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nanagoswife · 3 years

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Contrition of War

A request for @generousrunawaydonut

Summary: After going against orders from Obi-Wan to leave him behind, he's mad that you risked yourself.

W/C: 3.2k

Warnings: Angst, mention of blood and death and serious injury

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There was a light trickle of something wet dripping down the side of your face. You weren’t surprised as you had just jumped under a bunch of rocks to save many, but more importantly one particular person. This particular person also would’ve been the only one who had no possibility to escape.

Despite his protests and telling you all to leave before it was too late, you jumped in anyways, doing your best to deflect laser bolts while using your other hand to push the force through you to hold off the falling cliffside.

Although you were able to stop a lot of them, you were still unable to contain them all. A couple had come whizzing by you, a couple striking you as you prevented multiple injuries and one definite death.

You were aware the others were safe, but you had to wait for the right window of time so that you could try to guarantee your own safety. That was, until a blaster just grazed your shoulder. Thankfully, not enough for it to actually touch your flesh.

As time went by, it was getting continually harder to hold it all. The window you were hoping wasn’t showing itself. You started to fear that maybe this wouldn’t go as planned and that it may compromise everyones’ safety.

That is what you thought until you saw two other flashes of blue, now deflecting the shots that you had been determinedly fighting off.

“Y/N! Go now!” yelled Anakin over the noise. You looked at Obi-Wan who wasn’t breaking his attention from the droids in front of you.

Slight disappointment filled you when he didn’t spare a glance over at you to send you extra reassurance, but you didn’t let it distract you. There wasn’t enough time.

With the last of your strength, you pushed the rocks towards the droids.

The whole front line of them was crushed under the stone pieces, and awarded everyone enough time to get to the ships before they started firing again. Obi-Wan took the rear as Anakin came over and helped you as your tired frame began to pull you down, not allowing you to get up on your own.

It didn’t take long to get on the ship, and you were surprised you didn’t just collapse from how you just exerted yourself once you were safely up the ramp. There was so much of your force energy that was used for that act alone that you wouldn’t be able to do much else before getting a decent rest. Preferably in Obi-Wan’s arms.

“Why in Corellia’s nine hells did you do that?” Obi-Wan almost yelled. You slightly jumped at the suddenness of it. The doors had only just closed to the outside as the transport had lifted off.

Obi-Wan was nearly drowning in furious worry. He had nearly lost you due to your little stunt in the name of saving him.

You looked down at the floor, unable to meet his gaze as he reprimanded you. Anakin wasn’t far behind you, resting a hand on your shoulder for comfort as you kept your head down. He even slightly pulled you back and away from the man you loved, currently sounding like you had just betrayed him and the Jedi by saving him.

“Obi-Wan, calm down. Why can’t you be grateful at the fact that she just saved your life along with so many others,” Anakin shot back at his former master. “It may have been reckless, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen, or done, before,” Anakin continued sternly.

“Yes, and how does that usually turn out for us, Anakin? This was a brash, undercalculated and dangerous action that could’ve done a lot more harm than good!”

Obi-Wan’s blazing eyes still hadn’t calmed when you caught a glance at him. You were almost afraid that he would soon say something to deepen the pain you felt, and it was leading to that. You thought he would appreciate the help, not be mad about it. On top of the exhaustion, this wasn’t going well for you especially when you wanted his comfort. You wanted to fall into his warm embrace.

All you had wanted to do was help. Sure, you were spurred on by the fact that you wanted to keep someone you cared a lot about alive and unharmed, but there were others that were in danger. If needed, that could be your excuse to everyone else, you mused. It could hide the fact that you acted more out of emotion and previous experiences than The Code permitted.

Still, that didn’t dampen the painful twist in your chest as you were sure you were about to be lectured. Not only that, but it seemed like Obi-Wan was actually mad about you saving him. You thought he’d be happy. Happy that he could spend more days with you and then tend to your wounds in the quiet of one of your rooms, but that wasn’t seeming like a possibility with how this was.

“I’m not your padawan to protect,” he said suddenly, irritation in his tone.

You felt tears well up in your eyes with an extra sting of pain as you couldn’t bring yourself to actually look at Obi-Wan. It was too much to even just hear his tone, and it wouldn’t be helped if you saw the same thing in his eyes. Never, in your relationship or the time you’ve just known him, has he ever spoken to you like this. Never has he used a past failure against you.

When he finally took a moment to evaluate the situation, he saw that tears were forming in your eyes as you still kept your head down. Absolute shock froze Anakin in place at his words. Immediate remorse filled him as he realised what he had just said.

Anakin, your good friend and ever protective of you, even when he was still a padawan, used the hand on your shoulder to pull you into a hug while giving him a hard look.

“I-I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan stuttered out, changing his tone to be gentler. “I just- you could’ve been killed.”

“You think I don’t know that,” you said, shaky and muffled into Anakin’s robes, face turned away. “We’re Jedi. It’s part of our job description. To protect.”

His emotions were clouding every rational thought. So much so that he just brought up a sensitive topic and used it against you. He had no right to, not when he knew how much pain it brought you.

“General Skywalker?” a voice from Anakin’s comm buzzed as you felt your transport land in the star destroyer hanger.

Anakin pulled away carefully with a small groan of annoyance, still making sure you were alright before answering.

“What is it, Rex?”

“You’re needed in the docking bay. R2 seems to have a problem,” the clone captain replied.

With a sigh, Anakin let Rex know he would be there soon before turning his comm off.

“Will you be alright?” He asked you, genuine concern.

You nodded, “I was thinking of heading to my quarters, anyway.” You gave Obi-Wan a small glance as you said that. There was something in you that wanted to know how he was feeling.

At the moment, his fury from only moments ago had died down, now showing remorse for his words. Concern was also etched in, mainly felt through the force rather than seen on his facial expression.

“Alright,” Anakin started, breaking your train of thought, “If you need me, comm me immediately. Maybe get those scratches checked.”

You gave a snort in response which received a playful smirk from Anakin before he walked away, giving Obi-Wan a brief, hard glare before leaving you alone with Obi-Wan. You weren’t sure whether he was about to continue to lecture you on what you had done, or whether he was going to apologize. You could feel the conflict, but nothing on his face gave away what he was going to do.

Either way, you didn’t want to find out. There was too much running through your mind, and you didn’t want any of it to come out. Especially with the fact that he reopened an only just healed wound.

“Darling, I-” Before he could say another word, you dropped your eyes to the floor again and fled the room. He could feel the dejection radiating across your bond before it snapped away. You had completely closed off your side of the bond.

This left Obi-Wan alone. Between what he said to you, no, more like the way he talked to you and how he was chided by his former apprentice and then the way you seemed like you couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him, let alone have your bond open, he was frozen in place. Shock at everything absolutely flooded him, and he didn’t know what he was doing.

Bringing his hands up, he rubbed his face with both palms before running them through his hair, letting out a sigh of disappointment in himself. That was no way to talk to you. Especially when all he wanted was to be closer to you, comfort you, and when he had truly wanted to help you with your injuries.

Now was not the time, though. He knew you would want time alone, and he knew you wouldn’t want him to come knocking on your door. Not after this. Not when, for the first time ever, he had raised his voice at you.

It didn’t help that everything had been so stressful, especially for you. Recently, your padawan, Tylo Dara, had been gravely injured in a previous battle despite how hard you tried to protect him.

You and your padawan along with a squad of clones were answering a call for help on Toydaria. While you had been walking through where the Separatist troops had been sighted, a blast had shattered the walls of the ravine you were walking through. It was an ambush and you, along with any unhurt clones, were barely able to fend them off. Once the firing had ceased, you had frantically searched for Taylo, only to find him pinned under multiple boulders. Relief troops thankfully came soon enough to keep your padawan and a few clones alive.

Though the attack was an ambush, you blamed yourself for everything that had happened. It took so much of Obi-Wan to finally convince you that it wasn’t your fault. Now he had most likely just undid that.

Other than the mass casualties of your clone squad, it looked like Tylo would never be well enough to spend another day training to become a Jedi. Too much in his body was damaged that the bacta tank did next to nothing. Not even the healers could fix him enough to bring him back to usual health.

That’s when it clicked for Obi-Wan. You didn’t want to lose another that you cared about. You didn’t want to lose the one you loved.

Finally breaking out of his frozen position, he went after you. There was so much that he needed to apologize for. You didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that when all you did was protect him and so many others from the falling cliffside that had been blown off. In fact, it was one of the most impressive things he had ever seen.

Although you had injuries that needed to be tended to, Obi-Wan knew that the medbay wasn’t where you would go. No, you always wanted the injured clones to gain the limited medics’ attention along with the droids. That’s why it had been customary for Obi-Wan to patch you up after every mission, even if he wasn’t on it with you. You would be so stubborn that many times you would arrive home at the Temple before letting yourself get any medical aid.

Since there wasn’t anywhere else, he knew he would find you in your room. This would seem normal if you hadn’t spent nearly all of your nights in Obi-Wan’s room.

Standing outside of your door, he took a deep breath before knocking. For a moment, he was afraid you wouldn’t answer until your door slid open.

When he looked at you, you were slouched over. Your hair was a mess and he could see the trails on your cheeks where tears had run down your face. To you, you would’ve said that you looked horrible. To him, you looked beautiful. To him, whether you were happy, sad, angry, bloody or sweaty, you always made his heart skip a beat.

Now, he just had to keep himself together so that you may forgive his imprudent words.

“May I come in?” he asked, voice slightly shaky.

You shifted from one foot to the other, “I don’t know if-”

“Y/N, please,” he said, pleading with you. If you rejected him now, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

When your eyes met his, you could see how desperate he was. The cerulean pools of his eyes were showing a storm of emotion that begged you to let him in. It was a look that you were never able to say no to.

Relenting, you only nodded and made your way back to the corner of your room atop of your bed. It was the closest thing you could get for comfort, the cool durasteel pressing into your back.

Relief filled Obi-Wan as he cautiously stepped into your room. Closing the door, he took a glance around. Compared to his that had both yours and his things, this room was practically empty. On top of that, it was cold and felt lonely.

When his eyes rested on you, you had your knees brought up to your chest, arms wrapped around them as you sat in the corner. Your stare was blank as your chin rested on top of your knees.

Obi-Wan’s heart twisted in guilt as he experimented through your shared bond. He was only met by your walls still locked shut. Although he couldn’t wrap his force with yours, he could still feel the sadness and grief radiating off of you. There was also remorse that floated around, but not overpowering.

Making his way over, he sat on the edge of your bed, “Y/N, I am so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“But you were right,” you said, your voice small and hollow.

“No,” Obi-Wan said immediately, “No I wasn’t. Thanks to you, so many men are still alive.”

“You were right about one thing. You aren’t my padawan. I no longer have a padawan. I-” fresh tears were filling your eyes as your voice caught in your throat. “I- I no longer have Tylo.”

His heart sunk in his chest just like it had the first time you had told him of your padawan. Just like that night, he wanted to pull you into him and hold you as you cried, but he didn’t know if you would let him. He didn’t know if he crossed a line that he couldn’t come back from.

Testing the waters, he moved a hand to rest gently on an ankle, only now noticing that you hadn’t even removed your battle worn boots. When you didn’t try and move away, a small bit of relief filled him.

“I had no right bringing that up. It wasn’t fair of me, especially when I know how you feel about it.” Desperation to make his intentions truly known was starting to break through into his tone. He so badly wanted you to open up to him so that he could reinforce it all.

For what felt like the first time, you brought your eyes to meet his. There was so much pain that filled them that Obi-Wan almost broke down. The amount of sadness he caused you made him loathe himself. Anger was never the right answer and definitely not against you.

“I just didn’t want it to happen to anyone else,” you started, voice delicate and not letting sound properly make its way out, the silent parts sounding like a breeze trying to talk. “I didn’t want to lose you, Obi,” your tears began to burn down your cheeks once again as you said this.

Obi-Wan moved his hand to place it over one of yours. If this was the only comfort you’d let him give you, then he wouldn’t waste it. Then, you opened, letting him finally wrap your end of the bond to be wrapped in his comfort.

“I don’t care how much love goes against the code. I love Tylo like a son. I love Cody, I love all of the clones. I love Anakin. Obi-Wan, I love you. I love you.”

Obi-Wan couldn’t hold back anymore. He moved so that he was on his knees beside you, pulling you into him and hugging you tight. Although this was to comfort you, it comforted him just as much.

“I love you too, darling,” he said, kissing your head as your tears grew heavier and your heaving breaths grew as desperate as your hands clasping at his robes. “What you did was extraordinary and you saved so many of us. I was just so scared because I almost lost you.”

Carefully, he moved so that he was sitting, you partially on his lap as you buried your face into the crook of his neck. The spot was damp with the combination of your tears and your warm breath, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was comforting you and being there for support like you always were for him. All he cared about was that you still loved him.

“I’m sorry, Obi. I-”

“Shh, you have nothing to apologize for,” he said quickly. “I’m the only one who has to apologize. I made you feel bad for doing the right thing.”

Sniffling, you pulled away to look in his eyes. His smile melted all sadness and worry that you still stored. If that wasn’t it, then it was him wiping your face dry with the soft fabric of his undershirt.

Obi-Wan wasn’t satisfied until you smiled when he cupped your cheek with one hand and, with the other, intertwined his fingers with yours.

“Now, will you allow me to check your injuries?”

You chuckled as you brought your free hand to brush away the hair from his face, “No.”

“No?” The confusion on his face made you laugh.

“Not until I do this.”

With your hand still brushing his hair back, you slid it to the nape of his neck. As he caught on, he finished your thoughts before you were able to act. He closed the distance and pressed his lips to yours, both of you breathing out a contented sigh.

Everything around you melted away. Every doubt, fear, and shred of sadness disappeared. Obi-Wan was here. Your love was here and made you feel the safest you’ve ever been since the start of this war.

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@stardancerluv @where-fantasy-meets-reality @jaydenwoo @madmax2003 @mackycat11 @generousrunawaydonut @imabeautifulbutterfly @animalgirl05

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monamourbladie-mb · 3 years

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19 Years Later... (Darth Vader x reader miniseries chapter 1)

19 years have passed since Y/n’s husband Anakin’s death, and she has become the leading General of the newly founded Rebellion alongside her past Jedi friend Obi-Wan Kenobi, now known as Ben Kenobi. When her children Luke and Leia Skywalker gets kidnapped by Darth Vader, the man who killed her husband; her and Obi-Wan Kenobi must come rescue her. But when she finds out who’s behind Darth Vader’s mask, the truth is something she never thought she had to prepare herself for.

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Index:

1. prologue

2. chapter 1

3. chapter 2 [Coming soon]

wc: 2.3k

warnings: cursing

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Being the leader of the new Rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire had its perks. One of the things that was not a perk, however, was hiding one’s actual name from their people, and past.

None of Y/n’s rebels knew of her past as a former Jedi Knight that fought in the Clone Wars. Though she fought like a cunning warrior, the thought had never once crossed their minds, seeing as all the Jedi were dead.

She had raised her children Luke and Leia with Obi-Wan’s guidance to be trained as Jedi, seeing as both of them were very Force-Sensitive.

Watching Luke wield his father’s lightsaber brought such bittersweet feelings to both old Jedi Knights. Anakin was such a big part of both of their lives, that it was almost painful to see this without him there.

Anakin would be beyond proud of his son and daughter, for sure.

Y/n recalled the first time he and Leia held their lightsabers. They were both 9, the same age their Father was when he was brought him by Qui-Gon Jyn from Tattooine.

Luke had rushed up to Obi’s old trunk excitedly, admiring the strange silver object with big eyes as Leia crowded behind him, “What’s that, Uncle Obi?”

“This is your father’s lightsaber, my dear. He would’ve wanted you to have it,” Obi replied, a sad smile on his face as he held onto the hilt, activating its stellar blue glow.

“This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster—“ Obi handed it to Luke and his eyes widened, waving it around gently so he didn’t break it. “—an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”

“Is it mine?” Luke’s eyes beamed in excitement. Obi-Wan nodded, sitting down as he picked up Leia, putting her on his knee.

“For over a thousand generations, the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice. The old republic. Before the Empire...” he trailed off, turning his head towards the window.

Y/n rushed into the room, hearing the lightsaber and fearing there was an intruder, “Obi-Wan! What’s going on, I’m—“ she ignited her brilliant (l/c) saber, holding it in a protective stance before she realized it was just Luke. She sighed heavily and disengaged her saber, attaching it back to her belt loop, “Obi, you didn’t tell me you were doing this now...” she crossed her arms.

“Mom! Obi-Wan told me this was Dad’s! Look!” he started swinging it gently, making sure it didn’t hit anyone since he knew how deadly they could be. She began to smile sadly as she remembered a young Anakin as a padawan, rushing in to show her his lightsaber he constructed the day he finally got one.

She smiled sadly, tears welling up in her eyes. “You look so much like your father, Luke,” she said sadly. Obi looked back at Luke, and for a split moment, he was reminded of the small slave his old master brought back with him. He smiled to himself remembering how he helped Anakin with his padawan braid.

“Princess, come here. I’ll let you hold my lightsaber, okay?” she handed Leia her saber gently, and she took gingerly from her hand. Leia took it and igniting it, the blade’s glow reflecting in her excited little eyes.

“Mom? How did dad die? You never answered me,” Luke asked. Y/n felt herself freeze in place, a large lump in her throat forming. “Luke, I...”

“I’ll tell them, Y/n,” Obi-Wan replied solemnly. “Your father was killed by a young Jedi named Darth Vader. He was a close friend of mine before he fell. He helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.” The room fell silent, until Luke asked another question, “So you and Uncle Obi are the last remaining Jedi?”

Obi-Wan shook his head no, “There are others, but sparse. To name a few, Master Yoda and Ahsoka Tano, your father’s Padawan learner. The last remaining Jedi are being hunted down by Vader, which is why we hide.”

Leia spoke up softly, “Is that why we don’t use our actual last name, mommy?”

“Yes, sweetheart. As long as Vader’s reign continues, we must hide our names. Darth Vader does not know about the two of you, so you are safe. For us, on the other hand...” she trailed off, and the kids understood.

“Mom... Mom,” Leia spoke loudly. Y/n blinked in confusion and turned back around, looking at her daughter, “Yeah, my love?”

“Are you okay mom?” Leia asked, frowning. “We need to look at the Death Star plans.”

“Right,” she sighed heavily, turning to face from the window out looking Yavin 4. “I’m fine, princess. I just... was remembering Anakin, that’s all.” Leia sighed and laid her hand on her mother’s back, rubbing it gently, “Dad would be proud of everything you’ve done, mom.” She began to tear up as she pulled Leia into a tight hug, “I hope so. It’s been about 20 years and it still doesn’t feel right,” silent tears fell down her cheeks into her daughter’s bunned hair.

