#PlanetSide au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nevada-got-screwed-over · 10 months

Text

Taglist: @averagejoey2000

Original Inspiration / Masterpost

Chapter 19 / Chapter 21

Theta!South AU. I Guess.

Chapter: 20

Words: “if you know me you can guess what character makes a cameo this chapter" (2,274)

Hargrove backed off – at least while she settled into the Staff of Charon, as much as she could, given the circumstances. He had only briefly acknowledged Theta, asking her to ensure no such...mishaps happened again. She promised, as much as she could given the circumstances.

She was assigned a barracks and nothing else – no commanding officer to report to, no soldiers not-so-subtly shadowing her. South was starting to get optimistic about her chances of getting her hands on a proper weapon when she heard there was a shooting range on board.

Perhaps a little too optimistic.

“Psychological evaluation?” South scoffed, half growling in frustration at the stony faced soldier in charge of distributing arms.

“It’s standard protocol.” She shrugged, clearly having had this conversation with trigger happy recruits. There was a shine of apprehension in her eyes as South glowered from behind her helmet. “Dr. McCormick is on deck 4, same wing as medical. Their office is number –”

South had already started to stalk away, more dejected than offended that she was still weaponless long after Hargrove had stopped hovering over her shoulder. For all his paranoia, he took her word that she would be cooperative so long as she had Theta. And, partially to her own surprise, they were cooperating. There was no logical reason to antagonize him without proper escape routes.

The routine of bunking in barracks, running solo-drills in the training room – even the unease of the other soldiers who interacted with her was fading to something she could ignore. There was a sickening comfort in the familiarity of the cafeteria food. Even the rare rumble of mongooses on the boarding deck reminded her of the MOI. Of the Project.

Staring down the door of a psychologist only reinforced the warped deja-vu that blurred her thoughts.

“I don’t like this…” Theta was nestled safely in her mind, his presence somehow lighter than she remembered it being the last time they had synced. He was echoing her own doubts and irrational fears.

“This isn’t Price. This is just the guy Hargrove hires to make sure his private army isn’t plotting a mutiny.” South breathed slowly before raising a hand to the door. “Given the state of the food in the mess hall, I’m surprised there hasn’t been an uprising yet.” Theta’s giggle gave her the reassurance she needed to knock.

“Come in!” Their voice was muffled, but the lock clicked, allowing South to step through the door. “Oh – you, just a second, I’m – lunch break.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected, or how she felt about the tone in which the person behind the desk addressed her, but something in the woman’s nonchalance was dangerously disarming. It did not hurt that she was, admittedly, quite lovely to look at. Dark eyes smiled at South between black locs, and it took a moment for her words to register as Theta thwarted his host’s... distraction.

“I said take a seat, there’s an intake form on this clipboard. I’ll be finishing up my lunch if you don’t mind.” She waggled the clipboard over her desk impatiently, but her words held no malice.

“Oh.” South gingerly took the clipboard, realization that she was staring dawning the same moment warmth crept up her face. She decided to keep her helmet on for this meeting. “Oh. Okay.”

“Smooth.”

“Shut up.”

The intake form was, thankfully, a good distraction.

As far as she knew, Charon was covering her bills and so she made a note of such in the insurance section of the form. That usually took the most time, so she moved down the piece of paper

The medical history was easy.

A family history of heart disease on her father’s side, some rare genetic condition he didn’t inherit from his own father. South and her brother were still supposed to have echocardiograms every five years. She was several years behind on that recurring appointment.

Her mother’s side had arthritis and allergies to anesthesia that South lacked. She was, however, allergic to methadone and as a precaution avoided other opioid painkillers. She flipped the paper and frowned.

The psychological history was not going to be as easy.

“Do you want me to tell you what you clinically have, currently qualify for, or…?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Depression? Probably. Anxiety? Maybe. PTSD? Not that she would admit. There were dozens of other conditions she hesitated to move on from, but she plowed ahead. The final section of the paper had a few blank lines and ‘Reason for visit:’ in blurred black ink. She scrawled in her own smudged response ‘shoot range eval.’

“All set?” The psychologist took the clipboard back, eager eyes scanning over the form as South let her own drift to the desk. A framed photo she couldn’t make out from this angle, probably family. A name plate, cheap, that read: Sherry McCormick in faux gilded lettering.

“Alrighty then,” South leaned back in her chair as Sherry shuffled her paper into a filing cabinet behind her desk. “So, how are you doing?”

“Fine, I guess.” Sherry’s eyes were soft and her smile was playful.

“That bad?”

“Just, wishing I could relax in the shooting range.” She bit her tongue, even though she wanted to say: ‘Your boss is an extortionist blackmailing me into working for him, so I would rather not be on this ship at all.’

“You find that relaxing?” There was something sharp but not hostile in Sherry’s words, subtly probing deeper.

“More so than pacing around unarmed.”

“Do you feel unsafe?”

“I’m a soldier on a destroyer in the slipstream in deep space. Better to have a weapon and not need it than to be caught without one.” The answer prompted Sherry to scribble something on her notepad.

“Did you participate in armed combat, during the war?” South rolled her eyes, grateful for her helmet.

“Yes. Who hasn’t? I doubt Hargrove is staffing this place with greenhorns.”

“There’s a few,” Sherry laughed softly, shaking her head. “But fair enough. I wasn’t sure how involved the Freelancer project was in terms of combat.”

South’s blood ran ice cold and Theta grew restless in her mind. Sherry must have noticed the tension in her shoulders; she held up her hands in relaxed surrender.

“Hargrove doesn’t have any helpful records from your project, all I know is that you were an agent, unlike most of the scrubs working here.”

“There are others?” Theta’s voice was small, radiating anxiety and anger and steady calculation to South’s racing thoughts. Others could make it easier to coordinate an escape. Others could complicate any escape plan, no matter how foolproof. South’s own voice was half strangled in her throat.

“What?”

“Oh, um, after the war the, the project’s termination, Charon absorbed a lot of its workforce. Mechanics, pilots, cooks – those sort of people.” Sherry’s eyes flickered to her notepad. “Most of them had limited direct combat experience if any. You’re the only agent I’ve processed.”

A shudder ran through her, realization dawning. The other soldiers weren’t uneasy and tense around her because Hargrove had flaunted her presence or let slip her spotty history. The faceless suits of armor that loaded Pelicans and cleaned blood off the training room floors had traded Freelancer colors for Charon’s. The half-truths and rumors they knew about her were worse than any leaked reports. No wonder half the ship treated her like a time bomb.

“I’ll clear you for weapons, South.” Sherry said after the silence had a moment to settle. “But Hargrove has requested that we keep in regular contact. In case something comes up or you need to talk –”

“Thanks.” She didn’t mean to snap as she snatched at the approved form the moment Sherry offered it, only to have the paper yanked away at the last second.

“I mean it.” There was an intentional snap to Sherry’s voice, commanding but gentle. “I know the others aren’t giving you a particularly warm reception, correct?” South’s nod was stiff and slow, conceding to her point. “Consider me an impartial party. Hargrove may be my boss but he doesn’t have access to my records. Not to mention this room is a black box.”

South checked the corners for cameras, and Theta’s sweep for connected devices illuminated her HUD with a bolded message: ‘No bugs detected.’

“That’s...dangerous.” South finally said, though she would be lying if it wasn’t a reassuring piece of information. No recordings. No traces except for door access logs and Sherry’s filing cabinet. Not a bad safe room to hole up in, if she ever needed one.

“Danger is putting too much control in the hands of one man.” Sherry offered a shy smile, holding out the approved form with careful confidence. “You can trust me. I don’t report to Hargrove directly, none of the medics do either; that’s what the medbay supervisor is for.”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality and all, huh?” South gingerly took the slip of paper from the psychologist’s hand, her gloved fingers numb to its thin weight.

“Completely confidential.” Sherry nodded, gesturing to the door. “If you want to drop in just knock, or you can set up an appointment – you have a datapad, correct? Good – the UI is horrible but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks.” South said again, softer this time as she stood and walked to the door, Sherry’s eyes following her. Watching the glow her neural implant.

“It’s my job, Agent South. I look forward to getting to know you better.”

---

Never had the weight of a semiautomatic felt so good in her hands. The muzzle fire sang a chorus as bullets cut through target after target, bullseyes drilling through the skulls of phantom soldiers. She would have to check out a personal weapon in the armory, but the loaner from the range was enough to satiate that itch in the back of her mind.

More than once Theta did her the courtesy of making an overlay of Hargrove’s smug face for her HUD to project onto targets.

“Are we going to talk to her again?”

“I don’t know.” She put a bullet through the center mass of a target, taking a moment to reload the weapon.

“...What if she wants to talk to you about me?” Theta’s expected spike of stress was soft, a dull blanket of resignation. “What if she wants to talk to me? What...what are we going to do?”

“That’s up to you.” South winced, a few centimeters shy of a perfect shot at the 500m line. “Do...do you want to stay synced? Talking to her or, or just in general?”

‘I don’t want to lose you again’ wasn’t a coherent thought, but something Theta shared in her mind. If they were separated, there was a risk he could be captured again. Used as leverage against her, or she used against him.

“I want to stay synced. Is that, are you’re sure that’s alright? Will Sherry think it’s alright?”

“Who cares what she thinks?”

“You do.” Theta’s accusation was followed by a childish smirk South could feel in her bones. “You want her to like you.”

“Us.” South corrected. “She would be...a useful ally.”

“Hm, an ally?”

“That black box room could be useful.”

“You’re allowed to want friends besides me, you know.” His teasing tugged at a memory of her brother’s voice, his words from another time. The ache was enough to make her lower her weapon for a moment.

“I shouldn’t make friends here.” South’s eyes wandered from her shooting lane, the Charon soldiers making a point to use the lanes at the opposite end of the room. They certainly didn’t want to make friends with her either. “Painful to leave behind at best, liabilities at worst.”

“Yeah, but –”

“Besides, patient-doctor relations are best kept professional.” South reset her firing stance and went back to obliterating targets. “And there’s always a chance she was lying – she could be Hargrove’s lapdog for all we know.”

“She’s not.” Theta’s voice held a familiar but ill-fitting cadence she couldn’t quite place. “Based on her body language and vitals during your meeting, there’s only a 2.4% chance she was lying at any point, the most probable being her mention of never assessing another agent from the project.”

“Wait, so do you think she was lying? That there’s another agent working for Charon?” The thought turned South’s stomach, a brief flicker of Illinois’ face replacing the target she aimed at. It wasn’t one of Theta’s HUD overlays, it was purely her imagination. Her shot barely clipped the edge of the target.

“No – like I said, only a 2.4% chance overall. If she was lying, that was just the most probable statement.”

“Maybe she’s trained to avoid AI lie detection.”

“That’s borderline conspiratorial.” Theta scoffed, though there was a laugh in his voice. “But we’ll only know more about her if we see her again. I’m still banned from accessing the ship’s systems, remember? I can’t just pull up her file, or any of Hargove’s data on the project…”

She could feel the puppy-dog eyes from behind Theta’s helmet, like a kid begging to play in traffic.

“Let’s try and keep Hargrove off our backs a little longer – I did promise you’d keep out of the system.”

“Yeah, long enough for him to install some competent security software.” Theta huffed, arms crossed in childish frustration. “But, but, we have to meet with her in person if that’s the case. Even if we did have access to her files, you know as well as I do that formal documentation rarely tells the full story.”

“Of course.” She couldn’t argue with that logic, being legally dead.

---

wrote this in its entirety the day after I posted the last chapter but waited a month to post this one because. idk man my mind is an enigma even to myself.

#rvb #red versus blue #theta!south au #rvb south #rvb theta #agent south dakota #theta ai fragment #like. one or two more chapters on the ship and then we're planetside with our favorite mercs again

2 notes · View notes

solarmorrigan · 10 days

Note

space au neighbor au steddie

So I wasn't actually sure what a space AU is meant to entail, so I hope a little vaguely Star Trek-inspired AU is okay?? This was a challenging combination, but it was fun!

Fanfiction Trope Mashup: 22. Space AU + 11. Neighbor AU

cw: vague mentions of injury, mentions of background character death

Lieutenant Steven Harrington transfers from the U.S.S. Nora and onto the U.S.S. Forrest about six months into the Forrest’s mission. He works in security. He can usually be found stationed somewhere on the ship, but sometimes he’s called up to go planetside.

(He’s also too pretty for Eddie to believe he’s one hundred percent human, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Eddie knows all of this because Harrington gets the previously vacant room right next door to his.

It isn’t bad, really; sometimes the sound of someone shuffling around on the other side of a wall that had previously been silent is comforting. Much as Eddie loves the hum of the ship around him—you can’t really work in engineering and not be a little enamored of the sound of the engines purring—sometimes human noise is what he craves.

(Particularly out here in the void of space. Eddie loves his job, loves working in the guts of a starship, but he wishes sometimes it didn’t come against the backdrop of an endless dark nothingness.)

Eddie doesn’t have reason to see Harrington very often during the day, but they work the same shift rotation, and they catch each other coming back to their rooms now and then at the end of a shift. They mostly exchange nods or waves, brief pleasantries if one of them is in the mood, but that’s really it.

At least, that’s really it until a few weeks in, when Eddie gets back to his room and sees Harrington still standing outside his own, mashing the buttons on the keypad and swearing quietly.

“Everything alright?” Eddie asks as he draws up at his own door.

Harrington lets out a long sigh. “Uh, yeah, just–” He shakes his head. “Apparently if you get your code wrong too many times in a row, the keypad locks you out. And you can’t get into your quarters. Which is… great.”

“You forget your code?” Eddie can’t help but ask.

“No,” Harrington snaps, then softens a little, looking sheepish, even a little embarrassed. “No, I just– sometimes the numbers get a little jumbled.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m gonna have to go find someone from maintenance to reset this and let me in, so…”

“Nah, don’t bother. You’ve got in-built tech support right here.” Eddie gestures for Harrington to move aside and crouches down in front of the keypad to reset it; doors and security locks aren’t technically his remit, but it’s not like they’re hard. It’s the work of moments to get the keypad to unlock, and Eddie shuffles back out of the way. “Go ahead and try it now.”

Harrington steps up to the keypad and slowly punches in the six-digit code that should get him into his quarters, and this time, instead of beeping angrily and flashing red, it chirps and gives him the green light. His door slides open and Harrington sighs.

“Thank you,” Harrington says, turning a smile so bright on Eddie that he momentarily forgets how to function. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Nah, t’weren’t nothin’,” Eddie says for some insane reason, slipping into a ridiculous accent like he does when he’s running tabletop games in the rec room with a couple of other guys from engineering.

