moving a few minutes earlier, but he managed it now, his breath coming in ragged pants from behind her. She hoped viciously that the explosion had killed the Inquisitor; the detonator had gone off nearly in his face, so with any luck –

Chopper ground to a halt in front of her and Hera nearly tripped over him, barely catching herself with a hand on his dome. “What?” she demanded, then glanced up and saw the closed door. “Well, get it open!”

Grumbling to himself, Chopper rolled away from her and started to extend his manipulator before stopping abruptly with a sound of distinct distress. Hera looked down, startled: there was no jack for a droid to plug in, nor were there any door controls.

“Kanan?” she said. “We might have a prob –”

He had been watching the corridor behind them, but turned at her voice. He looked the door over and said, “Oh. I can do this.”

“What – how?”

He didn’t answer, just stepped past her and shut his eyes. He was holding a metal cylinder in one hand, his fist clenched tightly around it as he raised his other hand towards the door. As Hera watched, the door cycled smoothly open, revealing another corridor beyond it.

“Go,” Kanan said; opening his eyes.

Chopper didn’t need to be prompted, just rolled through the door. Hera followed, glancing warily over her shoulder.

The door startled to slide shut as Kanan lowered his outstretched hand; as Hera started to cry out in alarm, he ducked through the closing panels, stumbling for an instant before Hera caught him.

“Are you all right?”

He shook his head. “How much further?”

“Chop?”

She glanced down at the map he projected between them, though their current location was only a best guess rather than a certainty. “I think we’re not far,” she told Kanan. “Or if we can steal another ship –”

He jerked his head up suddenly, staring at the closed door behind them. “Run,” he said.

“Not without you,” Hera said. She looked hopefully around for a control panel she could shoot out, but this side, like the other, didn’t boast one. “Can you seal the door?”

Kanan hesitated, eyes slanting shut as he frowned, then he nodded abruptly. “Yes. Stand back.”

Hera took a few steps backwards, wondering what he was going to do.

Kanan put his shoulders back, then flipped the cylinder he was holding around in his hand and depressed something on it. A blazing beam of blue light extended from it and Hera gasped: a lightsaber.

Jedi, the Inquisitor had said, and suddenly it was real to her in a way it hadn’t been before. Kanan is a Jedi.

He plunged the lightsaber into the door, holding it in place as the smell of molten metal rose, then he drew it out and deactivated it. “He can cut through the door, but it will take him a little longer,” he said. He took a step towards her and stumbled, his face drawn with strain.

Hera caught him, putting her shoulder under his. “Almost out, love,” she promised him. “Can you walk?”

Kanan nodded, grim-faced, and drew himself up. Hera folded her hand into his, feeling him trembling.

“I’m going to fall over later,” Kanan promised, “but I can run.”

There was a sound from behind them, then a gleaming red blade appeared from within the door. It began to move, starting to carve a hole out from the sealed door.

They ran.

Hera palmed another detonator as they ran, ready to turn and throw it at the first opportunity. Up ahead there was another door, but this one had a control panel and a jack. Hera caught her breath, meaning to tell Chopper to open it, but Kanan held up his hand and the light on the control flickered from red to green. The door slid open.

They stumbled through it and Hera turned immediately to shoot into the control panel, sealing the door. Chopper crowed in relief; Hera turned to see the second-best thing she had seen in her entire life, the Imperial Lambda she had arrived in. They’d finally made it out.

Chopper rolled up to it without being told, lowering the ramp for them before zipping up into the cockpit. By the time Hera and Kanan had followed, he had already gotten the engines started for her.

She was lifting the Lambda up as the doors burst open beneath them, the skeletal figure of the Pau’an appearing from within them. Kanan, bracing himself in the co-pilot’s seat, jerked upright, his eyes wide and terrified.

Hera triggered the ship’s guns.