“I’m proud of you, Leia. If you were to be trained within the Order now, you’d be the same age your father was when he became a Jedi Knight, and when he married me...” she sniffled, wiping her tears. Leia smiled softly, holding her mom’s hand, “Do you think he’d be proud of me, too?”

“I know he would,” she rubbed her fingertips against hers, “He would pull you into the tightest hug, spin you a little and say softly, ‘That’s my baby girl,’” she replied, her voice cracking slightly. Leia began to tear up as she hugged her back, “I wish I knew him...” she said softly. “I wish so too, babe, so bad...” Y/n sighed. But I won’t let his memory be in vain. Let’s go look at these plans and destroy that Death Star, yeah?”

Leia and Y/n walked to the main board room, seeing how the map was already up on display. “General Jonas, we’ve been examining the Death Star plans. They’re on screen now,” one of her commanding officers recited. “Good, thank you, officer. Have we discovered a weak point yet? Or at least some form of entry point?”

“No, ma’am. We haven’t studied long enough. There are many ways in, but all most likely heavily guarded. We will have to find a way to go under the radar without getting detected, somehow,” he replied. She nodded, walking closer to examine it. She closed her eyes and felt out through the Force for some answer. No surprise to her, she could barely feel anything at all but an empty void. Ever since Anakin had died, she had felt more distanced from the Force than ever. Maybe she and Anakin possessed a rare Dyad, or maybe she had simply lost touch with the Force; but no matter what she did, she was nowhere near as powerful in the Force as she used to be.

“Alert me if you find anything, Officer, I would love to have this Death Star in shambles by the end of the month,” Y/n left to walk out and to ask Obi-Wan on the matter. “Yes, ma’am,” he responded, turning back to his computer to get back to work.

Elsewhere, Leia was pacing in Luke’s room, grumbling to herself, “I know Obi-Wan has taught us to not let our emotions guide us, but I can’t when it comes to him. He killed our father, he should be dead!” Leia huffed in anger, collapsing down onto her twin’s bed.

Luke grunted in response, his mouth full of food still, “It’s not like you can take him on yourself. You’d die!” he said, or at least, sounded like he said. “I will not let the lives of those lost who got us the plans in the first place’s memories die. We wouldn’t be this close to planning an attack without their sacrifices. Moreover, Mom has had these plans for two days now, and she hasn’t done a single thing about it!” Leia responded quickly. Luke shrugged, “Leia. Be real. It’s not like we can steal a ship and fly to the Death Star, find it’s a weak point, and get back in time for dinner.”

Leia sat up, looking at Luke as if he had just committed mass murder. “...What?” Luke asked warily. Leia grinned, “That’s it! We’ll do just that, Luke! We’ll take one of mom’s ships, fly around the death star undetected and find weak entry points, and get back like we were never even gone!”

“Leia, you can not be serious right now!” Luke gasped, setting his food down, “We can’t do this, we could get in so much trouble! Or spotted!”

“Do you want to sit idly while our mother and uncle do nothing, whereas our Father’s murderer is out on the lose on that moon!” Leia snapped at him. He narrowed his eyes, “That’s no moon, Leia. Also, no, I don’t! But do we have a choice? No. We’re staying here.”

“No, we’re leaving. Whether I go alone is up to you entirely, but at this point, I just want the man who killed my father dead,” Leia said, glaring at him. Luke huffed, “You think I don’t want him dead, too? But we are children, we literally can’t do anything!”

“We are 19 years old and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit at home here and wait for Vader to kill more innocent people,” Leia frowned, crossing her arms. “I really need you with me, Luke. But I get it if you don’t go.” she stood up, grabbing her stuff to leave when Luke grumbled “Wait!” under his breath. “I’ll... go. Just to protect you. But this is a bad idea, and I don’t want to get caught,” he raised a brow to her. Leia grinned and hugged Luke tightly, “Thank you, thank you! You won’t regret this! But bring your lightsaber maybe, just in case?”

——————

“What do you mean, YOU LET THEM GO?” Y/n snapped to C3-PO, enraged. Threepio raised his hands in defense, “I couldn’t stop them, mistress! I tried my best, I swear!”

“You let my children go confront Vader ALONE? You’re so lucky I don’t shut you down for that!” she growled, shoving past him with Obi-Wan following close behind her. “Oh, dear. I’m doomed,” Threepio whined.

“We have to go after them, we... I can’t... I can’t lose my kids,” Y/n said nervously, starting to pace once Obi got close. “Y/n, calm down sweetheart. I need you to breathe and think,” Obi said, holding onto her shoulders gently. “If we go, we have an equal chance of being caught since they’ll already be on high alert.”

She sighed heavily, shaking her head, “I hate you for being so levelheaded and smart, Obi,” she frowned. “That’s my specialty,” he winked. “Now, we need to stop and make sure that we can pull this rescue off without risking our lives, too.”

Meanwhile, at the Death Star, Vader was summoned by his leading captain because of an alert of an enemy ship flying nearby. “Bring them in, search them. They may know General Jonas.” “Yes, My Lord.”

Vader turned to leave the bridge towards the docking bay, to meet his guests personally. As he walked, his mind was filled with visions and memories from his dream the night before. Of her.

He sighed heavily, picking up speed as he neared the docking bay. Passing a group of stormtroopers, he pushed past them to be in front, crossing his arms. The door opened, and two stormtroopers walked out holding a young girl and boy, yelling at them to let go of them.

As soon as Vader looked at the two, he felt something... strange. A certain presence in the Force he had never felt before. What is this? Why do they feel familiar?

Vader dropped his arms, walking forward and raising his hand to stop the troopers, “Who are you? And why were you near my Death Star?”

His unmerciful, robotic voice rumbled through their chests, terrifying them. In all their years, they had never seen something so cold and unforgiving. “Don’t be petrified, answer me if you want to live,” Vader challenged, staring right at the boy.

“You killed our father,” Leia’s voice was cold, sad, and broken. She knew this was a bad idea, but it was too late now. “I wanted revenge.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, my princess, but I’ve killed many men. Your father was just another tick on my list, whoever he may be.”

“You son of a—!” Luke yelled, rushing to jump at him when the stormtroopers all turned their weapons on him, making him stop. Vader growled, “Insolent children. I don’t think you know who I am, truly. I’d crush you in a heartbeat, but seeing as you could have something of use to me... take them away, both of them,” Vader commanded. The two shouted in disagreement, and Vader simply stood and watched them struggle.

“You bitch! You’ll pay for what you did to our dad!” Luke yelled as he was taken away. Vader rolled his eyes from under the mask and walked back to his quarters. He knelt on the floor, taking his mask off as he called out to his Emperor through the force.

“What do you want, Lord Vader?” Palpatine growled, looking down at Vader’s hologram. “I felt something through the Force a few moments ago. My new hostages... they seem to be strong with it.”

“Really? Are you sure, my apprentice?”

“Yes, Master. More sure than anything.”

“Well, you know what you must do. Kill them. They could be Jedi if they tried opposing you,” Palpatine smirked. “They’re only children, which means they’re newer Jedi. Someone had to have trained them.”

“Children never stopped you before, don’t let it stop you now. Do it.”

“...Yes, my Master.” Vader ended the holomessage, sighing.

“Who are you two...?” he asked himself, reaching out through the Force and feeling they were still there.

Strange.

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ddaeng-danvers · 3 years

Text

under and over

pairing: anakin skywalker x reader

genre: fluff

summary: in which anakin learns how to braid hair

warnings: mention of death, minor injuries, the reader is described as having long hair

word count: 2753

a/n: well...i’m having an anakin phase, what can i say. this is unedited and i wrote it in one sitting so i apologize for any mistakes, also!! i’m aware some things may be inconsistent with ~canon~ but i’m having a good time so leave me alone,,, there are also mentions of platonic anakin x padme as an fyi... finally!! this isn’t a part two of my last fic (dreams) but in my brain they are like the same universe,,, so yeah,,, enjoy!!

masterlist

*this gif has nothing to do with the fic but he looks GREAT so i’m using it anyway*

You left for the Jedi Order when you were quite young. You left only your mother behind, as your father died in a shipping accident on Corellia. You held on to as many memories of your mother as possible, as she was the only family you had left. One of your fondest memories of your mother was the way she did your hair. Every morning, from the moment you had a sprout of hair on your head, she attempted to braid and style it intricately. The styles were always beautiful, inspired by the different cultures of the galaxy your mother had seen in her travels with your father before he passed.

Now, over fifteen years later, you long for the feeling of your mother’s fingers weaving through your hair. Because you left for the order at such a young age, your mother was never able to teach you her braiding and styling methods. This has left you with two simple skills, tying your hair into ponytails, and braiding it into two strands on either side of your head. You longed for the ability to weave it atop your head, but now, with the war, there was little time for hair styling.

Almost immediately after passing your trials, you were thrown into the Clone War. You worked alongside Anakin Skywalker and the 501st battalion most often, but frequently bounced around to others, such as Obi-Wan’s 212th, and your former master Shaak Ti’s position on Kamino. You were never officially assigned a battalion of your own due to your opposition of the war, but remained a Jedi General for the benefit of the Republic.

After a particularly rough mission, your find yourself sneaking from the medbay (you suffered only minor scrapes and bruises) and retreated to your quarters. It is there that you find Anakin standing on the balcony.

“What’re you doing out here, Ani?” He smiles and looks back at you.

“I should be asking you that. You should be in the medbay.” You look at the ground, feeling the slightest bit guilty. You know how much Anakin cares for you. If you stayed you may have lessened his worrying slightly.

“I’m alright. It’s nothing too serious.” A moment of silence passes. “What about you? You and Snips didn’t come out unscathed either.” Anakin’s face shrinks in the slightest, the thought of his padawan’s injuries a difficult one to process.

“We’re both okay. She was checked over. Hit her head pretty hard, but she’ll be okay. She does have to stay on bedrest for a bit, which I’m sure she’s thrilled about.” You both laugh at the thought.

“She reminds me of you, y’know.” Anakin’s expression becomes puzzled.

“Really?” He asks. You nod, looking out into the Coruscant skyline.

“She’s headstrong, confident. Sometimes a bit overconfident.” Anakin lets out a chuckle. “But she’s got a good heart. And she cares about those around her, deeply.” Anakin smiles at you again.

“Well I certainly do care for you, my love.” He leans down and presses the softest kiss to your lips, and then to both cheeks, which begin to redden. He still makes you feel like a bubbling padawan.

“We should probably head to bed soon, debriefs and all in the morning.” Anakin curtly nods, continuing to gaze at the setting sun. “We can check on Ahsoka too, before we head to bed., if you want.”

Although attachments are technically forbidden by the Jedi Council, there was a strange exception granted to you and Anakin. The council knew of your relationship, and even approved it. Master Yoda claimed you had prevented Anakin from falling down a darker path. He insisted that the force willed you together. Luckily, it seems the exception of your attachment has led to some more leniency in the Council regarding the subject.

After a quick trip to the refresher and a check-up with Ahsoka, you and Anakin retire back to your quarters. (Technically Anakin has his own quarters that he is supposed to stay in, although everyone knows this is a rare occurrence). He always seemed to like your room more. He claimed it had more personality than his. Likely because he didn’t have much to bring with him from Tatooine, and materialism was generally discouraged among Jedi.

Being held by Anakin at night felt like a gift from the Maker himself. His arms warm, his chest firm, and his hands combing through the tresses of your hair.

Anakin awoke the next morning to a cold bed. He heard you clamoring around the refresher. Curious, he threw on his robe and knocked on the door.

“You alright in there, love?” He stands up against the door, waiting for a response. You open the door a moment later, a grumbly look on your face. It seems you’ve already gotten dressed. You had on a brown and black tunic and pants. Your armor for battle left at the foot of your bed, since today was to be a day filled with debriefing, strategizing, and paperwork.

“I’m fine, I just woke up early and then couldn’t fall asleep, so I decided to get up, be productive, but I just can’t do my hair right.” Anakin noticed the rough braids on your scalp, likely from failed attempts at braiding it moments ago.

“I wish I could help you, but hair isn’t my area of expertise.” Anakin looks at you through the mirror as he wraps his arms around your torso. He places a kiss to your shoulder.

“It’s fine.” You affirm. “I’m just frustrated.”

The debrief with the Council went without a hitch. Just a standard report on your success, information regarding casualties, and your new assignments. Fortunately, the Council gave the two of you a few days off before your next assignments. You planned to spend every waking moment possible with Anakin, as you were being sent to aid Obi-Wan and the 212th. You returned to your quarters shortly after the meeting to strategize a plan for your upcoming assault with Anakin on your heels. He helped you as much as he could, before becoming distracted. (He was never the best strategizer. He joked you were the brains of this relationship). He tinkered with his arm as you worked alongside him.

A knock on the door pulled you from your work. You opened it slowly, curious as to who it could be. Opening it all the way, you were met with the colors and patterns of a traditional Nabooian gown.

“Padme!” You exclaimed. It had been so long since you’d seen her. You grew quite close when you and Anakin were assigned to protect her all those years ago. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here on Senate business, and I couldn’t be here without stopping by to say hello to you two.” Anakin has since gotten up from his seat and come over to great Padme as well. “I was going to stop and see Ahsoka, but I assumed she’d be training. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Ahsoka was actually injured on our last mission. Nothing serious, just a mild concussion, she’s resting in her quarters as far as I know.” Anakin assures.

“We could stop by and see her, I’m sure she’d be excited to know you’re here.” Padme smiles at the implied compliment. You grab your robes from your bed, and usher everyone through the hallway to Ahsoka’s quarters. You knock as lightly as possible on the door.

“Ahsoka, you in there? You have a visitor.” Ahsoka fumbles behind the door, before opening it.

“Senator Amidala!” Ahsoka exclaims. The two of them envelop in a brief hug before separating. “It’s great to see you!”

“And you as well Ahsoka. You’ve gotten so tall!” Ahsoka viewed Padme as an older sister figure. She’d lost the rest of her family so young, she had little memory of them. The memories she does have however, she cherishes. You and her both.

After an hour or so of catching up, you notice Ahsoka’s eye’s begin to droop. You look up at Anakin who seems to have noticed the same thing. Through the briefest of eye contact, you understand Anakin’s request. He wants you to stay with her, make sure she’s actually resting. You nod, as Anakin whispers this information to Padme. “It’s been great catching up with you Ahsoka, but I’m afraid I have to tend to that Senate business now. Rest well.” Ahsoka nods politely, her drowsy expression only worsening.

“Thank you Senator Amidala. See you later. You too, Master Skywalker.” You stay in your standing position before guiding Ahsoka down to her bed. She practically rolls over the moment she sits down.”

“Tired?” You chuckle. Ahsoka smiles slightly.

“Yeah, this concussion took me out more than I care to admit.” You laugh again. “You are just like Anakin when he was a padawan. It scares me sometimes how similar you to are.” Ahsoka nods again.

“I guess that means we’re a perfect match.”

“I guess so.” Ahsoka seems to drift off quickly, and you begin to tidy anything out of place around her room. There isn’t much out of place, so you make your way to the door. But just before you open it, Ahsoka calls out your name.

“Master Y/L/N?” You walk over to the edge of her bed again.

“Yes Ahsoka? Is there something wrong?” Her expression is confused and guilt-ridden.

“Can you stay here with me? I haven’t gotten very good sleep lately, I’ve been having nightmares.” You looks down at Ahsoka again. She seems to be like Anakin in her sleep habits as well.

“Of course, Ahsoka. If anything you are sparing me from planning Obi-Wan’s attack later this week.”

“I’m sure Master Kenobi can figure that out himself.” Ahsoka smiles.

“Yes, I’m sure he can.”

Anakin smiles as her feels your Force presence relax, assuming because you’ve fallen asleep. Padme smiles up at him.

“You’ve got that dumbstruck look on your face, again.”

“What do you mean again?” Anakin questions.

“You were looking at her like that the whole time we were in Ahsoka’s room.” Padme laughs. “It’s okay, it’s cute. I remember you two on Naboo. Absolutely dancing around your feelings until I put a stop to it.” Anakin remembers his mission with you to Naboo fondly. You assumed Anakin loved Padme, when he never held romantic feelings for her. Only familial admiration. You and Padme spoke over dinner one night after Anakin went to bed early. She essentially pried your confession out of you, but you assured her that Anakin loved her. How very wrong you were. Padme made it her mission to set you two up while you were still on Naboo. Clearly, she was successful.

“I have a strange request.” Anakin spoke up. Padme nodded at him to continue speaking. “Can you teach me how to braid hair?” Padme stops in her tracks, Anakin continuing to walk a few steps forward before turning around. “What?”

“Nothing, just, that is in fact a strange request. Why do you want to learn?” Anakin describes the scene of you this morning, frustrated in the mirror.

“Her mother used to style it, but she left for the Order so young that she was never able to learn how her mother did it.” Padme nods along.

“I can teach you. We’ll start with some simple ones, I’ll leave you datapads to look over in the future. Does that suffice?” Anakin nods, gratefully.

“Yes, thank you Padme. When should I meet you again for my...lesson?”

“We can go back to my room right now, if that works for you?”

“Of course, but I thought you had Senate duties to attend to?” Padme chuckles.

“If this is for Y/N’s benefit, this far outweighs my senatorial duties.” Padme and Anakin laugh and continue their walk down the hall.

Anakin spent the next few hours listening to Padme’s instructions as she demonstrated a few hairstyles on her handmaidens. They allowed Anakin to practice on their hair as well. Anakin was always a fast learner, and picked up these skills quickly.

Time flew by, and Anakin suddenly felt your Force precense awaken. He ties the braid he was working on in Sabe’s hair, and received an impressed nod from Padme.

“Not half bad, Anakin. You’ve picked this all up quite fast.” Anakin gives a nod with a hint of smirk on his face. He’s impressed with himself too. He thanks everyone in the room, especially the handmaidens who have had him tugging at their hair for the past few hours, and departs for your quarters, excited to show off his new skills.

When he arrives, you’ve already made it back from Ahsoka’s room and changed into a lighter pair of pants and a looser tunic. You have battle plans strewn across the table, with your head resting in your hands.

“Thank you for staying with Ahsoka, I had a feeling she wasn’t getting the best rest.” You nod in agreement.

“She’s been having nightmares. Nothing serious, I think she’s still reflecting on the mission. I think she’s being reminded of her squadron on Ryloth. She’s afraid of it happening again.” Anakin’s expression sinks. You know him well enough to understand his thought process. He wishes to protect Ahsoka from as much pain as possible. Although he knows this isn’t possible, he beats himself up when she feels this pain. “I can practically read your thoughts, love. It’s not your fault.”