If Harrington thinks he’s being weird, he mercifully doesn’t mention it. Instead, he sticks a hand out towards Eddie, still smiling. “I’m Steve, by the way. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”

“Eddie,” Eddie says, taking the hand to shake (Steve’s hands are big, and strong, and warm, and Eddie tries not to think about it).

“It’s nice to meet you, Eddie. And not even for the obvious reasons,” Steve says, nodding towards his door.

“Yeah, you too,” Eddie says.

He then realizes that he’s still shaking Steve’s hand. He lets go, but Steve is slow to draw back. They’re quiet for a moment, both unsure how to end the encounter, before Steve lets out a little huff of a laugh.

“Well… have a good night,” he says, backing away towards his door.

“Yeah, you too,” Eddie says again, wondering where the hell all his eloquence has gone to.

With one last dorky little wave at Eddie, Steve disappears inside his room, and Eddie does the same.

They talk more, after that. Whenever their schedules coincide, they spend an extra few minutes outside their doors, learning more about each other, bit by bit. Eddie talks about why he’d joined up with a starship even though he really hates space (he’d had to get out of his small-minded hometown), and Steve talks about how he’d ended up really enjoying his work even though he’d only joined to appease his dad (captain of another ship, one Steve prays he’ll never, ever be assigned to).

Their conversations edge past five minutes, past ten, past fifteen. Eddie talks about his uncle, who taught him at least half of everything he knows about fixing things, who had encouraged him to reach for the stars. Steve talks about his best friend in the galaxy, who works up in communications and speaks “about a million languages.” He mentions that they’d met as ensigns, both stationed on the U.S.S. Butterscotch, but he doesn’t say much more than that (and Eddie won’t make him; he knows the story already. The ship might have had a ridiculous name, but the fate that had befallen it had been anything but: it had been taken over by hostiles and eventually gone down in flames. The number of survivors had been abysmal, and fact that Steve is here at all is a small miracle).

Steve learns that Eddie loves music and roleplaying games. Eddie learns that Steve has a knack for avoiding medical staff after altercations planetside and for brushing off minor-to-moderate injuries.

He’s not as good at avoiding Eddie, however, who makes a point of dragging him down to medical one evening after spotting a still-bleeding gash on Steve’s arm.

“One of these days, you’re gonna come back with something you can’t walk off,” Eddie warns him, “and I’ll be there to say I told you so.”

“Well, as long as you’re going to be there, I guess it won’t be so bad,” Steve replies, and Eddie tries not to be swayed by the flirting.

When Eddie turns out to be right, though, he doesn’t even have the heart to say I-told-you-so, which he feels a bit cheated about later.

The evening starts out so promisingly: Steve and Eddie are loitering outside their doors, Steve gravitating further and further into Eddie’s space as they talk, and Eddie is just about to pluck up the nerve to invite Steve inside when Steve’s communicator goes off.

He frowns, pulling it from his pocket to check the message, and his demeanor immediately turns serious. “I have to go,” he says, and apprehension prickles at the base of Eddie’s skull.

“Everything alright?” Eddie asks.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Steve offers Eddie a brief smile. “We can pick up where we left off as soon as this is taken care of.”

Eddie wants to ask just what “this” is, but he finds out soon enough. The promising evening turns into a hellish night with too little sleep and too many hits to the machinery for comfort, under attack from some unknown, hostile force. When things finally calm down and reports start rolling in, things aren’t as bad as they could be. No casualties, minor damage to the ship, and minimal injuries. It sounds reassuring, until Eddie finds himself standing next to Steve’s bed in the infirmary.

“I’m going to be fine. Stop looking at me like that,” Steve says, even though his eyes are closed and he can’t possibly know how Eddie is looking at him.

And the thing is, Eddie knows he’s right – Steve might sound an awful lot like he’s in pain right now, but the medical tech on the ship is top of the line, and the staff is equally good. Steve will be fine, but that doesn’t give Eddie any comfort right then, realizing how lost he would feel without his and Steve’s hallway conversations every day.

How lost he would feel without Steve.

It scares him– for a moment, it scares him enough that he wants to run from it, to put a halt to things before they get too serious, before this really hurts him. But even more than that, there’s a feeling greater than the fear: one of rightness when he’s with Steve, a feeling that’s worth the risk, that’s worth holding onto.

Eddie reaches out and takes Steve’s hand where it rests on the bed.

Steve cracks his eyes open to look at Eddie.

“You know…” he says slowly. “They said I should be fine on my own by tomorrow, good to go back to my own quarters, but– I’d feel a lot better if there was someone nearby. Just in case.”

“Like someone right next door?” Eddie asks, a tease of a smile beginning to grow on his face.

“Maybe a little closer than that,” Steve says, squeezing Eddie’s hand in his own.

“I think I can do that,” Eddie says, finding that he’s prepared to do a lot of things, if it means he can keep Steve close.

#tea42 #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #eddiesteve #stranger things #you don't need to know star trek at all for this #this is like knock-off star trek. store brand star trek #it's there so that steddie can be gay and awkward in space #solar wrote #answers from solar

162 notes · View notes

fakegingerrights · 1 year

Text

Shades of Blue

[Rex x Fem!Medic!reader. Soulmate AU, multiple kinds but Rex's happens to be colorblindness until your soulmate touches you. Warnings: Violence, Injury and Gore, Nonsexual Partial nudity, Angst. Inspired by @mandos-mind-trick series.]

Soulmates weren't rare by any means. In fact, Rex would even go as far as to say that it was more rare not to have a soulmate than to have one.

The numbers were a little different when it came to clones. Many didn't live long enough to meet a member of another species, let alone form a relationship with them.

Rex wasn't so lucky.

He had adapted well to his colorblindness, his batchmates covered for him until he learned to tell the subtle differences between shades of grey. He learned that the red wires in a droid popper were always the thicker wires, he learned that the stun power packs and the regular power packs for the training blasters were different weights.

After Kamino, he learned even more. Blue paint smelled slightly different than red. Poisonous plants usually had some sort of easily recognizable pattern, but always be careful with what you touch.

Joining the 501st was a bit of a culture shock. General Skywalker took a liking to him immediately and decided he didn't want another clone to be in charge, promoting him to Captain. Kamino had forbade he become a commander, despite the command training. The blond hair and the fact that he had a soulmate kept him from advancing, he would have stayed a trooper if it weren't for Skywalker.

He was sure he'd die a newly promoted captain when Skywalker found out about his soulmate. Skywalker just grinned.

"I remember waiting for my own colors, not that there was much to see on Tatooine." Was all he said, patting Rex on the shoulder and walking away, leaving Rex dumbfounded in his wake.

"Sir?" His voice was slightly more strangled than he would have liked, calling after Skywalker. Skywalker laughed, but disappeared around a corner.

Rex waited in fear for the demotion, the notice he was sent back to Kamino, anything to do with his defect. Instead, he found battle maps more clearly labeled, he found medical supplies color coded yes but with shapes to go with the colors now. Rex found the paint cans labeled with careful Aurabesh, in Skywalker's messy handwriting, each individual color and what they were used for. The reds and golds for the jedi starfighters. The blues of the battalion.

That was how Rex learned his armor was blue. He asked Skywalker about it, in the long missions in orbit or the days spent in hyperspace.

"What's Blue, general?" He asked, looking at the newly done Jaig eyes on his helmet. "That's our armor, right? Blue accents?"

"Yep." Skywalker was currently elbow deep in his starfighter, something he insisted was 'relaxing' but had Rex on standby in case he got stuck or something. "Blue, huh? Blue is... Blue is Family." Skywalker settled on eventually. "That's the color of Mine and Obi-Wan's lightsabers, and all of your brothers have blue armor, and you were trained by Alpha 17, who had blue armor too." The jedi grunted as he untangled a ball of wire from the engine.

"Family? I thought Red was what people used for family..." He traced the fresh cut talleys into the paint on his vambrace. One for every tactical droid they took out planetside.

"Red? Eh, I guess you could... Red is blood. Adrenaline. Fire is red. Passion. Dooku and the other sith have Red sabers. You're mandalorian, right? Or... kinda, Half mando?" Skywalker yanked a piece of frayed wire out of the messy ball.

"I... I speak the language, and know the culture intimately, but I have no clan to call my own." Rex supplied. "Red, on armor at least, is for honoring a parent or a family member."

"Yeah, I can see that... But blue is more alive than red. I don't know how to explain it. It's the color of most unpolluted skies. It's the color of water, and that's a rarity for so many people. Kamino is mostly blues and greys and blacks. On Tatooine, we fought for the color blue. Water was so precious in the desert. When I met my soulmate, she was wearing blue." Skywalker gets a goofy grin on his face.

"You kept your soulmate bond, sir?" Rex asked. Skywalker sat up out of the belly of the fighter.

"I did. We agreed it would be more beneficial to both parties to keep it. Pass me that wrench, would you?"

And that was the end of that conversation.

The next time Rex thought about his soulmate, he was meeting the natborn medic assigned to Torrent company to help take the load off of Kix and Coric so they could 'spend more time actually doing their job of fighting rather than running around trying to keep everyone else alive.'

Rex really disliked natborns sometimes. He was fully prepared to dislike you too. That is, until he actually met you.

"Captain Rex, right?" You asked, holding out a gloved hand to shake his as he gave you a once over, appreciating the light armor you were wearing and the utility belt full of equipment. Rex smiled as you gave your name.

"Glad to have you, Doc. You've already met Coric and his junior officer Kix?" Rex asked. You nodded.

"I'm all settled in and ready to go too, wherever you need me, Sir." You saluted sharply at him. "I'm really impressed with the organization levels here. Everything is labeled so neatly I forget I can't see the colors yet." Kix coughed awkwardly as he interjected himself into the conversation.

"As hard as Kaminoans tried, they couldn't find a way to remove soul-bonds from us clones. Not all of us have one, and like anyone else we have different ones, but a few of us are color-bound to our mate. Coric is one of them, and he doesn't let it slow him down at all. Neither does the captain here." Kix clarifies. Rex gave him a look. "What? She's not gonna tell anyone. Right?"

You paled, waving your hands for emphasis. "No! I would never want to get anyone in trouble. If... what's the word you use for us? If natborn officers can have them you should too. My lips are sealed, promise." You met each of their eyes and they both relaxed an almost imperceptible amount.

Rex gave you a slight smile. "Let's get you acquainted with the other men, shall we? You're assigned to my company and trust me, you're gonna have a heck of a time getting us in to the medbay."

You gave him a cheshire grin. "Is that a challenge, Captain?"

~~~

You got to work quickly, as the men prepped and drilled for planetside deployment to Christophsis, you were right there, training your body to hold more supplies, to get to wounded faster. Every extra second shaved off your mile run was a life saved, you told yourself. Every time you got out of a sim to see a faster time, you smiled.

Even Kix was impressed.

"You're working yourself to the bone, Doc. You're already here, what are you trying to prove?" He asks, handing you a water bottle as you finish a set in the weight room.

"Prove? I'm working side by side with genetic perfection. And somebody's gotta make sure y'all don't go and get yourself killed." You took the bottle and sipped at it slowly, sitting up. Kix just shrugged and continued to spot you while you worked.

After Christophsis, and later Teth, he said nothing more about it. His cheerful, joking manner was replaced by quiet competency and a determination to see as many brothers as he could to the end of the war.

You sat with him when Coric caught a blaster bolt in the neck, and there was nothing either of you could do. With a choking softness in his voice, he looked at you.

"How? How is he dead?" The words brought a fresh wave of pain.

"Internal decapitation. The bolt went right through his spinal column. He was dead before he hit the ground." You intoned into the heavy silence. Kix shook his head and sat back from where the two of you had been sitting side by side on the empty surgery table, already scrubbed of blood from the day's activities and ready to be packed up when Torrent was dispatched back to the Resolute tomorrow morning.

You frowned, confused, as Kix stripped off the upper part of his blacks and turned so you could see his back. You had seen him shirtless before, in passing glances. You knew about the soulmark scrawled between his shoulderblades, the words in beautiful cursive and splashed with several different hues from what you could tell. You had never bothered to look at the words, but you did now.

Kix, as in Coric's little brother Kix?

Your heart broke a little. "Kix... Kix look at me." You reached up and pressed a hand to either side of his face. Misty eyes, tired and lost and so utterly broken, stared up at you. "We have soulmate bonds for a reason, ok? You can't break the bond until you've met the person." You pulled him into a hug, letting him hide his face in your neck as he struggled to come to terms with his grief of losing a brother. "You'll meet them one day, Kix. I know it. It'll be alright. Coric met his soulmate a few months ago, do we have anything to give to her?"

Kix let himself have a few more moments of just being in the presence of another person who cared. Who understood.

"He had a necklace she had given him... and his gauntlets. I have both. Do you want to come with Rex and I when we give them to her?" Kix asked softly. You nodded, a pit forming in your stomach at the idea of the next shore leave. You and Coric were close, and had met his soulmate a handful of times last time you were on Coruscant.

"Yeah. Let me go grab some stuff, ok? Then we need to head to bed." You got up to leave the room right as a knock sounded on the door.

"Doc, Kix, you in there?" Rex's voice came from the hall as Kix hurriedly tugged on his shirt again.

"Yeah, we're here." You called as he stepped in.

"I'm sorry to interrupt I need casualty counts from the wounded after battle." The captain rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Oh. I have those." Kix left the room in a hurry, and as you caught a glimpse of his back, adorned with the republic symbol and making it very obvious the top of his blacks were on backwards. Rex may have been colorblind but he was stupid observant when he needed to be.

He often needed to be in a warzone.

"Doc." Rex nodded at you in greeting after Kix had left.

"Captain. Been a helluva day, hasn't it." You sit down again on the floor, leaning your head against the wall behind you. "We lost Coric. He met his soulmate not to long ago. We're looking for his personal stuff to give back to her."

Rex sighed softly. A ache all of them felt for their brother's soulmate but few brothers lived long enough to know first hand.

"What about you and Kix?" Rex asked, taking a seat next to you. His plastoid plates click as he settles himself on the ground. "Has your world-" He made a gesture to his eyes with his hands. You laughed bitterly.

"Me and Kix? That would make things a lot simpler wouldn't it. No. I... It's his story to share. His soulmate apparently knew Coric by name." Rex took a deep breath.

"Yeah, yeah that would make sense. I'm sorry I assumed." He shrugged a little in his armor.

You sighed. "You?" You asked, looking at him. Rex ran a gloved hand over his pale hair.

"No. I... No. It's not I go around grabbing people anyways." He laughed humorlessly.

"Maybe we'll get lucky one day, you and I." You said softly. "Find our person. The Maker... Force... Universe, whatever, wouldn't give us another half unless we'd meet them." You looked at him, tracing the monotone contours of his armor.

"Yeah? What if we end up like poor Coric?" Rex sighed. "You... you get it. Even for a natborn, you eat with us, sleep with us, you know us. We're... not made for long term use. I don't want to leave anyone behind."

You hummed, not really saying anything. The two of you sat in silence for a long moment before Rex hauled himself to his feet, offering you a hand. You clasped his hand, latex glove on the blacks that covered his palm.

"We're gonna need rest for tomorrow. It'll be an exhausting day."

You couldn't agree more.