The platform beneath them erupted in gouts of flame, pieces of it vaporizing instantly or shattering to slide into the lava below. Hera didn’t stop to look if she had taken the Inquisitor out at the same time, just jerked the ship upwards at its top speed, sending it climbing up out of the atmosphere. Chopper had already done the hyperspace calculations; Hera didn’t wait to see if any of the star destroyers stationed in orbit around the planet were turning their guns on her, just sent the ship into hyperspace as soon as they were clear of Mustafar’s gravity well.

As the starlines outside the viewport dissolved into hyperspace, she turned towards the co-pilot’s seat. “Kanan?”

He raised his gaze to her, his lips parting as if to speak. Then he slumped over in a dead faint.

He was only out for a few minutes, not even long enough for Hera to have come to a decision about whether to leave him in his seat or drag him to a more comfortable position. She was leaning worriedly over him when his eyelashes fluttered, then he saw her and froze with the panicked stare of a prey animal.

“Kanan, it’s me,” Hera said quickly. “It’s Hera, it’s all right, you’re safe.”

The tightness in his shoulders eased a little. “Hera?” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

She nodded. “It’s me,” she said again.

He reached for her and Hera let him take her in an embrace, wrapping her arms around him in turn. He buried his face in her shoulder, his whole body trembling beneath her hands, and started to cry.

Hera rocked him back and forth, murmuring against his ear, meaningless nothings in Basic and Twi’leki, I love you, I love you, I love you –

It was a long time before his quiet sobs trailed off. He raised his head from her shoulder, resting a hand against her cheek as Hera looked at him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Would you like me to put you back?” she inquired, and he let out a choked sound that was half-gasp, half-laugh.

“No, I – no.”

She kissed him, careful of his bruised face. “I love you,” she told him.

“You’d better hope you do, after that –”

Hera shut him up with another kiss. “Are you hurt?” she asked him when she finally drew back. “There’s a medkit –”

Kanan shook his head. “It’s nothing a medkit can help with,” he said, and suddenly looked very tired.

“I can at least get some bacta for that cut and those bruises,” Hera said. “There’s a doctor where we’re going, he can look at you – he’s my uncle,” she added at Kanan’s raised eyebrow.

“I’m glad you got away and back to your family,” he said gently. “I wasn’t sure – they wouldn’t tell me anything. But I thought he would have rubbed it in my face if they’d caught you.”

He had to be the Pau’an Inquisitor.

“I’m sorry,” Hera told him helplessly. “I didn’t know where they were keeping you, it shouldn’t have taken me this long to find out –”

Kanan looked at her in stunned surprise. “Hera, you’re here,” he said. “That was rash and reckless –”

She kissed him again. “You’re rash and reckless,” she said after a few moments, finally pulling back. “I’m going to go get the medkit. Don’t go anywhere.”

Kanan’s voice was mild. “I don’t think I could move if I wanted to.”

Hera winced. She straightened up and made her way to the back of the cockpit, where one of the ship’s two sets of emergency supplies were stowed. As she was rummaging through it, Kanan said quietly from the front of the cockpit, “Hera, I love you,” with a slightly stunned quality to the words.

Hera stopped rummaging, a jar of bacta salve in one hand, then went back to him. He looked up at her, exhausted and beaten and tortured, and even though she had already said it Hera repeated the words, “I love you. I won’t leave you again. Don’t you dare do something stupid for me again.”

He gave her a loopy grin. “No promises.”

Since Kanan wasn’t injured enough to need immediate medical attention, Hera had Chopper plot a circuitous route back to the fleet to hopefully shake any Imperial pursuit. She spread out a crinkly emergency blanket on the floor of the cockpit while Kanan was in the refresher doing his best to clean himself up. When he finally emerged, still shaky but less bloody, they curled up together on the blanket.

The bacta had already started to work; the bruises on his face had faded even in the past hour, the cut looking older and less fresh. Hera rested her head against his chest after making sure that it wouldn’t hurt him, relieved just to have his arms around her.

“You’re a Jedi,” she said quietly after some time, and felt Kanan go suddenly tense.

“Yes.”

“I thought all the Jedi were dead.”

Soft-voiced, he said, “Most of us are. Maybe everyone else. I don’t know. That’s one of the things they kept asking me.”

