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rainydaydream-gal18 · 3 years

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Cal Kestis x Reader (Continued 4) The Proposal

OG Request: can i request that you write some cal kestis since you haven't written him in so long? how about one where the whole mantis crew helps him propose to the reader? it can even be like a part 4 to the "training" series lol

Author’s Note: I am SO sorry at how long this took me to post. I got hit with writer’s block so bad, and this week, I ended up getting sick. It’s been tough to find time and energy to write, but again, I am sorry at how long it was. I do hope you enjoy it!!!

"I've never seen you like this," Greez commented, lifting a brow skeptically. He planted his hands on his hips as he watched Cal make a cup of caf. It was a task the young jedi had done many times without fail since he was the definition of balance, but somehow, he had managed to spill his cup on the counter.

Cal lifted his brows only slightly as he tried to act casual. “What do you mean?”

“What’s got you so worked up?” Greez asked. “You seem off...Not quite sure what it is…”

Years of training had given Cal Kestis the ability to hide. He’d hidden from the Empire for so long on Bracca. He had concealed his identity without issue until that fateful day when he rescued his coworker and friend- an event that began quite the adventure. Still, even so, he hadn’t been able to conceal his nervousness from the Mantis pilot. His gaze flickered to Cere, who was quietly sipping her own cup of caf from the dining booth.

Her amusement at the interaction was palpable. Cal could see the slightest smile on her lips which she hid behind her mug as she took another sip, eyes trained to the table in front of her.

What would she say if she knew the truth? Would she be so amused? As worried as Cal was that his mentor would disapprove of his choice, he was running out of time. This wasn’t something he could conceal.

“The truth is…” he paused, running a hand through his orange hair.

“What?” Greez prompted. “What is it?”

“I’m…”

Cere lowered her cup, the soft clink of the material against the table catching Cal’s attention. “You’re going to propose to _________.”

Cal gazed at her, lips parting in surprise.

“Very perceptive of you, Greez,” she continued, eyes flicking to the pilot. “To have caught that something was going on with our Cal. However-” she met Cal’s gaze coolly “-the nervous excitement was coming off him in waves.”

Cal exhaled, shoulders lowering as he braced himself for some sort of sagely warning about the path he was choosing, but Cere merely smiled.

Greez's jaw dropped straight to the floor. "You...you what?" He chuckled quietly at first before bursting into joyful laughter as he approached Cal. “Congratulations, kid!”

He smiled appreciatively at the support, but shook his head. “She hasn’t said ‘yes’ yet.”

Greez shifted his stance, resting a hand on his hip. "What, you think she'll say 'no'?"

“Yes, I mean...no...We’ve talked about it, but I just don't know how to do it.”

Cere surprised him further by rising from the booth. “Need some help?”

He tilted his head. “You’d do that? But I thought…”

“The order is gone, Cal,” she replied. “As members of this crew, we’ve already done some things the Council would have disapproved of. I think after all these years of sorrow, a little joy is something we need.”

Cal nodded. “Thank you.”

“So wait,” Greez shook his head. “You want our advice? On how to propose? A former monk and a lonely pilot...what could go wrong?”

- - - -

“Hey there, uh, kid.”

You smiled, dabbing at a few beads of sweat that glistened on your forehead. “Hey, Greez. How’s it going?” You gave your arms a little stretch, holding back the groan that threatened to spill from your lips at the dull ache. Cal had assigned you to an arduous training session all afternoon. It was unexpected, but you were up to the challenge. Upon returning to the Mantis, you found no sign of your boyfriend, or Cere for that matter.

There was only Greez, who averted his gaze nervously. You got the distinct feeling that he was hiding something. Something big.

“Everything alright?” you asked, testing the waters.

“Alright? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Everything’s alright. Why wouldn’t it be? Is everything alright with you?”

You fought a smile as he fumbled his way through the somewhat defensive response. “Yeah, I’m done with training for the day. I’m just looking for Cal, actually. Have you seen him?”

“Yes, I mean, no...I may have seen him… He went somewhere.”

“He did? Did he say where?”

Greez fell silent then, and you raised your brows incredulously at him. The stubborn pilot wasn’t going to talk. Your suspicion grew, especially when his nerves seemed to spike even more. With a shrug, you headed back toward your bunk. Cere wasn’t anywhere to be found either.

What if there was a new development with the jedi order? Even though the holocron containing the location of force-sensitives across the galaxy had been taken care of, the Mantis crew had not lost hope that someday the jedi would return. Perhaps something had come up. Still, you weren’t sure why that would mean that both he and Cere would need to discuss it elsewhere. It wasn’t like Greez couldn’t be trusted. Or you.

As you changed out of your training clothes, your hand brushed over the hilt of your lightsaber. You gripped the handle and removed it from your belt before doing so with the second saber you had constructed some time ago. The weight in your hands no longer felt foreign and unsettling. The sabers had become part of you. They were not just weapons; they were tools. They were tools to defend those you loved and to usher in peace when the time was right.

You set them down and continued changing into your gear.

For years, you’d heard stories of the jedi old. You’d never imagined becoming one. You’d never imagined to have a mentor as young and handsome as Cal. And you certainly never imagined falling in love the way you did.

The thought was bittersweet. You mourned for Cal and all that he had lost, but you were so glad to have found him. He was glad to have found you too. You could feel it every single day.

A knock on the door to your quarters pulled you from thought. “Yes?”

“Hey,” Greez said, poking his head in. “He’s waiting for you.”

“He’s...waiting for me?” You watched as he disappeared from the doorway before shaking your head. “This day just gets weirder.”

- - - -

Greez had followed you off the ship and stayed close behind as you picked up on Cal’s trail. He insisted that he was not supposed to give you any hints- only that you were supposed to reach out with your feelings and find Cal on your own.

“Is this some sort of training exercise?” you wondered aloud. “Because I already finished training for the day.”

“Sorry, kid,” Greez shrugged. “It’s not for me to say.”

“But of course.” You smirked. “It’s never that simple.” You let your eyes slide shut as you reached out with your other senses. You took a deep breath, inhaling the lovely scents of the forest- leafy greens and even something sweet, like blossoms. There was a damp feel to the soil beneath your shoes. More clearly than the other things you felt, you sensed the familiar presence of Cal. He was nearby.

As soon as you began walking in that direction, Greez uttered a “woah.”

You paused, glancing at him over your shoulder. “What?”

“You jedi never cease to fascinate me,” he said. “You know where he is without even a hint.”

“It’s automatic at this point.”

“So, you...you two really love each other, huh?” he ventured.

You smiled and uttered a quiet, “yeah.”

The two of you walked through the forest. A familiar tingle in your feelings let you know that someone was just ahead. It was Cere. You’d recognize that presence anywhere after traveling with her for so long. She sat in the center of a small clearing, legs crossed and eyes shut.

“This is a training exercise, isn’t it?” you whispered under your breath at the sight.

Cere’s eyes opened, and her lips turned up in a smirk. “Cal’s waiting for you.”

“So I hear.” You wanted to shake your head in amusement, but if it was indeed a surprise training session, Cere was acting as a mentor, so you instead gave her a nod of respect. “Is there anything...Is there...What is my task?”

“That is something you will have to find out yourself. I wish you luck.” And with that, Cere rose from her seated position and gave you a nod before stepping aside. Greez stole a look and shrugged, immediately going to join her.

All the while a strange anticipation was growing in you. Part of it was curiosity on you part for this next step in your training, and part of it you chalked up to be Cal’s emotions mingling with yours. Even though you had no idea what was going on and why, something about the situation made you feel exhilarated. Like something amazing was about to happen.

You continued on your way, shooting your teammates one last curious look before vanishing farther into the forest. The tingling feeling changed. It was soon the distinct feeling that you got whenever Cal was nearby. You knew it before you saw him that he sensed your approach, but when you finally stepped into the clearing where he was waiting, you weren’t expecting the sudden drop of his heart. It was so sudden that you halted for a moment, thrown off by the swift shift in emotion. Nervousness. What did he have to be nervous about? You were the one being tested!

“Cal?” you ventured.

“___________,” he breathed out. It was like he struggled to breathe for a moment. You’d never seen him this way before.

“Is everything alright?” you asked, voice ticked up with concern.

“Ah, yeah,” He nodded, glancing down for a moment. “____________, I need to ask you something.”

As soon as he said that, your own heart dropped. It was nervousness at what you suspected was coming next, but it was a good nervousness. You immediately shifted, hands going over your heart as Cal walked over to you. There was a small part of you screaming to not give into the hope, just in case it wasn’t what you thought. Before the seeds of doubt could take root, Cal got down on one knee in front of you.

Bright afternoon sunlight poured in through the treetops, dancing along his skin with each gust of wind that shook the branches above. His eyes were fixed on you, glinting with a light you’d seen in him many times when he looked at you. It was love. Adoration.