“I know, I just wished she believed in herself a little more. She’s capable, but afraid of further consequences.” You both nod and let a comfortable silence overtake the room.

Hours fly by yet again, and the sun has set behind the Coruscant skyline, signaling the end of another day. You both wordlessly get ready for bed.

As you finish drying your hair, Anakin can seethe wheels turning in your head. He knows exactly what you are about to attempt, and he has a surprise in store. He grabs your brush of the stand along your bed, and elastics gifted to him by Padme. “Love, come here.” He motions for you to sit in front of him, your bottom practically in his lap. Anakin has brushed your hair before, you used to rebraid each other’s braids during your time as padawans as well, so you weren’t suspicious when Anakin began to brush through you hair.

What did surprise you is when he began to section it off. He weaved it gently between his fingers, skillfully. He managed to avoid every knot and unnecessary tug. You felt him pin the braids intricately forming a ring over the top of your head. The rest were tucked into a bun, with braids that formed a section of their own. He placed his hands on your shoulder to signal his completion, and you looked at him eagerly.

“Can I look at it?” You asked, brimming with glee.

“Of course, love.” You rush to the mirror in the refresher. As soon as you are met with your reflection, you are rendered speechless. Anakin has since gotten out of bed and come to stand behind you in the refresher. “You like it?” Anakin asks. You nod your head. You turn your neck to see the back, and it’s beautiful, The braids flow within your natural hair perfectly. It feels both similar and different from your mother’s style. Not quite Correlian, but…

“Padme taught you how to do this.” You stated.

“How did you know?” Anakin asked, surprised you deciphered it that quickly.

“I’ve seen her wear something similar before. It also feels very Nabooian.” Anakin gleams down at you, thrilled to see your smile. You reach up and grip his cheeks pulling him into a kiss. You separate a moment later. “Can you teach me how to do this?”

Anakin laughs. “Of course my love.” The two of you retire to bed shortly after. Anakin admires his handiwork as you lay your head against his shoulder.

“Thank you, Ani. I really do appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem, love. It made me upset that you never got to learn from your mother, I know how much it meant to you, so we can learn together.” The thought of Anakin with his hands in your hair glaring at a datapad about hair styles made you giggle. “Maybe you can pass these hairstyles on to our children one day.” The thought of Anakin with a child, your child in his lap, makes you smile as you slip into sleep.

#star wars #star wars fluff #star wars imagine #anakin skywalker #anakin skywalker fluff #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker imagine #anakin x reader #anakin fluff #anakin imagine #please for the love of god show up in the tags #i'm bEGGING

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jasontoddiefor · 4 years

Note

I don't know who to share my thoughts with so now you get them: I think that more anakin time travel fics should explore vaders whole medical trauma body horror thing. Dude is on life support for half of his life and suddenly he has hair again. The medic clones should figure out that somethings up pretty quickly. Actually, imagine having to deal with hair after 23 years of being bald. He probably isn't used to eating anymore. There's so much to think about.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR THOUGHTS THEY ARE WONDERFUL. Yes, yes, yes, there is so much horror to consider. TW for Vader’s lack of health and the psychological effects it has

Say, Anakin wakes up again in the middle of the Clone Wars, before Ahsoka leaves and everything goes to hell. One moment, he’s dying in his son’s arms, the next he’s in the middle of a battlefield. Completely disorientated. The campaign is already half won and it’s just clean up. And Anakin, like any man with too much trauma, has a panic attack and hyperventilate. He knocks away a dozen clones in his panic, aimlessly (broken bones, but thankfully no dead), then he faints

Let’s start with the breathing. Vader hasn’t breathed by himself really for decades. Only in emergencies when his suit failed or he turned it off himself did he actually have to do it and I bet that during those times he had to be conscious of every breath. This young, healthy body, remembers how to breathe automatically still. Anakin’s mind however? I could see him freaking out and being unable to handle it. When they bring him to the medbay, they get him hooked on a breathing machine because Anakin can’t function when he has to focus on that. Also, his voice must sound strange in his own ears. He can sing now, he doesn’t have to pause for his own breaths. His intonation must be all over the place.

Talking healthy body: His clone-wars mech arm was canonically his best artificial limb. He’s shorter than he is as Vader. He still has all most of his limbs. He tries to take his first steps and falls to the ground because he hasn’t walked like this in over twenty years. He feels like a newborn, stumbling around. Probably also underestimates how strong his legs and remaining arm is. Vader could like. Punch through steel. You know Obi-Wan trying to kick Grievous? That’s him now. Constantly. He also weighs a lot less now. He’s free of that 100 pound armor! Once he starts training again, his speed and flexibility probably improve immensely because that’s not holding him back anymore. On the other hand, he probably does put on more armor than before because he was used to treating his body as expansible. It’s not anymore.

Also talking healthy body, his mind is probably really out of place. Like, he has the brain of an early-20-something, but the mind of a traumatized adult. His brain hasn’t even finished developing it and what I’m saying is: He probably feels like he’s high on spice, all happy and carefree because his mind is used to function on much lower levels.

Regular movements don’t hurt him! His pain tolerance is through the roof and it’s honestly shocking. He could be bleeding out and probably wouldn't register it for a while. He’s supposed to do regular check-ups now to ensure he isn’t actually dying and just not aware of it because it’s only minor pain.

In general, Anakin probably feels like his body is heaven and curse at the same time. Because on one hand, it’s such a relief, on the other, he probably feels dysphoric because Vader did see himself as a weapon. A tool. A one-man army. And now he suddenly has to take care of himself and his body just. Messes with him?

Moving on to habits! First of all: He can touch people again. I like to HC that Anakin was a very tactile person. This is dialed up to 11 now. He’s constantly running his flesh fingers over something. If there’s somebody he cares about near him, guess what, you’re getting hugged now. He doesn’t even notice he’s reaching out until Ahsoka is like “Master, please, can you let go of me I’m trying to eat”. He can feel warmth and cold, rough and smooth surfaces. Probably, when also not in armor, he might indulge in super soft clothes. the stuff that's feather-light on your skin.

Food: That’s difficult as well. Vader didn’t eat and Anakin now probably develops an eating disorder where he either overgorges until he gets sick and vomits or forgets to eat for days at a time until his blood sugar is so low he faints.

Sleeping: Obi-Wan has never seen Anakin meditate this much. Or so well. Or drop into so many healing trances so he can avoid sleeping. Anakin hasn’t properly slept in ages. He can’t fall asleep, he doesn’t know how to and he's terrified when he does. He has nightmares- no, night terrors really frequently. When he goes under, he barely gets any REM sleep.

Hair: Probably also one of those “100% or 0%” actions. Either he actually does take care of it, take care of it well too, or he just forgets and it's a rats’ nest until Ahsoka, a clone, Padmé or Obi-Wan - whoever is in reach really, sits him down and brushes and idk braids it. He’s probably half annoyed by its length and half going “I’m never cutting this again” so guess everybody is getting proficient in braiding now

So bottom line is, if Anakin actually did time travel, he probably wouldn’t be able to hide it because simply breathing on his own already unsettles him and that’s not even accounting for all of Vader’s health issues.

#star wars #darth vader #anakin skywalker #tcw #writing inspiration: star wars #Anakin: i need to kill the chancellor he's the sith lord #obi-wan: anakin you can't even stand up and you started crying because the blanket was soft #Anakin: it's not my fault my body's automatic emotional responses are out of control #ask #anon #this is why vader is fun #you can take his sith health and slap it into SO MANY fun situation #Anonymous #medical trauma time travel AU

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gabriel4sam · 3 years

Text

Not love at first sight (But love at the sixty-third life defying idiocy), a CodyWan story

Written for @swbigbang, with the help of @kitcatkim in the role of the patient beta and @outernorth for artist (art just there)

Because all the other members of their small outpost were not in shape (read, hungover), Cody and Obi-Wan go on a small, simple, totally not possibilities of explosions supply run.

Cody comes back with a headache the size of Coruscant, a new hate of insectoids life. And a brand new significant other, in the shape of his exasperating General

It’s not a hangover, it’s a hecatomb. Whatever Boil had put in his new still was a terrible, terrible idea. The entire Separatist Council could do pointes in tutus on the flight deck and the vode would neither see it, nor care about it.

Cody and Obi-Wan were the only ones not drinking the day before, them and the communication officers on duty. The communication officers because they were working, and Cody and Obi-Wan, well, because they like the occasion for the men to feel free, and they can’t with their superior officers in their company.

That doesn’t mean the men are supposed to feel free enough to incapacitate the whole bunch of idiots they are apparently in charge off.

“Latrine duties, the first time we do planet fall. The whole of them.” Cody grumbles, assessing the damage with a cold, clinical eye.

“How does that even work? Does every man have latrine duties for his own latrines? Do you make them install as many latrines as they are? ” Obi-Wan remarks. He’s the usual calm and composed Jedi Master Cody knows on the outside, but the Commander is pretty sure he’s laughing on the inside. Cody had met Quinlan Vos, ok? And he poured enough hard liquor in the man to obtain confidences. Confidences which horrified him, Obi-Wan had even less survival instincts than Cody thought, but confidences he can’t un-hear. He will know forever!

Or at least, he will know until a luckier droid kills him. Cody is not an optimist about clones living long, happy, fulfilling lives. He has eyes after all and a functioning brain.

Cody glares at Obi-Wan, just in case. He has learnt, in the two years since he took his position with his General, that Jedi react pretty well to glaring. Not that it stops them from doing stupid stuff, but at least, they feel guilty about it.

If they like the glaring party only. Commander Ponds had a lot of things to narrate about Mace Windu and the horrible, horrible conglomerate mogul.

Obi-Wan takes his most innocent air, something Cody stopped believing two days in their acquaintance, when his newly minted General had destroyed a whole block of warehouses on an unnamed moon and made a grown Hutt call for its parent. It had been a bad month for Obi-Wan. No need to judge. When innocents are in danger, the cost of the repairs is less a problem and more a number for the politicians to handle. And yes, Obi-Wan knows the money used could certainly be used in other useful ways, but no amount of credits could ever buy a life, in the eyes of a Jedi. But that day, when Cody, after a few, very stressful hours of radio-silence, had finally gotten back his General, slightly charred, the hostages, hungry and thirsty and exhausted but all of them in one piece, and a terrified Hutt, in the middle of a devastated battleground, he had understood better the warning of Alpha-17. There, Cody had sworn in petto to never underestimate his Jedi, despite the irreproachable manners, the swishing hair and the smile of a holo-star.

Together, they take the time to check every soldier, to make sure nobody was busy drowning in their own fluid because they were too hangover/still drunk, to roll over. Everybody is alive, and the communication officers are getting ready to do a double shift, and ready to nib their vode about it later.

“It’s a good thing we’re on down time,” Obi-Wan remarks, “I must confess, despite the talents of your brothers, I’m not quite sure we could withstand an attack from Grievous and his various cronies right now.”

“We would get our asses handed to us, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

Obi-Wan cautiously touches one of the abandoned drink containers, with more care than he gives to explosives.

“What did he put in this thing?” he asks, fascinated.

“You’re not testing it!” Cody immediately retorts, because he knows his Jedi, “not in the name of science, curiosity or whatever.”

Obi-Wan touches the container a second time.

Cody could swear the thing moves in return, like it wants to be pet. Obi-Wan hums, his face interested and he leans a little more in the direction of the container. If the thing starts growing whatever strange means of locomotion is on its mind, Cody is using his blaster, no matter the General’s opinion. That’s how bad holo-dramas start, with an unknown thing unleashed on an unsuspecting ship/outpost/space station. He refuses to star in one of those plot-lacking dramas his brother Wolffe pretends he doesn’t love.

The thing doesn’t move anymore and Obi-Wan loses interest and goes back to helping troopers into their quarters and their bunks.

Cody helps, but that doesn’t mean he’s not plotting terrible retributions. He knows the last few weeks have been pretty hard, the hardest in a long time, that’s one of the reasons Obi-Wan and himself made themselves scarce last night.

Now, they have a week just waiting for the Negotiator to come pick them up. One week for the men to rest and to heal and perhaps to train lightly…but that’s no reason for the sort of screw-up Cody is seeing right now. Boil and his still should be transferred from the 501th and put into whatever part of the army that handles studies about biological warfare. Biological warfare that the Republic officially doesn’t indulge in, studying it only as a way to protect its worlds against it. But Cody isn’t convinced. He has a lot of questions he will never ask about parts of the army which are not led by Jedi, and that the Jedi are trying, with no success, to have access too. Obi-Wan has promoted him so much that the Commander now has access to documents he’s pretty sure nobody thought a clone ever would. He’s staying silent for now. If the Jedi need help with that, if they fail, the vode will try, but Cody is keeping this ammunition in reserve. He can only fire it once, because when natural-borns who aren’t Jedi realize exactly how much power Obi-Wan and the Jedi council has given him and some of the other commanders, they will try to strip them of it, he just knows it.

At the end, everybody is moaning in their bunks, or manning communication, and Cody and Obi-Wan raid the nice rations, the ones with the green seals, no less food of unkown origins than the rest of it, but certainly the tastiest. They sit down at the entry of the outpost, sharing a canteen of water between them. They don’t talk, most of the time they don’t need to.

Cody isn’t really hungry but it’s easier to trick Obi-Wan into eating something when those who surround him do too. The warmth of the sun, the sounds of nature, the nice, and so rare, oh so rare, knowledge that they have a little free time instead of having to run to put out another fire. All of this is making Obi-Wan soften, like a carving of stone suddenly becoming pliable.

“Commander?” Cody’s holocom disturbs them, and Cody startles, suddenly realizing he was lost in the light playing into the copper of Obi-Wan’s hair.

“It’s nothing, really nothing probably,” the shiny in charge of this particular console explains to them, “ one of the new models of probes should have been back twenty minutes ago. I tried to raise it per the procedure, but it isn’t answering.”

“We’re supposed to be alone on this world,” Obi-Wan remarks, a line forming between his brows.

“They are still working the kicks out of this model,” the shiny admits, “that’s why we used them specifically on this planet where they are in no danger. We’re supposed to go back with all of them, for study, to hammer out the last problems.”

The line between the General’s brows is growing deeper.

“I will make a report to the Council about the danger it could pose to you, to send any vode on the field with materials not totally ready, and the Jedi Order will issue a formal protest.” His shoulders are tense. No matter the number of tries, the Jedi are blocked at every corner in the Senate in their efforts to better the life of the clones, even in the small things and it’s a terrible possibility that this time will be the same.

“You know what? We should go check ourselves,” Cody decides, because he wants to erase that line, that tension. “Since Boil poisoned the men, we could do it. A little trek in fresh air before breathing the recycled air in the Negotiator again.”

“Oh Cody, I can do it myself,” Obi-Wan offers immediately, “you don’t have a lot of free time-“

“Funny, I would have sworn you didn’t know the concept…”

“I am perfectly capable of knowing when my body needs down time.”

“That’s not what Master Erin said.”

And that’s how they leave the base.

It’s almost noon, birds or other small things Cody can’t honestly identify are chirping, the air is crisp and fresh, and the sky is only slightly purple, with no risk of rain. No matter how many worlds he sees, Cody is still out of countenance on worlds where the combination of gases in the atmospheres and stars emitting other waves than the Kamino sun combine to give entire landscapes strange colours. Most of the time, he’s wearing his helmet which filters the strangeness of it, and it’s only at the end of the battle, when he takes it off, that he realizes everything is weirdly green-tainted.

Also, he’s pretty sure Arc Trooper Fives was lying when he told him once he visited a world on a body guarding mission with his own Jedi were everything was glittering. He’s not putting any money on it, because Skywalker and his men were guarding the Naboo Senator. From what Cody observes, when Naboo people enter the scene, glitter just happens. He also thinks Fives is much better being Rex’s problem than his own.

Most of their supplies have already been packed for retrieval, so Cody and Obi-Wan only took one hover bike out, and for now Obi-Wan is piloting, Cody behind, and the Commander is beginning to think he made a tactical error. The plastoid of his armour is supposed to stop him from feeling Obi-Wan’s warmth, but Cody could swear he can still feel it. For all that the Jedi can seem aloof and strange, nothing makes him remember his General is flesh and blood than encircling a linen-warped waist with his arms.

The world passes around them, the colours of the trees, the playful course of the clouds in the sky, the peaceful scenery of a wild world, with its inherent qualities and defaults. Cody likes those worlds better, untouched by sentient life. Growing up in the sterility of Kamino, there is something intoxicating in nature running its course, forests giving way to meadows, biotopes decided by climates and geology, and not by a careful hand arranging them for the maximal profits in their exploitation.

Cody understands about the need for fresh territory, with the growth of population, but certainly, certainly the most carefully hidden part of him insists quite vehemently, there must be another solution than the desolation of grey and pollution that is Coruscant. Something else than seeing the poorest people of the Republic living in deplorable conditions, never seeing the fresh green of a new leaf, as the richest ones can sample the delights of nature in carefully constructed reserves?

More and more, Cody is curious about the Agricorps, and their works to restore degraded biotopes, but he had the vague impression, when he asked questions about it to his General, that it’s a difficult subject for him.

Probably, Obi-Wan wanted to go into the Agricorps and they didn’t want him to, for whatever reasons. Cody thinks it’s more glorious to restore nature and to help feed a community than to go to war, like Obi-Wan is doing right now, or to negotiate treaties, which he vaguely thinks is Obi-Wan’s job in time of peace.

Cody’s thoughts drift gently as the journey continues, going from nature’s beauty to the exact shade of Obi-Wan’s hair when he has been under a natural sun for more than a few hours. The way the copper of it becomes richer and richer…. After a little less than two hours, they switch pilots, and Cody does his best to keep his thoughts on track. It would be stupid to crash just because he’s distracted by a flight of birds taking off with the noise of the bikes, no matter how graceful they are. He concentrates on piloting, and not on the presence of Obi-Wan behind him, his arms around Cody, and not in the colours of the forest around them, and the bucolic impression of their little expedition.

The last known position of their wayward probe put it next to a small lake, four hours away on hover bike, at the base of the mountainous regions. If this part of the world was in winter season, the most logical reason for their missing probe would be a mudslide. Cody told in his reports time and time again that the probes should fly higher, that the field itself is much less friendlier than believed in the labs, but apparently nobody listens to him.

It’s the end of spring on this part of the planet, the probe was probably eaten by a giant fish, or something equally undignified.

They unseat on a single beach, the last known location. No more probe there than dignity and decency in the Senate. Nothing. No blackened hull of the thing if it had exploded under mysterious circumstances, best known as shoddy work in the conception. Not even a trace they could track back.