~~~

You cradled Coric's helmet as Rex knocked on the door of Coric's girlfriend's door. You recognized her instantly when she opened it, a dark skinned twi'lek with pale tattoos.

"Uh.. Good evening, Sirs?" She asked, a tremble in her voice. You took your cue to step forward, presenting Coric's helmet.

"I'm so sorry, Ma'am. There was nothing we could do."

Her face crumpled as she took the helmet. "I... I know. I felt it." She whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. Kix stepped forward too, placing a hand on her shoulder. She leaned into his touch.

"I'm so sorry Ma'am, I have his necklace and vambraces here for you too." Her head whipped up to look at Kix, tearstained and wide eyed. Rex nudged him.

"Kix..."

The Twi'lek shook her head, dropping Coric's helmet with a clatter. "Kix... as in Coric's little brother Kix?" She asked, barely waiting for Kix's stunned nod before she pulled him into a hug.

"I'm sorry about your brother." She whispered, and Kix just shook his head, a bitter laugh bubbling out of his throat.

"I'm sorry about your soulmate."

You put a hand on Rex's shoulder opposite of his pauldron. "C'mon, Captain, let me buy you a drink while they adjust to each other's presence." You murmured low enough for him to hear. Rex glanced back at the two, Kix now also in tears and not letting go of the poor girl, who was sobbing into his chestplate.

The two of you walked in thick silence, the 79's a few blocks down from Kix's soulmate's apartment. Rex stopped short at the entrance of the bar.

"I... I'm usually not one for clubbing. Too many people." He hedged. You gave him a reassuring smile.

"We'll just grab a seat in the back then?" You propose. Rex still looked hesitant, but nodded after a moment. You insisted on buying drinks since Rex hated spending his small stipend on something like alcohol. As you two waited, him watching the crowd and you sneaking glances at him.

He was beautiful, in the black and white shades that made up your reality. All the clones were, but he stood out to you. You flushed slightly as he caught you staring.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" He asked. You laughed and shook your head.

"I... you're gonna laugh." You said, looking at the table and tracing the grain with a finger tip.

"Did I do something stupid?" Rex asked, giving you a wry look. You snorted.

"No, no you haven't. You not the kind to make stupidity a habit. I was wondering what color your hair was." You blurted out. Rex groaned and rolled his eyes.

"Hey, I'm still the same stock as Fives, gotta make sure he's not rubbing off." He took a sip of his spotchka, mouth twisting slightly until the tang settled into a pleasant burn in his throat. "My hair is blond, according to Skywalker. A yellowish color. Everyone else's' is black or dark brown."

You took a drink yourself, coughing at the taste. "Ok, that is awful." Rex snorted.

"That's the point. Don't worry, I'll getcha back to the barracks." He promised, a fond smile flitting across his face.

"Going soft on me, Captain?" You asked.

"For you? The entire GAR is soft. You could probably get Fox to take a nap by batting your eyes." Rex chuckled. You swatted at his arm, hand bouncing off his armor.

"Hush. If rumors about you are true I'll be hauling you to the barracks rather than the other way around, lightweight."

Rex just took another drink to spite you.

~~~

The last place for healing that you would expect to take place is on the Battlefield, but here you are ducking and covering between the rounds of rocket mortars.

Explosions shook the ground, and everything hazed out around the edges as you in grey smoke and black soot. Dark blood stained your body and none of it was yours. You heard the shout Kix gave when it happened, but he was too busy to react.

"The Captain's down!" The roar went up among the men and you weren't one to hesitate, springing into action to cross the four hundred meters between you and the Captain. Rex was holding his side and gasping, frighteningly still. Blood, dark and thick as oil spilled from the gash on the left side of his chest in spurts.

You instantly were yelling orders, trying to get a perimeter set up around the two of you as you pried the captain's helmet off so he wasn't gasping through his respirator.

His breathing was ragged, his lips chapped and cracked, eyes hazy as your gloved hand brushed dust off his face.

"Stay with me, Rex. You're not allowed to die on me yet." You yelled above the din so he could hear. He gave you the barest hint of a nod, if not the the intensity in his eyes you would have thought it a spasm.

You pried his chestplate off, plackart coming with it as you inspected the damage. You couldn't tell if the piece of debris that had done this had punctured more than a lung, you felt up under his jaw for a pulse but there wasn't one you could surely feel with your gloves.

You yanked one off with your teeth, jamming it under his chin as you tried to get a read of what was going on with his heart.

Rex gasped under you, eyes going out of focus as you gritted your teeth and counted the beats to make sure he wasn't in danger of a puncture in his heart.

You kept pressure on the wound, wincing as his broken ribs creaked under your hands, red seeping out-

Oh.

Oh Kriff.

You laughed slightly hysterically as you gave him a stim to help with the bleeding and pain, spraying bacta over the wound. "You seeing this, Captain?" You asked. Rex's blood was vibrant across your hands, sending a painful twist through your stomach. The stripes, the blue stripes, in his armor was almost completely covered by golden-brown dirt and red blood and black soot. Even the greys and blacks looked more life-like, vibrant and real.

Rex's eyes held a dreamlike haze to them as an explosion, brilliant gold, flashed over head. He was drifting slightly in and out of consciousness as you worked, eyes wandering in silent wonder at this new reality. Red blood. Dusty armor. Gold fire. And high high above this messy battle was blue sky.

Blue.

It was the color of your armor, strong steady hands bandaging the wound and keeping pressure.

It was the color of his own shattered plating.

It was the color of the sky. Freedom

Rex could see now why Skywalker called blue Family. The two felt remarkably similar.

"ey-.... Hey!" You patted his cheek until his eyes fluttered open and tried to focus on you. He didn't remember closing them. "Hang on, Rex. Medevac is coming, we're getting you out of here and pulling a tactical retreat." You yelled, brushing some dust off his face. His eyes followed your blurry form, suddenly snapping into focus. You gave him a lopsided smile.

"There you are. Hang on, Cyare." The clone word of endearment fell from your lips so naturally. "You aren't leaving anybody behind yet." Rex tried to talk, his breath coming out in a raspy gasp. You shook your head. "Save your breath. Ok."

Rex managed a nod, fumbling with his right hand to grasp your arm, squeezing twice. You nod.

"I'll be there when you wake up, Captain. Promise." There was a roar above your heads and a LAAT/i dropped down right in front of you two, and you lunged to get a gurney prepped as blasterfire splashed around you. A clone Rex didn't recognize lifted him, careful not to disturb the bactapatching on his side.

He listened with half a mind to your chattering as your bare hand brushed his head, fingers playing over his gold, you told him, hair. Rex fought to keep his eyes open, trying to obey and stay awake until he felt the shift in his stomach that meant artificial gravity had kicked in and they were on the Resolute once more.

"Ok, Rex. You can sleep now. You're in the clear now." Your soft voice finally said, and he went out like a candle in the wind.

~~~

You paced the medbay, forcing yourself not to spend too much time gawking at the vibrancy of everything. You could do that properly when Rex was awake. Currently, Kix was taking him out of a bacta tank and he was set to wake up in a few minutes but those few minutes felt like hours.

Your head snapped around as Kix stepped out, fond exasperation written across his face.

“He’s been asking for you since I took the tube out of his throat.” Kix stepped aside and let you into the small room, then shut the door to give you some privacy.

Rex was watching the heart monitor in it’s different colors with rapt fascination until you made your presence known, leaning against the rails of his gurney.

“Hey.” You murmured, looking him over and deciding he looked much better when he wasn’t covered in blood and dirt. Deep bronze skin, amber-gold eyes and white-gold hair made for a stunning figure. “We… certainly danced around this for a while.”

He laughed, a hoarse, grating sound that still made you smile. His left hand fumbled a bit until you slipped yours in it. His thumb slipped back and forth across your knuckles.

“I had hoped.” Rex whispered. “Stupid armor.”

You laughed, swatting at his shoulder gently. “Your armor keeps you alive. So what if it caused a little delay. We’re together now.” You said the last phrase with some trepidation. Rex nodded instantly.

“We weren’t made to be apart, Mesh’la.” You squeezed his hand tightly at his words.

“Rex? I’m scared.” You whispered. Rex struggled to push himself up into a more proper sitting position, recently severed and healed muscles protesting. He waved away your concern and lowered the rail on the bed.

“Me too. I don’t want to give this up though.” He murmured. "How are we going to do this?" Rex looked at you and for a second you were lost in his eyes, admiring every little fractal of color.

"Like anything with uncertain terrain, one day at a time, Captain." You murmured.

"Rex." He corrected you. "Call me Rex. I want to be more than just a title to you."

You lifted your clasped hands and pressed a kiss to the back of his knuckles. "You've always been more than that." Rex looked at you like you had hung the hyperspace lanes just for him. "Rex, you're my other half. We'll be fine together."

"Promise?" He whispered, seeming to tire and letting himself slide against the pillows. You squeezed his hand tight.

"I promise. Go to sleep, Rex." You stood up, to leave him in peace but he caught your hand.

"Stay, Mesh'la." And you couldn't say no. You let go of his hand and had him scoot over, making sure you stayed on his uninjured side as you curled up next to him on the bunk, resting your head on his chest and listening to his slow, steady heartbeat. A heart that you had fought to keep beating. The medical bunks weren't made for two but you two made it work, slotting together like pieces of a puzzle.

Rex bent his head, and a feather light kiss brushed the top of yours. You didn't respond, but didn't pull away either. His exhausted body quickly succumbed to sleep. You weren't far behind. Two halves of a whole.

#captain rex x reader #captain rex #star wars #clone wars #the clone wars #clone wars captain rex #soulmate au #GingerWrites

270 notes · View notes

al-astakbar · 10 months

Text

☆ The Gift -- Thrawn x reader ☆

> title ☆ The Gift ☆ part 2/?

> summary ☆ As congratulations for his recent promotion to Grand Admiral, Emperor Palpatine gives Thrawn a gift -- a young woman who has been trained as a pleasure companion.

> pairing ☆ Thrawn x reader ☆ word count [3.8k] ☆ warnings for this part ☆ brief sexual language ☆ series warnings ☆ dubious consent; sexual slavery; concubine/ sex slave AU; will add more warnings as more parts are posted

>series navigation ☆ part 1 ☆ part 2 ☆ part 3 ☆ part 4 ☆ part 5 ☆ part 6 ☆ part 7

> posted on ao3

author note!! To be very clear, in this story reader is a concubine against her will and is gifted to Thrawn, but there is at no point any noncon between Thrawn and reader. Reader is never noncon with anyone, either referenced or explicitly, and there is never any explicit noncon. However, this is a darker take on Thrawn and he doesn't really have many hangups about putting his gift to use...

Neither Mirri nor Solis know where his shuttle is, and one did not stop a Grand Admiral as he was walking away to ask for clarification about something so trivial, despite you elbowing them to do just that.

They walk you to the turbolift, and just before you get on, an aide comes up and gives directions. Landing platform E-52. The lambda class shuttle. The aide leers at you openly, and wonders to his superior officer, “what do I have to do to get one of those?”

The Commander snorts. “A Prasad?” the formal term for the type of trained, indoctrinated pleasure companion popular among the Empire’s elite; you are surprised he knows it, though any good Imperial citizen would recognize what you are just from the distinctive robes. “Gain more favor than you’ll ever hope for in a lifetime. Or make friends with someone who’s got one. I hear they share the best ones around. Get invited to the right party and all you’ve got to do is wait in line for a turn.”

You stiffen and stumble, nearly managing to turn towards the two men, with no real plan of what you might say. Mirri catches you.

“Do you think he’ll be-- he’ll be nice?” You ask in a small voice once the lift doors have closed. Or at least gentle. Mirri and Solis do not answer. The walk to the platform is quick, just a short ways outside through more elegant, richly appointed halls. These ones have hanging gardens, trailing vines and foliage beneath a huge glass ceiling and bursts of flowers, the entire floor a mosaic of millions of black and white stones. You try to dawdle, slowing your pace to spend just a little more time. Given to a Grand Admiral, you will likely spend at least the next six months in space, on a warship, and you don’t know when you might be planetside again, let alone on one with greenery.

But Mirri and Solis lead you through it too quickly, and after a short walk, you are there on LP E-52.

Private platforms such as this one have small, luxurious waiting rooms, so that the senator or whoever is being flown that day does not have to wait out in the elements. Mirri and Solis choose not to use it, and you know they would have happily made you stand there in the wind, until you are bone-chilled and shivering despite the bright Coruscant sun.

Luckily-- one small mercy on this day-- the Grand Admiral arrives within minutes, walking ahead of a small contingent.

Nausea has been a constant, rising bloat in your stomach since walking into the throne room but now it threatens to overwhelm you. A wild, horrible thought comes to you, that maybe if you’re quick enough you could run for the edge of the platform, and just be… done. But you know it wouldn’t work. There are safety measures. Systems of repulsor barriers and simple old fashioned nets to catch people in case of falls or accidents.

“Be sure to mind him,” Mirri whispers to you harshly.

“The last nine to be presented before you all went to lower ranking officers or minor dignitaries—“ Solis says.

“And all were better behaved than you.” Mirri’s tone is venomous.

Then they both step back, bowing deeply to him, and you stand alone. Strong winds buffet the platform, whipping your robe against you like a sail.

Instead of his aide approaching you, the Grand Admiral himself advances. Up close, he is even more imposing of a figure, his bearing imperious and assured, his skin unmistakably blue and his hair sleek blue-black, like indigo. In this light, he looks magnificent, a paragon of an Imperial officer. His uniform is blindingly white, gold shoulder bars, silver collar insignia, and code cylinders glinting brightly, the broad expanse of his chest interrupted by the large rank plaque. The jodhpurs and black jackboots only make his legs look longer-- most Imperial officers you have seen do not carry off the look so well.