“_____________,” he said, gently twining his fingers with those of your left hand. “I love you. As a jedi, I never thought I’d be able to go down this path….but here I am, and I’m so glad that I can. You’re the only one I’d want to go with.”

“Cal….” you murmured.

“Will you marry me?”

Even though you’d realized the words were coming, they still hit hard. Your vision blurred with tears as the emotions welled up within you. “Yes, I will. I love you, Cal.” And you pulled your hand from his only to wrap both your arms around his neck and plant a loving kiss to his lips.

Cal kissed you back passionately, leaving you with one last peck before he pulled away to take your hand again. His eyes darted up to meet yours before they focused on your finger as he slipped a ring on. Your tears hadn’t stopped.

“Cal, I’m so happy.” Then, a chuckle escaped your lips as you wiped your eyes. “I was wondering what all this was about. I thought it was a training exercise.”

“That was the idea,” he said with the shake of his head. “We thought it’d be more of a surprise that way.”

“‘We’?”

“Cere and Greez helped me out. I knew I wanted to put this ring on your finger, but I wasn’t quite sure how.”

“Thank you,” you called over your shoulder, and you were amused when Cere and Greez emerged from the brush. “Really, this was a lovely surprise.”

“I’m glad you thought so,” Greez said, clasping his hands together. He glanced between the two of you curiously. “So, when’s the wedding?”

#cal kestis x reader #cal kestis reader insert #cal kestis fanfiction #cal kestis x you #cal kestis imagine #cal kestis x y/n #greez #cere

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the-last-kenobi · 3 years

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I... I wrote a thing... goddamnit...

Based on this post

All credit and love to @latenightsomewhere and @americankimchi for the idea!

(keep in mind this is not canon compliant. I have aged Obi-Wan down to ten, for one thing. I wanted smolbi-wan💕 and dammit, that’s what I wrote.)

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It was supposed to be a simple mission.

Then again, that was something that could be said after all missions. “It was supposed to be simple,” Jedi would say, shaking their heads ruefully. “Simple.”

They had known they were walking into unpleasant territory.

The Outer Rim was safe for no one — least of all Force-sensitives.

Least of all, Qui-Gon reflected, gripping the hilt of his lightsaber so tightly that he could feel the ridges carving lines into his palms, least of all young Jedi Padawans. Who had training. Who had skills. Who carried kyber in their sabers.

Like Obi-Wan.

Qui-Gon hadn’t quite realized what had happened— not at first — not with his head ringing with the force of the blunt instrument someone had slammed against his head during the scuffle. He had dragged himself to his knees, first, heaving for breath, then slowly rose to his feet, breathing deeply to chase away the nausea.

And then he had discovered he was alone.

Completely alone.

The slavers were gone, and so was his ten-year-old apprentice—

They took him, he thought, stunned. They took him right from under me, where he should have been safest. I didn’t leave him alone on the ship for a reason, but they took him—

As he reeled, flashes of memory started to filter back through the confusion.

Obi-Wan had been behind him, shielded — and then they were unexpectedly surrounded, outnumbered by what was clearly more than a roving pack of criminals — Obi-Wan had ignited his saber and fought back — Qui-Gon had dropped with a blow to the head, and he heard — shouting —

— a startled cry, a thin and high-pitched voice — a muffled scream, a child’s scared voice —

“Master!”

And a powerful fury rose up inside Qui-Gon, both focused and wild, and he did not feel inclined to subdue it.

•

“It’s not natural, is it,” complained one of the group, a young nautolan with grey skin. “Look at him.”

“Shut up,” one of the others said, shooting a slightly wary look in the direction the first was gesturing.

“He’s a kid,” a third said dismissively. This was easily the most eye-catching of the group, an enormous burly Besalisk that was even taller than Master Krell. “And he’s drugged. He can’t do anything. Forget him.”

“He’s a fucking menace is what he is,” the first muttered.

Obi-Wan grinned at them, a slightly manic expression. This was not helped by the blood streaked through his ginger-blonde hair, or the gag they had tied tightly around his mouth.

He said something to them, muffled by the cloth.

“What?” the Besalisk suddenly turned from dismissive to angry.

“Leave him, he’s just being—” one of the others began, but the enormous reptilian humanoid shook his head violently, stalking towards their captive.

“I asked what you said,” he repeated.

Obi-Wan actually rolled his eyes, gesturing towards the gag with his bound hands. The nautolan looked gobsmacked at his nerve.

The Besalisk rumbled low in his throat and jerked the cloth roughly out of the boy’s mouth, catching painfully on his lower lip as he did.

Obi-Wan winced and blinked rapidly, shaking his head as if to clear it.

“What did you say?” his antagonist repeated.

“I said,” Obi-Wan answered, staring plaintively up at the much taller creature, “you’re going to be very sorry when my Master catches up with you.”

The Besalisk laughed, but it was not a happy sound. One by one the others all joined in, although some more hesitantly than others.

“Your Master didn’t put up much of a fight,” the kidnapper goaded him. “And even if he could, he’d have to put in a lot of work to find you. I don’t think he’ll bother, do you?” He leered. “He’s a Jedi. He’s got a job on his hands, and you come second.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes flickered.

Then he smiled. “I was wondering something earlier, but you just answered my question for me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Obi-Wan said, mocking the elder’s drawling accent. “You made it obvious that yes, you are exactly as stupid as you look.”

Several of the slavers gaped.

“Or even stupider,” Obi-Wan added.

There was a bellow of rage, and an enormous fist collided with the boy’s face, leaving grooves up his cheek and forehead that were none too shallow. The gag was forced back into his mouth.

Obi-Wan went back to smiling manically at anyone who looked his way.

•

It took Qui-Gon three and a half standard days to find who had taken his apprentice and where they had gone.

Every minute of those three and half days were spent utterly focused; healthy amounts of sleep were sacrificed in exchange for tracking down information and planning his rescue.

And every minute was also spent with quiet thoughts murmuring in the back of his mind, where not even Jedi calm could quiet them.

They could have moved him again.

They could have had a buyer waiting for the next Force-sensitive they managed to catch.

They’re hurting him. They’re hurting him right now and you’re nowhere near enough to help.

And, perhaps the most quiet, most desperate truth in his heart — If I lose this one, there will be no coming back for me.

•

Obi-Wan bit the hand in front of his face.

The slaver yelped, somehow not expecting the attack despite what Obi-Wan considered fair warning in the form of a venomous glare before the gag had been removed.

“Little brat!” the slaver hissed, shaking his damaged hand that the apprentice was a little pleased to see was bleeding.

“Get him up,” one of the others snapped. “We’re taking him to the deep market tonight, and he needs his attitude fixed first.”

“Not likely,” the ten-year-old said cheerfully. “I was an incorrigible child and my mentor is not exactly—”

He was struck again.

“That’s getting kind of repetitive,” complained Obi-Wan, kicking his bound feet a bit where they hung a foot off the floor, trying to get the blood flowing. “And the same side every time, too. I’m going to get permanent damage and then how much will I be worth?”

“He’s gotta point,” said the newcomer unhelpfully.

The one who had been bitten scowled mightily, then sneered down at his captive, a mean little gleam in his eyes that the boy did not like the look of.

A moment later, a hand closed tight around the boy’s throat, right above the thin collar that had been set there, rigged to blow if he managed to flee.

Obi-Wan choked and began to struggle.

The hand squeezed tighter. “The punishment should fit the crime,” the male mused aloud. “And it’s your back talk that’s going to get you in trouble with your new master, and lower your value on the auction block. Seems fair to get rid of your voice, then.”

The other slaver watched appraisingly. “Just don’t kill ‘im, Frid.”

“Course not,” said the man who was evidently Frid, watching with vindictive pleasure as Obi-Wan writhed weakly, his face turning white and then blue.

Obi-Wan was dropped.

He gasped, his breath rattling in his constricted throat, and kept his head down this time.

This is why Master always says I need to redirect that urge to talk back, he reflected, feeling a little queasy. He’s not going to be happy about my injuries at this rate.

•

Qui-Gon was no stranger to bypassing the local authorities on the planets he visited. He was notorious for it, in fact.

This time, he had chosen to work with the authorities — and then ditched them at the last minute.

Now everything was as legal and tidy as he cared to make it, and the government would be able to arrest and shut down the entire operation, over the course of mere weeks if they were focused about it.

...After Qui-Gon had gone in after his apprentice.

He was quiet and careful about his approach, stealing his way into the underground warehouse that was the gateway to the infamous black market of the planet, a place where spice and banned items were passed from hand to hand — and sentient beings, too.

He could sense his Padawan, albeit barely.

Drugged, most likely.

Sustained exposure to Force suppressants could kill him.

Shaking off the intrusive thoughts, Jinn followed his instincts down several flights of stairs and down a hallway, listening intently.

Bang.

A door flew open to his left, and he melted into the shadows as two figures emerged, one a hulking Besalisk with a permanent scowl and the other a gangly human male with very scruffy hair.