Cody turns on himself, surveying the landscape. Vegetation, mountains, peaceful lapping of water on the beach, more mountains with their snowy capes, a lot of weird looking trees. For a vacation, it would be peaceful. For missing military equipment, it’s sadly lacking.

“By incredible luck, you wouldn’t sense our missing flying friend in the Force?” Cody asks, because that would simplify things. That would simplify things, so of course the answer is no. As Obi-Wan struggles with putting together the scanner, Cody gathers pieces of driftwood, intending to start a fire. If they have to circle on foot, on uneven ground, to find the probes, nothing says they can’t do it after another meal next to a warm fire. In the harsh reality of war, Cody has learnt to wisely enjoy the few moments of peace, and he would very much like to teach that skill to his General. Obi-Wan is supposed to have decades of experience in him, but apparently he’s not aware that every sentient has their limits.

Cody is less than twenty meters from the Jedi and the hoverbike, facing Obi-Wan, his arms already full of a nice load when he sees Obi-Wan let go of the scanner, which tumbles on the stones, and turns to him, a hand already at his waist, reaching for his lightsaber.

“Cod-“ Obi-Wan yells, but the sound doesn’t reach Cody, as the stones give way under him, shifting in a dip of grey sand and Cody is gulped down like Master Yoda gobbles a small fish.

For a second, he can’t breathe, there is sand everywhere around him, on his skin, in his mouth, infiltrating his armour by the neck, and the wood in his arms squeeze against his ribs. He feels he’s gonna get crushed alive and he struggles with all his strength. Death has always been the end but he wanted to leave in combat. He can feel unconsciousness threatening and just before it would take him, he’s spit up violently and he rolls over with the momentum, the driftwood, the sand, and a few bits of the armour which didn’t survive the experience.

He can see someone lean over him, no more than a silhouette, because it’s so dark, he can feel the sand under his head, and also the head wound and the blood seeping out of it, and he takes a long breath, and it burns, all the way to his lungs, and then he knows no more.

For a long time, Cody floats. He dreams. Or he hallucinates.

He’s on Kamino again and he learns the world is without mercy for him and his brothers.

He’s training and he can feel Alpha-17’s eyes on him, pensive.

He’s very young and he doesn’t understand where the last of his batche went.

He’s older and he’s meeting his first Jedi, General Tii, and she always has a nice word for every clone, but her eyes are terribly sad every step she takes on Kamino.

He’s meeting Rex and their friendship soars instantly.

He’s seeing brothers dying and he’s seeing rescues and the world is a never ending war, but Cody refuses to let that be the only thing his brothers will know. He watches and he checks and he learns and he places his brothers the best he can, and he’s evaluating Jedi and people, and planets and his mind never stops.

Cody wakes up. General Plo Koon is leaning over him and Cody lets relief seize him, until he realizes something is wrong. No eye covers, no breathing masks, and as much as Cody can see in the very low light, the thick leathery hide acting as skin is much lighter than Plo Koon’s. A Kel Dor, but not the Jedi Master that the Wolffe’s pack would follow to the end of the galaxy and beyond.

After a few seconds of his brain going round in circles, it finally stops at a very important point: Kel Dor and humans don’t breathe the same atmosphere, and this Kel Dor is without breathing apparels. Cody goes to put a hand on his mouth in instinctual movement, like he could stop himself from suffocating, but the other lays a hand on Cody’s forearm, his entire body language non-threatening, and says something he can’t understand. That’s when Cody realizes something translucent is surrounding his head, like a bubble inflating and deflating with every breath he takes. He pokes it, very carefully. It’s flexible, slightly sticky and it smells earthy, a little like those mushrooms his General insisted he try once, when he took him to his friend Dex dinner.

Cody takes a careful breath. He doesn’t die in terrible suffering, so he takes another one. The air entering his lungs still seems appropriate for his species. He tries to sit up, moving very slowly to make the stranger understand he’s not attacking, and the Kel Dor helps him.

Seated, he can better observe the place around him. He has been placed on a pallet of light fur, in some sort of carved place, the walls decorated, not in paint, but in carving, and his armour is against one of the walls, carefully stacked. Cody wants to touch his head, where he was hurt, but once again the Kel Dor stops him before he touches the bubble. The only light comes from a small clay bowl full of sizzling oil, where a wick has been adapted. It doesn’t give enough light to help Cody see more than the small room and a crude overture in the stone, leading to more darkness. He can’t even study perfectly the features of the Kel Dor, more than to be sure it’s definitely not Master Koon.

The Kel Dor says something again and Cody makes a frustrated noise.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language.” The other doesn’t seem to understand that, so Cody tries Mando’a, with the same result.

He tries the Galactic Sign Language, no results.

He knows a few signs of the Alderaan Sign Language, the one from their Southern Hemisphere. Queen Organa taught him a few lessons once during a lockdown in the Royal Palace when he was guarding her, between grumbling about clones’s rights and what her husband better do about it in the Senate, and Cody learns fast. The Kel Dor still doesn’t react in any useful way.

“A common language would be pretty useful to know if I’m your guest or your prisoner,” Cody jokes. Sarcasm now. He’s spending too much time with his General.

He shifts, trying to see if he will be stopped from standing, but the other only helps him, carefully arranging on Cody’s torso the ending of the bubble. Now that Cody studies it more attentively, he’s sure the stuff is organic. It’s like they forced his head and the superior part of his torso into some sort of ring of weird looking mushrooms, the mycelium of one of them extended around his head. If this is producing oxygen for him, he really doesn’t want to disturb it.

The world tilts when he stands up but the Kel Dor pushes a shoulder under Cody’s arm and they go out. When Cody passes his armour, he fetches his blaster, and the other doesn’t stop him. Either he doesn’t understand it’s a weapon, or he doesn’t think Cody will attack him. Her? Them? Are Kel Dol gendered beings?

Exiting the small room, Cody can’t see. Everything is dark around them. He can hear movements and the air around him has the quality of an enormous space. A cave, he would think, but the little lamp his new friend has in his claws is not enough.

“Of course,” Cody remarks, “your eyes are much much better. You don’t need a bank of lamps.” He almost jumps when someone joins them and if his head wasn’t still ringing, he probably would have attacked, but it’s only another Kel Dor, smaller, with a skin more brown. They ask something to the first one, but again, there is no sense for Cody.

He’s guided to a stone bench and the little lamp is pushed into his hands. Kel Dor are going in and out of the little circle and Cody tries to evaluate how many of them there are, but he’s, to his great shame, not good enough to distinguish between the Kel Dor easily. He can isolate one or two who have more evident features for a human, like one missing an arm, but the rest of them, all dressed in a very similar way with some furs identical to those Cody woke up on, and the alien features. Cody feels anger against himself. He judges natural borns for not making an effort to distinguish between the vode, despite their efforts to gain their own identity by tattoos or dyes, and he shouldn’t be victim of the same bias.

Finally, someone sits next to him. Cody studies their face, trying to commit them to memory.

People don’t seem unfriendly. He’s pretty sure the one he woke up with is some sort of local healer, and that it is this one who came back to him several times. Children even come to him, chattering in their language in a way which makes him think of the younger ones on Kamino, before some of their batches started to disappear and they started to understand what their fate in the world would be. A particularly daring little one climbs onto his lap and Cody looks around, ready to see the parent arrive and take its offspring from the strange being. But this community seems so peaceful nobody sees a problem with the child on the stranger's lap.

The little one shows him his treasure, a cube deeply carved with symbols Cody can’t decipher. Of course. In a world without sun, carving must be a medium and painting, or writing, must be inexistent.

“It’s a very nice cube,” he says to the little one, whose gender he can’t decipher. If Kel Dor have gender. He’s pretty sure he heard once that the biggest number of genders registered for a sentient species was eight, and the smaller zero, but he has no idea for this species.

The child seems pretty happy with the answer, even if they can’t understand it any more than Cody can understand their own opinion, expressed in an uninterrupted flow.

Around him, he can vaguely perceive people going about their day. How calm. How reposing. Nevertheless, peaceful or not, Cody can’t breathe the same atmosphere as them, and the strange organic concoction they put on his head to help will soon find its limits. He’s getting thirsty, for once, and he can’t drink without taking the thing off, which he can't. And that’s not even thinking about his General, who must be trying to reach him by any means the Force gives him.

If he knows Cody is alive.

No, no, he must know.

And even if the Force, whose exact limitations Cody is quite unsure of, even if the Force can’t tell Obi-Wan Cody is alive, Obi-Wan is not exactly a man to just go back to the outpost and declare him dead. He will search and search and search, and bring Cody back alive to his vode, or his body for his brothers to honour.

Cody knows: it had been a terrible row between the Jedi on one part and the Kaminoan and the Senate on another, this refusal to abandon dead clones bodies to the elements.

And, to the surprise of the Senate who was in the habits to bully the Jedi for centuries, the Jedi hadn’t budged. But Cody had seen what it had cost them: the Senate had made them pay, in late important reports who the Jedi needed for the war efforts, on refusal of important supplies, suddenly labelled unessential…

So, Obi-Wan is searching for him at the moment, and Cody needs to go to him. The ringing in his head, present since he woke up, has slightly diminished, and he has walked with more grievous wounds.

The question is now: how to mime exit to the Kel Dor, how to ask for a guide? Because if he has to feel around the cave until he finds an exit, he will, but that would be so much easier.

“Hoping there is an exit into your cave, little one,” he says to the child, who is falling asleep on his lap, “because if I have to drill through the roof to the exterior of the planet, it’s gonna cause breathing problems for your city.”

An adult approaches them, a long plaid in their hands, and they mime Cody putting it around his shoulders. Instead, Cody wraps the little one in it and puts the resulting bundle into the adult’s arms.

“I don’t suppose you could send me to the nearest exit?” He asks, and of course, the Kel Dor doesn’t have an answer.

He takes the little lamp and leaves to explore. He can’t see well more than two meters from the circle of light, and even with it, his eyes are struggling.

Soon, he’s stopped by a wall, which he follows until he finds a low door, with only a curtain. He risks an eye, feeling quite voyeuristic, but he only sees something resembling a storage space, big amphoras against a wall.

He continues to follow the wall, finds another one, loses himself in what is a succession of low houses. Above him, the roof of the cavern is still invisible and he can’t see the walls. He finds another little place with stone benches.

Or is it the same?

No, even underground, Cody is sure of his sense of direction. It’s another one place, and the city is bigger than he thought possible. He’s also walking way too slowly, because of the problem of light and his still ringing head.

“Kriff,” he whispers, sitting down on one of the benches.

“Obi-Wan, please find me,” he whispers before scolding himself. He’s no melodrama maiden, he is perfectly capable of finding the surface again by himself.

A burly Kel Dor approaches him, mushrooms in his claws and says something.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Cody tries to explain. The other sits next to him and gesticulates to the mushrooms helping, he thinks, him to breath, and when Cody doesn’t do anything, he starts placing the ones he brought against the first ones. They seem to merge in a frankly disgusting scene which is probably mushrooms porn.

“Does that mean you need to change them regularly for me to breathe?” Cody asks, despite knowing he won’t receive an answer he can understand.

To add another problem to the long list Cody is already shouldering on, the cave floor starts to tremble and people start yelling.

People are yelling, and despite the language barrier, Cody can understand the panic with no problems.

The soil beneath his feet grumbles again. There is a sound like a rockslide, and more yells, and terror is the taste at the back of Cody’s throat, because he still can’t kriffin see.

Finally, the trembling is so terrible he’s thrown on his knees and the sound reaches a crescendo as a great light emerges from the rock soil, three hundred meters from where Cody is kneeling. It’s some sort of giant worm, with a maw higher than Cody. It roars and glows even brighter, the bioluminescence of its chitin almost dazzling for Cody himself.

All around Cody, Kel Dor are yelling and struggling on their feet with great difficulties, as the rock soil is still trembling. The beast roars again and it sounds like a thousand ships taking off at the same time in the confined environment. As Cody is helping a Kel Dor to their feet, the pandemonium reaches an even higher spike as another worm emerges, further than the first, and the quake of the rock sends them flat on their bellies.

Cody really regrets letting Boil distribute his production yesterday, what he wouldn’t give for ten men and a rotary canon right now! Even for Hardcase, who he’s really happy is most of the time Rex’s problem, and his tastes for explosives.

He hoists himself more or less vertical, swearing all he can at the same time. He helps the Kel Dor to their feet again and then assesses the situation.

The lights of the worms let him have a good gaze for the first time at the enormous cavern they are in and the low buildings in it. Behind them he can even see big overtures, probably an entire network of caverns. An entire city in the dark, deep in the soil, protected from the outside world and its atmosphere which the Kel Dor can’t breathe, and from the Republic scanners which never knew they were there.

Protected from the sun, too.

And now that the light has come to them in the form of predators, they are defenceless. Cody can see people trying to flee, with a hand on their eyes, and with no success. By the time Cody has succeeded in approaching the scene of the disaster, at least three Kel Dor have been swallowed.

One of the worms, the closest, roars again and Cody doesn’t lose time: the maw, unprotected by the chitin covering the body, seems like a perfect target.

He raises his blaster and fires.

Another roar, even more deafening, as blood splatters all around in a gorish scene. A good part of the mandible has exploded, but the beast isn’t dead. It strikes, trying to gobble Cody like it did the poor Kel Dor. The difference is that the Commander can see in the light, on the contrary of the first victims. He evades just in time to escape certain death.

He rolls over and raises his blaster a second time, but the angle is worse than the first time, and the shot dampens itself on the chitin with no more effect than darkening it, and enraging the worm even more.

Again, it tries to kill Cody and the man dances out of range, blessing the hours of training the Jedi gave all of them. It had been the first thing the Jedi had done, because they thought the training the vode had received on Kamino didn’t focus enough on the art of dodging.

Cody never told them it was because the trainers and the Kaminoans thought the vode easily expandable and more useful for a suicide strike. He suspects the Jedi knew, if the way they act around the Kaminoans is proof.

Dodging, advancing, retreating, taking a shot every time he sees an overture, Cody fights, more a reflex than anything, to protect the Kel Dor. He wouldn’t refuse a little help; with spears even if they don’t have other weapons, but the cavern inhabitants are useless. They are not even running away from the worms, full of the terror of death, and the light, which have come in their city.

Nevertheless, the issue of the fight was never a real question. Even hurt and far away from his usual fighting grounds, Cody was bred a warrior and he had honed the skills given to him by his genetic donor all his life. The worm, a female, is in the habit of only fighting other female worms during the mating season for access to the best breeding ponds and to gobble Kel Dor and every animal it could. It never had to fight a sentient being, especially one with a blaster.

The blaster’ shots finally damage the roof of its mouth enough and one of them burns its path to the brain. The beast dies immediately, but the nervous system needs time to receive that message. For a moment, Cody fears the convulsions of the enormous body will cause the entire caves system to collapse on their heads.

When the movements finally stop, he vaults himself over a rock slide, caused by the events, and approaches carefully. The worm is still partially obscured by the rock he emerges from, but Cody can see a good twenty meters of it. He’s bringing back a chitin part to the GAR, because he wants ships protected like that!

A sudden movement to his left makes him turn, but too late. His zoological fascination has caused Cody to make a horrible, rookie mistake, the sort of mistake which makes a rookie never have an occasion to become something other than a rookie.

For a moment, he had forgotten there was a second worm.

He brandishes his weapon, but it’s too late. Only his reflexes save him from being cut in two, but a razor sharp incisor scraps against his armour, parting it like butter and only missing the skin by half a centimetre. The worm has no interest in the Kel Dor, no matter how easy prey they are. It just wants to kill the stubborn little creature who just killed its mother. His blaster clatters on the rock, too kriffin far away. Cody rolls on himself, tries for it, but he already knows it’s too late, when the sound of a lightsaber being ignited announces the arrival of the cavalry, just in time.

Obi-Wan Kenobi arrives on the scene like an armed deux ex machina. He’s wearing Cody’s helmet in order to breath in the cavern and death is burning light-blue in his hand. Rare are the materials which can resist the power of a lightsaber, and Obi-Wan doesn’t take chances with Cody’s life, no matter how he is repelled by the taking of a life, even an animal one. The head of the worm falls on the other side of the body as Obi-Wan is still airborne from one of those improbable jumps Force Sensitive do. The second his feet touch the rock; he’s rushing to Cody, trying to assess his health.

Across the galaxy, Anakin suddenly sits down in the marital bed, sending Padmé, who was asleep across his torso, tumbling into the sheets by the violence of his movements. The vision of a chitinous torso opening, full of meaty juice, dances before his eyes.

“Ani?” The young Senator asks, once he has succeeded in making her put down the blaster she retrieved from even the Force doesn’t know where. Padmé doesn’t do peaceful when she’s woken up abruptly, something he learned quickly in their marriage. Convincing the handmaiden that every noise inside their bedroom wasn’t a murder attempt and that they shouldn’t rush in, weapons drawn, was another interesting adjustment to the married life.

“I just.….I’m not sure…” He tries to grip what woke him up, but it already has disappeared. “I think I’m hungry,” he admits, “sorry to have interrupted your sleep.”

“The droids can make you something,” she suggests, burrowing into the nest of pillows, less prone to sudden shifting.

“Do you think we have insects?” He asks.

****************************

“Cody! Cody, are you alright?”

“Obi-Wan, General, are you hurt?” Cody and Obi-Wan ask at the same time, hands searching, patting the other bodies in gestures less destined to triage of wounds and more to the simple animal need for contact.

“The air of the cavern isn’t breathable for us,” Obi-Wan says, after a few seconds and Cody nods: “I deduced that, but the thing on my head….it’s helping.”

“How did you deduce such a- Oh, um, hello.”

Around them, the Kel Dor have begun to assemble, all of them an arm on their face, trying to protect their eyes.

“Your lightsaber, turn it off,” Cody says and, making something purr in the Commander’s chest, Obi-Wan immediately obeys, no question, no hesitation.

The Kel Dors guide them away from the scene of the carnage. Cody sees a few of them with stone machetes and axes, already working on taking apart the pale flesh of the worms, working from the wounds Cody and Obi-Wan made, as the chitin is too hard on other places of the big bodies.

Cody watches for a few seconds. One of a Kel Dor yanks open the cranial cavity. Cody turns to the other side very quickly, because butchering enormous worms is apparently more than his battle-hardened stomach can take. Nothing should make the noise an axe makes against flesh.

Cody finds his little lamp again. It’s not even extinguished, the events haven’t probably lasted more than ten minutes. The universe is a hard place, thinks Cody, where he could get eaten by any abomination with too much teeth in less time than an oil lamp runs its course.