“Did I get you caught?”

He shook his head. “Someone saw the fight – recorded it, maybe, and he saw it. I’m not usually – I don’t actually fight like a Jedi most of the time. But someone who’s seen Jedi before can tell.”

Hera thought back to the fight, which seemed a million years ago now, and the brutal efficiency with which Kanan had taken out his opponent. She had thought he was just a good fighter.

Hesitantly, Kanan said, “Does it matter to you?”

“No,” Hera said immediately. She leaned up and kissed him. “I remember – you told me that the Empire killed everyone you knew. And…” She hesitated over the words. “I didn’t know, but it isn’t – it isn’t a surprise, really? If I had to pick someone I knew to be a Jedi, it would be you.”

Kanan slanted a glance at her. “Everyone you know is an Imperial officer.”

“Well, right now there’s also everyone I’m related to,” Hera said. “Who you’re going to meet.”

He grimaced.

“They’re not so bad,” Hera said. “Well – I mean, my parents might be mad at me, since I, um, stole this shuttle and ran away. But mostly they’re just glad I’m alive, so I’m sure they won’t be mad very long.” She kissed him again. “And I’m sure they’ll like you. My father used to know Jedi back during the Clone Wars.”

Kanan frowned briefly. “Is your father – your father isn’t Cham Syndulla, is he? The freedom fighter?”

Hera blinked, surprised. “He is. I – why? Did you know him?” He had said that he had been in the Clone Wars, all those weeks ago – lying in bed together at the Spotted Shaak, sweat-slick and post-coital.

He shook his head. “I was still back at the Temple during the Ryloth campaign, I wasn’t even an initiate yet. I was only in the war during that last month. But my line-master – my master’s master – was Mace Windu.”

Hera sat upright. “I met him!” As Kanan stared up at her, she added, “I was very small then. We had to flee the estate and go into hiding in the wastes, underground where the Separatist bombers couldn’t get us. He came to ask my father for an alliance. And then at the parade in Lessu, later – he was there, and two other Jedi, another human and a…a…” She frowned, trying to remember. “A Togruta? The other Jedi’s apprentice, maybe. I don’t think I met them.”

“Skywalker and Tano, I think. I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying much attention to the war then.” He quirked a grin at her. “At the beginning the crèche-masters were trying to keep it from us. Everyone thought it would be over soon, and they didn’t want the younglings to know about it.” He frowned again, like he had suddenly remembered that all those people were dead.

Hera leaned down over him. “Are you feeling better?” she asked, changing the subject.

Kanan nodded, arching an eyebrow. “Don’t ask me to run any races. Or duel any more Inquisitors.”

“I think if there were any on the shuttle they would have popped up by now.”

“I’d have sensed them.” He reached up to curve a hand over her hip, arching up into Hera’s kiss. “I’m pretty sore,” he warned her.

“I just want –” Hera hesitated. “I just want to be with you. We don’t have to have sex. We’ll be back at the fleet in a few hours. And I have a cabin to myself.” Which her parents probably wouldn’t be thrilled about her sharing, but she didn’t particularly care.

“Beds are much nicer than floors,” Kanan said. He squeezed her hip gently. “Though I’ve done some of my best work on floors.”

“Pervert,” Hera said, kissing him again. She lay down beside him, curling her body into the warm curve of his arm as they kissed.

“Maybe,” Kanan breathed against her mouth a moment later. “But you love me.”

“I do,” Hera said, and smiled.

Hera’s parents were, as she had expected, furious with her. They managed to keep it from showing until Hera’s uncle Themarsa had taken Kanan into the medbay to get checked out. Hera took the tongue-lashing without complaining, then admitted to her parents that it had been the Inquisition she had broken into and gotten yelled at some more.

It was a long time before Themarsa finally released Kanan, his expression suggesting that he would have preferred to keep him there overnight. It was even longer before they were finally curled up in bed together – both of them fed and showered, Kanan already asleep with his head against Hera’s shoulder as soon as she had turned out the lights.