“—not my responsibility,” the human was complaining. “I didn’t sign up for dealing with him. I didn’t even catch him.”

“I did,” the Besalisk grunted. “Little whelp. Squirmed around like a worm on a hook and wouldn’t stop fucking screaming. He would’ve alerted the whole neighborhood just moving him from where we picked him up to the truck.”

“Why didn’t you just gag him?” the human laughed.

“Didn’t have anything to do it with,” the other shrugged. “Tried using my hand and the brat damn near snapped his own neck trying to scream anyways.”

They chuckled a bit.

Qui-Gon held his breath, both wanting and not at all wanting them to be discussing who he thought they were—

“What do the bosses expect us to do, work miracles?” the human went back to complaining. “I hear he’s a spitfire. And they want him ready for sale, in what, three hours?”

The Besalisk grinned. “Three hours is plenty of time. Frid told me that smacking the kid around doesn’t do much good, but he half-strangled him earlier and that shut him up. Jedi whelp.”

And there it was.

It was all the evidence Qui-Gon needed.

The two slavers turned around in alarm when they heard the distinctive hiss-snap of a lightsaber igniting.

All they caught a glimpse of was a towering figure seemingly appearing out of thin air, his expression serene but his eyes blazing, an emerald blade glowing in his hands, and then they were down for the count.

•

Obi-Wan decided that lying facedown on the floor was the better part of valor for the moment.

He was sore and bruised and scratched, and his throat was swollen while his neck chafed against the collar, and he could no longer tell if the nausea was caused by the drugs in his system or from being mistreated.

They had forgone the cloth gag in favor of sealing his lips shut with tape, which Obi-Wan considered a compliment to his ability to annoy them, but it also hindered his ability to breathe.

The slaver standing over him was dusting his hands off rather gleefully.

Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut and wished very very hard, knowing that even without being able to touch it, the Force was with him—

And like a miracle, the door swung open, and there was his wish.

The slaver didn’t stand a chance. He only had time to let out an undignified squawk of surprise before he was flying into the ceiling, smacking into a rafter with undue force and then dropping neatly onto a nearby cot that rattled under his weight.

Obi-Wan sighed and let his eyes drift closed.

The man in the doorway was at his side in an instant.

A warm hand touched his shoulder, then slid upwards to touch his neck, looking for signs of life, examining his damaged throat.

Then, very carefully, the tape was peeled away from his mouth.

Obi-Wan smiled into the cold flooring and forced himself to open his eyes again.

“Hullo, Master,” he murmured.

•

Qui-Gon had thought, for one heart-stopping moment, when he had reached Obi-Wan just in time to watch him close his eyes and go limp—

But he was awake, now, those enormous bright blue eyes twinkling up at him out of a battered face.

“Hullo, Master,” said a very small, hoarse voice.

“Hello, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said softly, running his hand up and down the boy’s back, unnerved by how chilled he was to the touch. “How does a warm shower and some proper sleep sound?”

Obi-Wan pretended to think about it, and Qui-Gon had to fight down a laugh at his antics, even now. “Do I have to see healers first?”

“Yes,” answered the Master. “But I believe I can manage to have them release you quickly. We’re leaving for Coruscant tonight; we can sleep on the ship.”

“Oh, all right,” said Obi-Wan, but he didn’t move.

“Can you stand?” Qui-Gon asked.

“Possibly.”

There was another pause, then: “...not really.”

Without another word, Qui-Gon stood, scooping the boy into his arms as he did, cradling his head against one shoulder. Obi-Wan murmured something that he didn’t quite catch.

They moved out of the room and into the hallway, then began to make their way back out of the warehouse. Qui-Gon was stepping over bodies as he went... most of them merely unconscious.

He spotted the scruffy-haired man who had been laughing about the screaming Jedi whelp, and didn’t begrudge himself for trodding accidentally on the man’s outstretched fingers as he passed.

“I... am sorry, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said heavily. “I should have protected you better.”

The ginger head shifted; the boy murmured something vague into his tunics again and then said softly, “It wasn’t your fault, Master. Besides...” he winced as they crossed beneath a bright light that threw the injuries on his face into glaring relief that made Qui-Gon’s stomach clench with self-recrimination. “...I knew you would come for me.”

And those seven little words did a great deal to ease the rage and guilt still swirling inside the tired Jedi Master.

“Always, Padawan,” he said quietly. “Always.”

Obi-Wan was asleep in his arms by the time they emerged into the twilight, surrounded by the movement of law enforcement as they swarmed upon the compound, and therefore he didn’t know it when Qui-Gon, near-shaking as the adrenaline of the past several, stressful days began to fade, murmured: “Thank the Force for you, little one.” And pressed a soft kiss to the sleeping head.

#star wars #my writing #not my idea #smolbi wan #tiny bean #my baby #obi wan kenobi #qui gon jinn #obi wan and qui gon #star wars au #tw child harm #tw strangulation #dad qui is Not Happy #little obi is just giving vibing and waiting on his dad #i love them your honor #somebody hug him

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wynniewright · 4 years

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In Harm’s Way (M)

→ This story is a part of the @bangtanshadowfamily “The Creatures of Moonlight Manor” Halloween collab!

→ Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

→ Word Count: 4.8k

→ Genre: grim reaper au, halloween au, smut, lots of fluff, bit angsty

→ Summary: After fighting with her grim reaper boyfriend, Y/N decides to throw herself into a dangerous situations to get him to stop ignoring her.

→ Trigger Warnings: Mentions of attempted suicide (it’s not dark, think of when bella tried to get edward to save her so she kept doing stupid shit - it’s that), one time mention of a past near-death experience (not detailed, it’s just vaguely mentioned in the fluffy part), reader attempts suicide via toaster bath (with the intention of being saved by her supernatural, soul-reaping boyfriend). Please don’t read if these make you uncomfortable!

→ Warnings: dirty talk, unprotected sex, oral (female), bit of impregnation kink, tae just wants to be a dad, reader makes stupid decisions, cum play, possible impregnation?, sex with pants on, fingering, lots of fluff and all that good stuff

→ A/N: Hello hello! Finally found the time to squeeze in this story in the middle of my full-time school and part-time work schedule. Sorry it took so long for another fic to post but here I am! I want to thank my amazing bangtan hq sprinting crew who helped motivate me to finish this @purpletigertaetae @nightowls388 @shadowsremedy @wwilloww. This story was supposed to be a lot darker and a whole lot more filthy than it turned out. Wasn’t supposed to be fluffy at all and somehow it turned real quick so I hope you enjoy. I’d also like to state that I’m not promoting suicide or slightly toxic relationships, this is a fictional story and the reader hasn’t died, isn’t dead, and won’t die, so the suicidal scene in this is not meant to be disturbing. If you’re not comfortable reading, please don’t. Alright, I love you all.~ Hope you enjoy.

The biggest struggle of dating Taehyung was that no guide, tutorial, or advice blog post could’ve prepared you for what it was going to be like to be in a relationship with him. I almost wished there were some sort of ‘how to’ on dating a grim reaper because no matter how much dating experience I had, being with him was like being in my first relationship again.

It was a little unconventional, sure. Date nights were always iffy since, apparently, reapers don’t need sleep and therefore are technically scheduled around the clock. Boy, there was nothing like us setting up a nice, stay-at-home dinner date when he’d suddenly kiss my cheek and disappear into thin air, only to come back a few minutes later and announce he’d taken another soul. I’ll be honest, it was a slight mood killer.

But aside from his job description, Tae was a kind person. He didn’t seem to know exactly how to deal with human emotions, as his kind were strictly prohibited from having human-reaper relations and never had the opportunity to learn from us. But just because he didn’t know what emotions were, doesn’t mean he didn’t feel them. He was a sensitive guy, too.

I remembered the first time he cried. We were watching Marley & Me and I cried at the end like any other sane human being. Tae didn’t cry at all, in fact, knowing I was sad made him sad enough to tear up, even more so when he couldn’t get me to stop. That memory was one of my favorites purely because it was too wholesome to forget: a grim reaper crying because a girl was sad that a dog died in a movie.

But like every other person in the world, not ever emotion was positive.

Being much older than I, Taehyung didn’t really have moments where he got angry to the point of exploding in a fit. There wasn’t a situation where he ever passed that threshold, at least, not in front of me. The feelings Tae couldn’t quite grasp were hurt and jealousy.

From his own words, he never loved anyone before me, and something I knew better than anyone was that jealousy and love were very closely intertwined.

The first year we dated, I tried explaining to him what jealousy was, that even I felt it too in an attempt to teach him that he didn’t need to act on it. It was safe to say that it didn’t really work.

Over four and a half into our relationship together and Taehyung still chose to disappear whenever we got into a small petty argument that involved him taking something out of context and then not wanting to talk about it like the century old being that he was.