They sit next to each other on the closest bench and in the halo of the lamp, Cody inspects his General better. He’s covered in stone dust and whatever else disgusting stuff is on his tunic: he probably crawled his way there.

The adrenaline is still burning through Cody, and joy too, as he turns to his General. On the whole, he misses the days life was simpler on Kamino, with no worms for example, but on Kamino, he never heard the sound of a lightsaber and knew, with a certainty so burning it could have well resonated in the Force, that he was saved. There is comfort, in the hard world he’s living in, in the certainty that his General will tear apart entire solar systems to rescue any clones. That all Jedi would. For a clone, raised to be interchangeable, this strong-willed refusal to leave even one of them behind is a balm to the soul.

“You found me,” he says, and he tries to infuse that with professionalism, and fails miserably.

“I will always find you,” Obi-Wan promises. It’s strange to talk to him like that, with Cody’s helmet on his head. Cody hadn’t realized he relied so much on the Jedi’s face to understand him.

“Yes, sir, but for a moment, I confess I thought you would more, avenge me or something.”

Obi-Wan touches his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to have been so long,” he says, “the system of caves proved itself tricky, and the Force insisted I couldn’t just blow up my way inside.”

“That would let the atmosphere on the outside enter,” Cody theorized, “and I think, our hosts….”

Like they have been summoned, two Kel Dor approach them. They are dressed as simply as all the others Cody has seen, but on the bust of the smaller one, there is some sort of ceremonial pectoral and it has a very big difference with everything Cody has seen since stepping into the cave. It’s in metal.

“Obi-Wan”, Cody whispers, “look at that.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t speak the language more than Cody. He can recognize it’s not the actual principal language of Kel Dor, which he has heard before, but no more than that. Nevertheless, it’s less a problem for a Jedi. He can feel in the Force other’s intentions, enough to understand easily that the people here don’t want to harm them, which Cody had deduced himself hours ago, and that they want to bring them to see something.

Cody is very happy to leave the dead bodies of the worms behind them.

And to General Skywalker eats insects! Bless the Force that Skywalker is Rex’s Jedi.

One cave. Another. Another one.

“How many are there? How big are these caves?'' Cody asks. He’s tired, hungry, thirsty, and more or less ready to go back to camp, thank you very much.

They find a ship, or more, the skeleton of a ship, in the last part of the caves system, the deepest one. It’s less a cave, and more the memory of a crash. The ship has been cannibalized, years after years, of everything useful, to the latest scrap of metal, except for the framework.

“It was probably made with a metal too dense for the meagre set of tools they have,” Obi-Wan theorizes.

“I can’t recognize the type of ship that is, the form itself is so strange,” Cody remarks, watching it with the eye of a man trained to recognize enemy and ally ships in a nano second in the middle of battle. Obi-Wan is touching the metal with his bare skin, with great reverence.

He always loved old things, his Jedi.

The happiest Cody had seen him was for a protection mission in a dusty archive, on a faraway world. General Skywalker was with them, and the young Ahsoka too, and the intel had been faulty. There had been no attack, Obi-Wan had had his Padawan and GrandPadawan close and safe, and spent his days making amorous noises at poetry treaties centuries old.

“It’s incredibly old. Probably before the foundation of the Republic."

"But that’s….that’s old as kriff."

"During the first time of space travel, ships weren’t as reliable. They probably are the descendants of a crew of explorers. After the crash, staying inside the caves was the only long-term possibility for them, if they hadn’t the means to produce enough respiratory apparatuses. It was the only way to survive for them. Nevertheless, it stopped anyone from finding them. And little by little, they regressed technically and lost the way to contact the outside."

"Do you really think they would have travelled from their world without a way to breath on other planets?"

"Perhaps it was stocked in a part of the ship lost during the crash. Perhaps it was so long ago, it was long before the Kel Dor knew very few worlds have an atmosphere breathable for them…Every species has the tendency to think the world at large tailored for them.”

They don’t leave immediately. Obi-Wan is of the opinion that Cody is too tired to use the path he himself used to find him. And he’s probably right. Cody’s head is throbbing where he hurt it during his fall, but he doesn’t see how he could get better here, where he can’t eat or drink.

What follows is a game of mime between Obi-Wan and the Kel Dors which Cody won’t forget, ever, no matter how much Obi-Wan asks, and he regrets he doesn’t have a holocamera.

After a time, and an unforgettable time it was, Obi-Wan and he find themselves stashed in a little room, so low they can’t stand. It’s more a bed stuffed inside some sort of structure made in the same weird-looking, weird-smelling mushrooms. Cody takes off the bubble around his head and Obi-Wan takes off Cody’s helmet.

The red head has the worst case of helmet’s hair Cody has seen, ever and Cody can’t stop an unprofessional laugh around his first mouthful of fresh water.

“I don't Not a head made for helmets, do I?” the Jedi smiles, as he tore in two a strange looking loaf of bread.

They fall on the food, famished, and tease each other at the same time. There is water and what Cody thinks is some root vegetables, and flatbread, and some meat he isn’t touching with a ten foot pool, just in case it's giant worm.

“If you swear to wear armour instead of linen in battle, I swear to the Force I will never mock your hair,” Cody smiles in return, and Obi-Wan makes a face, like he did already wear good, solid protection instead of tunic and leggings and whatever he calls the multiple layers of his Jedi’s clothes.

“I thought….for a moment, I thought…” Obi-Wan stops. It’s rare to see him lost for words, he of the Silver tongue, the Negotiator.

“I’m not dead,” Cody reiterates, because there is no need to beat around the bush. Even risking their lives every day the Force makes, nobody likes the kick of adrenaline when one of your men is missing. It never becomes normal. It never should.

“And yet, for a second I thought you were. When I saw the earth opening under your feet and gobbling you. And when I arrived during your battle, the Force trumpeting in my heart about the mortal danger you were running to.”

“The Kel Dor were pretty useless against those things. Couldn’t let them get eaten like that. Not when they rescued me and helped me.”

“I know. I know. And I would have done exactly the same thing.”

Obi-Wan sits on the bed, less gracefully than he usually does. From where he’s leaning against the mushroom wall, Cody stares. He can see the lines around his mouth, and after his late-night conversation with Master Quinlan Vos, he knows they aren’t from laughing. He can see the lines at the edges of the eyes, discreet for now, a little more present every day. He can see the first traces of grey on the temples, simply a trace of silver in the red mane…. He’s, almost, sure there was no grey at the beginning of the war, he has seen the holos of Obi-Wan against Prime, against Jango, all those years ago, on Kamino.

Obi-Wan is burning too bright, burning himself.

And Obi-Wan isn’t the only one not getting younger. The accelerated aging isn’t exactly good for Cody’s health, starting with his knees.

One day, he won’t be quick enough for the next giant, bioluminescent man-gobbling worm. Or Obi-Wan will be too tired against Grievous. Since they met, an assignment Commander- General decided by Alpha-17 himself, their life has been full of Separatist assassins, murderous fauna, Sith assassins, murderous geology, Separatist assassins pretending to be Sith assassins, and Sith assassins pretending to be Separatists assassins, brain-washed murderous Senators, murderous flora, murderous black holes, and one time a murderous sentient ship.

The whole galaxy is conspiring to kill clones and Jedi, for what Cody can see.

If his math is right, he survived today the sixty-third attempt on his life from Fate since he left Kamino. Obi-Wan was there for most of them, and Cody was around for the latest attempts on Obi-Wan’s life.

And one day, it will stop.

Cody opens his mouth before he can talk himself out of it. Life is short and he’s a soldier slave, he doesn’t have the luxury to wait for another time.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he says, and Obi-Wan looks like he has been whacked on the skull with a heavy object. It’s not exactly his best face, mouth round in surprise, and Cody only feels affection. Then Obi-Wan’s lips curve into a smile like a sun, blinding, warm, and the Jedi touches the side of Cody’s face.

The Jedi touches the side of Cody’s face.

He doesn’t speak. Not yet. His head against Cody, his breath sharing Cody’s own air, they close their eyes, and Cody experiences the strange idea that he’s detaching himself from his brothers.

For the first time, there is something in his hands, or well, in his heart, that he doesn’t want to share with Wolffe or Boil, or even Rex, who has become his closest brother.

He doesn’t want to hide Obi-Wan from them, but he wants….

He hasn’t the words. Not yet.

But, with Obi-Wan at his side, he hopes he will learn them.

And he hopes his brothers too can find something, or someone, so precious they need to share the joy of knowing it, but also to keep it to themselves, like he wants to keep to himself the smile of Obi-Wan when Cody tells “I love you”, or the small freckles at the side of his mouth, visible only so, so, so close.

The first “I love you” Cody hears from Obi-Wan is whispered against his lips.

The first kiss tastes of the bread offered by the Kel Dor, of the cave’s dust and it’s perfect.

They’re still in the same situation, two exhausted men, in a cave full of toxic gases, only protected from them by some unknown mushrooms exuding oxygen, and Cody feels like he could take over the entire Republic. He sleeps curved around Obi-Wan, like two parts of the same whole, touching as much as they can, and if the headache from his head wound brings Cody to the surface a few times during their nap, he feels rejuvenated after it.

After, the Kel Dor help them find the surface and Cody and Obi-Wan leave their new friends, hand in hand, quite happy to find back the sun and the sky, the fresh air of a late morning…and almost all their men crawling around their area, trying desperately to find them.

Obi-Wan keeps Cody’s hand in his and a few brothers less intimidated than others by Cody’s glare, embarrassed and proud at the same time, even bumped their big brother’s shoulders as a sign of congratulation. Obi-Wan immediately goes red, like he’s a teen on his first crush, and not a seasoned Jedi Master whose touch can bring life or death.

Cody finds it adorable.

*******************

It’s the middle of the night shift on the Negotiator, but Cody is still working on a different time zone, so he lets Obi-Wan sleep peacefully in their shared bunk. Their shared bunk! A notion that still makes him giddy like a shiny at their first kiss, even a month after getting together. They are taking things pretty slow, or in the wrong order, Cody isn’t sure, they sleep in the same bunk every night, but haven’t got very far in term of sex, and this perfect, because this is them, and not some sort of artificial list of relationship’s milestone. And Cody already knows, deep in his soul, that he will never love a man like he loves this one, even if Obi-Wan is killed tomorrow, and he’s sure it’s the same for Obi-Wan.

The Negotiator is in route to join with the Steadfast, so General Koth is on board after a conjoined mission where Obi-Wan and him gave Cody new grey hairs. He finds him easily in the mess, demolishing a healthy serving. The stamps outside the rations are a different colour than the ones Cody and his brothers eat.

“Can I join you?” Cody asks.

“Of course,” Eeth Koth immediately answers and the chair on the other side of the table moves on its own, offering itself for the Commander. Cody arches a brow.

“Don’t tell Obi-Wan,” the General jokes, “or I will endure a lesson for frivolous use of the Force.”

Cody sits and they stay silent for a moment, the General apparently happy to let him come to his questions in peace, continuing to eat his meal. Despite being tailored for a different species’ nutritional needs, it looks exactly as unappetizing as most rations Cody is used too.

“General Ke-“

“You can call him Obi-Wan in front of me,” Eeth Koth interrupts. “There is no need to be ashamed of what binds you.” He grimaces. “Force knows we will all need all the comfort we can get before everything is set and done in this war.”

“Obi-Wan and I, we had a bit of an adventure, last month.”

“From what I heard, you have a lot of them.”

“Yes but….it was…it was the first time I was around civilians. Normal people, I mean.”

“Not Jedi and not clones, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Putting apart the fact that you are normal people, and that we are too, that it is a slippery slope to consider us different, because then the rights…”

“I know you’re fighting for us in the Senate. I know. That isn’t the question…I just mean. They were civilians. Even more civilian than usual. I have only met natural borns who are Jedi and Senators and politicians or some sort of official. This was different. And I realized how little we know about the world outside the GAR. And how little we know about societies, and species who aren’t us. They raised us for war only…” Cody was almost trembling with it. Eeth Koth put a comforting hand on his wrist and Cody continued:

“Obi-Wan, I don’t want Obi-Wan to become my teacher. It’s not his role. But if we want to have a chance outside the war, us, the vode, we need to learn about the outside world. I wanted to ask you if there was something…a way…”

Eeth Koth had totally abandoned his meal and Cody could feel the weight of his gaze, the same gaze as Obi-Wan, transcending their species.

“Let me call a few people,” the Jedi said.

**********

Years later, Cody thinks a lot about that moment. Eeth Koth joined the Force during the war and Cody has to remember this moment for the two of them, this simple moment around a table, this moment which became one of the tipping point of his life. Not the too numerous almost-death, not the many battles, not even his first kiss with his dear Obi-Wan. This moment, in Cody’s mind, is the one which changed his fate.

Eeth Koth died not even two months after that, one among a lot of Jedi who gave their life, alongside the vode, for a chance for the galaxy and its people. Not that people are particularly thankful about it: the discovery of the Sith engineering the two sides of the conflict rocked the easy confidence of the Republic in the solidity of its system.

Democracy is never forever, if people don’t work for it.

No, democracy is only saved for now, and never will it be saved forever and ever. But that shock to the system is treated by the most intelligent of the bunch like a chance to seize. All across the reunited Republic people are working hard, entering politics, creating organizations to teach the population, to hold those in power accountable….

It’s a sad thing so many vode, jedi and civilians had to die and suffer for that. It’s even sadder to think it didn’t almost happen. The Republic almost burned, the Sith almost won, the beloved former Padawan of Obi-Wan Kenobi almost helped murder Mace Windu, Master of the Order...Mace Windu isn’t exactly the type to hold a grunge, but Obi-Wan still needed months after that to stay in his presence, the guilt that should have eaten Anakin transfered.

Honestly, if Obi-Wan forgave Anakin much too quickly, and Windu too, the vod needed a much longer time. Skywalker had almost helped the man who had engineered them as slave soldiers, the man who would have wiped out their free will, the poor part of it they still had. The vod had needed a long time to forgive, and would never forget, but Cody still has the desagreable impression Rex’s anger is a most important consequence in Skywalker’s mind that the almost death of the democratic system and the almost rise of a dictatorship.

Sometimes, late in the night, Obi-Wan stays awake, something lost in his eyes than mediation never totally makes disappear, and Cody is sure that day figures in a good part in his dark thoughts.

Obi-Wan, and Cody too, think about what could have been. If Cody hadn’t been there that day, in the Temple, who would have been in charge of keeping an eye on Skywalker in the Council Room? No one, that who. Because Skywalker was a Council member, if a very fresh one, and there wasn’t on hand a Jedi Master with enough years to take a look at a Council Member and decide he needed baby-sitting. All those Masters were deployed, or in beds in the halls of healing. But Cody, Cody was there, and since he and his General had become an item, he had taken sometimes to act, despite what his logical brain told him, not like a soldier Anakin could order around, but like an exasperated step-father. Exasperated and concerned, as the war advanced and Anakin seemed less and less attached to his morals.

Who would have followed him to the Senate when Skywalker had refused to wait anymore, and tackled him at the last minute? Who would have stopped Anakin Skywalker from doing something as tremendously stupid as to save a Sith pitted against Mace Windu?

And all of that had been possible because Jocasta Nu had taken the first excuse she could to keep Cody on Coruscant that month. A well-known linguist was visiting for a series of talks, and she thought he could be a good professor for Cody, and more importantly that well-know linguist had enough political power to obtain permission for a clone following his courses.

And the Republic had lived, because Cody loved linguistics, or more because he had loved the little he understood of it at the time.

But Cody refuses to let the horrors of those years of war, and his terrible first years on Kamino, define him. He prefers to think, again and again, to that moment with Eeth Koth.

Cody didn’t know exactly what he wanted. His accelerated childhood, raised for war and war only, hadn’t given him the words for it. He just knew that for his brothers and he to have a chance after the war, they needed more. Or even more terrible horrors would certainly befall them. Soldiers without wars aren’t useful anymore, and tools with no use are only fated to be dismantled for parts.

Following Eeth Koth’s call, Jocasta Nu and her assistants had descended on the GAR with determination, great efficiency and anger that they hadn’t thought about that themselves. By dint of foraging the Jedi Archives, and every friendly archives of the galaxy, for legal precedent to help the Vode, they had forgotten all answers weren’t found between the terabytes of a datapad.

Master Nu is seated right next to Obi-Wan in the public and trying very hard to pretend her eyes aren’t misty, as Cody receives his diploma, earning himself the title of Doctor in linguistics, for his work with the forgotten Kel Dor city, right next to the first Kel Dor of said city to have made the jump to Coruscant.

Cody isn’t the first clone to finish his thesis. Not surprising: he left the GAR years later than some of them, refusing to leave before his lover, who had been pressed into service as long as the Senate could justify it, and even longer. With Anakin leaving the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan was certainly the most famous member of it for the public, and it was as if the Senate tried to make him pay the Jedi’s refusal to abandon the vode. But Cody was the first clone Jocasta Nu talked with, when she arrived to try to help the vode not in pleading that they shouldn’t be slave soldiers, but in demonstrating they were so much more.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to leave the GAR officially, that honour went to Rex who followed Ashoka to Orto Plutonia, the first clone to be officially accepted as a member of the Jedi Corps. For what Cody understands, his life consists of almost losing his toes ten times a month, hunting with the Taz and flirting desperately with every passing skirts, as Ahsoka flirts desperately with her own Senator and supervises Republic-Taz contacts. Obi-Wan and Cody went once during permission, and Cody swore to himself that the next time Rex and Ahsoka wanted to see them, it could be on a tropical atoll.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to find a job outside of the Jedi orbit. That honour went to Fives and Tup, who left together and chose the most pacifist world they could. “We were almost separated once, never again. I’m not touching a weapon again in my life” Fives had said to Cody that day, watching Tup, busy hugging Rex, with something ferociously possessive in his eyes. Now, they have a nursery of succulent plants on a small island, in the south hemisphere of Alderaan, and Cody still isn’t sure if they are the best friends in the world, or one of those pairs who took brothers in a quite different sense, and frankly, he doesn’t care. There is a small potted thing they sent as a gift on Cody’s desk, with red undertones and white flowers once a year, but the former Commander has a black thumb, and only Obi-Wan’s careful nursing in the Force saved the poor thing already thrice.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to enter academia, that honour went to Waxer, who now teaches mathematics on Mandalore and is busy reintroducing Fett’s genes into the population with a long string of ex-partners, who still like him very much and with who he raises an army of children, at least three of them bearing a name honouring Waxer.

Cody wasn’t the first clone to marry, that honour went to Jesse and Cody isn’t touching that choice of spouse with a ten-foot pool.