He’d been hurt. He’d been hurt so badly that Hera hated to think about it, badly enough that Themarsa had taken her aside and told her firmly that he wasn’t allowed to do anything strenuous for the next few days, including any particularly athletic sex. At least her uncle hadn’t said it until her parents weren’t in the room.

Hera pressed her lips softly against his hair in a silent kiss. He had been hurt, and he would bear some of those scars for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t there anymore. He was here. He was safe with her, and that Inquisitor wouldn’t touch him again. Hera wouldn’t let that happen.

He’s traumatized, Themarsa had told her gently. And he’s going to be traumatized for a long time, even if he doesn’t admit it to you or anyone else.

Hera kissed Kanan’s hair again, then put her arms around him and shut her eyes.

#cut scenes and concept writing #kanera cage fight au tag #as always comments are appreciated

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padawanlost · 6 years

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Can you imagine how the story might have turned out if on mustafar anakin turned his back on the dark side and went into hiding with obi-wan and padme + the twins? I'm reading a couple fanfictions like that right now.

I LOVE AUfanfics. They are the best :P But, in canon, unless Palpatine was dead (and/oreveryone gets therapy) it would end badly. Palpatine, at that time, had ALL theresources in the Galaxy at his disposal and he would be looking for some of themost famous people in the GFFA. It would take some time, but I believe he wouldeventually find them. The only reason hedidn’t find Yoda and Obi-wan was because he didn’t care enough to look. Anakin,on the other hand, he would very much like to find. Can you even imagine howangry he would be after Anakin betrays him and goes back to Obi-wan? He wouldstop at nothing to kill Anakin and the people responsible for taking him prizeapprentice away from it.

Also, Anakinwas the chosen one and a symbol of hope (if we the take the Hero with No Tearthing in into account) and his survivor would keep hope alive for any remaining Jedi and the general public.Padmé’s survival would do the same too. If you add Padmé and Obi-wan’s skillsinto the mix, the surviving trio would be a serious threat to Palptine’sEmpire. He would have to try to destroy (or convert them) to ensure his ownsurvival.

But thereal reason why I think it would end badly is Anakin (and, to a lesser degreeYoda). Palpatine would be hunting them, and together (Anakin, Obi-wan, Yoda,Bail, Padmé and Ahsoka) they would have the power, influence and skillsnecessary to defeat Palpatine. But, Padmé, unlike Obi-wan and Yoda in canon,wouldn’t be okay with just watching the Republic be destroyed. She would wantto do something and that would aggravate the situation on team!Republic. Why?Because Anakin would not be well. Turning back to the light wouldn’t suddenlyfix 20 years of trauma. And on the topthat he would be dealing with eh added guilty of what he did to Mace and theslaughter at the Jedi Temple. The boy would be an even bigger mess than he wasbefore (and that is saying something :P). So Anakin, unless they get him thehelp and support he needs, wouldn’t be stable enough to be a productive memberof the team and that would be a huge liability.

And to makethings even harder with have the Jedi ideology and Yoda bias against Anakin.The Jedi built they Order upon the idea that once you go dark side you nevercome back, but Anakin came back so what happens now? That would create aserious internal conflict in the surviving Jedi and it would probably influencetheir relationship with Anakin and Yoda, which would lead to more trouble forteam!Republic.

Then youhave the things. should the be raised by a former sith lord? Should they beraised as a Jedi? even if the Jedi way was just proven faulty? How and whereshould they be hidden? How would they keep them a secret if Padmé and Anakinare both alive and everyone already knew Padmé as pregnant? All these issueswould put extra strain on Anakin and the rest of team!Republic.

What wewould have is a ideologically fractured team, a raging sith lord trying to killthem all and a chosen one under more stress than he was when he decided to godark side. That’s a recipe for disaster :P

#ask #anon #fanfic #anakin skywalker #sw meta #send the link anon #i want to read the fic #<3 #what if #meta: anakin #txt

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bedlamsbard · 7 years

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Do you have any advice for coming up with a plot when you already have your setting and characters? I'm not writing a fic but I figured fic writers also have heir characters and setting pre-plot and you're an amazing writer so I thought you'd be a good person to ask?