In our most recent example, my best friend, Sam, called and told me that she was expecting her first baby. We cried a little and then spent the rest of the conversation talking about whose eyes they would have or which parent they would most resemble. Tae and I never talked about kids nor a future together, we just lived in every moment the two of us were given, so indulging on a new topic with Sam gave me the image of tiny Tae-Taes waddling across the wooden floor, matching their father’s bright, boxy grin as they giggled.

I made one comment - one! I told her how I’d love to have mini-Taehyungs running about the place and that I was so excited to meet her little Sam. Somehow, he took that and ran with it.

He didn’t bother letting me speak, pulling the usual disappearing act he always resorted to when he was upset and didn’t want to properly face his feelings in the moment. I thought it would pass like all the rest, but something changed.

Hours passed and he never came to check in on me. Days flew by and I hadn’t heard from him. I wanted for him to come by, swallowing my pride and shouting at the empty air in hopes he was listening, to no avail. Nothing worked.

After two weeks of being ignored and left without so much as a trace, I decided to do what any normal girl would do to seek out her boyfriend’s attention.

I needed to kill myself.

I didn’t want to die, by any means. Tae knew how close I’d come to death a few too many times, but if I was going to get his attention back on me, I needed to attempt something stupid. Not only did it have to be stupid, it also had to be believable. I needed to convince him that I was going to die and hope he’d rescue me just in time.

I knew it wasn’t a good plan to start off with but it was the only thing I could come up with to get him to focus on me. The only reason I even thought of such a stupid idea was because I knew he’d never let me actually die. He saved me once and I was willing to bet he’d save me again and this time my life was actually on the line.

All that being said, I’ll regurgitate that it wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had.

What if he’d decided to have someone else cover me? What if the one time he decided he didn’t want to see me again, he passed the job on to someone else and they just let it go?

I shivered with that thought fresh in my mind. To say I was scared was a gross understatement, the thought of all the ways this could go bad were enough to paralyze me with fear. There was only one reason I stood there in our master bathroom with a bath full of water and a toaster in my hands, already plugged in and ready for me to drop it in.

If I wanted him to talk to me, I had to force him to keep me out of harm’s way.

Nervousness nagged at the back of my mind, heart beating a million miles a minute against my ribcage, forcing me to take a deep inhale of fresh air, even if it was only to calm my nerves for a few seconds. A few seconds was enough to release my grip and pray that Tae would be there to rescue me.

With a last shake of my head, I thought up a quick “I love you” to the universe as if the universe would deliver my message to my friends and family if things didn’t go as planned. And with that, I dropped the small appliance.

The moment it slipped from my fingers, I clenched my eyes tight and waited for the shock to ripple through my body in powerful waves, but nothing came. In fact, time itself seemed to slow down as a large clanging against the wall forced my eyes open, right as a tall, dark figure wrapped an arm around my waist and yanked me out of the tub to press me against the wall adjacent.

Taehyung stood there, fuming in anger as his gaze bored into mine, hands gripping tightly to me and keeping me pressed against the wall, though I’m not sure if he was holding onto me to keep me steady or if he was preparing to murder me where I stood. To be fair, if it wasn’t for his hold on me, I would’ve slipped against the tile floor that puddled with the water leaking from the bottom half of my jeans. I added a mental note to myself that next time I do something like that again, I should prepare for it to actually work and actually wear a pair of shorts or something. But another problem for another time.

The sheer force in which Taehyung’s eyes glared into mine would normally have made me cower. But knowing I had to do something that stupid just to get him to talk to me again filled me with a burning anger that I didn’t know I had within me. With that newfound anger, I pushed back against his chest, my hands rebounding off his chest without moving him in the slightest. He dropped his hold on me and I stepped forward, my foot catching a slippery tile and making me bang my back against the wall roughly. A sharp pain shot through my back and Tae softened for a moment, reaching out again to steady me before I finally exploded.

“No. Don’t touch me! I don’t even know where to begin right now!” I defiantly shoved his hands away from my body and crossed my arms over my chest once I balanced out a bit.

“You? You?! The fuck did I do?” He argued, waving his hands in the air as if his gestures were defence enough for his stupid inhuman reactions.

“Oh, so you’re going to play stupid now, is that it? Really?” I barked, taking a step forward and poking a finger right against his tight chest. “I don’t know. How about the fact that you just walked out on me and never came back? What happened to having a normal fucking conversation like an adult?” He received a poke to his clothed peck with every word to emphasize what he’d done wrong.

Annoyed with me prodding at him in frustration, he grabbed my wrist at my last poke, holding my arm away from him and resumed the glaring. “You’re making this about me now? Are you going to completely ignore the fact that you almost just fried yourself? What the fuck were you thinking?!” He raised his voice, something he didn’t do often, and I naturally shied away from the loudness of his voice to keep my ears from ringing.

“Well I wouldn't have needed to do that had you come back to talk! Of course I tried to get your attention. I love you, you fucking moron,” I grunted, voice cracking at the end as tears instantly sprang to my eyes. Willing them away, I stood my ground and met Tae’s heated gaze with an unwavering one of my own. I wasn’t the one in the wrong.

“We did talk. Yeah I left, but I did that after I said things weren’t going to work out between us.”

He wasn’t wrong. He did technically say that but it was spoken like a passive statement made in anger, a second before he disappeared to wherever the fuck he went to whenever he was upset with me. So I was just supposed to accept that was it after four and a half years and no idea what broke the two of us. Fuck that, he meant too much to me.

“I don’t understand why you keep saying that. I made one comment - one! - about kids to Sam and now you’re dead-set on not being with me? Why are you so angry about that?” My words came out in a pained whisper as I pleaded with him. I just wanted a response back, to know what was hurting him so I could try and fix it.

His eyes shifted from mine repetitively, searching my face for something before he mumbled out, “Because I can’t give that to you.”

I froze, all but my heart coming to a halt as I processed his words. He couldn’t give that to me… Kids?

I couldn’t help the frown that framed my lips as his face morphed into one of discomfort, grimacing at himself. A pang of guilt smacked me right in the chest as his face fell. All of it began to make sense and I wasn’t sure if I made things better or worse by doing what I did.

“Tae…” I started, mouth agape as I tried to form some sort of response but I couldn’t think of one at that moment.

He straightened himself out and all visible evidence of his emotional expression was wiped clean off his features. “I can’t give you kids,” he repeated clearly, seemingly more for himself than for me.

Pride swelled up in me and I reached out to wrap my arms around his midsection to hug him close.

“Baby,” I cooed, a fresh wave of tears threatening to soak into his soft cotton shirt as I smothered my face against him, taking in his scent and his warmth. He returned the embrace, tightly hugging me back with his nose buried atop my head.

“You’re not mad at me,” he mumbled thoughtfully.

I shook my head against him, squeezing him that much tighter to reassure him. “I figured it wasn’t biologically possible, but there are plenty of ways for couples to have kids when they otherwise can’t themselves.”

I imagined his brows furrowing as he turned his head, resting the side of his plump cheek on top of my hair. “I don’t understand.”

Pulling back, I tilted my head to look him in the eyes and smiled supportively. Our kids don’t have to look like either of us to be ‘little Taehyungs’ or little ‘Y/Ns’.” I leaned back further and pressed my chin against the center of his chest, humming as he readjusted his embrace around me. “I’ll see you in the way they smile or laugh, all those little idiosyncrasies they pick up from you that make them you kids.”

Tae blinked with a blank expression on his face, staring me down without so much as a response to follow up. The longer he went without responding, the stronger my heart pounded in my chest.

We never had any serious talks like that before because everything about our relationship was too complicated. Marriage and families weren’t even on our mind, at least not on mine until Sam was getting her own, and suddenly I realized how I’d love to have a family with Taehyung, no matter how unconventional. But there’s a chance that could’ve just been me. Maybe it was too early to be talking about that so Tae didn’t really have an opinion since he couldn’t have kids. Maybe he was trying not to hurt my feelings? God, I broke him.

I cleared my throat and opening my mouth to talk when he cut me off. “So you’re not mad that I…. you’re okay with it?”

“Of course I’m okay with it. Sure, I’m a teenie but sad they probably won’t have your boxy grin or your cute little nose freckle, but our kids would be cute regardless.” The anxiety I had towards his response was no longer a thought in my mind as I suddenly grinned, punctuating my statement with a kiss on his chin, which he playfully returned. But he didn’t stop there. Strong hands gripped the back of my thighs and urged me to jump, forcing my legs to wrap around his waist as he pushed us up against the wall once more, chaste kisses littered across the length of my face. Each peck tickled, giggles pouring past my lips as I scrunched my nose up and took all the comfort he gave. Lips trailed down my neck before he buried his face in the crook of my collarbone, happily sighing against ym skin with a happy hum.

The smile on my lips pinched at my cheeks, making my face ache with the strength of my happiness alone. I never knew he’d have such a human response to something like kids. It made my heart flutter to know that’s where his heart and mind were, that he wasn’t actually mad at me.