Cody wasn’t the first in a lot of things. But it’s ok. He doesn’t have to lead his brothers anymore. He doesn’t have to bear responsibilities for death and help who didn’t come, and for the horrors that were their life.

The vode are free and Cody can only be a brother like any other.

He can be only Obi-Wan’s husband, even if Obi-Wan jokes that now, it’s more him that will be only the husband of Doctor Cody Kenobi, his arm candy in gatherings.

#star wars #obi wan kenobi #commander cody #codywan #my fics

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gffa · 4 years

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Honestly, I don’t know. Both of these characters did love each other very much, but they’re coming at this with a whole lot of baggage. For Anakin: Despite that Padme never gave him any reason to doubt her, he still couldn’t stop fearing that she was going to betray him. She made it very plain that she wasn’t interested in Clovis as anything other than a friend, that she had important reasons for working with him, but Anakin time and again kept boiling it down to her having romantic feelings for someone else.

Padme did everything “right” with Anakin, she always treated him with sympathy and softness, no matter what. She poured all of her love into him, she got swept up in the romance with him just as much as he did many a time, yet he still cannot trust her. It’s the same on Mustafar--she has given every indication that she wants to be with him, wants to have a family with him, wants to leave with him, but he still turns on her and thinks she’s plotting behind his back when Obi-Wan reveals himself.

He’s willing to turn on her with the slightest indication without giving her a chance to explain. She says, “No! I love you!” and he screams back that she’s a liar and starts to Force-choke her.

This is what Anakin is bringing to this relationship--yes, he’s high on the dark side and this is a really bad critical moment, but that’s what the dark side does. And further canon (especially Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith and Vader Immortal) really hammer home that he’s unwilling to face his own mistakes about this, that he was responsible, that the dark side twisted him into this. Would he be willing to come back if Padme were still alive, would he be willing to leave the dark side behind for a second chance at a relationship with her? I honestly can’t say. I suspect not, because as much as he loved her, he didn’t really want to live a simple, quiet life. He desperately wanted something bigger and grander, he wanted to rule an Empire with her, he wanted to remake the galaxy into what he wanted. He wanted a shadow of her, this idea of her, not the woman who actually said no to him.

Then there’s the other side of this relationship. For Padme: She is someone who does try to put her foot down, to set boundaries. We see that she does this really well in Attack of the Clones, where she tells him, “Stop looking at me like that, it makes me uncomfortable.” But then in that same movie, when he confesses that he’s killed the Tusken women and children, she doesn’t express any horror at this, only comforting him, telling him that being angry is being human.

She sees someone who is in incredible pain, it’s completely understandable, but it also shows that she’s willing to overlook his actions for how sad he was about his mother’s death. By the end of the movie, despite knowing him for about a week, she’s marrying him. Yes, the circumstances on Geonosis are intense, which will put intense feelings into a boiler pot and make them even more intense, but she’s still known him like a week. Padme is very much someone who gets swept up in romance and how she feels empathy for Anakin, she aches on his behalf. It’s the same with the Rush Clovis arc in season 6, where he beats the shit out of Clovis because he thought Padme was kissing him and she says they need to take a break. By the end of the arc, intense circumstances (Clovis’ death, her own almost death) have her setting all that aside again to be with him, to exchange romantic holo-messages with him, to daydream about having their baby together on Naboo. She has seen what Anakin does when he has dreams of someone dying, like with his mother. He directly says that these dreams are like those and he won’t let Padme die, but she says they’re just dreams. And when Anakin murders the Jedi younglings after having turned to the dark side, Padme’s first response is angry disbelief.

She goes to Mustafar to try to talk him back, but he’s off the deep end, so she backs away, saying, “You’re not the person I married, you’ve become this person I can’t follow any longer.” She absolutely does mean this--but she’s meant it before, too. And she’s come back before, too. Even her final words about Anakin are, “There’s still good in him.” because Padme cannot maintain those boundaries. So, I’m not sure how this set-up would necessarily even work, if Padme even could set down the boundary of “turn back to the light or we’re done” and keep it in a way that would actually force Anakin to change. Because the dark side isn’t just anger, it’s also pain and suffering--which Padme is incredibly vulnerable to in Anakin. If she somehow could maintain that boundary, it’s possible that Anakin would come back, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet money on it. Anakin has always loved the idea of her just as much as he loves her for herself, so much of their relationship was about his feelings for her, that nothing was more important that the way he felt about her. And when she goes against what he thinks she should be doing, goes against his feelings that he’s giving her, he gets furious and lashes out. He’s absolutely willing to physically assault her if he gets angry enough and that trigger is a hair trigger at times. And here’s the other thing: I think Anakin loved Obi-Wan just as much as he loved Padme, though, in different ways (even if they’re both romantic or if one’s romantic and one’s platonic, they’re still different), he knew Obi-Wan loved him and he knew Obi-Wan would accept him back if he turned away from the dark side. He knew if he went to Obi-Wan, even after everything, and asked for his help, Obi-Wan would listen to him, would still love him.

In the vision he has in Dark Lord of the Sith, the Force/the kyber crystal shows him this and Anakin’s eyes are blue again, he’s able to make his choice freely, and he rejects it. He rejects coming back from the dark side. Now, his relationship with Obi-Wan and Padme are different, he can’t break down Obi-Wan’s boundaries the way he can Padme’s, nor does he have the same physical power over him that he does over Padme, the fight on Mustafar illustrates that. Obi-Wan gives Anakin every chance, the entire battle is written to be like a married couple having a fight where Obi-Wan is trying to give him time to calm down, as well as Obi-Wan will not let this happen, even though he desperately didn’t want it to come down to this. Anakin refused to come back, though. Once the dark side got its hooks in, once he was willing to murder the Jedi and the Jedi children, once he was willing to help burn the Republic to the ground, he couldn’t go back. He knew what he’d done was wrong, he was never going to be able to accept someone who knew what he’d done, knew him and what that really meant. That’s why Ahsoka could never have brought him back, either. Because Anakin hated himself for what he’d done so deeply that he couldn’t accept anyone who knew him, that’s why it could only have been Luke or Leia who made him have his final selfless moment, someone that represented the future, rather than his past.

"Just imagine this person that’s so wrapped up in their hatred for themself as much as external hate, that he just can’t deal with it. He needs to destroy [Ahsoka]. So there isn’t empathy for her. I’ve never thought that she could be something that would turn him back from the dark side, because that would completely rob Luke. That would make it seem like that story was just one possiblity of many, when I think that Luke or Leia are the only possibility of their father’s redemption.” --Dave Filoni Anakin knew these people that he loved would accept him back, knew they loved him, but he couldn’t face it. He tries to bring Padme back in Dark Lord of the Sith, when he’s fresh off his turn, but even then it’s just a reflection of himself that he’s chasing after, not really her. In Vader Immortal he’s also trying to bring her back, but he’s chasing a shadow of her, not really her. It’s not about her, it’s not about what she would want, it’s not about the horror she would experience at what he’d done in her name (murdering children, murdering entire planets), it’s not about how she would react. It’s about his feelings for her. And that’s not something that would bring him back from the dark side. Padme is different in that he’s used to eventually breaking down her boundaries, so he feels a possessiveness towards her that he can’t have for Obi-Wan or Ahsoka (who assert their boundaries and keep them), but ultimately if Padme asserted those same boundaries, if she refused to take him back unless he turned away from the dark side, he would do the same thing he did to her on Mustafar, the same thing he did to Obi-Wan, the same thing he did to Ahsoka--try to kill them, because he cannot stand to look at what he’s done and work through it, he has to keep justifying it or he’ll fall apart and he refuses to do so.

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #ahsoka tano #anidala #meta #long post

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crispyjenkins · 4 years

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Me again, hope you don’t mind... anyways could you do Cody and Obi wan First Meeting out of Cody’s POV and he slowly realizes that this isn’t you usual Jedi general but that Obi-Wan Kenobi is not only beautiful but also 1. Incredibly good at words 2. Actually cares about the Vode 3. For that reason dislikes fighting and casualties and actually shows his compassion to the Vode 4. Is an absolute badass and 5. Absolutely insane

(Obi-Wan defying the troopers' expectations is the reason i'm alive, and the vode being intimidated by this scary magic man only to find out he's a reckless dumbass who cares more about them than actually winning the war is just. yes. not actually sure how it happened in canon, my brain is being mean, but canon is nebulous and i do what i want.

so here's Cody being surprised by Obi-Wan's endless love for absolutely everybody, and obi being surprised that Cody is surprised.)

Cody is running on six hours of sleep in two days following General Rret So’s reassignment, and he isn’t even close to being finished cleaning up that... disaster. They’ve got a new batch of shinies to paint and name, bodies to bury, a new general to meet, and to be honest, Cody doesn’t have all too high hopes for their next one. It’s already kriffing clear that none of the Jedi have proper military training, and while Cody isn’t one for gossip, he’s also heard rumors that Kenobi hasn’t been in the field since Geonosis. And they want him to lead an attack battalion.

But when Cody arrives in the hangar of their current outpost to make sure it’s in shape before Kenobi arrives, there’s a Jedi near the center of the room, sitting on the floor. Or sitting... a few inches above the floor, only one hand gently touching the durasteel below him, and Cody halts just inside the door.

It doesn’t take much to guess his identity, what with the Jedi robe mostly pooled on the floor, whose edges drift in lazy swirls. The man has his eyes closed, several small stones levitating in equally lazy spins around him, but the casual show of power doesn’t put Cody on edge the way their Nautolan general had; the air around Rret felt like static when he meditated, but General Kenobi effuses warmth and calm, his expression as thoughtful as it is peaceful.

Cody skeptically takes in the armor under Kenobi’s robe, modified clone armour; General Rret never touched anything not sent directly from the Temple. And Kenobi is... smaller than Cody had expected of the famed Negotiator that had helped lead at the Battle of Geonosis, more lithe, more compact. His hair is longer than regulation (not that that has ever stopped Tup), just enough to pull back, with an endearing curl that’s escaped the elastic floating at his temple.

Cody was created for problem solving, for analyzing patterns and information where his rank-and-file brothers could not, but all these little details just leave him confused.

The stones gently and slowly settle back onto the ground, followed by the general as he inhales a deep breath, and that aura of tranquility does not leave when he opens his eyes.

And then he smiles at Cody.

Cody snaps a salute, nerves jumping despite the general’s expression, and tries to raise his mental shields like Jango had taught them to. “General, sir,” he greets, keeping his gaze just below Kenobi’s eyes, which unfortunately has him pinned on his lips.

“Commander Cody,” he returns warmly in High Coruscanti, rising in a fluid motion and holding out a hand. Cody stares at it for a moment before he realises General Kenobi means to shake his hand, and he almost thinks it’s a trap, but he hesitantly reaches out all the same. That smile grows as Kenobi then moves to grip Cody’s forearm like any proper Mando, tapping his other fist to the center of his chest. “It’s good to finally meet you, Commander: I’ve been assured that we will work quite well together.”

Reeling, Cody almost forgets to respond. “Sir?”

“I’ve heard nothing but compliments from your men, and from other battalions; Captain Rex in particular speaks very highly of you.”

Does he know Cody was almost court martialed for arguing with General Rret? Does he know about the multiple complaints submitted by the Nautolan for insubordination?

The way Kenobi’s eyes crinkle at the corners doesn’t assure him that he had. “I like to get my information from multiple sources,” Kenobi explains, finally releasing Cody to tuck his arms behind his back almost at parade rest. “You’re here a bit early, aren’t you? Excellent, that gives us some time to chat before your men arrive.”

It’s enough that General Kenobi went out of his way to learn his name, and then use it, leaving Cody absolutely helpless as Kenobi launches in questions about the cleanup from Rret’s departure.

Kenobi growls like a stampeding reek as their next assault goes to kriffing shit. No sooner had Kenobi managed to greet Ghost Company, that the call to arms had blared through the outpost, a droid battalion approaching from the South. Which was something Rret had apparently anticipated but not felt the need to tell anyone, including the High Generals.

And Kenobi had loaded up with the rest of them, speaking quickly with the pilot, and surely his general wasn’t planning on— on actually fighting with them?

But he had indeed leapt from the transport into the dense forest right alongside him, and Cody had realised, kriff, he has to try and keep this crazy Jedi alive long enough for him to ask what the kriff he’s thinking.

And then things just keep going wrong, from misinformation about droid numbers, to being cornered in a ravine, to Cody having to step over a Shiny that hadn’t even been named yet. Kenobi whirls through the droids with his lightsaber, but the B1s seem to just keep coming, and Cody has almost resigned himself to dying here, because Rret would never let them change the plan this far in—

“Commander!” Kenobi shouts, shoving a B2 droid off his ‘saber. “Full retreat! Evac is inbound, get your men to the top of the ridge!”

“Sir?”

Appearing at Cody’s side and handing him a fresh blaster, Kenobi’s serene expression is traded for troubled rage, but it’s by some miracle not aimed at the vode. “We’re not winning here today,” Kenobi says, jerking his chin towards the ridge as he tugs Cody behind a boulder. “We need to regroup, your medic is already overrun.”

Which doesn’t quite compute. It’s not as if they haven’t lost entire squads in similar conditions, what does Kenobi hope to achieve by—

“I’ll hold them off,” he says, making Cody choke on his spit. “As long as I can.”

“General!” By the Force, he can’t honestly think that Cody will let him stay behind, that Cody will leave him here.

“That’s an order, I’m not losing any more men today,” Kenobi says firmly. He checks around the boulder before spinning back to Cody. “I was told you were by the book, that you were a stellar soldier with his brothers’ best interest at heart. Are you going to make me a fool for believing that?”

“General, I don’t think—”

“I’ve given you an order, Commander. Retreat. I will meet you back at the outpost.”

Swallowing down the urge to throw up, Cody nods and salutes, and prays to whatever deity listening that he’ll wake up tomorrow with absolutely no memory of today.

Kenobi gives him a small smile, before reigniting his ‘saber and rushing back into the battle.

Cody is just beginning to wonder if they’re going to have to get another new general when Kenobi shows up in the last search party before they call it off for the night, stepping off the transport with several more injured brothers that hadn’t made it back with the first two evacs. A squad of shinies runs up to get the stretches to the medbay that is indeed overrun, but Cody doesn’t worr— can’t worry about that right now, marching up to Kenobi with a comm disk.

“Sir, welcome back,” he greets, taking quick stock of the minor grazes on Kenobi’s face, how limp his hair has turned, but he otherwise seems fine, which is a miracle in it of itself. “High General Mundi—”

“Later,” Kenobi cuts him off, not unkindly, but with an air of unspeakable exhaustion. “Master Rret So restationed your secondary medics, yes?”

“Yes, sir, but what—?”

Kenobi nods once and starts to follow the shinies, Cody matching pace with him even as he’s sure he’s broadcasting his confusion into the Force. Kenobi offers him a tiny smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Your brothers aren’t going to last the night if I don’t go help Wupi, and you’re horrendously undermanned as it is.”

Another name casually thrown out, as if General Rret hadn’t even bothered to learn their numbers, and if Cody wasn’t already a whirlwind of emotions, he might have some feelings about that. Later. Everything later.

A thought occurs to him. “Sir, General Rret said they were needed elsewhere. The secondary medics.”

They arrive at the medbay that is in utter chaos, too small to house so many vode, already filled from their last skirmish and now completely overflowing. Kenobi looks around almost as if he’s going to cry, before he clenches his jaw and turns to Cody.

“General Rret was mistaken. I hailed the 501st from the transport, they’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, but until then, it’s my duty to keep your men alive. Can you help me do that, Cody?”

Cody simply nods, wondering if he had been concussed during the battle. “Yes, sir. What do you need.”

“I need every sheet you can spare, and the emergency medkits from all the transports. I need you to hold off General Mundi until morning, I know he’s expecting a long conversation. And please, tell him in no uncertain terms that I plan to have very harsh words with his former padawan as soon as the 501st arrive.” Kenobi takes a deep breath, seeming to draw energy in from everywhere, and then puts a hand on the side of Cody’s neck for the briefest moment. Almost like static shock, Cody flinches, but suddenly doesn’t feel so exhausted, and he blinks down at Kenobi.

“That should hold you over until morning, I trust you to handle the rest of the outpost?” He raises a single brow, but kriff if Cody is going to tell him no.

“Yes, sir.” He salutes, feeling a green warmth brushing against his mind that certainly was not there before, but belongs there all the same.

That warmth stays with him long after the 501st arrives with aid, and Cody intends to hold onto it for as long as his cannon-fodder life allows.

401 notes · View notes

thicctails · 3 years

Text

Summer of Whump Day 12 [Death/Rebirth]

A direct continuation of the last one!

The room was quiet when Tech entered, the only sound being his and Omega’s breathing. He slowly inched forward, trying his best not to look at the glaringly obvious wound on Omega’s back. He took a seat, folding his arms and resting his head on them. Today had been a complete mess, and he was still processing it. Their chips weren’t supposed to activate! Crosshair was suppose to be the exception, not just a warning of what was to come! Thank the Maker for Rex, he wasn’t sure what they would have done without his help.

A shudder runs through him at the thought of Wrecker’s chip activating while they were on the ship or on a mission. Hell, he could have easily ended their lives in their sleep at any point. Apparently, they had all been one blow to the head away from becoming killing machines. Today had proved that the chips truly took away any semblance of control, because Wrecker would never have hurt Omega if he could have helped it.

‘But,’ Tech thought sadly, ‘he still did.’

Wrecker had hurt Omega, and it wasn’t just a little injury. Her neck was purple with bruises, and he could still couldn’t bring himself to look at her back. He knew he’d have to, she’d need to have bandages applied soon, if the bacta did its job, but he wanted to avoid it for as long as possible. He’d hurt her, and Tech wasn’t sure how to feel. He wanted to feel angry at Wrecker, wanted to have someone close by who he could take his anger out on, but he knew it wasn’t his brother’s fault. It was the Empire who had put those chips in their heads, in all of their brothers’ heads.

He settled on feeling mad at everything.

Omega shifted slightly, her face scrunching up in disgruntlement. Tech frowned, unsure of how to help. Was she having a nightmare? Was she in pain? He couldn’t tell.

“What’s going on in your head, little one?” He asked softly, taking one of Omega’s hands. Her hands were so small compared to his own, and he was once again reminded of how young she really was.

Omega blinked, finding herself in familiar darkness. Waves of purple and blue rippled around her, ebbing through the void. She tries to move, and discovers that, unlike before, when she had felt grounded and normal, she now feels much lighter.

‘I wonder if this is how clouds feel.’ She thought, smiling as she floated around.

“That’s an interesting thought, young one.”