You have heard of Gifts kneeling when presented, and always thought it was stupid, but the urge to sink down in front of him pulls at you now. Somehow it would feel so natural. Just the idea of it feels traitorous to everything you believe.

“Come,” he says, bringing one white leather-gloved hand from behind his back to gesture for you to walk beside him. He is stern, but not hurried. He is a Grand Admiral, meaning everyone else bends to his schedule and never the other way around. A cadre of four black armored death troopers fall in step behind— they must be his personal guard. You gawk at them a moment too long, turning your head to look over your shoulder, then the Grand Admiral’s hand is at the small of your back.

“Watch your step,” he murmurs, a second before you trip— the hem of your robe, the uneven surface of the boarding ramp, or both— and he catches you, sets you right.

“I’m fine, I don’t need help,” you say sharply, even as your cheeks burn with embarrassment.

He lets you shrug off his assistance with another quiet word. His accent is like nothing you’ve heard before-- not that you are particularly well traveled-- but it certainly isn’t from any Core world.

“Where are we going?” you ask, feeling strange and a bit guilty for wanting to hear him talk more.

Once you, the Grand Admiral, the complement of troopers and a handful of aides are inside the small loading bay, the ramp closes with a prolonged hydraulic hiss.

“This way,” he says. You follow him through a narrow passageway to the main cabin. Unlike the rest of the shuttle, which is drab, Imperial-issue grey, this cabin is furnished with plush leather seats, what looks like a small bar, and a shiny stone surface desk in one corner, all in sleek black and white.

The Grand Admiral motions courteously for you to sit, while his aide, a pale, light haired young man in an olive-drab lieutenant’s uniform takes a post standing by the hatch you just came through.

“I meant-- are we leaving the planet? What system are we going to?”

At that moment, the shuttle’s engines kick on, and light streams into the cabin as the wings unfold while the craft slowly lifts off and rotates. Strange. From the outside it looks like the only transparisteel on the shuttle is around the cockpit.

“Yes,” the Grand Admiral says. “To my ship, the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Lieutenant Tyvo, send word ahead for the stormtroopers to begin preparing their cold weather uniforms and kit. And during the next week, have the section chiefs ensure forward chasing tractor beam targeteers run through another training cycle.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant says, and immediately begins typing on his datapad.

The Grand Admiral continues speaking to the lieutenant, giving instructions about maneuvers and training schedules and meetings and briefings, and you realize he will not be sharing any more information with you. So you settle deeper into your seat-- much more comfortable than any in the austere cloister where you had spent the past year-- and gaze out the starboard viewport. The city flashes by, spire after spire, growing quickly smaller as the shuttle rises. No waiting in traffic, but of course a Grand Admiral must have his own priority lane.

“Anything else, sir?”

“No, that is all. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

You look over to find the Grand Admiral standing, as he seems to like to do, with his hands clasped behind his back. He regards you for a moment, cold and appraising, before sitting opposite, and his authoritative bearing makes you sit up straighter. Somehow his starched white uniform doesn’t wrinkle. “What is your name?”

The question gives you pause. It is customary to only speak a companion’s given name in private. “They didn’t tell you?”

“I would like to hear it from you.”

He does not seem cruel or pushy, and that unbalances you. With less reluctance than you feel you ought to have, you quietly give him your name so the Lieutenant can’t hear, and then ask his.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” he says. “But you may find it easier to call me Thrawn.”

You repeat his name with a small nod. “Thrawn.”

His glowing red eyes do not have pupils, and though you can’t tell quite where he might be looking, you feel the weight of his attention pinning you down nonetheless.

You feel your face grow hot. Is he going to have you here, now? It would be well within his rights. He is entitled to anything— everything. The thought makes you squirm with anger and… something else hot and deep in your chest you can’t give a name to.

Quickly, you pull your gaze down to your lap. Demure, as you had been taught. “Sorry,” you mumble.

“For what?”

“Staring. You probably get stared at a lot.” Hold your tongue. Mirri and Solis would have seen that you were punished for this impertinence. There had been one girl who had been with you, retraining after her first master had been terribly displeased with her. At least, that is as much as you could glean. He had removed her tongue before sending her back, and the threat of having all her teeth pulled out too kept her obedient.

Thrawn raises a blue-black eyebrow. “Indeed.”

For a time, he says nothing more, but studies you closely. His eyes seem to roam over your form, and you feel somehow naked, exposed for his discernment. You watch him back, thankful for your veil once more, studying his face. His features are even, well proportioned, though severe, and his dark hair slicked back from a widow’s peak makes him distinguished. Perhaps he is considered handsome among his people. The third time he catches your gaze, you get the distinct sense that he knows exactly where you are looking.

There is a definite hunger in the way he watches you, intent and completely still. As if waiting for you to act first. The tiniest movement. You exhale slightly, and it makes the fabric covering your face flutter.

Caught again.

“Remove your veil.”

You jerk at the order, and in a split second of gut instinct, almost obey, such is the authority in his voice and bearing. Thrawn’s aide gives a start too, fumbling the data pad he’s holding.

“Give us the room, Lieutenant,” Thrawn says without looking away from you, and his aide hurries out.

Thrawn rises, unfolding his long limbs gracefully, and crosses to you in two steps. “My apologies.” He stands at his full height, broad shoulders square and hands behind his back. It gives him an infuriating air of calm superiority. And still, you can’t shake a foreboding sense that he is very, very dangerous, and not to be crossed. “It is customary for those of your position to remain covered at all times, except during… intimate situations. Is it not?”

“Y-yes. Yes sir,” you say, relieved that he understands.

A beat passes, and then he prompts: “we are alone now.”

You feel your face heat at the implication. “I don’t want to.”

His mouth presses into a thin line. “That is of no concern to me.”

“I don’t want to kiss you.”

His red eyes gleam. “It was not a request.”

You stand up, meaning to move away, but it only puts you closer to him, and his height dwarfs yours. “I don’t want to lay with you!”

“Is that what you imagine necessitates showing your face?” His voice drops to nearly a whisper, full of dark promise. “When I fuck you, it need not be so personal.”

At that, your heart thuds in your chest.

Before you can think it through, you try to slap him. He catches your wrists, dispassionate and unflinching as you struggle against him. “Enough. There will be no need for…theatrics. I was given to understand that those of your Order are all volunteers. Is that not true in your case?”

You can’t help your wide-eyed expression. It is an open secret that many young men and women were pressed into this sort of service, and your Order is no exception-- but nobody spoke that secret aloud. And it certainly wasn’t brazenly stated by an Imperial Grand Admiral to his new companion. You nod in confirmation, hoping that this isn’t some sort of trap or game to get you to admit something he could punish you for.

“I see,” he says, considering for a moment. “Then, you have a choice to make. An unwilling partner is of little use to me.”

You wrench against his grip, but it’s futile. “Oh so I guess that makes it all right then. You don’t want to— to fuck me but you’re going to anyway,” you say hotly. He doesn’t rise to the accusation, merely waits for a beat, allowing you to continue. When you say nothing more, he speaks.

“As I said, I would prefer your cooperation, but it is not required. However, there are… complexities… to our situation. Our Emperor—“

“Your Emperor.”

“--Will expect me to fully enjoy the gift he has given me. This is not in question. He will know, if I do not take you to bed. I have no intention of slighting him by refusing his generosity.”

“But how would he know! Couldn’t you just tell him that you have?”

“No,” he says, his voice cold and soft.

You stare at him for a moment, breath catching suddenly at how close you are, and then you start struggling again. “Let go of me!”

His hands tighten around your wrists like shackles, squeezing so hard it feels like your bones grind together.

“Please!” A note of panic, breath tight in your chest. It had been your last, foolish hope that whoever you were given to would be understanding, would find the whole practice barbaric. “Just let me go, pretend I ran away, just leave me somewhere!”

Thrawn, evidently, is not that person.

“Think,” he presses, red eyes flashing with impatience, though he reins back in to calm just as quickly. “Under what circumstances might you leave my service?”

It takes a moment for you to realize that this is not a rhetorical question. Most of the time Mirri and Solis had considered answers to such questions as just another form of backtalk, worthy of punishment.

“When I ask you a question, I expect an answer,” he says, rather sharply.

Another trap? You try to gather your thoughts, calm your breathing, but your pulse is wild with high emotion, and your voice shakes. “I could… run away.”

“Yes. What else?”

You draw in a deep breath, and smell the starch and wool of his uniform. “You could let me go.”

He nods but stays silent, expectant. A third option? You frown, then venture: “someone else takes me. Without your permission. Steals me away.”

“Indeed.”

Your mind flashes to the ones who were returned broken and maimed. “I could misbehave,” you say, with a touch of defiance.

“Yes, you could,” he agrees. “The circumstances of you leaving my ship would be altogether unpleasant, but more so for you than for me. You are a gift that cannot be refused, so your removal would be necessitated by your own behavior. Now, what do you imagine the consequences would be like?”

You swallow thickly and shake your head, unable to find the words.

“At best, placed with somebody else with less concern for your… consent. At worst…” his voice trails off, letting you reach the obvious conclusion silently.

He is right, which is all the more infuriating to admit because of the matter-of-fact way he had stated it. Gifts who came back were, if deemed ‘salvageable’, subjected to months of remedial conditioning and then reassigned, almost always to someone less desirable than the previous recipient. Lower ranking, or particularly hideous or cruel. It was whispered that there was one Outer Rim Governor whose appetite for a fresh face had been the demise of at least four Gifts.

“There are functions, too,” he adds quietly, with just a hint of something in his voice that you imagine to be embarrassment or reluctance, “ that I will be expected to attend, with you by my side.”

“And by functions you mean…?”

“You might call it a party. Others who have been recipients of the Emperor’s goodwill would also be there, with their gifts. We will be… observed.”

He waits for that to sink in.

No… You have an idea of what he means, and it makes your blood run cold.

“It is imperative that we demonstrate our appreciation of His generosity.”

Your stomach turns. Not quite ready to confront the reality of what he’s telling you. “Can’t you just send a ‘thank you’ holo or something?”

He remains silent.

“How… how many people?”

“Hundreds.”

“Hundreds…” you repeat hollowly. “Observed… doing what? Having dinner together? Do you fuck me right there on the table between courses or could we get away with waiting until after the meal and finding a dark corner?”

Thrawn says nothing for a moment, just gives you a rather irritated look. “Understand,” he says flatly, “that I did not ask for you. You are a distraction.”

You have to swallow down the insult of this rejection.

“Then leave me at some spaceport. Outer Rim, I don’t care.” You say, voice cracking. One more try, even though he’s already convinced you of the futility of it all.

“I did not say I don’t want you. But— as I said, I cannot. If I let you escape, I show incompetence, and lack of control over those in my care. If I let you go, it would be seen as rejecting the Emperor’s goodwill, disobeying his command, even.”

It clicks in your mind, then. If you do not give him a certain degree of cooperation, it could hurt his career and reputation— whatever that might be. He is concerned enough to mention it, though his attempts to cajole you into compliance so far have been baffling. This strange Grand Admiral claims to have no regard for your wishes but he is actually trying to convince you instead of ripping off your clothes and holding you down. He’s taken the time to explain it all and seems to want you to understand his reasoning.

You take a deep breath, trying to slow your heart pounding. Thrawn still holds you close, and he is so tall his rank plaque is just above eye level for you.

“The embroidery on your robe and veil — tell me about it.”

This catches you off guard. “I—it’s part of our traditional— I don’t know what to call it. Our uniform, I guess. It’s added during our Vigil.”

“It is very fine work.” He sounds intrigued, and picks up the hem, holding it closer to look at and brushing his thumb over the stitching. “And the other two with you before, their garments had similar work to yours, also done in the same type of thread, though not as intricate. The motifs were simpler, and the execution… adequate. This was done with great skill and care.” He grasps your wrist in such a way as to closer inspect the embroidery; it draws you clear to him so you are pressed against his body. You squirm, knowing he can feel your breasts against him, as you can feel his heavy belt, and that he’s half-hard and hot against your stomach.

“Be still,” he murmurs, making no effort to conceal his arousal. He takes a few more moments examining the work, then lets it fall.

“Now,” he says. “Will you remove your veil?”

With a cooler head, you realize he had done nothing to punish your outburst, nor any of your other little jibes. Stars, you had tried to hit him and he hadn’t even been angry about it. This doesn’t mean you’re safe with him. Doesn’t earn him even a little trust. But for now, it seems wise to acquiesce. This will be okay, or at least not so bad. He will not demean or abuse you. And he is right. There is no good way out of this, for either of you.

Heart pounding-- no one outside the cloister on Coruscant has seen your bare face in over a year-- you sweep the fabric up and over, so that it trails down your back as if you were a bride. The change in light makes you blink and squint for a moment. Thrawn leans forward, as if he can’t help himself, and strokes a lock of your hair off your face.

You try not to flinch away from him, nor to let any emotion show.

But he traces his thumb over your lips and you feel a hot prickle of tears that you can’t hold back. It would almost be easier if he were cruel.

“When they train you,” he says, voice dangerously quiet, “do they fuck you?”

You feel a pulse through your core at his question, and immediately shove the feeling down. “Why? You don’t want someone who’s been used before?” Mouthy again. His expression stays mild.

“Previous experiences do not concern me. I only wish to know what your training entailed.”

“No. They don’t. In most cases the recipients want to be able to be the first, you know, to be in control of…that.” You finish lamely, a vivid blush creeping up your neck.

“It is believed the recipient will wish to shape the desires of his companion,” Thrawn offers.

“Yes. Not because of anything like— like purity.”

He takes a moment to consider this, then asks, “are you pure?”

You blink, meeting his eyes, and immediately regret it, as you feel tears well up anew. You quickly look aside, and can see the dark edge of space out the viewport, just where it meets the muddy orange-gold of the atmosphere. “No,” you say, then look right back at him, lifting your chin. “Are you?”

One blue-black eyebrow goes up. “No.”

Then he lets you go, saying nothing more during the ride except to direct your attention to the Chimaera on approach. It is a magnificent ship, and you press against the transparisteel trying to see more of it, though its bulk quickly fills the entire view. On the underbelly of the ship is painted a huge, stylized chimaera, twin heads crossing over the wedge line. You have to restrain yourself from asking him a million questions about everything you see as you pass beneath the bow and into its massive shadow.

An escort of four TIE fighters sweeps in to escort the shuttle to the hangar bay. The distinctive high roar of their engines is somehow audible inside the shuttle. You had never understood that, though admittedly your knowledge of physics and space travel is limited. You almost ask Thrawn. He would know, and he is still standing quite close to you. You can feel him at your back, watching the same panorama, and the one time you brave a glance over your shoulder at him, his gaze is distant and his expression inscrutable.