With determination, he pushed us off of the bathroom wall and opened the door to our shared bedroom, carrying me to the bed where he motioned to put me down.

“Babe, my pants are still wet,” I reminded him, to which he nodded and set me down a foot or so away to stand in front of him.

“Well, we’re going to solve that,” he quipped, reaching down between us to fumble with the button and zipper on my jeans while I grinned up at him. It wasn’t what I had in mind when planning this out but I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

He had a few issues with the clasping mechanics of my pants, a regular issue he was faced with, and grunted in irritation. I giggled, brushing back the long strands of hair behind his ear before a loud ripping sound pulled my attention.

“Baby! These are my favorite jeans!” I screeched at Taehyung, lips pouting as I admired the fresh rip down the center of the jeans that paralleled the zipper. You know, the zipper he could’ve just undone.

Lips pressed to my forehead as a chuckle rippled through his chest. “Not anymore, they’re not.” He meant it to tease but I still glared at him, not finding it in me to laugh at the expense of my favorite pair of jeans. “Sorry, I’ll buy you new ones,” he offered in a light-hearted tone, making me roll my eyes and return the kiss to his chin.

Lean fingers dipped into the waistband of my jeans, tugging them down my hips until they passed the curve of my ass. But the material from the thigh down was still sopping wet and made it even more entertaining to watch him struggle to slide the denim down my legs, coaxing another giggle from me.

“Fuck, why is this so difficult?” Tae let out a soft groan, giving up on his quest of removing the wet article and instead closing the distance between us, lips meeting mine in a gentle kiss.

“What about my pants? Not going to rip them all the way?” I wriggled my eyebrows and laughed when he rolled his eyes back.

“Pants or no pants, I’m still fucking you into the mattress.” His voice dripped with heat, his tone comparing to sex itself, sensual and deep, which made the words shoot straight down to my core.

As promised, he stalked towards me until the back of my knees pressed up against the edge of the bed. He didn’t miss a beat, cupping my face with his large palms and pulling me into a deep kiss that took away what little breath I had after his sexy statement. His tongue skimmed over the seam of my mouth, canines digging into the flesh of my bottom lip as he gave me that final push back onto the bed, lowering me down with a steady hold on my back until I was flush against the mattress with him hovering above me. Mouths lavished over one another, pulling the other into each other as far as our bodies would let us until the lack of oxygen forced me to pull away for a moment.

I wasted no time in pulling the white shirt from his black dress slacks, untucking his usual orderly work clothes so I could dip my hand under the smooth material to feel his bare warmth against my fingers. Each little divot and bulge across his stomach only added to the arousal gathering between my legs, allowing my fingers to explore the clothed spaced with the image of him naked on my mind.

The thought of that alone drove me mad, thighs instinctively rubbing together to relieve some of the pent up pressure. But doing so only reminded me of the pants I still had clinging to the lower part of my legs, the tight and uncomfortable sticky feeling causing a slight bubble of irritation to well up within me.

“Bab-” I started, cut off by Tae’s lips roughly soothing over mine with a kiss deeper than the one before it. It was his mission to explore my mouth, delving deep inside to slide his tongue along mine in a dance for passion, not power. There was no struggle in the kiss, which was different - a good different that made my heart beat just a little bit harder for him.

“Sh, ignore the pants,” Taehyung whispered against my lips and I had to force down the eyeroll that almost surfaced at such a dismissive response.

As I was about to protest further, Tae parted from the kiss and pushed himself from the bed, kneeling down on the floor and pushing my legs up until they tucked up to my chest to expose my clothed core for his eyes to feast on. The tip of his tongue swiped across his lips before he dove down, pushing my panties out of the way to dip a finger shallowly into my sopping heat. I moaned softly, holding onto my ruined jeans with one hand and sneaking the other around to his head, intertwining my fingers in his soft, chestnut locks.

Without warning, Tae pushed his finger in to the knuckle and lowered his head to hungrily lap at my clip over my already soaked underwear, ripping a moan forcefully from my throat. He moaned in return, any noise that left my mouth only adding to his determination to work me up and get me as wet as inhumanly possible. He sped up his pace, curling the tip of his finger to stroke the pad of his fingertip along the rough patch at the top, the spot that made my mind go blank and left me a mumbling mess for him to please. He always knew how to hit the right place, each and every time together was spent as a new learning experience for him to map out and worship my body as I did his.

A few pumps later, Tae placed a sloppy, wet kiss along the inside of my thigh before adding a finger to the one already thrusting into my cunt at a moderate pace. The stretch burned despite how slender his fingers were, always filling me up nicely. Brushing against a particular spot deep within me, I was left gasping for air, tugging the strands at the top of his head as I attempted to buck my hips against his hand to meet each of his thrusts, my sopping pussy tembling around his fingers.

“Fuck, baby. You always take me so fucking well,” he praised, leaving a few stray kisses along my thigh to accompany the faster pace he’d set, working his fingers into me as if he could do it all fucking night long.

“Mmh, Tae,” I groaned, abandoning the grip on my legs to ground myself against the duvet underneath.

“What, baby? What do you want?” Rougher kisses were pressed into the length of my thigh and along my wet mound, tongue practically dancing everywhere but my clit to tease me.

“Tae-Tae, I want you in me. Please.”

Despite the urgency in my request, Tae peeked around my legs with a softened look, eyes kind as his body smile outshines the gloss of arousal painting his lips and chin.

“Yeah? Where do you want me, baby? Here?” He asked with a slide of his fingers across my g-spot, causing my thighs to quake as I fought off the softest hint of an orgasm. I nodded and begged him for his cock while he rubbed the remainder of my slick from his face and onto his sleeve, towering over me once again as he climbed up the bed once again, having stripped himself of his clothes. The heat returned to his gaze as he devoured my body with his eyes, not needed for me to be naked in order to let his imagination run wild.

Leaving a soft kiss against my lips, he pushed back to sit on his knees and lifted my legs up until my feet rested against the top of his shoulder. The position we were in gave him the perfect view of my ruined panties, his eyes lit up with a heat unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before as he traced the material with his fingertip.

“You want me to fuck a baby into you?” He asked, fighting the blush that creeped up his neck and into his ears as he stayed locked onto my clothed pussy.

His words made me giddy, the thought of him fucking me and getting me pregnant with his child adding fuel to our very passionate fire. “Please, I want your baby, Tae,” I whined. He dragged his cockhead against my clothed core, earning a grunt from us both. With a push of my panties to the side and a gentle rock of his hips against my own, the entirety of his cock slid into me, walls protested the stretch his thick girth gave despite the prep, drawing a synchronized moan from us.

“Oh fuck, babe,” I groaned, fisting the sheets beneath me as his grip aropund my legs tightened. He stilled when the last inch of his cock sank into me, the tremble in his breath telling me he felt the tightness in this position too. Without warning, he dragged his hips back, exposing everything but the tip of his cock before he quickly thrusted back in.

He continued his languid pace while pressing open kisses to my foot just beneath the hem of the jeans, nails raking against the flesh of my thigh before his eyes flickered down to me.

I gasped when he adjusted the angle of his hips and targeted my g-spot without miss, setting a punishing pace with his hips as he suddenly drove his cock into me roughly. I moaned out, teeth capturing my bottom lip to contain the sounds his actions were tearing from my throat.

With a grunt, Tae switched our positions, lowering himself down until his shoulders nestled in the hollow of my knees, face ducking down to pull my lips into a kiss as he resumed his powerful thrusts into my aching pussy.

The new position had every part of my body humming in happiness, the surface of my flesh tingling with each thrust he gave until my eyes shut. Our lips danced together, tongues stealing tastes of one another as the little sounds we made were muted by the other. I fisted a hand in his sweaty hair, using the brunette strands to ground me against his assault against my hips. I tried to meet his thrusts, but the awkward position left me lying there, unable to move, as I took his cock as he gave it.

I tightened around him, loving the way I felt every ridge of his thick length as it disappeared from my cunt and pushed back inside to hit me in all the right places. After so many thrusts against that spot deep within me, a pressure built up in my lower stomach that burned, growing in size with each pump of his cock until I whined, needing pressure on my clit to push me over that final edge.

Knowing exactly what I wanted, he snuck a hand between us and used the slick on my thighs to wet his thumb before swiping rigorously against my sensitive clit. I mewled in pleasure at the contact, throwing my head back and parting our lips as loud whines and moans leaked from my mouth. It was almost too much, the combination of his hand and his cock throwing me over the edge faster than I could ever get myself off, pushing me over that ledge and into my orgasm.

I mumbled incoherently as my spasming cunt only drove Taehyung to ride out into his own orgasm, continuing his brutal pace until his cock twitched and stilled inside me, filling me to the brim with his seed.