The voice surprises Omega, and she spins around to see a man standing before her. He was dressed in long, brown robes that hung loosely off of him. He had long hair that flowed over his shoulders and his eyes were a kind blue. An aura of blue light seemed to emanate from him.

“Who are you?” Omega asked.

“A friend. Would you like some company?” The man asked, not quite answering her question.

Omega shrugs. “Sure. Not like there’s much to do here.”

The man chuckles a bit and sits down, crossing his legs. “Yes, I suppose this place isn’t the most entertaining for a child.”

Omega sat down as well. “Yeah, you’d think a dream would be more interesting.” She frowns. “Wait, if I’m dreaming, why are you here? I don’t know you.”

The man’s smile turns a bit sad. “This is no dream, young one. You are in the Between.”

“The… what?” Omega was confused.

“The Between is the place that exists on the line between life and death. You haven’t passed on yet, but you are close enough to that point that you can exist here.” The man explained, gesturing to the void around them.

Omega looked at her hands, then back up at the man. “So, I’m dying? Isn’t there anything I can do? Are you dying?”

The man shook his head. “I passed on years ago. The best thing you can do is find peace and wait to see what the Force wills.”

“Peace? How can you tell me to find peace?! I’m dying!” Omega yelped. “That’s not something you feel peaceful about!’

“You are strong in the Force. Your body might be gone, but your soul will remain. There is nothing to fear.” The man said, trying to calm her down.

“Easy for you to say, you’re dead! Look, maybe you were okay with dying, but I’m not.” She huffed, getting to her feet.

“Where are you going?” The man asked, sounding somewhat amused.

“I’m gonna find a way out of here. I need to tell Wrecker that what happened wasn’t his fault!” Omega said, looking back over her shoulder as she picked a direction and started walking.

She did not find a way out.

Omega groaned and flopped down when, for the third time, she ended up back where she started. The man was still there, looking over at her as she visibly deflated.

“This sucks.” She muttered.

“Giving up?” The man asked.

“Well I don’t really have a choice. There’s no way out, so I guess I just have to wait and see if I die.” Omega sighed, tears starting to form as she felt frustration build in her chest.

“If you give up, you almost certainly will. You must have faith in yourself and in the Force.” The man said, patting the space beside him. “Come, I’ll show you how to meditate. Connecting with the Force isn’t a bad way to pass some time.”

Omega looked uncertain, but moved to sit next to the man.

“So, are you going to tell me your name, or am I going to have to call you “dead bearded dude” forever?” Omega asked, not afraid to sass a ghost.

The man actually laughed at that. “You remind me a great deal of my padawan. He always had a quick remark ready on his tongue. My name is Qui-Gon Jinn, but you may call me Jinn.”

“Your padawan? You’re a Jedi?” Omega questioned.

“I was. I died before… well, before everything went wrong. I wish I had been able to stay around longer. I had never wanted to leave my padawan alone like I did. I’m not sure he ever found peace after my passing.” Jinn said, sounding remorseful.

“I’m sure he misses you. I don’t think I would get over the death of someone I cared about very easily, if at all.” Omega said, staring out into the shifting darkness.

“Jedi aren’t supposed to mourn. We believe that there is no real death, just your life returning to the Force.” Jinn responded.

“Wow. That sounds…” Omega frowned, her brow wrinkling, “really awful. No wonder the Force is mad at you guys.”

“What?” Jinn reeled back a bit, not at all expecting Omega’s statement.

“Yeah. It said that the Jedi ruined someone named Anakin. I think he was the Force’s favourite.” She said.

Jinn blinked. “How do you know about my grandpadawan?”

“The Force told me. I was created to be Force-Sensitive, so I have an unnaturally strong connection.” Omega explained.

The ghost’s eyes widened.

“Oh Maker, that- that is not good.” He whispered. “How the hell did they manage to piss of the Force?!”

“Maybe by teaching this Anakin guy your terrible ideas on life?” She deadpanned. “Did you tell him to not mourn and also to just be at peace with dying?”

“Something like that…” Jinn said, putting a hand on his face.

“Jedi suck.” Omega said simply.

“They can.” Jinn agreed. “But not all of them are bad. My padawan tried to help Anakin, but he didn’t understand how bad things were until it was too late. The guilt he feels from his failure is so great, I feel it even as we speak.”

“What happened to them?” Omega asked. “Your padawan and Anakin?”

“Anakin has fallen to the Dark side, and he now acts as the Empire’s attack dog. My padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, now resides on Tatooine. He watches over Anakin’s son.” Jinn said. “If you would like, I could ask him to train you. I could tell right away that you were strong in the Force, even before you told me to what extent. I’m sure you and him would get along extremely well.”

“I don’t think I’ll be doing any training for a while.” Omega said. “I- I got really hurt today.”

“I know. The Force felt your pain, and we could feel its alarm.” Jinn said sympathetically. “What happened?”

“I’ve been travelling around with a group of clones who’s chips didn’t activate right away. Today, one of theirs did, and he ended up chasing me down into the bottom of a Jedi cruiser. There was lots of steam and really hot metal, and, and…” Omega shuddered at the memory, phantom pain rippling through her.

Wait, was that phantom pain?

“It seems as though the Force doesn’t wish for you to join us yet.” Jinn said, pointing to Omega’s hands. They were becoming more and more transparent as the seconds passed.

“What’s happening?” Omega cringed as she felt another wave of pain hit her, a couple of tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Don’t be afraid. You’re waking up.” Jinn said quickly. “Consider my offer, little one. Reach out to me when you have healed.”

Omega tried to respond, but found herself unable to. She felt heavy, and she started to fall into the void. She blinked, and the world went white.

Wrecker hovered by the doorway, unwilling to go in. When he’d woken up, his memory had been fuzzy for a moment. His head had ached a bit, but nothing like it had before. He’d been shocked to see the muzzle of a blaster pointed at his face, and even more surprised to see that it was Rex who was holding it. He’d held up his hands instinctively, shrinking back in shock. He must have done the right thing, because Rex’s face had softened and he had moved the blaster away. Once he’d gotten over his surprise, he’d asked why Rex had been pointing a blaster at him.

His stomach had dropped when he got his answer.

He’d been standing just outside the door for a while now, needing to see for himself that Omega was alive, but also not being able to bring himself to face her after what he had done.

He’d been assured that no one blamed him for what had happened, that it was the chip��s fault. But it hadn’t been a piece of metal in his brain that had grabbed Omega by her little throat and slammed her against that burning hot steel. That had been him. How did you even begin to apologize for something like that? Could you even apologize for that? Or had he just irreversibly shattered his relationship with Omega?

“Wrecker.”

Rex’s voice brought him out of his own head. The blonde was standing on the opposite side of the doorway, looking at Wrecker expectantly.

“Aren’t you going to go in?” He knew that Echo was sleeping in the room, so he kept his voice low.

“No, uh, I don’t think so.” Wrecker murmured. “I think I’ll stay out here.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

Rex sighed. “Wrecker, you can’t keep avoiding them.”

“But what if they all hate me? I wouldn’t even want to be around me after what I did.” He said, crossing his arms as he looked away.

“No one hates you, Wrecker. You were a victim, too.” Rex said.

Wrecker didn’t respond, still looking down at the floor as Rex laid a comforting hand on his arm.

“Just remember, Omega is going to need all of her buirs while she recovers.” Rex said, smiling as Wrecker startled at the title.

The burly man turned the word over in his head. He’d only ever been a vod before, and he’d never even once consider that he might someday be something more. The idea wasn’t an unpleasant one; he actually liked the idea of being seen as a parental figure, but how could Rex even think that Omega would still think of him as such, if she ever had before.

Suddenly, he heard a familiar yelp, followed by a thud. Instinctively, he jolted into the room, eyes wide with fear when he saw Omega on the ground. Tech, who seemed to have been dozing off, had startled awake, knocking over the chair with how fast he stood up.

“Omega!” He gasped, stepping forward to help her up.

Tech beat him to it, the younger clone easing Omega into his arms with extreme care. Omega instantly buried her face in his chest, shivering as she whined in pain.

Hunter and Echo practically materialized beside Tech at the sound, and Wrecker didn’t miss the way Hunter’s hands twitched upwards, like he wanted to take Omega from Tech and hold her himself.

Perhaps Rex hadn’t been too far off when he’d called them her buirs.

“What happened?” He asked, shuffling a bit closer.

Tech’s eyes flickered up towards him, and he silent exhaled in relief when he saw no traces of the hatred he had been expecting to see.

“I don’t know. She was sleeping just fine, and then she suddenly woke up and fell off the cot. I think she’s feeling her injuries.” He said, quickly looking towards Rex. “Where is the sedatives? We need to give her a low dose so we can reapply the bacta.”

“It’s in the cabinets. Wrecker, grab a sedative from that cabinet there!” Rex barked, rushing over to a different cabinet. Wrecker obeyed without question, retrieving a pack of needles with a green liquid within them.

He gives the sedatives to Tech as he set Omega down. The girl wasn’t too happy about having to release Tech, and she clung to him as she cried. Tech looked at Hunter for help, needing to administer the sedative but not wanting to make Omega even more upset. The man instantly brought Omega into a hug, holding her while Tech opened a needle. He whispered reassurances as Omega tucked her face into his neck, shivering all the while.

Finally, Tech managed to get the sedative ready and he stuck it into Omega’s neck, grimacing when she squeaked in pain. After a few tense minutes had passed, Omega relaxed, still breathing hard as the sedative kicked in. Rex came over soon after with some more bacta, and they quickly applied the healing substance. Omega pulled her face away from Hunter’s neck and looked around the room, her eyes wet and still a bit wild looking. Her eyes met Wrecker’s, and the enhanced clone realized that he was now in the very room he had just been trying to avoid.

“Hey Wr-wrecker,” She said, her voice still shaky, “how’s y-y-your head?”

To his complete and utter surprise, she smiled at him as best she could. It was a little bit wobbly, and it looked like it was hard to keep it there, but he could tell she wasn’t forcing it.

“It’s- it’s good. I’m okay now.” He said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Oh, g-good! I was w-worried ‘bout you.” Omega said, leaning against Hunter’s chest as she shakes.

“Me? You shouldn’t worry about me, Omega. I’m not worth worrying over.” He said, shaking his head. Omega frowned, her eyes becoming misty.

“N-no! It’s not your fault! You weren’t in control!” She argued, trying to sit up. She hissed when her back muscles were moved, and she was quickly eased back down as Echo gently pushed on her arm. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

She sniffed, and Wrecker quickly put his hands up. “Okay, okay you’re right! I won’t blame myself! Please don’t cry…”

He moved closer to her, kneeling down in front of the cot. She reached a hand out, and Wrecker slowly took it gently. She squeezed his hand, blinking away tears. She breathed, struggling a bit from her throat muscles being deeply bruised.

“I-I,” He started, looking down as he tried to think about what to say, “I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am, Omega. I tried to control it, tried to stop, but I just-”

“Couldn’t.” Omega finished. “I know Wrecker. It’s okay, I forgive you.”

“Don’t.” He said instantly. “Don’t forgive me, at least not yet. I gotta earn that.”

Omega huffed but nodded. “Okay Wrecker, if you say so.”

Wrecker nodded, more to himself than to Omega. He kept holding her hand as Echo applied bandaged, the clone trying to avoid touching Omega’s skin as much as possible. After around half an hour had passed, Omega’s eyes began to droop. She yawned and, upon deciding that Hunter would make a good pillow, leaned into him and settled down to sleep. Hunter didn’t dare move, lest he disturb Omega. Even when she fell into a far more peaceful sleep, she kept a sturdy hold on Wrecker’s hand.

Pillow sniffed the air, trying to figure out where Warm One had gone. Blue Stripes, a new human that had apparently joined their group, had led Warm One’s pack into this large, broken metal den, and they had yet to come back out. He’d brought her doll, just in case they were staying here for a while. Pillow hauled his way up into a vent, wiggling through the cold metal space. He could hear something moving around up ahead, so he followed it, eventually ending up above an open room. He poked his head down, cocking his head in confusion.

There was a human standing in the room, staring at something in his hand. He wore the same colours as the other members of Warm One’s pack, and he smelled extremely similar to them, but he didn’t recognize him.

‘Must be a lost clutchmate.’ He thought sadly. ‘Poor human. Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back to your pack!’

He dropped down, sitting on his haunches. He honked a greeting as the human whirled around, his weapon raised. Ah, he must not understand that he was here to help. Humans had practically useless noses, after all. They needed to use their eyes to identify each other.

Pillow dropped the doll, nudging it towards the human. He pauses, then picks up the doll, turning it over and examining it.

‘See? I know where your family is!’ He thought.

The human stares at the doll, then at Pillow.

“Where did you get this?” He asked, and Pillow thinks that his voice is a bit… cold.

Ignoring that, he sniffs the air again. It takes a moment, but he eventually picks up the scent of blood and tears and familiarity. He honked, now worried. Was Warm One hurt? Was that why she hadn’t come back?

‘Hold on, Warm One. I’m coming!’ He thought, taking off down the hallway. The new human was quick to follow.

#the bad batch #star wars the bad batch #star wars #omega bad batch #hunter bad batch #rex clone wars #captain rex #echo bad batch #tech bad batch #wrecker bad batch #tw injury #qui gon jinn #force ghost #talking about death #summerofwhump #summerofwhump[12]

19 notes · View notes

chancelloramidala · 3 years

Text

Across The Stars In A Galaxy Far Far Away ★ Star Wars & Marvel Crossover AU

ONE.

Tony didn’t know what else to expect when Peter called him at two in the morning. He wasn’t even asleep, just drinking coffee in his workshop and fiddling with a new project. Usually when Peter texted him it was about literally the smallest thing. And most the time, Tony didn’t mind it, he found it endearing that the kid wanted to update him on if he passed a test or not and the latest gossip going around school was.

But this time, it was a call, which was deviated from the usual. Calls were important, and Tony wasn’t prepared to talk about anything important. Was Peter going to talk about dating with him? Did he like someone at school? Did he have questions about the birds and the bees?

No. The answers to all of that was no.

Not even fucking close.

Peter was talking so fast that Tony thought the kid accidentally took some drugs and was hallucinating, but when the kid finally slowed down, that’s when Tony heard it.

“I think a space ship just crashed into Central Park, Mr. Stark!”

Tony spat out his coffee all over the steel table. “What?”

“I think a space ship just crashed-”

“Nope, I heard you kiddo,” Tony rubbed his temple feeling a migraine begin. “Promise me you didn’t take anything, nothing that looked like candy off the ground?”

“What? Why would I even... Oh my god, I think aliens are inside the ship!” there was some shuffling and Tony could only assume Peter was running to hide. “I hear something, yelling... clanking...”

Tony felt his face pale as he stepped away from the coffee ruined table and he held the phone closer to his ear. “Peter, whatever you do, don’t approach them. Wait till we get there.”

“”We”?”

“Yes we. Now stay put.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up!” Peter exclaimed as the voice call turned into a video one, “I think they’re trying to get out of their ship! Look!”

Peter turned the camera in his phone around to reveal what he was seeing to Tony.

━━━━━━━━━━━━

Anakin helped Obi-Wan down the ramp with one arm loosely around his friend’s torso to keep him upright. “Well, at least we’re all in one piece.” He said as he sat Obi-Wan down next to Ahsoka who was being tended to by Padmé.

Padmé rolled her eyes as she applied a bacta patch on Ahsoka’s bruised back. “No doubt it’s thanks to your flying, Ani,” she sharply replied.

“Where are we anyway?” Ahsoka asked, carefully rolling her shoulders despite the aching pain.

“We’re too far away for our coms to get a signal out.” Rex said as he continued to tap at his com. “I can try again with the communication systems on board, but they looked fried beyond compare, sir.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to try again,” Anakin nodded his head at the Clone Captain before he turned around and went back onto the ship.

Obi-Wan patted Anakin’s arm before reaching up to run a hand through his auburn hair. “I didn’t recognize the star system before we crashed,”

“Artoo?” Anakin called out for his trusty astromech droid. In an instant, R2-D2 rolled down the ramp, beeping and chirping. “Can you get a read of the terrain and figure out what we’re dealing with?”

The Jedi Knight looked around at his surroundings, seeing that there were trees, grass and what seemed to be a water fountain nearby. Benches were scattered about and there was a cobble stone wall way a few feet away. If anything, the area they were in didn’t seem hostile at all.

“Will do,” he beeped as a part of his dome shed while his life-form scanned extended from the top. It turned and started to scan the surrounding area while the droids companions were given bacta patches from Padmé.

“I’m picking up someone in the tree over there!” warbled the droid as he moved side-to-side nervously and extended his utility arm to gesture to the tree he was talking about.

Anakin reached out into the Force, feeling that there was a Force-sensitive being in the tree. Then, with a raised arm, Anakin used the Force to apprehend the being and remove them from their hiding place. From what he could see, it was a small form, lean and of average height wearing some sort of blue and red suit with strange shaped eyes.

Peter Parker yelped as he was yanked out of the tree and dropped his phone on the ground, Mr. Stark’s voice fading away. Now he was just levitating in the air before the aliens he was stalking. “Oh my god, please don’t kill me!”

Padmé Amidala’s eyes widened as she heard the voice and jumped up from her spot next to Obi-Wan and tugged on Anakin’s arm, “Ani, he’s just a kid, put him down!”

“Oh,” Anakin deflated as he felt his face heat up. He carefully lowered the boy to the ground and sent him a sheepish grin. “Sorry ‘bout that,”

The teenage boy wanted to scream, he was so confused. “Uh... that’s okay, um, thanks for putting me down-”

Then a beautiful woman dressed in a maroon vest paired with tan pants and long-sleeve stepped forward. “Are you okay?” Even if Peter was absolutely baffled with what was going on and was on a verge of an anxiety attack, the soothing presence of this woman calmed him down a bit.

Peter made a small uncertain noise, “I don’t really... know,” he let out an awkward laugh before pulling off his mask, causing Padmé, Anakin, and Obi-Wan to see how young this boy was. Ahsoka was glad to see someone who looked around the same age as her. “I mean, how would you react if you saw a UFO crash in the middle of Central Park?”

Before anyone could answer that, (especially Anakin who wanted to say that he wasn’t an alien here and if anyone was an alien it would be Ahsoka), a voice was screaming from the ground.

“Peter? PETER?!”

“Shit,” Peter mumbled under his breath and then crouched down to pick up his phone that he dropped earlier. “Mr. Stark-!”

“Fucking HELL, kid! You can’t do that to me!” Tony Stark’s panic ridden face filled his screen, and from what Peter could see, he was wearing his Iron Man suit. “Where are the aliens? Whatever, we’re on our way.”