☆ link to part 3 ☆

☆ join tag list ☆ <- this is the easiest way to make sure your request is recorded, however anyone is also welcome to dm me if they want to be added

@thrawns-babygirl @vibratingbonesbis @thrawns-teef-weef @debonaire-princess @aethersecho @exoplorationn @elc3004 @littlecrowtime @twilekchiss @saber-slutt @projectdreamwalker

#thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #thrawn fic #thrawn fanfiction #thrawn x reader #thrawn x you #thrawn x y/n #mitth'raw'nuruodo #thrawn fanfic

119 notes · View notes

sev-on-kamino · 7 months

Note

Beloved Sev! A new smut prompt for youuu!

❛ i'm sorry, what was that? i can’t hear you over all that noise you’re making. ❜

😌😌

Luv uuuu

My darling Pineapple, Ilysm!!! This prompt is divine, and I hope you enjoy it ❤️🤍 I had to go with Flicker for this one. He’s just so cocky and bratty. The prompt is in red!

Warnings: thigh riding, light bondage, fooling around in an alleyway, dirty talk, Flicker 👀 MINORS DNI

Word Count: 472

Dividers by my fave @dystopicjumpsuit

Song: from my 79’s playlist

The wall at your back was rough, biting at your skin through the thin material of your shirt, but you stopped caring shortly after Flicker had pushed you up against it.

“You didn’t tell me you’d be planetside,” he said, breathlessly between kisses. He tasted like cheap booze and candy he probably stole from Fox.

“Wanted to surprise you,” you moaned, as he easily parted your legs with an armored thigh. The ridge along the center pressed against your core, and you rolled your hips automatically.

“That’s it, mesh’la,” he purred against your lips, as one hand gripped the back of your head and the other found your hip.

“Missed you,” you said breathlessly, as the two of you moved against one another in a languid rhythm like you weren’t in an alleyway.

“Missed you too,” he said, kissing the corner of your lips, before nipping at your bottom lip.

“Can we…go back to my place?”

“Come first,” he ordered, releasing your hip, and using his teeth to tug one of his gloves off.

"Flicker," you whined, even as you gripped his shoulders and rocked your hips against his thigh.

"Mesh'la," he parroted back with a smirk, as his bare hand slipped up the front of your shirt to tug your breast band down. His nimble fingers circled, brushed, and pinched one of your nipples.

A moan rose out of your throat before you could stop it. You moved to cover your mouth, but the sergeant caught your wrists in his free hand pulling them up and holding them above your head against the wall.

"I don't think so," he chided playfully. "I wanna hear you. Every...single...sound."

He licked his lips as he took in the sight of you completely at his mercy. His to please and enjoy.

"Keep working those hips. I mean it, not leaving til you come for me," he said, stealing a heated kiss before pressing his forehead against yours.

You complied, grinding against his thigh, growing more vocal as you got closer and closer to your climax.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" He asked as his name flowed past your lips amidst a plethora of colorful swears and groans of desire. "I can't hear you over all that noise you're making."

He slid his hand down your body, and reached around to grab your ass, and move you over his thigh.

With one final mewl of bliss, your pleasure crested like a wave, leaving you to fall apart in Flicker's grasp.

"You sound so good when you come for me," Flicker praised, releasing your wrists to cup your face once more.

"Apartment now?" You asked, reaching up to cup his face and draw him into a soft kiss.

"You got it. I want you to do that again on my cock when we get there."

taglist: @secondaryrealm @dystopicjumpsuit @sunshinesdaydream @dukeoftheblackstar @wolffegirlsunite @808tsuika @sleepingsun501 @starrylothcat @ladyzirkonia @wings-and-beskar @pb-jellybeans @clio3kantarella @stardusthuntress @idontgetanysleep @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @anxiouspineapple99 @littlemissmanga @mandos-mind-trick @amorfista @kimiheartblade @freesia-writes @sinfulsalutations @523rdrebel @clonemedickix @multi-fan-dom-madness @mooncommlink @1vlouds @moonlightwarriorqueen @starqueensthings @dangraccoon @idoubleswearimawriter @wizardofrozz @trixie2023 @dreamie411 @nunanuggets @foodmoneyandcats @cdblake1565 @eternal-transcience

#seven answers #seven writes #oc: flicker #oc: sgt. flicker #clone oc #clone wars oc #oc x reader #clone oc x reader #not safe for costco #not safe for the bart #not osha compliant #not osha approved #spicy prompts #x reader #reader insert #corrie guard #corrie oc

68 notes · View notes

candlecoo-sideb-art · 1 year

Note

In the somewhere else (in space) au does Jon get to interact with the octokittens that may have followed Jonny planetside?

Yes he does and if he tries to steal one who's to say.

#somewhere else (in space) au #the magnus archive #tma #tma podcast #tma au #the mechanisms au

146 notes · View notes

the-scandalorian · 2 years

Text

like a moth to the flame

Pairing: Monster!Din Djarin x Female Reader Rating: M, 18+ Word Count: 6.9k Content warnings: monster!Din, dark!Din, haunted!Din sort of?, stalking, obsessive/possessive/predatory behavior, creepy vibes, mentions of sex, angst, pining, canon-typical violence, nightmares, sort of a dark Beauty and the Beast AU, eventual monsterfucking probs, complete neglect of Star Wars flora and fauna for the sake of vibes Notes: Heed the warnings, please!

Thank you to @dincrypt and @ezrasbirdie for the help, to @stealyourblorbos for the idea, and to @tuskens-mando for sharing her monster!din! xx

YOU

He arrives in the summertime.

He arrives when the sun feels especially harsh overhead, even in the dewy shine of the early morning, even under the partial cover of the cherry trees. The air is stung with heat and sweetness, laced with the scent of berries and ripe with pollen—it floats lazily through the beams of light that filter down though the branches. The bees seem drunk as they zip and bob between the leaves.

You don’t hear the news right away. You’re out in the orchards, a bead of sweat breaking free from your hairline and sliding down your temple, and you absently swipe it away with the back of your hand, setting down your full basket before snatching up an empty one to move on to the next tree. The cherry yield is extra high this year—peaches and strawberries too. Overall, a very successful season.

In a few months, you will have earned enough for the final payment on your ship. It’s taken years of saving and dreaming, but it’s finally within reach.

You head into town with this week’s harvest feeling hopeful.

You sense the subtle shift—the low hum of electricity that permeates every corner of town—as soon as you arrive. No fewer than four people stop to tell you the story as you make your way toward the main thoroughfare: a Mandalorian checked into the inn late last night. It’s so rare to have a novelty to discuss in this sleepy place that everyone is eager to be the first to share.

A couple hours later, when the outdoor market has opened, the story has yet to lose momentum. The entire street is abuzz. You can actually see the word spreading before your eyes: friends rushing over to friends, one and then the next, hands cupped around ears, jaws dropped open in surprise, fingers pointed toward the inn. They gossip and chatter as if there’s actually something of substance to discuss.

You’re sure he’s just another transient visitor, like so many others who come through. There’s nothing for a Mandalorian here: no riches or war, no one interesting enough to have a substantial bounty on their head. Yours is a small town on a backwater planet where nothing happens—hence your eagerness to leave.

The Mandalorian is probably stopping for fuel and supplies, two things that aren’t always easy to come by out here in the Outer Rim, especially not safely.

He’ll be gone in days.

You envy him a little. Even before you actually see him, despite the fact that you don’t know anything about him, you’re a little jealous. Because he’s traveled the galaxy. He’s seen things. Done things. He has power and agency and purpose.

You finally do get a glimpse of him late that Saturday afternoon. You have a clear view of the inn from your kiosk. You’re in the middle of a transaction with a customer when the bright glint of silver draws your attention.

He steps out the door into the afternoon sun and sets off at a brisk pace. All you manage to catch is his impressive profile as he turns down a side street, and then he’s gone.

He looks strange in this setting—completely out of place in this rural village, like a piece of silvery moonlight excised from the night sky and fallen planetside. A warrior steeped in myth, a legend extracted from the pages of an old book and dropped into the mundane reality of your daily life.

At least you got one look at him. So you know he’s real.

*** The next week at the market, the new word about the Mandalorian surprises you—even more so than the fact that he’s still in town. He’s taken up residence in an abandoned house. He’s going to stay, for a while at least. He asked the innkeeper about places outside town, anything remote and livable and available.

The house he chose is set back in the dark part of the forest, miles away, where old-growth trees stretch so high that their thick canopies blot out the sun. No one has lived there for decades. You’ve only been that far into the forest once before: when you were a little kid, you were dared to go there, dared to go where the beasts lived—the hungry creatures with jaws that snap, the ones your parents warned you about. And at eight years old, you were too stubborn to resist once that gauntlet had been thrown. So you’d taken a flashlight and a kitchen knife and made the long, long walk out there. You saw nothing but huge, clawed footprints in the dirt and slashes gouged into the tree trunks that day, but you’d never been tempted to go back. The eerie silence was enough.

If you thought the gossip about the Mandalorian was bad last week, now that he’s staying, it’s rampant.

Violent. Brutal. Ruthless.

Hunted by The Empire.

On the run from the New Republic.

Exiled by Mandalorians.

Too bloodthirsty for The Guild.

Murderer. Mercenary. Contract killer.

Monster.

Where any of this came from, you have no idea—most likely, someone’s wild imagination. The innkeeper is the only person who actually spoke to him before he moved out into the forest.

And after he moves out there, he only comes back into town on Saturdays for the market. Otherwise, no one sees him. You know because you casually inquire about him whenever you head to town for dinner, or a drink, or to visit a friend.

You can’t help it. You’re curious.

Now, over a month after his arrival, you’d think the regularity of his weekly appearances would prevent sightings from stirring up so much excitement, but that’s not the case.

Today, he stalks through the tittering crowd, and an awed silence falls in his wake as it always does. Heads turn to follow his slow, purposeful advance, but his gaze is trained forward. He acknowledges no one.

You expect him to visit the largest kiosk, the one situated at the end of the lane, like every week prior. Instead, your hands still in the middle of tying up radishes and your eyes go wide when he turns abruptly and makes a beeline for you. He’s never come to you before. But here he is, standing before you, scaring away a couple lingering customers, who shoot you half-wary, half-jealous looks as they scatter.

You gather yourself quickly, square your shoulders, and offer him your warmest smile. The Mandalorian nods once in greeting, then tilts his helmet down to scan the goods laid out in front of him.

Fuck, he’s broad.

He looks even bigger up close, his armor and weapons even more intimidating. You note a blaster at his hip, charges on his other side, and something clipped to his belt that looks like the handle of a blade…without the blade. Peculiar. And you’re sure he’s packing more than just what you can see or make sense of.

“Looking for anything in particular?”

He spares you another quick glance but offers no response aside from a noncommittal grunt. His gloved hands work deliberately, collecting a selection of produce. Sensible, standard ingredients. Filling things that keep well in a pantry.

Your task of bunching radishes remains abandoned. You can’t help but admire him when he’s right here. The lines of his visor are harsh, the glass so dark you can’t even see a hint of his eyes. His pure silver Beskar shines like liquid mercury in the bright sunlight. You wonder vaguely if he too is dangerous to handle with bare hands. Toxic. Even more deadly to breathe in.

What would he smell like if you tucked your face into his neck, pressed your nose into the rough fabric of his cowl? Woodsmoke, you think. The masculine tang of sweat after standing in the sun in so many layers. Leather, definitely. Metal, of course. Something sharp and predatory.

When he has a sizable collection of produce arranged on the counter between you, his helmet continues to scan like he’s searching for something else.

“Can I help you find something?” you ask.

He looks up at you, and his visor stays trained on your face for a few beats too long. He cocks his head to the side slowly, like he’s trying to make sense of your question, like you just asked him something fascinating. Or maybe he’s studying your face. Whatever he’s doing, it makes heat crawl up the back of your neck.

“What’s your name?”

You’ve never heard his voice before, and you didn’t expect it to be like that—like velvet dragged down your spine, a low, sultry purr made sibilant by his modulator. It makes every nerve ending in your body light up in a way that no other sound ever has, not even the voice of anyone who has shared your bed.

You tell him your name.

He repeats it back to you, and you’re sure it’s the only correct way to say your name, that every other person has been saying it wrong your entire life, and you’ve only realized it now that you’ve heard it spoken like that. When he rasps your name, it smolders like dark magic, throbs like the first crack and roll of a distant thunderstorm, melts—

“What do you like best?”

You stare blankly at him for a moment, caught off guard that he’s not just shopping at your stall but also talking to you. He’s making an effort to connect with you…or at least being polite. Most strangers on a stopover spare little more than a grunt, and you expected the armored Mandalorian to be even less generous with words and courtesy.

He gestures across your displayed goods with a gloved hand, prompting you for an answer.

“Um, what do I like? Oh, well, the peaches are extra good this year,” you say, motioning to their basket. “Really sweet. Just the right amount of ripe at the moment. And the strawberries.”

“I’ll take both.”

And me?

The ridiculous question tickles at the back of your throat, but you swallow it back.

You gather his fruit, do some quick mental math, and tell him the total. He stows everything in a bag slung over his shoulder and digs into a pouch on his belt.

The pads of your fingers graze his leather glove when you accept his credits in your palm. You swear his hand lingers over yours for a few seconds longer than is necessary, that his fingertips brush your skin a few times even after the credits are in your possession, but before you can decide if that’s real or imagined, he leaves.

“Thank you,” he says.

He’s vanished before you can even manage a goodbye, a flash of mirror-bright beskar and duraweave cape.

And you’re left there, standing in the sun, wondering why you feel a little drunk.

*** You don’t know him—don’t know his name or what he looks like or his purpose here or if he’s a good person. And yet, after one single interaction, he becomes an almost constant fixture in your mind. He lingers on the edges of your thoughts, the possibility of seeing him again next Saturday pulsing like a beacon.

You can’t help it.

You want to know him, this stoic warrior with a surprising hint of sweetness. You want to ask him every one of the questions bouncing around in your head, to tug his gloves off his hands and strip each piece of armor from his body until you reveal the man underneath.

You only touched his glove—not even his actual skin—but the feeling burned through you nonetheless, leaving a residual tingle for the rest of the day. That night, those two fingers are the ones you slip under your clothes and snake between your thighs.

You heard just enough of his voice to piece together a very realistic growl of take it, take it just like that in your head.

What you wouldn’t give for the real thing.

DIN

The dappled gold-green light gradually gives way to shadow as Din makes his way deeper into the forest.