We stayed that way for a few minutes, taking the time to catch our breaths and return to reality. My body protested him pulling his limp cock from my oversensitive hole, making me grimace. When he pulled back and released my legs from his grip, I groaned at the stiffness in my legs from being in that position for a while, but completely forgot about that as goosebumps fluttered over my skin and brought my attention back down to the soaked jeans I still had on my body.

Taehyung noticed my shivering and gave a small laugh, deciding to help me out and finally rip each of the legs until the material wasn’t too tight to remove. Sticking to the stripping, I took off my top and unclasped my bra, flinging both across the room to deal with later as Tae stood at the edge of our bed, between my legs. His eyes locked onto the cum dripping from my pussy and he couldn’t contain a grin as he reached forward and swiped a drop up onto his finger to push it back inside of me.

“Well, at least we’ll know for sure,” Tae murmured to himself.

“Hm?” I hummed, reaching out with grabby hands for him to come join me on the bed, which he did with a soft smile and a peck to the nose.

“I’ve always assumed we can’t have kids. I guess now we’ll figure out whether I was right or wrong.”

#creaturesofmm #btsbookclub #bangtanhq #ksmutclub #ficswithluv #bangtanarmynet #bangtanuniversity #bts smut #taehyung smut #grim reaper au #halloween au #collab

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passable-talent · 4 years

Note

*grabby hands* childhood Jedi training rival x anakin skywalker? 🥺🥺

you ever had a boy own your whole heart? I didn’t even realize how much I loved this man when I watched the prequels at 7 until I watched them again at 19- literally a gay awakening, twice. unprecidented.

also. I LIVED BITCH

Three years old, and you’ve never known anything other than the Jedi Temple. You’re learning words quickly- words like ‘up’, and ‘down’, and ‘Force’.

Five years old, and you’re told about how your parents sent you to Coruscant with pride, because you were force sensitive. They knew that someday, you were to be a Jedi.

Age seven. The time is drawing closer for you to become an initiate. You’re doing well in your classes, and you’re capable of some deep meditation, even if Master Yoda always comments that you’re too distracted.

Age nine, and there’s an eleventh added to your clan of younglings. His name is Anakin Skywalker, and he seems cool. He’s a bit old to start his training, but he’s part of your clan now, so everyone helps him study and catch up to the rest of the group.

You’re eleven years old. The initiate trials are only a few years away. Anakin is your best friend, even if you’d never admit it. He’s such a show-off, his force powers much stronger than anyone else in the unit, his marks on strategy exams are always outstanding, and he’s already a padawan, as he loves to remind you. But your politics are stronger, and when you practice with the wooden sabres, you beat him every time.

Thirteen, now. Next year, you’ll compete in the initiate trails, and if you succeed, the Apprentice Tournament. Anakin has started going on missions with Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he’s stopped teasing you about it, since he’s noticed how you redden with jealousy.

The initiate trails were a success. You’d gathered more skill in the force, though you still weren’t at Ani’s level, and passed the first trial. You had been gifted an orange kyber crystal by Master Mace Windu, and your lightsaber was distinct and brilliant. Finally, you had something to tease Anakin about- his blue blade was a common color.

For a year you trained with renewed fervor, having been moved from a youngling to an initiate. You were readying to participate in the Apprentice Tournament, where you would show off blade skills that Master Kit Fisto praised as being some of the best he’d seen from an initiate. Anakin helped you train, though he always offered with a throw-off statement such as ‘you’ll need all the help you can get’.

And if he didn’t cheat and use the Force, you certainly would’ve won more than you did.

Master Mace Windu had become an idol of yours, ever since he chose you to hand that kyber crystal to. If he didn’t mind the interruption, you would study with him, and he would guide your emotions, like your jealousy of Anakin and your angry determination, into Jedi strengths. He harbored the decision that he would take you as a padawan, as he hadn’t had one since Depa Billaba completed her trials, years ago.

He told himself that he’d take you as a padawan as soon as possible, but it seemed that you were intent on competing in the Apprentice Tournament, and he wouldn’t stop you.

Fourteen years old, and facing off against your class- and clan- mates in lightsaber duels, one by one. Your skills with the saber were unmatched by your peers. Certainly not by far, but you had a talent, a natural knack, and you quickly progressed through the bracket, until the final free-for-all. Anakin and Obi-Wan, you knew, were in the stands, just like Mace Windu. You needed only to win, or at least put up a fight, to impress them all.

Strategy was your ally, as the match started, as you did not charge headfirst into the battle. Your angry determination had turned to cool focus, picking out the best times to engage a fight and turn your opponent away. Soon enough, it was you and one other initiate- Lys Kysek. He was skilled, but you were better.

Cheers erupted when you won the duel, and you gave a humble bow, lifting Lys up to show respect to him. When you exited the Arena, you found the congratulations of your friends, and though Anakin looked impressed and happy for you, he maintained that things would’ve been different if he’d entered the tournament.

Seventeen years old- you’re a padawan to Master Mace Windu, and have been for three years. Anakin is most certainly the person you despise most in the world, and anyone who claims otherwise is clearly lying, kidding themselves. Don’t they see how you boast every time you beat him in a duel? Don’t they see the way you flush with anger whenever he bests you? What other explanation could there be for your sputtering whenever he sends you a cocky smile?

Yeah, yeah. You see, Jedi are forbidden to love. You wondered, though, if the Masters of Old would’ve written that rule if they’d seen how Anakin smiles.

At nineteen, you were knighted, having completed your trials. It was rushed, you knew that, but the Clone Wars had begun, and the galaxy needed Jedi Knights like never before. It was fine- Master Windu would do just fine without you. And besides, being a General in the Grand Amry of the Republic had its perks.

One being, of course, that you were able to chose to go on missions with your old friend, Anakin Skywalker.

He had his hands full, with his new padawan and all, so he was often grateful to have you at his side. Ahsoka, her personality not unlike a Florrumian fire cracker, seemed to reignite the rivalry between the two of you, going so far as to claim she wished that she had been your padawan, instead of Anakin.

Oh, how that made him boil.

Still, you would follow him into battle in a heartbeat. You’d protect him with your life, and of course, he would do the same. Together with his piloting and your sabre skills, you were unstoppable on missions. Ever so slowly, you forged a force connection.

It was like that of a padawan and master, but more balanced, like a true partnership. You could feel each other’s presence, location, and sometimes even emotion, when it was particularly strong. Anakin never spoke of it, and so you wondered if you were meant to hide it- maybe, it had happened because of the love you held for him as a teenager, and maybe still did. Jedi weren’t meant to grow attached to anyone, especially not the way that you had, and so you kept quiet, and just felt it when he stood beside you.

Anakin and Ahsoka had left for a mission that you weren’t meant to accompany them on. You stayed at the temple and completed the diplomatic communications you were known to be quite good at, content and confident that Anakin would return unscathed.

And then, you felt it.

In the middle of your meditation, when your body was open to the force, you felt the deepest, most raw pain you had ever felt in the depths of your stomach. It made you double over and nearly vomit, its pain so intense that you couldn’t move. It ebbed after a few moments, and on weakened legs you stumbled to your communication station.

Where pain had been only moments ago, you now felt fear settle. You had a connection with Anakin, and when you were meditating with the force, had felt horrible pain- the conclusion was obvious that Anakin was hurt. You tried first to reach him, but nothing went through. Then you tried for Ahsoka, who was equally unreachable. When you couldn’t reach Captain Rex you started to fear for the worst.

You ran to your old Master, finding him in discussion with another Jedi, who he waved away as he sensed your panic, and strife.

“What is it?”

“Anakin’s in trouble. I can’t reach him, and I think he’s hurt.” Mace turned to the nearby communication equipment and tried to reach Anakin’s unit, but gave you the side eye as he did so.

“How do you know he’s hurt if you can’t reach him?”

“Master, I- I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.” You conceded with a sigh, knowing that your master could see through you.

“Anakin and I- we have this bond, in the force. I don’t know how it happened. But it’s never been like this before- I’ve never felt his injury, and I’ve never felt him when he was so far away. I- I’m scared that he’s in real danger.” By this time, Mace had pulled up transmission with Obi-Wan, who quickly relayed the 501st’s last known meeting and location.

“Be careful,” Mace warned you, “what you’re describing sounds almost like a Dyad. It can’t be, we would’ve known by now, but if it’s this similar now, it could prove to be dangerous, later. Don’t let his pain keep you from his rescue.”

You hopped in a speeder and raced to the aid of your friends.

When you entered the atmosphere of the planet Anakin had said to have been lost upon, you tried to open your mind to the force- it was difficult, you had to admit, flying a speeder through Seperatist airspace, but you had to try. You let the force guide you to a different part of the planet, where you touched down and hid your ship amongst the foliage as best you could.

Once again you let the force guide you, sending you deep into the woods. You knew you must’ve been getting close when you began garnering fire, but instead of red droid blasters, you were avoiding instead blue fire.

So you ignited your saber and lifted it as a sign of peace.