I’m not sure that I’m going to be particularly helpful here, because I haven’t written original fiction in a while and I’m the kind of fic writer who believes that if fanfic can be completely divorced from the canon, then it’s failed as fanfic, so I’m not sure how much of this is transferable, but these are some of the things I think about as a fic writer who writes primarily plotty fic:

To oversimplify greatly, plot is the pithy description: “The one where X happens.” (Ex: The plot of Rogue One is the Rebel Alliance stealing the Death Star plans.)

Also: “The one where X happens because of A, B, and C” – “The plot of Rogue One is the Rebel Alliance stealing the Death Star plans because a Rebel intelligence officer and a group of rogues with various ties to the Empire uncovered the existence of the Death Star and decided to find a way to thwart it.” (Note: This is not the only way to describe the plot of Rogue One.)

Plot is also the progression of events that make up the pithy description: Thing 1 happens, Thing 2 happens, and as a result of these things, Thing 3 happens; meanwhile Thing 4 is happening because it is not at this point affected by Things 1, 2, or 3, but somewhere along the line Thing 72 will not happen unless Thing 4 happens first.

This is the primary way that I plot – I’ll have scenes or images or lines that I write the story to use, and then backtrace to work out what things have to happen for those scenes to occur later on.

Wake the Storm is a good example of this: the two images that I wrote the story for were Anakin crawling through the ventilation shafts on Vader’s star destroyer and Anakin fighting Vader on Mustafar. So I had to go back and figure out what the sequence of events for those things to happen would be. (Wake’s a little unusual in that these are beginning and (near) ending scenes; Gambit and Backbone both have keystone scenes that are closer to the middle of the story as well, but Wake didn’t.)

Sometimes your brain is not consciously aware of these things, and you figure it out further down along the line. Sometimes you’re further down along the line and you go back and reread and go, “huh, if I use X throwaway line, I can do Y main plot point.”

Plot should flow naturally from characters and setting. Most of the fic I write is in a genre that I call a single-point divergence AU: if one thing goes differently in canon, how does that affect everything that comes afterwards? Everything is progressive; actions have consequences both immediate and long-term. Those actions will flow from characters, both from their choices and events that are out of their control. (And what will be out of one character’s control will not be out of another’s.)

This is essentially the same method that alternate history writers use. (I’m a historian, so I think about cause and effect a lot.)

I try to have an action plot (the sequence of events) and an emotional plot (the character arcs). These should be inextricably intertwined and inform each other; the events of one will ultimately not be possible without the other.

Wake has two primary emotional plots: Anakin and OT!Obi-Wan

Backbone has two primary emotional plots: Hera and Cham.

Gambit is a weird case because the action plot and the emotional plot involve separate sets of characters – the action plot is what happens with the Gambitverse characters, and the primary emotional plot is what happens with the Wakeverse characters. Certainly there are secondary emotional plots for the Gambitverse characters and a secondary action plot for the Wakeverse characters (and the primary action plot affects the Wakeverse characters because they’re present in that ‘verse, but it’s not their action plot), but Gambit was partially an exercise in seeing if I could separate the one from the other. I can and did, but the effect was to make the story feel slightly lopsided in a way I’m not entirely happy with (but couldn’t avoid without changing the way I approached the story).

I come up with a lot more plots than I actually use, and about 95% of the time, they flow directly from canon because of the kind of stories I gravitate towards telling. They also tend to be questions that I’m trying to answer.

Some examples:

How would Anakin react to suddenly turning up in the OT era? (Wake the Storm)

What would the repercussions of this be, both in the OT timeline and in the PT timeline?

How would Ben react to Anakin suddenly turning up? Luke? Leia?

What if Queen Amidala was the leader of the Confederacy? (Queen’s Gambit)

What are the events that would lead this to happen?

What are the repercussions of this change, both in the past and present?

How would canon!Padme react to this?

What if Hera and Kanan were Imperials? (On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone)

What are the events that would lead this to happen? Is there a point in canon I can use for this or do I have to make it all up out of whole cloth?