Overall, things are going as he planned. When he limped back to the public transport ship after his duel with Paz—burned and gutted and confused—he knew he needed to find a place to stand still.

Somewhere with enough space for his rage and grief and pain to expand and contract freely. Where he can take each of the things weighing on his mind, lay them out, and let them breathe.

Somewhere he has time to figure out exactly what he has become. What it means. How to get a handle on his new reality. What to do next.

And what happened after he closed himself in his private room on that humming public transport ship made his plan less necessary and more imperative. Just the memory of that pain makes him shudder.

This planet, just as he expected, is completely untouched by the Republic and the Empire alike. Remote. Exactly what he needs. It took him a couple weeks, skipping from one public or private transport to the next just to get all the way out here. His anonymity is all but absolute. He has space and privacy and time.

After another twenty minutes of walking, the little house comes into view, almost completely lost amidst the cobalt twilight of the trees. The tight, throbbing coil of anxiety in his chest loosens, just a little. This will be the perfect place for him. He can do what he needs to do, completely undisturbed. And he won’t be able to hurt anyone, even if he loses control.

The town is miles away, and when its inhabitants venture into the forest, it’s never this far. He was told they stay on the edges, where game is plentiful and there is food to forage.

It only takes Din a few days to make the house livable. The process is easier than he expected. The woman at the inn made it sound like it was crumbling and dilapidated, but she also stated out-right that it was haunted, so he took everything she said with a grain of salt. Din had brushed off the warning with a shrug of his shoulders and asked her for directions. She’d shared them with a resigned smile and a final protestation that no one in their right mind would ever want to live there. Din stopped himself from asking her about people in their wrong mind.

Would it be a good place for someone like that?

In reality, the house is completely intact—totally structurally sound, well built—just long-neglected and hard to find. The most difficult job is hacking away the thick emerald vines that are trying to swallow the facade. Once that’s done, the rest is simple. He forces the old, creaky front door open and clears out the cobwebs and debris. He sweeps away the dust and scrubs away the grime until he unearths a gleaming hardwood floor, faded sky blue walls, and copper fixtures.

It’s a beautiful house. Someone, years ago, put a lot of time and money and heart into it. And now Din is reaping the benefit of someone else’s hard work.

One more thing he doesn’t really deserve has fallen into his hands.

After a few days, he understands the origin of its reputation. The darkness and the unnatural stillness are constant here. It’s always night, and Din likes the quiet, the solitude. The old-growth trees are undisturbed even by animals. There are no birds tittering in the branches above him, no rabbits scurrying into their burrows when he passes. Nothing grows between the towering conifers because no light reaches the ground: the forest here doesn’t sustain. Nothing can survive for long—aside from Din and other occasional far-ranging predators.

He’s only seen the hungry reflection of yellow eyes a couple times, and the crackle and spark of the dark saber being ignited are enough to make them melt away between the trees.

They don’t bother him.

On his first supply run, Din identifies the only problem on this planet.

He takes in the haze of the small town distantly, retaining none of the blurred details as he stalks through the dusty streets…until you. He sees you standing there at the market, behind one of the many stalls, and the heart he was sure existed in his chest seems to have disappeared altogether.

Beautiful.

It requires immense physical effort not to stop, even more not to stare. He keeps his helmet trained forward and just looks out of the corners of his eyes.

He’s alarmed by the intensity of the feelings that slam through him: he wants to rip off his helmet and breathe you in like fresh air.

He can’t put his finger on exactly what draws him in. You’re gorgeous, sure, but it’s more than that. It’s biological or chemical or molecular. Magnetic. Something primal, a force he doesn’t understand—like the one that infected him when he took the saber from Moff Gideon. Overwhelming and completely out of his control.

He just barely manages to stride past like he doesn’t notice you at all.

After a month of pretending to ignore you, though, he caves. You’ve been stuck in his consciousness like a burr since the first time he saw you, begging for attention.

He has to buy supplies every week. What does it matter where he buys them?

Maybe if he talks to you, he can figure you out—figure out this pull—and that will help him disentangle you from his thoughts.

As soon as he’s standing before you, though, he knows this is a bad idea. He picks out some produce—completely ignoring his very specific mental list in favor of gathering whatever his hands happen to fall upon.

Because he’s distracted.

By you.

You turn your head a little, and he thinks about biting the sweet juncture where your shoulder meets your neck, sinking his teeth in just hard enough to hear you whine, not hard enough to break your skin.

Would you like that? Would you squirm against his chest and beg for more? Would you let him touch you with rough hands and fingers that leave behind stormcloud bruises? Would you mind the hard ice of his armor and the hilt of the dark saber digging into your stomach if he crowded you up against the wall behind you?

Would you cower if you saw the true color of his eyes?

Din tries to busy himself by staring at everything laid out before him, but he can’t stop thinking about the plush of your lips.

When you ask him if he’s looking for anything in particular, he finally has a reason to settle his gaze on your face again.

He looks at your lips for too long—he knows that. He’s reassured by the fact that you can’t tell his eyes are fixed on your mouth. You must just think he’s odd. He tries to recover by asking for your name and what food you like most. Of course you pick the sweetest things, collecting the fruit with a discerning eye, choosing only the best of the bunch to wrap up for him.

You hand him his purchases, and he’s never been more tempted to slip off his gloves in public. He wants to brush his fingertips along the smooth, sensitive skin of your inner wrist. He needs to know what that feels like—what you look like when you shiver.

He lets his touch linger for a fraction of a second and is rewarded with the subtle dilation of your pupils.

He turns to leave before he can do anything he’ll regret.

And yet, you stay with him.

He stalks down the street, back toward the edge of town, onto the wide dirt road that parts the forest. With each step, he gets further away from you. With each step, he expects you to release him, to fade away, so his mind can quiet, and he can focus.

You don’t.

He doesn’t know what to do about that. Din has grown accustomed to living with blinders on; they have always been necessary for staying on track, for shutting out everything but one bounty and then the next. They’re familiar, comforting. A life of discipline and duty gifted him an iron will and laser focus, and he’s always relied on those.

And yet here he is, distracted.

He’s never experienced this type of all-consuming attraction before.

He tells himself that if he just knew more about you, if he could solve the mystery of this feeling, he’d be satisfied. That would be enough to slake his curiosity, and he could move on.

*** Two days later, Din gets a chance.

He’s on a rare mid-week trip into town for real food, lost in thought about Grogu as he strides down the street, wondering what kind of caretaker Skywalker is. Is he patient? Thoughtful? Does he pay attention to the little things that make Grogu feel safe, like gentle back pats and low, murmured reassurances?

Surely, whatever complicated Jedi-magic bond that exists between them guarantees that he’ll know exactly what the kid needs. He’ll probably know better than Din ever did.

Jealousy radiates through him for a moment. But it fades quickly into grief, and that almost immediately spills over into a simmering anger.

Every feeling eventually gets twisted into anger these days.

Din isn’t paying attention as he turns a corner and smack. Luckily, you react fast enough to catch his chestplate with raised hands instead of your face, but the force of the impact still sends you reeling backward a few steps.

His first instinct is to reach out and steady you, to catch your elbows and pull you back toward him, but he resists it.

You manage not to lose your footing, but you do wring your hands like they’re hurting.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you laugh, rubbing your palms, “I’m fine.”

He stands there for a moment, silent. He wants to talk to you, but he has no idea what to say. So, irritated with himself, he makes to leave instead, offering you a nod and your name in some combination of greeting and farewell as he tries to walk around you.

“Wait,” you say, reaching out to grasp his elbow, your fingers curling into the space between his armor. “What’s your name? You never told me.”

He stills, looks down at you, relieved. His hands twitch with the need to touch you back. This close, your smell is overwhelming—floral and warm and tempting.

“Mando is fine.”

Your lips pull to the side in an understanding but slightly disappointed smile, your hand dropping back to your side. “Not your name, but that’s okay.”

He wants to give you more than Mando, but he can’t.

Now that he’s finally letting himself really take you in, he notices a black smudge under your eye. “Were you just at the landing bay?”

You shoot him a suspicious look. “Yes, how did you—?”

His hand moves before he can stop himself. You watch it, a flicker of surprise in your eyes, but you don’t move away, don’t flinch.

“Engine grease,” he tells you. He holds your cheek softly, swiping his thumb across your skin. You look a little flustered—caught off guard but not uncomfortable. His helmet tells him your pulse has kicked up significantly.

He likes that.

His own pulse starts a steady gallop in answer.

“I have a ship,” you offer, staring up at him with wide eyes.

He actually chuckles at that, a warm, rich sound rumbling in his chest. It makes him realize how long it’s been since he’s heard his own laugh. “I figured.”

His hand is still on your face. If he slid it down just a little, he could touch your lips, see if they give as much under a light touch as he thinks they would.

“Well, I don’t have it yet,” you amend. “It’s almost done, though.”

There’s still a shadow of a mark on your cheek when he finally does drop his hand. He imagines pulling off his glove, sliding his helmet up just enough to suck his thumb into his mouth, and erasing the rest of it with the wet pad of his finger.

What is it about you that makes him insane?

“Where are you going?” he asks.

You light up, your smile radiant. “Anywhere. Everywhere. I have a list. What’s your favorite place you’ve been to?”

Din legitimately has no answer. No one’s ever asked him that. He considers for a moment.

Maybe Sorgan, where he and the kid were able to lay low, where he got to watch the kid be a kid, if only for a few weeks. Even there, though, they weren’t safe.

Aq Vetina occurs to him next. It was also safe for a time.

No place is safe forever.

He’s about to tell you he has no answer when an older woman crosses the street and calls your name, waving an excited hand. You turn to look, and Din takes that chance to step around you to avoid having to speak to anyone else. He murmurs your name again and brushes your arm with the tips of his fingers as he leaves, unable to help himself.

But he pretends not to hear when you turn back toward him and start to say, “Mando—wait—”

*** Maybe if he eats enough ripe peaches, he’ll be able to imagine the taste of your mouth. Spring, he thinks as he walks away, his hands fidgeting restlessly at his sides, two fingers tapping absently on his metal thigh guard. You must taste like spring: honey and tight pink flowerbuds and dewdrops. And if he pulled off his gloves, you’d feel warm under his hands, like sun-baked river rocks, and soft—fuck, yeah, definitely soft—like the brushed suede of new sage leaves.

As delicate under his rough hands as freshly unfurled butterfly wings.

Din scowls, and his hands curl into fists.

All of these are breakable things. Good things. Corruptible things. Things he’d ruin. He’d strip the scales from your wings until you couldn’t fly. Even if he didn’t mean to, even if he tried to be gentle. He’s too brutal and hard for you—all beskar and blaster fire. He always has been.

Even before he became… this.

His low growl—one that he expected to be too quiet to be picked up by the modulator—comes out a little louder than he intended. A cluster of locals startles like spooked rabbits, frozen and silent, as he stalks by.

Fucking hell.

He can’t even be mad at himself without scaring other people. He nods reassuringly at them, raising a hand in friendly greeting, and they give him a wary look before turning back to their conversation.

In that moment, Din decides he won’t ever speak to you again. Being close to you sets his thoughts to spiral, puts his teeth on edge. It’s too intoxicating, and if he’s truly honest with himself, he already knows the more he gets of you, the more he’ll want. There won’t be a point when his need is sated, and he can let go.

He’d want to possess you—for you to possess him (as if that process hasn’t already started).

An unnameable feeling, something both rapturous and raptorial, sears through his chest at just the thought of being able to look at you and call you his. He can’t imagine the real thing.

Mine.

There’s a lot he doesn’t understand about this new version of himself, and he hates that. But he does know his core, his true essence that can’t be uprooted by whatever is happening to him now—even if it can be distorted.

Din knows his attachments run deep. He loves hard or not at all. He loves with teeth. The open wound Grogu left behind will take years to heal. He won’t let himself become vulnerable to that magnitude of loss for some time…maybe ever again. This, coupled with the new hunger and rage that simmer under his skin like a crackling electrical current, just waiting to spark and burn, means that he can’t be trusted around anyone.

It’s painful for him to admit he doesn’t trust himself anymore—that he’s so off-kilter, so mercurial he can’t even predict his own behavior—but the first step toward mastering this is accepting that he’s changed. It’s why he’s in this self-imposed exile in the first place.

So, he’ll keep his distance from you, for as long as you remain here. He doesn’t know if it’s a matter of days, weeks, or months, but soon enough, you’ll be gone, lost to the vastness of the galaxy. And there will be no more distractions.

This planet can still work. He can do what he needs to do. One small, temporary snag is nothing. He’s dealt with so much worse.

What’s one more thing abandoned when he’s already lost so much?

*** Over the next week, Din keeps his word to himself in all the ways that count. He doesn’t speak to you again, doesn’t approach you. Sometimes, he watches.

For your sake.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

The first time it happens, he’s skirting the edge of town at night, restless and sleepless, when he sees you walking alone on the main road. It’s dark out, the sky spattered with dim stars, and he’s been walking through the forest long enough to know that slinking, orange shapes regularly prowl through his thermal readout. They’re lying in wait for something just like you.

It’s not safe out here.

He reminds himself that you’ve probably walked this road hundreds of times. You know this planet better than he does, know how to take care of yourself.

He tries to resist it, but a flood of something hot and vicious douses all reason, his protective instincts overriding everything else.

It’s easy enough to follow you home like a silent shadow. His senses are heightened, even keener than what the helmet affords him, and he finds that he can stalk you as easily and stealthily as any of those creatures that leave massive, clawed footprints on the forest floor.

With him around, none of them can hurt you.

You live in a small cottage on the outskirts of town, surrounded by fields and orchards, ringed by the dense forest. Alone. He wonders why a pretty thing like you is alone—must be your preference. You’d have no trouble finding someone if you wanted to.

He wonders who keeps you safe from the things that lurk beyond the trees when he isn’t here. If your bed ever feels cold.

Once he knows where you live, he visits whenever his willpower isn’t enough to keep him away. He watches from the cover of the trees and tells himself he’s only there to check on you.

He should feel bad about it. Creepy and invasive. Predatory.

He doesn’t, though. Not really.

He’s not here to hurt; he’s here to protect.

He learns about you as he watches. How hardworking and resourceful you are, how sweet you are with your animals, that there is always a vibroblade tucked into your ankle-high boot. He finds that out one day when he follows you into the forest, where you go to forage for wild raspberries.

You pick your way carefully through the brambles, slowly filling the basket looped around your forearm, humming quietly to yourself. Din watches leaf-filtered sunshine play over your features: your soft lips, the hollow of your throat, the swells of your breasts.