As soon as the clones stopped firing, you rushed toward them, and found almost exactly what you feared. Ahsoka had tears running down her face, surrounded by a protection squad of clones, and Anakin was bleeding heavily from a droid blast in the center of his abdomen, right where you had felt the pain. You had taken time to get here- he was still alive, but had passed out either from the pain, or from blood loss.

“Master (Y/N), I don’t know what to do,” Ahsoka sobbed, and you feel to your knees opposite her, at Anakin’s side.

“Ahsoka, give me your hand,” you ordered her, and you pressed down her hand onto the left side of his wound, then moving your palm to its right. “Meditate with me. We’re going to give him some life force, to help him heal.” You’d tried this, once, long ago. When you were on a mission with your Master, and he’d received a similar wound. It was much smaller, and he’d been able to guide you through it. Today, you would be that guidance, for Ahsoka. And maybe, her Force powers and yours combined would be enough to heal him. “Visualize the Force, the Force all around us, within us. Visualize it traveling down your body, into your fingertips, into Anakin’s body. Visualize the energy flow being channeled by the two of us.”

Once you’d explained, you closed your eyes, and pictured it. The Force, to you, looked like golden light, compassion and kindness shimmering in the air all around you. Like a magnetic field it was drawn to Jedi, and in this instant you saw it pour downward through the funnel you created with Ahsoka into Anakin’s body.

He opened his eyes slowly, a small groan leaving his body.

“Hey, (Y/N). You made it after all.” Ahsoka called Master! and leapt forward to give him a hug, to which he laughed and hugged back, teasing that it would take more than a droid to kill him. You shook your head and sat back, narrowing your eyes.

“Skywalker, how many times am I going to have to hop in a speeder and race across the galaxy to make sure you don’t die?”

“Oh, just once more,” he shot back, that smirk back on his face, as though it had never left. “I don’t suppose you have a way off this planet?”

“You’re lucky I’m going to let you on my ship.”

As soon as Anakin opened communications on your speeder with Obi-Wan to report the successful, if nearly life-costing, mission, you let Captain Rex take the wheel, and went to the deck below to speak with Anakin in private.

“You felt it, didn’t you?” He asked, his hand over the scar that had formed from rapid healing. “When I got shot.”

“Yes,” you answered, eyes cast to the side.

“Why are we connected like this?”

“I don’t know. I think-“

“Is it because of how much I like you?” You lifted your head in surprise, and briefly felt an emotion you almost never felt from Anakin- vulnerability.

“You- you do?”

“I have since we were kids. I never told you, because I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel this way, and thought that since you were raised in the temple, you’d never feel the same.” His expression told you he was sensing the emotions that currently broiled in your heart. The nervousness, the surprise, but mostly the relief, relief that your love wasn’t unrequited, that you weren’t the only one, that you weren’t breaking the code alone.

“Anakin, I- I can’t believe this.” You took the two quick steps to him but stopped short of the hug he was expecting, briefly laying your fingers where his wound had been, where his robes were scorched. “I’m glad you’re not dead.” Anakin gave a little laugh.

“Yeah, me too.” You closed the distance and hugged him, tightly, closing your eyes and letting yourself feel as satisfaction and happiness bounced between the two of you. “I’m glad you were there when I woke up.” You snorted, pulling away, eyes narrowed playfully.

“Buddy, if I wasn’t there, you wouldn’t have woken up.” Instead of teasing back, as you had expected, Anakin took hold of your closer wrist, the playfulness only in his smirk.

“Then it’s a good thing you were there. If you hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have gotten to do this.” With his opposite hand he cupped your face, and slowly, he brought the two of you together.

Scattered across the galaxy, there were four people who felt it when the two of you kissed. Not because of the kiss itself, but because of the connection between two who were bound by the force, pulsating outward from a moment of satisfaction, devotion, happiness. Master Yoda, on a mission to Endor, who scowled, wondering how much harder it would become to control Anakin. Mace Windu, on Coruscant, who laughed, as though he expected such a feeling. Obi-Wan Kenobi, in a cruiser halfway ‘cross the galaxy, who merely shook his head. And, on the very same ship, Ahsoka Tano, who quietly received five Republic credits from Captain Rex, who’d lost their bet.

-🦌 Roe

#reader insert #angst #imagines #Star Wars #star wars prequels #anakin skywalker #darth vadar #Jedi #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker imagine #anakin x reader #poor anakin #anakin imagine #revenge of the sith #clone wars #the clone wars

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animemangasoul · 3 years

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You Are Wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi

Summery: Summery: Qui-Gon lives and Mace gets a new Padawan.

[In which Qui-Gon repudiates Obi-Wan and Mace isn't about to let the kid leave the order without a fight.]

Chapter: 8/10?

His mission debrief was held in private with only himself standing in the middle and Master Yoda sitting across from him. Feemor was grateful for that. It was a small thing, a tiny gesture of consideration but it meant a lot to him and Feemor was sure his Great Grandmaster was aware of it, after all, Yoda had always been kind to him and that hadn't changed even after Qui-Gon Jinn disowned him.

So standing there; ignoring his throbbing knee for all it was worth, he carefully and with enough detail to suffice, summed up his mission.

The disastrous mission that nearly cost him everything. Might still be costing him everything. With the haunting voice at the back of his mind, echoing a constant reminder off his stripped humanity, of his lost dignity of……

When he closed his eyes at night, he could still hear it. The roars, the thirst for blood, the calling of death. He could still feel the grim of filth under his nails, the rot of expiration on his skin and he could taste it, the pain.

He'd fought in the Pits for over a year and a half and it clung to him like the stink of penance yet to be absolved.

After all, how could he call himself a Jedi if he'd killed to survive?

And yet….. here he was, back in old Jedi robes, skin clean, shaved head although marred with scars, actually alive with dust of blonde locks peaking out and hiding his damaged scalp.

He was tainted, Feemor knew that all too well. Maybe if he'd been a Shadow he would have been able to set aside the disgust, the horror, the guilt, but…. He wasn't. He was just an ordinary Jedi Master who'd gotten himself into more than he could handle and then felt too honour bond not to do the logical thing. The smart thing. He'd let his emotions rule him and now…now he was giving his report as if…. As if what he'd done, what he'd sacrificed had all been part of the mission.

"Hard on yourself you are," Master Yoda spoke up, breaking him out of his spiraling thoughts. "Believe this you might not, but the right thing you did. Saved those Padawans and force sensitive kids you did with the choice you made."

Feemor swallowed thickly, eyes blinking furiously to hold back the stinging of tears. The pride in Master Yoda's voice was obvious as the sun was bright and any other day, any other time in his life Feemor would have soaked it in like a starving wild animal thrown a piece of meat . But after everything….. After his failed mission….. After all that he'd been through. The praise felt like hot coal against his skin and he found himself recoiling away from it. Eyes drilling into his boots, bottom lip catching between his teeth.

How had everything gone so wrong?

The mission had been simple. Track down missing lightsabers currently being sold in the black-market by a notorious black-market dealer, known to have belonged to the Coruscant Temple's missing Padawans. Report back and let the Shadows handle the rest. Simple enough. Or it should have been. It's after all the reason why he took it in the first place.

Coming back from a grueling long mission on the outer-rim, Feemor had taken it as a chance to finally get that break he'd been putting off for so long. He would go, track down the dealer, report back and let a Shadow take over.

Simple enough.

Simple….enough.

But it wasn't. Because loathe as he was to admit it, Feemor was nothing if not Qui-Gon Jinn's former Padawan and if there was anything that their lineage was infamous for was their ability to get into more trouble than was imaginable. The simplicity of the mission should have clued him in from the very beginning. But it hadn't and that was his first mistake.

And now here he was, unable to breathe a single minute without remembering the hands touching his skin, without recalling the foul breaths of those masked men, sizing him up like nothing more than the slave he'd become. Unable to go a day without remembering the fear, the terror of even taking something as innocent as a nap for you never knew……

["Left, you could have," Master Yoda had said when he'd come off the ship yesterday. "Choose to stay you did."]

And he had. He had chosen it. No one had forced his hand. No one had been there to force him. The slice of a knife, the burns of hot metal rods, the combats of death, he'd endured it all for a chance to track down the kids. Kids he'd found out weren't actually dead but being……

He'd chosen to stay in the darkness. Freedom had been in touch. Fresh air, warm clothes, home, it had all been so very close. He'd managed to escape the clutches of Mir'randa, managed to collect his lightsaber, info chip in hand, just a step away from his passage out of the accursed planet. He could have taken it, but he hadn't because at the end of it all. Despite everything he'd been through, everything he would continue to endure, he was a Jedi. So when he'd sensed the new shipment.

The force sensitive shipments.

The choice became obvious. So painfully obvious.

They'd been kids after all. Some unknown, unfamiliar but most of them….. They'd been theirs. Jedi Padawans. Their missing Jedi Padawans, and now those kids, terrified, hurt, having been through force knows what were about to be pulled into the very nightmare Feemor wanted to escape, and what had he done?