Peter raised a brow as another flare of confusion coursed through him. “Mr. Stark, I don’t really think that’s necessary-”

“Stay where you are. That’s an order!” Tony briskly ended the call.

Peter stared blankly at his phone with his mouth agape.

Rex then descended from the ship’s ramp and walked over to the group with his helmet in his hands. “Sir,” he said, briefly sparing a look at the boy they picked up.

“Yes, Rex?” Obi-Wan slowly rose from his spot on the rock and ignored the shoot of pain from his ribs. Anakin also turned his attention to his second-in-command, but could sense something was up and that it probably had to do with what he found.

“Um...” The Clone Captain looked torn, expressing this through standing up straighter and nervously gripping on his helmet. “There’s no record of this galaxy in our records.”

Anakin’s fists curled by his side. “What?”

Padmé frowned and turned her head towards Obi-Wan. “Is that even possible?”

Obi-Wan held a thoughtful expression on his face and gently stroked his auburn beard. “It wouldn’t be the first time a planet was wiped from the records. It happened to Kamino before the War started.”

Ahsoka turned away from the adults and let them talk among themselves, feeling that her input wouldn’t add anything. So she turned her attention to the human boy across from her. He looked severely conflicted by how furrowed his eyebrows where and how he kept nibbling on his lower lip. Not only the physical signs of conflict being completely evident in him, but she could feel the emotional strings of his mind reach out to her.

He’s Force-Sensitive? She asked herself and then cautiously approached him, curiosity swirling inside of her. “Hey, are you okay?”

Peter shrugged and ran a hand through his brown hair. “This was not how I was expecting my night to go, that’s all.”

The Togruta almost laughed, the exact thought crossing her mind. “I get that, name’s Ahsoka by the way.”

“I’m Peter, hi Ahsoka.” he offered her a half-hearted smile, one that she returned.

A shadow of something flew overhead, accompanied by what Ahsoka could only assume was a jet pack. Her hand instantly fell onto her lightsabers by her hip, turning her head in the direction of her Master. Bright lights then shined brightly, causing Ahsoka to raise a hand to block it from blinding her as five silhouettes appeared from the source of the light.

“Stay where you are,” a modulated voice said and stepped forward, revealing a red and golden droid aka the source of the lights that came from its palms. “Give us the kid and we can do things without ruining Central Park.”

"I don’t think this hostility is necessary,” Padmé started her cordial senator mask falling onto her easily, putting her hands up to show that she meant no harm. “Our ship crashed while we escaping an ambush set up by Separatist sympathizers. We will be more than willing to explain everything to you, but please, we need medical assistance and a place to repair our ship.” she carefully explained, staring at the droid and discerning that the make and model wasn’t Separatist grade.

Tony Stark turned his head to the side to one of the silhouettes but kept his hands raised just in case. “What do you think, Cap? Do you believe their story?”

Steve Rogers scanned the group before them. One of the men was holding his side, while another looked like he was going to pass out because of pure exhaustion. Three of the five individuals had slim silver cylinders on their belt, as for the other two had guns he has never seen before. If anything, they looked bruised and tired, and didn’t seem hostile.

“I do believe them,”

Tony made a small disgruntled noise but then lowered his arms to his side. “Fine,” he eyed them warily and scanned the group with his sensors, seeing that four of them were humans while one was indeed an alien species. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., bring in the cavalry to get their space bucket out of here,”

Obi-Wan staggered in his footing, causing Rex, who was the closest to him, to hold him steady. “Careful there, sir,”

“I’m fine,”

“Nope, you’re a liar,” Tony scoffed as he did a full scan on this bearded guy. “You’ve got a concussion and two broken ribs if my medical sensors are right, which they usually are..”

“Obi-Wan! You said it was nothing,” Anakin scolded his former mentor.

“And it is!”

“Alright, tough guy,” Natasha Romanoff rolled her eyes as she walked over. “Let’s get you to someone who can make sure of that, hm?”

Clint and Natasha helped round everyone into one of the black SVU’s parked along the side walk while R2-D2 hurriedly rolled behind them and beeped incessantly.

“What the kriff is going on?” he asked.

“I’ve got no clue, Artooie,” Ahsoka patted his metal dome with her gloved hand.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” the droid beeped nervously before hoisting himself inside the strange looking speeder.

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meridiansdominoes · 4 years

Text

How To Scrap Battledroids

(I have decided to make this its own post entirely, so here it is! Read it on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24424678)

Prompt: Anakin and The Boys make a skillshare about how to scrap battledroids but about halfway through Tup makes a hair routine class, then other troopers post their hobbies and basically thats how they win the public over to support the clones

______________________________________________________________

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the first instalment of ‘Reasons Why the 501st is the Best Battalion in the GAR’, subtitled ‘How To Scrap Battledroids’, sponsored by the Hero With No Fear himself, General Anakin Skywalker!”

General Skywalker steps into frame with a cocky smirk. The camera trails from his face down his arm to where he’s holding his lightsaber with a sure grip.

“Today we’ll be demonstrating some of the most effective ways to absolutely demolish the B1 battle droid,” the narrator continues. The camera turns slowly, revealing several clones all around the Jedi, armed to the teeth and waiting. “The B1 battle droid, also referred to as a standard battle droid or a clanker, is the most widely used battle droid manufactured by Baktoid Combat Automata and Baktoid Armor Workshop. They’re the successor to the OOM-series battle droids. Early versions of the model required the use of a—”

“Holy kriff no one cares, Echo!” one of the clones says loudly. The narrator lets out an offended huff. The camera jerks and spins so that General Skywalker comes back into frame. The Jedi looks amused.

“Some of our viewers might appreciate a little background, Fives, shut up!”

“Force, can we get to it already? All this waiting around is driving me crazy!”

“Hardcase, calm down, exposition is important—”

“So is getting my weekly dose of adrenaline, Jesse—!”

“Okay, alright,” another clone soothes. “General, we’re waiting for your signal.”

“Thank you, Tup,” General Skywalker says, and ignites his lightsaber. “For that, I think you deserve the honor of going first.” This spurs a cacophony of groans from the others, but Tup makes a delighted sound. “Alright, on my signal. Echo, you’re in charge of making sure it all gets on camera, understand?”

“Yessir,” Echo says smartly. He pivots so that the entire group is visible—one Jedi and four clones, tense and waiting behind some sort of structure.

“Alright, let’s go!” General Skywalker shouts, and they charge around the corner and take the platoon of battle droids that had been approaching by complete surprise.

It’s possibly the most unfair fight the GAR has ever seen. It’s impossible for Echo to keep up with all the action. Hardcase’s Z-6 whines as it tears the droids apart. Tup and Jesse are dodging enemy blaster bolts and returning fire with fluid ease. General Skywalker is a storm of blue light and sparking clanker parts. At one point the Jedi reaches out his hand and sends Fives and Tup flying through the air with the Force so that they can attack from above.

The fight is over in less than two minutes. It had been pure chaos, and utter destruction. The clones regroup around Echo, riled up and excited as General Skywalker comes within earshot of the camera again.

“And that,” General Skywalker says, sheathing his lightsaber with a flourish, “is how to take down a battle droid, 501st style. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

______________________________________________________________

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve constantly been wondering, “Boy, who could possibly be better than those 501st imbeciles that showed up on the holonet a few weeks ago?” like I have recently, look no further! What takes six of the 501st’s best only takes two of the 212th!”

“Boil, less talking, more not-dying!” someone shouts, and there’s a large explosion. The camera shakes uncontrollably for a moment, and then suddenly it steadies, half of the camera obscured by the rock that the cameraman is crouched behind. Regardless, General Obi-Wan Kenobi and Commander Cody are visible, back to back in the middle of a courtyard absolutely swarming with droids.

“Kenobi deflects blasterbolts from every side, and oh there’s the Commander, headshots, every one of ‘em, look at the way they kriffin’ move! So in-sync, they turn together, no hesitation at all—!”

“Boil, quit the commentary and get down!”

There’s another explosion. Boil lets out a grunt of annoyance. The camera whirls.

“Come on, I’m missing the best part!” There’s a flash of orange and white, and then Boil gets the camera back up. The droids are attempting to close in on the two combatants, but General Kenobi slashes and whirls with ethereal grace. Commander Cody lashes out with powerful kicks that shatter the droids at the joints. They’re absolutely surrounded by sparking droid parts, untouched in their little circle of safety. When there are only a few droids left, General Kenobi slashes his last opponent cleanly in half before tossing his lightsaber oh-so-casually to Commander Cody The Commander catches it out of midair without even glancing at it and beheads the very last droid with a lazy flick of his wrist.

Boil whistles, long and low. He’s not the only one.

“And that’s how to destroy a battle droid, 212th style,” Boil whispers gleefully as General Kenobi and Commander Cody motion for their troops to advance. “And it really doesn’t get any better than that. Suck it, 501st!”

______________________________________________________________

Captain Rex looks extremely annoyed.

“Since the 212th really seems to think the galaxy of themselves, this is Captain Rex of the 501st, and I’m here to show you all what it really means to destroy a battle droid.”

Behind the camera, someone giggles. Commander Tano’s hand appears in the frame as she gives him a thumbs up. He shoves his helmet on and draws both DC-17s, checking them over briefly before stepping out of cover directly in front of the platoon of battle droids, determined and completely alone. He charges, pistols already releasing a steady hailfire at his opponents.

The battle droids don’t even stand a chance. They scream and cower and attempt to escape, but it doesn’t do them any good. Commander Tano laughs so hard that the camera shakes in her hand.

______________________________________________________________

“You know, I think that normal B1 battle droids are getting pretty old,” Commander Cody says, smirking at the camera—there’s something a bit dangerous in the expression, almost predatory. Daring their next challenger to try and top them. “So this time we’re upping our game. Super Battle Droids aren’t nearly as easy to take down as B1s, which means we have to get a bit creative.”

By ‘get creative’, Commander Cody means ‘use lots of explosives’. It’s very impressive.

______________________________________________________________

“Oh kriffing—are you serious, General?” Commander Bly makes an unamused face at the camera.

“Of course, Commander. We can’t let the 501st and the 212th have all the fun, can we?” General Secura says in amusement, the tip of one blue lek sliding into frame for an instant. “Besides, we’ve got something much better than battle droids to destroy today, don’t we?”

Bly snorts.

“The Armored Assault Tank does take a significantly larger amount of effort than any battle droid can. So are we skipping droidekas, then? I don’t think anyone’s done them yet. They seem like a more logical next step up from SBDs to me.”

“Someone else can do that,” another clone chimes in, sounding a bit excited. “Go big or go home, right General?”

“Very good,” General Secura praises. She sounds pleased. “Trooper, please explain the weak spots of the tank to our audience as Commander Bly and I take care of those two on the ridge. It shouldn’t take us long. It’s a bit far—you might have to zoom in, but it should still be plenty visible.”

“Yes sir,” a trooper agrees happily as she passes him the camera. “Don’t worry, sir. I’m sure this’ll blow the rest of the videos completely out of the water.”

General Secura grins at her Commander. She shrugs one shoulder at him and pulls her lightsaber from her belt as she turns to face the tanks. Bly’s expression softens into something that definitely isn’t meant to be seen by the camera. Then he shoves on his helmet and raises his weapon to stand at her side.

“Alright, General. Lead the way.”

______________________________________________________________

“You know, these videos aren’t just to show people how easy the Seppie droids are to blow up,” Tup says with a shrug. “You can do other stuff too, you know. Dogma, the comb please!”

Dogma dutifully passes him the comb. Tup releases his hair from the bun. It falls down around his face, far nicer than it should considering the amount of time it spends mashed underneath Tup’s bucket. Tup begins to run the comb through his hair, grimacing slightly as he carefully works out knots.

“Alright, everyone is always asking me how I keep my hair so well-maintained with the GAR’s very limited hair products. Today I’m gonna let everyone in on a couple of my most prized secrets…”

______________________________________________________________

“I absolutely will not.”

“But sir,” Comet says (his voice trembles because he’s trying to keep from laughing), “You’re the best at it! The rest of us don’t even come close!” He moves the camera a little closer to Wolffe’s face.

“I don’t give a kriff,” Wolffe deadpans. He goes back to scrolling through his datapad. Comet swipes it from his hand and passes it to Sinker as Wolffe lunges for it, who passes it back to Boost, who tucks it behind his back. Wolffe levels a ferocious glare at them. All three of them cower for a moment until Comet finds his voice again.

“Siiiirrrrr. Sir, please.”

“No.”

“Then you’re not getting your datapad back,” Boost attempts bravely. Wolffe rolls his eye.

“What’s stopping me from just taking it from you, Sergeant?” he counters. Boost licks his lips nervously.

“I mean, it would still be just as good of a video if you did,” Sinker says, snickering. “How To Discipline your Unruly Sergeant.”

“Just once, sir!” Comet begs, focused on their original goal. “We’ll stop bothering you if you do!”

“For how long?” Wolffe asks gruffly. Comet considers.

“Until the next deployment, sir?”

Wolffe sighs.

“Fine. But only once.”

He tips his head back and lets out a long, inhuman howl. It’s wild and fierce and absolutely terrifying. It calls warriors to the hunt, triggers something carnal in the blood of the pack. The sound echoes through the room. In the corner of the frame, Sinker bares his teeth in response. The reaction is seemingly instinctive.

When it finally ends, Wolffe drops his chin and lifts one eyebrow at his audience.

“Satisfied?” he huffs. Boost passes him back his datapad with a dazed grin.

“Sithspit, sir. That was… better than usual. Trying to… impress someone, maybe?”

“Get out of my office,” Wolffe growls, on the defensive. “Get that camera out of my face, or I’ll have you running laps in the gym until your brains melt out of your skulls.”

“But sir! Now you have to explain how you did it! That’s what these videos are technically for after all!”

Wolffe loses his patience. He lunges. The camera gets swung around until everything is a blur. There’s a flash of grey, a hint of white, a snarl. Comet lets out an embarrassing shriek. The video cuts to black a moment later.

______________________________________________________________

General Windu is weaponless and surrounded, but that doesn’t stop him from utterly decimating every clone that gets within five feet of him. No one can even touch him. He dodges their attacks like he already knows their every move. He probably does. He flows and shifts like water around their attempts to take him down, even when they team up and pull out all the stops. Commander Ponds, hands steady as he films, chuckles mercilessly whenever General Windu successfully tosses someone aside.

“There’s not really anything to explain here, we just wanted to demonstrate how cool our Jedi is. Mace can take on half the battalion bare handed and he barely even breaks a sweat.”

“Commander, are you actually going to help us or are you just going to sit there and watch us suffer?” a shiny yelps, two seconds before he gets his feet swept out from under him and goes down with a curse. Ponds laughs again.

“No thanks, kid. I learned the hard way that what you’re trying to do is impossible.”

“Maybe you just never tried hard enough, sir,” Stak grits out, shoving the staggering shiny towards the edge of the mat. He charges Windu head on. It looks foolish until Ponds spots Razor coming in from behind the Jedi. He’s moving as silently as possible. Ponds shifts the camera accordingly so that all three of them are in frame.

For half a second, it looks like General Windu won’t be able to block both of them.

Well, it appears that way. General Windu ducks low, twists so that he gets right into Stak’s personal space. Stak tries to grab him, but General Windu just uses his momentum to whirl him around and send him crashing into Razor. Their helmets clunk together with a hollow sound. They go down hard.

The onlookers cheer in excitement. General Windu has the smallest of smirks on his face as he settles back into a fighting stance and waits for the rest of the clones to make a move.

“And that’s why our Jedi is the best,” Ponds says smugly. The next ten minutes of the video is General Windu successfully incapacitating the rest of his challengers.

(The video is well-received by the general public but poorly received by the rest of the GAR.)

(“Respectfully, the 212th would like to submit this video to demonstrate why General Kenobi is actually the best—”)

(”The entire 91st can go kriff themselves, watch General Skywalker hijack these STAPs in midair and you’ll know that the 501st obviously has the best Jedi—”)

(“The 327th resents everything that the 91st’s most recent video claimed and declares that Ponds has no kriffing idea what he’s talking about, General Secura is obviously a better choice, here are ten reasons why—”)

(“General Plo Koon can fight in space. I don’t see General Windu doing that, here are the clips from the 104th’s most recent zero-grav drills—”)

______________________________________________________________

When Commander Fox steps into the room, the men have the decency to look sheepish. Fox takes everything in slowly—the camera in Byte’s hand, the way Thorn and Thire are standing together shoulder to shoulder, hiding the failed project behind them, the scattered nuts and bolts all over the floor. The multitool in Stone’s hand. He drags one hand down his face and takes a deep breath.

“You told me it was an emergency, Thorn.”

“It is an emergency, Fox! Listen, we even brought you caf because we knew you’d be annoyed,” he holds the steaming cup up as he speaks in a desperate attempt to make peace, “and there’s no way we’re going to figure this out ourselves!”

Fox plucks the caf out of Thorn’s hand and sighs again.

“What is it, then?”

“Well…” Thire drawls slowly. Fox narrows his eyes impatiently.

“What the kriff is so important and difficult that three of my fellow officers couldn’t figure it out on their own?”

“To be fair, sir,” Stone says good-naturedly, “it’s far more difficult than we thought it would be.”

Thire and Thorn step away to reveal… a piece of furniture. A bench, only halfway assembled, innocent looking enough. Fox stares at it blankly for a few moments. Byte zooms in on his face enthusiastically.

“We were going to demonstrate how to make it, for the video thing that half the GAR seems to be doing right now,” Thorn explains weakly. “But… it’s confusing. There’s even instructions but they don’t really help.”

Fox drains the cup of caf. He squares his shoulders.

“Force save me. Are you kidding? Give me the kriffing instructions. This is ridiculous.”

(It takes them two more hours to get the bench set up. Fox misses a meeting. Byte edits the final video to include the bulk of the angry tirades and all of the snark. Public relations improve to an all-time high almost overnight.)

______________________________________________________________

(“The clones are not people. They are soldiers created for a single purpose,” some of the Senate attempt to protest. This argument does not last long, mostly because the civilians who have been eagerly following the videos that the clones have been releasing over the course of several months start to riot in protest.

Padme Amidala and Bail Organa take great pleasure in bringing the videos before the Senate to prove to them that the clones are indeed soldiers but also individuals who laugh and cry and live just as any other citizen of the Republic does.

In the wake of the unshakable evidence and the rioting, there is little the opposition can do to stop the Clone Rights Bill from being passed, and the entire Republic celebrates.)

#fanfic #star wars the clone wars #captain rex #commander cody #commander fox #commander bly #commander ponds #ahsoka tano #commander wolffe

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