Beautiful, he thinks again.

He has seen a lot of this galaxy—more than most. He’s seen it from its forgotten, frayed edges to the center of its vital, beating heart. He knows one thing for sure: there’s a lot of raw pain in every place, suffering and struggle. Ugliness and mundanity and horror.

He can’t remember the last time he stopped and looked at something simply because it’s beautiful.

It’s probably just your novelty.

No, he doesn’t think this fresh sense of awe would go away even if he saw you every day, up close. Even if he had you. If he woke up to your warm body curled against his side morning after morning, your head tucked into the crook of his neck, he thinks it would feel like a miracle each time. Maybe—

Din is yanked out of his reverie by the sound of rustling. Something is moving very close by—too close. He should have heard its approach, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything but you.

He moves quietly, taking a few silent steps forward and falling into his defensive stance, feet planted wide, hands poised on his weapons.

You haven’t noticed anything yet, and his thoughts are racing as he tries to decide what to do.

Should he reveal himself before the threat does? Would he scare you more than whatever is making that sound, the one that’s getting ever louder?

He doesn’t think it’s a predator making its approach; a predator would stalk and slink, not blunder like this, and would likely be larger than the small-ish orange blur that is visible on his thermal readout. But there’s no way for him to be sure. He doesn’t know this planet well enough to have names for all of its hazards.

Why haven’t you noticed it yet?

Din is one breath away from bursting through the trees and putting his body squarely between you and this oncoming threat. He’ll reveal himself if it’s the difference between your life and death. And only then.

Finally, when the thing sounds like it’s just a few paces away, you go very still, listening carefully. Din waits.

Run, he thinks.

But you don’t have time to react. It makes its final approach in a rush, crashing through the undergrowth and into the small clearing where you’re standing.

Din sprints forward at the same time, his blaster aimed, his forefinger heavy on the trigger when he realizes what it is. He barely manages to stop himself.

It’s a fawn, its legs tangled in what looks like an old, unraveling fishing net. Its eyes are round with fear, and it freezes when it sees you.

Din skids to a halt just on the other side of the ring of trees circling the clearing, and he takes a few silent steps backward. The crashing of the fawn covered the sound of his heavy footfalls, so he hasn’t yet blown his own cover, and he’d like to keep it that way.

He watches as you assess the creature and takes deep breaths to slow his thunderous heartbeat.

Already dead, he thinks as he looks at the fragile little thing.

It’s harsh but true. Its loud, frantic movements are sure to draw predators eventually, and no mother is in sight. It’s alone and injured, likely from flailing around the forest half-bound. It’s standing on three legs, one of its back ankles clearly broken. A quick death would be a mercy—might as well spare it the drawn-out misery.

Din watches as you lower yourself to one knee, a placating hand held out toward the trembling little creature, and ruck up your skirt, revealing the well-worn handle of a blade. Slowly, whispering quiet reassurances, you unsheath it.

Aside from an occasional nervous quiver, the fawn remains a statue. Your empty hand reaches out to stroke reassuringly along its flank, the other slowly raising the knife. For one shocking second, Din thinks you actually are about to slit its throat—and realizes how much he doesn’t want you to kill it—then your prodding fingers reveal a loop of rope wrapped tightly around its neck. You slice easily though the cord there and a few other places, careful to keep the sharp edge of the blade facing away from the fawn, and the tangled mess of the net falls to the ground.

Even though it’s free, the little thing stands there like it doesn’t know what to do.

“Where’s your mama, hm?”

It stares with wide, blank eyes. You look around the silent forest.

“You’re all alone out here, aren’t you?”

Din scans the trees and knows you’re right. There are no large heat signatures anywhere nearby. The fawn takes a tiny step toward you.

“You want to come home with me?”

You reach out again and rest a gentle palm on its chest, testing its comfort. It doesn’t flinch.

“Alright,” you say, “we’ll fix up that ankle, okay?”

You carefully, slowly move forward and gather the little thing in your arms. It cooperates as if it understands your invitation.

Din watches you care for this broken, lost thing, and he wonders who takes care of you. He wonders if you have a soft spot for broken things.

What about permanently broken ones? What about things with no chance of being made right again?

*** Din falls into a routine.

He knows it’s wrong. That he is wrong.

After a couple weeks, he’s forced to admit to himself that his constant presence isn’t really for your sake. He’s there to protect you from the things that howl, but he is one of those predators now.

Why fight it?

He’s there because he wants to be.

He denies himself so much else, and what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

He can’t stop, anyways. Or won’t? There’s no difference between the two anymore.

Either way, you’ll leave this planet soon, and that will solve his problem.

At night, Din satisfies himself with a glimpse of you moving around your kitchen through the big picture window that frames your oak table. Sometimes, the only reassurance he gets is the flicker of a candle casting dancing shadows on your curtains.

During the day, when you’re working outside, Din settles against a trunk on the edge of the forest as you work your way down a row of apple trees until you’re nothing but a paint stroke in the distance. And when you make your way down the next row back toward him, for a little while, he can trick himself into thinking that you’re coming to him.

Willingly.

It’s enough.

It’s enough because he gets you in his dreams too. He can’t help it; you’re on his mind when he’s falling asleep, so you’re in his dreams. Sometimes, when he lingers on the edges of sleep, he can almost taste your skin on his tongue. He can picture your smile and your soft hands, and he feels like he’s under the shade of your peach trees with you, your body pinned between his and the trunk, as he dips his head to kiss your neck.

When he finally does succumb to sleep, though, his mind snatches his fantasy and twists it into a nightmare.

The tongue he dips into the hollow of your throat and drags up your neck is changed: it’s long and dextrous, like that of a hungry carnivore. You like it, though. He laps over your pulse point until a bead of spit slides down the column of your neck, and you moan, your hands scrabbling against his shoulders, pulling him in, like you’re desperate to be closer even though there’s barely enough space between your bodies to breathe.

When he sets his teeth against your skin, they’re no longer human and blunt—they’re the saw-tooth edge of half-shattered glass, and they pierce your skin too easily, like the point of a sharp knife to fine silk.

You whine and writhe in this arms—in pain, in ecstasy.

And the worst part? The part that haunts him during the day? You taste good. Your skin is tart and fresh, like the first apples of the season... and when he punctures it, the hot rush of your blood in his mouth is startlingly saccharine, as if he left one of your peaches in the sun too long.

He wakes up salivating, panting open-mouthed inside his humid helmet.

What is wrong with him?

No, that’s not the question that matters. He knows what’s wrong with him. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

Din groans, his body stiff and sore from sleeping in his full armor, and hauls himself out of bed. He’s not going back to sleep now; he’s sure of that. So instead, he rips off his helmet and eats strawberries over the sink. The juice drips between his fingers and down the back of his hand.

He didn’t buy these from you, since he’s been avoiding your stall at the market, and they’re less flavorful than the ones you’d grown. These are an anemic light red in color, instead of a dark ruby.

When they’re gone, he licks up the sticky pink trails, his tongue laving between his knuckles, and his thoughts wander back to your taste—how could they not? He thinks about your scent, about the way you taste in his dreams, about the salty sweetness between your legs.

Has anyone known you that way? Has anyone had the privilege of that intimacy, of taking you apart with their tongue?

The thought makes his cock twitch.

He’ll watch you again tomorrow. He’ll get a little bit closer, just a little. Not close enough for you to notice. And who knows? Maybe he’ll get lucky, and you’ll be hanging your laundry outside again and the light, floral smell of it—of you—will catch on the breeze. He’ll get what he needs, and you’ll never know. He will be sated by the occasional sight of you, by knowing you from afar.

He’s going to repeat these things to himself until they’re true.

He’s going to repeat these things to himself until you leave.

This is a compromise he can live with—he gets to indulge, and you stay safe.

It’s enough.

It has to be enough.

#monster!din #monster!din x female reader #dark!din #like a moth to the flame #din djarin x you #din djarin x female reader #mando x you #mando x female reader #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x female reader

1K notes · View notes

dorkicon · 2 months

Text

thingie i wrote about a tf au i mentioned a while back 😐👍 thanks to my pals on discord who had to hear me prattle on about this. questions welcome. etc.

helllooo.....SARtobots

the autobot gang (optimus hound bee jazz prowl ratchet and skids) are a team of rescue vehicles sent down to earth alongside cybertronian drones to help rescue people. optimus is a first responder/fire truck, ratchet is an old hippy ambulance, prowl stays at the base as their intell guy, hes a pre established package deal with jazz, who is a search and rescue copter, bee is a hardened foot soldier/scout, skids is a scientist interested in humanity, hound is our pov character, a rough and tumble upstart.

megatron is also planetside with his team. megatron is a keenly loyal general to straxus, the leader of the decepticons, soundwave is his long suffering 2ic, astrotrain is the strong silent type...he does whatever hes told, but he has a bit of a soft spot, seeing earths technology as wildlife to be respected, starscream is starscream, he has some history with bumblebee, making it his goal to snuff out the scout personally! thundercracker is hounds counterpart, and stars protégé. theyre on earth in search of devastator, a lost combiner megatron is convinced will be the secret weapon that wins the war for straxus. nevermind that the constructicons are scattered across the planet after being hurtled across space a kajillion years ago...and wont be too keen on battle once theyre reactivated...

so the cons and bots butt heads on earth, ignorant to the larger war until word gets out that the prime, sentinel, has killed straxus, causing an immediate power vacuum and knocking the decepticons off balance. good news for optimus' team right? well...

sentinel sent them to earth as an invasion! hes using those drones i mentioned to strip earth of its energy as a last surge to squash the decepticons and win the war. and who cares if optimus' team gets caught in the destruction? cant make an omelet without destroying a few nameless autobots right?

(hey i couldnt find a place to fit this but alpha trion is the real leader of the autobots. hes more of a figurehead though)

well at the same time, megatron learns that straxus has been murdered. before he can get it in his head to get revenge for his fallen leader, megatron learns frm his source that straxus was killed after going to alpha trion with peace talks. his leader, who megatron has been devoted to for millions of years...gave up! well megatron dismisses it as propaganda. hes going to kill sentinel prime.

the issue here is that the autobots are the only one with a ship...and those drones going haywire arent exactly helping things, bc theyve begun to attack anything that threatens them indiscriminately. so...the only solution is to aid the autobots in disposing of them, in return for use of their ship.

megatron and optimus come to a shaky truce, that no ones really happy with, besides maybe tc and hound, with their already budding friendship. bumblebee and starscream are like lowkey trying to sabotage it, until they realize they make a pretty good team. to their horror. for example. megatron, for his part, respects his side of the deal, trusting optimus to do the same. he slowly comes to turn that loyalty he had for straxus onto prime, who isnt exactly sure what to do with it--hes no soldier!

of course, they also have to work together to get the ship back online as well, since it was kicked offline back when sentinel activated the drones. thats...pretty much where im at atm. also i think shockwave is megatrons source on cybertron. loyal in any universe baby.

#straxus is like. hes the old noble 'respects the rules of warfare' type but like. a lot of shit goes on under his nose. he kind of lets it-#happen though #yeah megs isnt the leader. ops not a military leader but he still kicks ass. source: he is optimus prime #or orion? gee i dont know #tfau #transformers au #idk. tags #sartobots #maybe this is stream of consciousness nonsense .perhaps.#anyway (poses)

17 notes · View notes

baylardo · 2 years

Text

I heckingn love that Basics is essentially right after Resolutions ESPECIALLY FOR AU PURPOSES EHEHEGGHGG,,,,,,,

It’s funny to think about how they’re essentially in the same circumstance they were in on New Earth where they’re stranded on a planet hahahaghh. A little bit worse off now but I bet Kathryn and chakotay are like K WE KNOW THE DRILL very mom and dad camping trip survival mode with their crew hehe. Also VERY cute to consider that chakotay never had to make a fire on New Earth cause it’s in Basics where he’s like IM THE WORST 😭 at making fires haha.

I also always forget that there’s a scene where chakotay offers to carry lil baby Naomi for Samantha while they’re down on the planet and my brain ALWAYS ENVISIONS whenever I watch this ep that on top of doing this he’s probably got the triplets all in slings on him that he’s carrying as well heeheeeee. AND AND,,,, there’s a hecking series of scenes where naomi has begun showing symptoms of illness and hehehehegeh it makes me wonder if on New Earth that’d have been something Kathryn and chakotay would have had to deal with, likely with Edward. :333 but their response to it was very DOTEY and cute.

IVE SAID IT BEFORE but SOOOOOOO fitting for threshold au that chakotay is conflicted about fathering a son conceived without his consent and that his father consoles him over this and reminds him of a legend where the women got R WORDED and had a bunch of babies who were accepted among the people despite the means in which they were conceived which is VERY THRESHOLD CORE AHAGRGAGAG. And I bet ESPECIALLY after Resolutions if that’s where Kathryn calls him Papa in front of the kids for the first time, I’m sure that now that they’re back to their lives off of New Earth, he’s uncertain of his place once more. But to Kolopak he’s probably project these insecurities in referring to Seska’s child, which he’s probably concerned about as well. But I like to think Kolopak’s a LITTLE more omnipotent/aware of chakotays circumstance and knows where his son needs to find peace and acceptance of his position as a father hehe.

#resolutions through basics is suiuuchchcchch an endearing little segment of time for threshold au for me #I think it’s a very pivotal point for both Kathryn AND chakotay and their roles as parents :)#it’s very cute to think that New Earth was like practice mode for Kathryn especially HAH #she seems so much more patient (annoyed but patient!) about being stuck planetside #and she’s taking care of so many more people now heeheeeeee #threshold au

6 notes · View notes

natjennie · 1 year

Text

a ghosts space au where they're all bridge crew of a ship, cap is captain and defense/munitions officer, pat is medic and chief science officer. Astro-Light Intergalactic Communications and Navigation (alison, colloquially) is their ship's ai. thomas is technically communications officer but alison does most of the work and he fawns over her. humphrey is a cyborg/droid or something so his head still detaches. maybe Mike is their like.. manager? sponsor? planetside so he has to do all his contact to them through alison. is this anything?

#is this anything???#please let it be something #bbc ghosts #ghosts in space!

80 notes · View notes

dnightshade0 · 3 months

Text

Voltron: vampire lance trying to enjoy his blood.

I have this one Voltron AU where Lance ends up turning into a vampire and now has to adjust to his new life.

Important note: when this lance gets his blood, he gets it by catching wild animals, and carefully siphoning their blood through an IV into thermoses to drink later. without harming the animals. This lance has a bit of an issue when it comes to feeding. He doesn’t like the idea of killing for blood.