How this does effect other characters and events in the Rebels timeline? Other characters and events in the saga timeline? (A.k.a. how important are the Ghost crew, anyway? – Remember that Backbone was plotted immediately after S1.)

What if Obi-Wan a Sith lord? (All Along the Watchtower; planned)

What are the events that would lead this to happen?

What are the long- and short-term repercussions of this?

What if Anakin didn’t go dark side and survived Order 66? (What is Lost)

This isn’t a great example because I wrote this literally ten years ago and remember none of my thought process, and would do it differently today.

What if Obi-Wan was a woman? (Oxygen & Rust)

What does this change in the saga?

The way that characters interact with her – how does that change the events of the saga?

Here’s an example from a TCW story that I partially plotted a few years ago, but didn’t end up writing:

In “The Unknown”, Tup reacts to Tiplar and Tiplee as Jedi, but seems unaware of Anakin, suggesting that Anakin may have been specially programmed into the chips not to be an Order 66 victim.

What if more clone chips started malfunctioning and all the Jedi were targeted except Anakin?

The most dramatic way for this to happen would be in a group setting, so that it’s immediately evident to other Jedi that Anakin isn’t being targeted.

That’s going to look suspicious as hell and the other Jedi are probably going to take Anakin into custody.

Let’s have Obi-Wan be injured in this attack and out of the picture, so Anakin feels trapped and alone.

Palpatine is pissed off because this isn’t playing into his plans at all, so he’s revising and improvising on the fly.

If all of the sudden Jedi can’t trust their clones, then that’s going to have massive effects on the war – a.k.a., the Separatists can suddenly make a huge push forward. What if Dooku starts taking the war seriously?

Anakin’s an enterprising sort and after what happened with Ahsoka, he doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to trust the Order in this scenario, so it makes sense that he would escape. (Maybe Palpatine helps to engineer this, because it’s easier for him to have Anakin loose than in prison.)

There ought to be a clone in here, make it Rex, who was aware of what happened with Tup and Fives. He teams up with Anakin.

Rex is going to be wary of having that thing in his head and Anakin needs proof, so they need to find someone to remove it.

How is Padme going to react to all this? Anakin doesn’t want to actively involve her, but he also wants to let her know that he’s all right.

Anakin escaping makes the Jedi Council pretty sure he’s guilty, but after Ahsoka they’re feeling burned, so maybe they proceed with more caution.

At this point Palpatine doesn’t have many options as Supreme Chancellor other than making Anakin look guilty; as Sidious this is an opportunity for him to recruit Anakin.

It would make sense for Anakin to contact Ahsoka to have an ally outside the Order, especially if she’s still on Coruscant.

at this point I stopped plotting this story out. I never had an ending.

(this was originally supposed to be my cool down story after Queen’s Gambit; I wrote Backbone instead)

Here’s a link to some writing meta that I like (and which influenced me a lot when I was younger – you’ll note that this is where I got the terms “action plot” and “emotional plot” from). Her 10 minute AU is essentially the same as my single point divergence AU, but she breaks it down better than I do. (ETA: I want to clarify that I don’t agree with Synecdochic on everything, but I really can’t deny that a lot of this was pretty crucial to my development as a plot writer.)

This isn’t really helpful insofar as coming up with ideas goes, because when it comes to original fic, that’s…what I don’t write and haven’t written for a while, because I’m so used to bouncing directly off canon for ideas. When I do write original fic, I have a tendency to mash stuff together – “classic urban fantasy + ancient Rome,” “traditional high fantasy + modern urban setting,” “prison hulks + space,” “New Orleans-inspired + WWII + magic” – and see what that gets me. If it’s something like a genre – urban fantasy, high fantasy, prison break – then I look at what the common tropes for that genre are and how they function in a different setting. And hope that something shakes loose. (I haven’t done originals in a couple of years, and the last time I was working on one I was co-writing. Which is a whole different thing.)

Hopefully there’s some food for thought here!

#bedlam on writing #space-flannel #bedlam answers

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