Lance is sitting on the couch in the common area drinking a thermos of blood when Keith walks in and sits down next to him.

Keith: hay, what cha drinking?

Lance: … um… blood?

Keith: no, I mean WHAT are you drinking?

Lance: … again BLOOD!

Keith: what life form did that blood come from?

Lance: ah, why didn’t you just ask that in the first place?

Keith: just answer the question.

Lance looks down at his blood, turning it in his hand and shrugging.

Lance: hm, meh idk some alien animal we caught back on the last planet we visited.

Keith: what did it look like?

Lance: idk some kind of weird purple hippo-like animal.

At this Keith gasps in anger.

Keith: WTF MAN?! HOW COULD YOU?

Lance: dude what’s your problem? Why are you getting so bent out of shape for?

Keith: HIPPOS ARE MY FAVORITE ANIMAL!

Lance: ok? And?

Keith: YOUR EATING MY FAVORITE ANIMAL!

Lance: omg are you serious right now?

Just then shiro and the others walk in, hearing all the commotion.

Shiro: hay, I heard shouting, what’s going on in here?

Lance: Keith is throwing a fit because I’m drinking his favorite animal!

Keith: HES DRINKING ALIEN HIPPO BLOOD!

Shiro looks so confused right now.

Shiro: … huh?

Pidge: only you two could create drama out of nothing.

Hunk: I don’t see what the big deal is. Lance has to eat too. And it’s not like he actually killed the animal to get its blood.

lance: THANK YOU HUNK!

Keith: still how would you feel if he drank the blood of something you liked? What if he drank the mice’s blood?

Pidge: Keith, the mice aren’t even large enough to serve as an hors d’oeuvre.

Keith: what about kaltenecker?! What if lance ate her?!

Lance: I would never drink kaltenecker Keith!

Keith: and why not?

Lance: cause she is like family! I’d never feed on family! And seriously Keith, I can’t just decide not to feed on everyone’s favorite animal. If I did that then I wouldn’t be able to drink blood from anything period.

Keith: so your saying it doesn’t matter what animal it is, you’d eat it regardless?

Lance: ok let me stop you right there. I may drink animal blood but I do still have my standards. There ARE animals I won’t drink.

Hunk: like what?

Lance: I draw the line at bug-like, cute adorable and babies.

Then Keith mumbles.

Keith: I bet you’d eat a baby hippo.

Lance: NO KEITH I WOULD NOT!

Keith: just you wait lance, someday the universe will exact karma upon you for eating a hippo!

Lance: for the love of god Keith! First off, it’s not an actual hippo! It LOOKED LIKE A HIPPO! Second, I didn’t eat it! I just had it donate a few pints of its blood and it went on its merry way! STILL ALIVE AND VERY MUCH NOT EATEN!

Allura walks in.

Allura: paladins! Get your armor on. We have a diplomatic mission on the planet kolslac. The kolslacians wish to join the voltron coalition and are requesting an audience with us.

Lance gives a sigh of relief.

Lance: OH THANK GOD! Saved by the princess!

Shiro: all right team! Let suit up and go meet these kolslacian diplomats.

(Later planetside)

Lance stood frozen in horror at the sight that awaited team voltron on the planet kolslac. The kolslacians as it turned out were a race of purple bipedal hippo-like aliens.

Lance was mortified.

Lance: (whispers) you gotta be kidding me!

Hunk: (whispers) dude, are you ok?

Lance: (whispers back) no I am NOT ok! I’m surrounded by a race of alien hippo people! This is Keith’s fault! He wished this! He asked the universe to punish me for drinking alien hippo blood and now I’m in hippo hell!

Hunk: buddy calm down! I don’t think the universe is really punishing you.

Lance: oh are you really gonna tell me that after the insane conversation we had about drinking alien hippo blood, that us coming to a planet of actual alien hippo people is just some random coincidence?!

Hunk: …um.. ok I’ll admit that is one hell of a coincidence and it surprises the heck out of me too but still, I really don’t think you’re in any danger here. These guys don’t even know that you drank alien hippo blood. So I think you’re safe.

Lance: yeah unless some mullet goes and rats me out to his new alien hippo buddies.

Hunk: I don’t think Keith would do that.

Lance: you sure about that?!

Hunk: …um…

Hunk then turns to Keith and taps him on the shoulder.

Hunk: (whispers) Keith you wouldn’t tell these kolslacians about Lance drinking “you know what” would you?

Keith looks at hunk then turns his gaze towards Lance and give him the most evil grin.

Lance: I am so dead…😰

Fortunately, the alliance talks go over smoothly without incident and surprisingly Keith says nothing to the kolslacians in regards to lance drinking alien hippo blood. Everyone goes home happy. But Lance, the poor guy. He suffered through the entire thing freaking out about if the kolslacians will want to roast him on a stake or chase after him with alien versions of torches and pitchforks. Or maybe even a mob trampling him to death with their big hippo looking feet.

When it was all over and team voltron returns to the castleship, Lance gives a huge sigh of relief. But as soon as he sees Keith walking in, he turns to him and shouts…

Lance: I HOPE YOUR FREAKIN HAPPY NOW! I’M NEVER DRINKING ALIEN HIPPO BLOOD AGAIN!!!

26 notes · View notes

27dragons · 5 months

Text

New Year Countdown: Dec 28

Getting down to the final few days! Today I wrote a little Winteriron SciFi AU for you!

Dec 28 - Winteriron - Scifi AU - Scarf

Tony found Bucky, finally, on the observation deck, watching the sun rise over the planet below them. He was sitting on the edge of the walkway, his feet dangling over a shaft that was only used when the ship was in zero-gee. Tony folded down next to him and shivered a little as the cold metal leached the heat out of his body through his clothes. He wrapped his hands in the trailing ends of the scarf he always wore when they weren’t planetside. Why did space have to be so cold?

They watched in silence as the sun rose over the rim of the planet.

“How many orbits have you been sitting here?” Tony finally asked.

Bucky didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the planet below, where the terminator divided the deadly night from the almost-survivable day..

Tony nudged him. “How many?”

“Dunno. Three? Four?”

“So, since the mission brief,” Tony surmised.

“Guess so.”

“You could tell him you don’t want to go down there.”

Bucky shot him a look. “And who else has he got who can actually do what needs doin’ down there?” he asked. His tone was mild, but Tony could feel the heat bubbling underneath it.

Tony pointed out, “He can do it himself.”

“The garf I’m gonna make him do that,” Bucky growled. “That’s an ice planet down there, Tony. You know he doesn’t deserve to deal with another one of those, not ever again.”

“And you do?”

Bucky closed his eyes. “It’s different.”

“Why?”

Bucky’s eyes opened, but instead of looking at Tony, they stared past the planet, out into the black. “I got things to atone for.”

Tony’s chest ached. “You know I’ve forgiven you for that,” he said softly.

“I know,” Bucky said. “But I haven’t.” He turned toward Tony, taking Tony’s hands in his own. “I have to do this, sparks. But I’m glad to know you’ll be waiting for me to come back.”

“Always.” Tony unwound the scarf from his neck and draped it gently over Bucky’s shoulders. “Stay warm down there.”

#my writing #countdown to 2024 #winteriron #scifi au

23 notes · View notes

thicctails · 8 months

Text

Scales, Claws, And Other Signs Of Fatherhood

a little while back, i said that i'd like to write a crossover between my SW Dragon Batch AU and Canon, so this is a little test for that! If you like this, and would like to see more, please let me know! I'd love an excuse to write baby 'mega again.

The last soft, orange-tinted rays of dying light were just beginning to dip behind Corruscant's horizon as the members of Clone Force 99 sauntered out of their beloved ship, the Havoc Marauder. The enhanced clones had been invited out to 79's by one of their reg brothers, Commander Cody, a rare treat and one that they were eager to take their ori'vod up on. Tech, especially, was thrilled that he was going to have the opportunity to meet General Anakin Skywalker face to face. According to Cody, the 212th's general had heard about their exploits, and had mentioned them to his former Padawan. Apparently, the man had been very impressed, and had specifically asked to go be introduced the next time they were both planetside.

As they exited the ship hanger, the batch was greeted by the familiar faces of their brothers, Rex and Cody, as well as someone they'd only seen on holos or from a distance.

"General Skywalker," Hunter greeted, extending a hand, "It's nice to finally meet you."

"You must be Hunter. It's nice to meet you too." the Jedi replied with a smile, "Please, just call me Anakin. We're all equals here!"

The two men shook hands, and something in the air shifted.

A full-body shiver wracked Anakin's body, and his face scrunched in confusion as the Force surged with some unknown feeling. Even the clones, who were not in tune with the Force, felt a prickle of unnatural energy rush through them, the hairs on the back of their necks standing on end.

"General, what's-!" Rex started, but was cut off by a blinding explosion of light. The air crackled with energy, and all of the men flinched as their ears popped unexpectedly, their bodies becoming overwhelmed by a feeling of pins and needles that infected every muscle, leaving them unable to hold themselves upright.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling dissipated.

Hunter managed to right himself first, groaning as he pushed himself up onto his knees. To his left, he heard something shift, a new heartbeat joining the six he already heard, not counting his own. It was slower than their racing pulses, yet it was slowly getting faster, like someone rousing from a deep sleep. Forcing his eyes open, the clone Sergeant turned his head.

Tech lay on the ground before him, his signature goggles missing from his face. He was dressed in a casual black shirt and dark gray pants, and he had a small, cream-coloured blanket strewn across his shoulder.

Hunter blinked, shook his head slightly, then glanced over his shoulder at the spot where his brother should be.

Tech was stirring from his place on the ground, still clad in his armor with his goggles firmly in place over his eyes.

"Ooough... I think I hit my head. 'm seein' double" Wrecker croaked, running a hand across his face. Hunter stiffened at the realisation that it was not just him that could see the Other Tech. General Skywalker, Cody and Rex were also up now, all three staring at the newcomer with saucer-wide eyes.

"You're not the only one." Crosshair hissed, reaching for his spare blaster.

The Other Tech shifted again, his nose wrinkling in irritation. It was an expression Hunter knew exceedingly well, having seen it time and time again on his batchmate's face.

"Wrecker, Crosshair, if you two wake Omega, I'll skin you both." the Other Tech grumbled sleepily, no real malice to his tired voice.

The sniper and demolition expert gave each other wide-eyed stares, before looking to their leader for some kind of advice or plan. Hunter, for his part, gave them an equally confused face.

"Tech?" he tried carefully.

"Yes?" twin voices replied to his gruff voice, something that caused both clones to become alert at last.

Tech and Other Tech nearly mirrored each other in the way they sat up, eyes wide and filled with equal parts curiosity and caution. Their heads tilted in sync.

"Fascinating." they spoke in perfect harmony, something that made both of them start in surprise.

Other Tech broke the parroting first, squinting at his counterpart first, before letting his gaze flick to the rest of the group, his mouth setting in a tight line. "Hmm, I don't suppose I'm lucky enough that this is all some kind of elaborate dream or hallucination?"

"Uh, no?" Anakin managed out, still recovering from the effect of feeling reality rip itself apart and stitch itself back together all around him.

Other Tech sighed. "I thought not. You're all too young for that to make much sense."

Once those words had been spoken, Hunter realised that Other Tech did look older than his vod'ika. He had the beginnings of a few laugh lines, and there was a look in his eye that spoke of wisdom his counterpart had yet to gain. Questions swirled in his mind, but one stood out among all the rest.

"Who's Omega?"

Other Tech stared at him for a moment, before shaking himself.

"Ah, yes, I had almost forgotten that there had been a time before we had a daughter. I suppose you wouldn't recognise her-"

Hunter's brain had nearly short-circuited at the word daughter, but he quickly pulled himself together as he watched his older-younger brother's face go from sleepy and fond to panic-stricken as he touched the blanket on his shoulder. Instantly, Other Tech was on his feet, whirling around as he searched for something, or, rather, someone that he clearly believed should be there.

"Oh Gods, not again." his voice cracked dangerously, his breath hitching in panic.

Hunter forced his legs to work, his elder batchmate instincts kicking in. He knew the signs that Tech was about to have a panic attack, and it seemed as though time had not changed them. Around him, his vode pulled themselves out of their shock and stood as well, not knowing exactly what they should do in this situation. Tech, especially, seemed lost, mouthing the word 'daughter' to himself in disbelief.

"Hey, vod, breathe. It's okay, we're okay, and you're okay." Hunter soothed, "I'm going to put my hand on your shoulder, is that okay?"

Instead of the jerky nod or head shake he was used to, Other Tech whipped around and snarled at him, his teeth fang-like and wicked sharp as he bared them. His pupils had narrowed into slits, and Hunter could see glittering grey scales beginning to dot his brother's face.

"It is not okay!" he snapped, and Hunter stumbled back a few steps as a pair of wings suddenly formed on the other clone's back, leathery and tipped with ivory claws.

There was real anger in Other Tech's voice, but what Hunter really heard was fear, raw and almost palpable. The sudden turn that this already bizarre situation had taken made Hunter feel afraid too, not that he'd ever admit it.

It must have shown on his face, however, because Other Tech stepped back, his pupils rounding out again as he drew his wings in close to his body.

"I- I apologise. You have no way of understanding the situation I have just come from, but that does not give me the right to bare my teeth at you." he said, sounding genuinely sorry.

"WHAT THE KRIFF ARE THOSE?!" Wrecker shouted, having put himself between Crosshair and Tech, who were, like everyone else, staring at the two new appendages that had just sprouted from the other man's back.

Other Tech blinked at the question, before slowly extending a wing towards the group, one eyebrow raised. "My... wing? Wrecker, are you feeling alright?"

"Why do you have wings?" Cody barked, causing the other to shrink back at his 'I'm so done with this banthashit' tone of voice.

"Why do I- is that meant to be some kind of joke? I'm afraid I'm not the best with humour." Other Tech frowned. "We all have wings, I am not the exception here."

Hunter swallowed hard, stepping towards this strange, otherworldly version of his little brother. "Actually, vod, you are."

Other Tech stared at him, eyes wide.

"You- you're just human? All of you?!"

"Yes?" Hunter replied, becoming more and more convinced he was the one hallucinating by the second.

"What else would we be?" Anakin asked.

Other Tech looked at everyone, eyes searching for some kind of lie, some hint that they were all joking. When he found one, he exhaled hard, pinching the space between his eyes before speaking.

"Dragon shifters. Where I'm from, we're all dragon shifters."

#star wars #star wars the bad batch #the bad batch #star wars dragons #star wars the clone wars #dragon au #star wars fanfiction

20 notes · View notes