He'd watched as his window of escape closed. Watched as his last hope off the planet disappeared with a single droid; carrying a single chip meant for the Jedi temple and he'd made his way back inside. Back into the darkness. Back to the clutches of Mir'randa, back to being less than human. Less than a Jedi. Knowing this might very well be the last time he'd be able to sense the force dancing and flittering around him because this time around he knew his force-suppressant collar would likely be impossible to remove.

And for what?

For…..

What……

Gritting his teeth, Feemor dug his fingernails into his palm, the jolt of pain bringing him back to reality. Back from there.

"Sit down, you should." Feemor choked down a strangled noise of despair and shook his head, left knee straining under him.

"No thank you, Master." For he would be damned if he let himself show weakness. Not when he'd failed so spectacularly. Not when he'd only manage to save seven of them. Just seven. Four Padawans and three force sensitive kids.

Only seven when there had been sixteen.

He'd only managed to save seven……seven kids out of sixteen.

His stomach turned. An image of the Pit flashing through his mind for a single agonizing moment before he brutally shoved it to the back of his mind with the rest of his darkest deeds.

Seven.

"Will that be all, Master Yoda?" He managed to keep his voice stable even as his knee screamed, his heart thudded like the dreams of war and his scars ached with every breath. "Because I need to find my former Master and have a long overdue conversation with him."

A flicker of amusement danced across his Great Grandmaster's eyes before it was drowned out by concern yet again. If the concern was for him, for Qui-Gon, for Obi-Wan? Feemor didn't quite know. But he appreciated non-the-less. "A talking to he needs," the old troll rumbled, gimer-stick hitting the ground twice. "But first to the Halls you need to go. Grateful I am for the people of Dugmulo for taking care of you and the young children, but a secondary check up by our own, ease my heart it would."

Feemor smiled, it made his cheeks ache, strain. "Of course Master," he said, clasping his hands under his robes and giving a shallow bow; his knee protested but he refused to let it bother him. "I'll do that right away."

After all, he had all the time in the world now, didn't he?

He'd busted the ring, he'd shut down Mir'randa's Games, he'd…..yes, yes he'd failed to save them all but he'd saved some and those he hadn't been able to, he….. those Padawans, their bodies, he'd recovered them for the proper Jedi burial they deserved and for the others, Master Yoda had secured a journey back to their own families as their last resting place. Had it broken something fundamentally vital within him to do so? Perhaps. Had it cost him sleepless nights fraught with horrors brought on his creaking shoulders, horrors he'd been subjected to and caused himself to keep them all alive for just one more day. Yes, of course, yes. But…..

It was all over now, wasn't it?

He'd come back. He was home. Where he belonged. It had taken weeks.

After the Pit, after the Jedi came to the rescue, weeks of bacta tanks and treatments and several weeks more to ensure the safety and security of those kids who still----

He swallowed thickly, refusing to allow himself to collapse in front of his Grandmaster, no matter how much that might help liberate the choking guilt clawing at his throat because how could any of these kids trust him still after everything they'd seen him do? After the scars and burns and tears and blood. After seeing the filthy arena filled with the bodies of their fallen under the same sky as the cheers of their spectators?

How did anything he'd done to get the word out, to stop the trafficking, how did any of that lessen his desperate actions to keep them alive for another day, another week, another month, year…..how did it make up for it?

But he had all the time in the world now.

All the time.

And he'd come back for a reason. For Obi-Wan Kenobi. Because with all his newly acquired scars, still, no matter how, somehow being repudiated by Qui-Gon ran the deepest.

So what could he do but try and help his Padawan brother the only way he knew how? Running off to go fix what his former Master had somehow managed to break in his absence. As if Xanatos hadn't been enough of a nightmare to deal with as it was.

Maybe after he took care of that he could answer back Kuflo's insisting messages and Androlet's updates on how things were going Dugmulo. Maybe, maybe.

The Halls would just have to wait a little while longer. Because if he could do one right thing today, maybe it would be his first act to wipe away the blood marring his soul.

He took a step back from Master Yoda and turned to the door, wincing at the strain that simple action put on his knee; saying a soft goodbye.

"May the force be with you Great Grandpadawan."

Feemor's lips twitched, it didn't reach quite reach his eyes. "May the force be with you as well, Master." And with that, he left.

One foot in front of the other. Eyes focused on nothing but the path ahead. Ignoring the murmurs around him, the gossip, the looks of concern at his bandaged appearance and his limp. He ignored it all. Only allowing himself the briefest glimmer of satisfaction at the positive mutters on one Obi-Wan Kenobi that he caught every now and then. Apparently being the new Padawan of the Master of the Order was something to behold.

It did hurt a bit, Feemor silently had to admit to himself, not having had the chance to take on the kid himself.

After all, that was the primary reason why he'd wanted to rush back to begin with, despite initially deciding to supervise the imprisonment of the Gamers, but it hurt less knowing that the kid hadn't been thrown to the side for too long. That he hadn't been alone, confused, broken hearted for months as he wondered what he'd done wrong to be discarded like his time with Qui-Gon meant nothing that he was worthle…..clenching his fists tight enough to leave dents, Feemor gritted his teeth.

This wasn't about him. Going down this path would only lead to his suffering. Only reopen old wounds he was not quite ready to acknowledged. So he needed to focus on the here and now. This wasn't about him.

It was about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon and little Skywalker and what he, Feemor could do to make things better. That was it. Nothing more. After all, hadn't he already lost his chance to get to know his Padawan brother with his own indecisions? He could have gotten to know him any time he'd wanted, but he had….he'd been so angry, so hurt, and he'd refused to have anything to do with the must innocent party in all of it. And that wasn't, shouldn't be an excuse.

So Master Windu was fine. Great even. The perfect Master probably. The one who stepped up when no one else would.

And…. He…..Feemor….he was not well. Not anymore. So taking on a Padawan brother who probably didn't even know who he was, that was just a recipe for disaster. So this was good. 'Yes,' he told himself firmly, taking one step after the other as he traced his steps from the council chambers to the Room of Thousand Fountains. 'This is good. Master Windu is a perfect choice so all I can do for Obi-Wan now,' when his knee nearly buckled under him, he again regretted not putting on the brace. 'Is to find Master Jinn and set things straight. For the betterment of everyone.'

'One problem with that plan though,' he grimaced, slamming a hand against the nearest wall for stability. Taking a moment to be grateful he was in an empty hallway and no one was there to witness his momentary weakness.

Frowning down at his right leg, he bared his teeth in frustration. Looked like his knee would refuse to carry him all the way to his destination after all.

"Kriff it," he hissed, teeth biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. "Kriff it all."

The agony coursing through his leg was almost unbearable. It had stiffened significantly on his walk over to the Council debriefing and Feemor should have known then that he wasn't going to make it but……

Weakness Is Death

That had been a mantra, his mantra that he'd lived by for what felt like forever. Instilled it in the kids. Bad'kuu, Kuflo, Gaa'ah, Androlet…. Everyone. He'd said it so many times it was all he knew how to say to them anymore. Weakness is death. To show a vulnerability was to allow yourself to be broken. To be scrapped from the inside out. The fingers. The touching, the prodding, the dragging…….

Weakness Is Death.

So Feemor refused to show it. To wear the brace, not in front of Yoda. Not in front of those who'd already seen his failures. Not when he needed to be strong and honorable to show…. To show he hadn't fallen.

He hadn't even been allowed to come back until several Jedi Masters had confirmed he hadn't turned. He was good. He was still a good Jedi, tainted yes, but not fallen. Not yet. And what a relief that revelation had been. To know that despite everything he'd done, he could still call himself a Jedi. But he wasn't delusional enough not to know he was still under keen observation. Falter once, fall one time and it was all over.

So, no knee brace.

He'd managed to make due in the Pit. Fighting with a bad knee was disadvantage enough without him broadcasting that fact to the entire arena. Spectators and fighters alike. He'd always had a weak right knee ever since that disastrous first mission he took as a Master, but it hadn't been too hard to deal with at first, even if he'd had to take up Jar'kai to make up for his lack of mobility when it acted up.

Jar'Kai had been a way for him to compensate for his damaged knee at first, nearly two years in the Pit however, and it had solidified itself as the only form he could trust to keep him safe. To keep him alive.

Protect yourself for no one else will protect you under the skies of Miiir.

Sinking to the floor, eyes blinking back the sudden wetness burning at the edges, Feemor allowed himself a moment to just loathe it all. The regret, the pain, the failure, the shame. And then he breathed in and let it go.

It wouldn't do to dwell on the unchangeable.

Shoulders sagging he let his head drop back with a gentle thud against the wall behind him and he let his eyes fall shut. It all felt rather heavy. Being back here, being back home.

Maybe a moment to rest his eyes would be enough. Just a moment. Until the pain dulled. Then he'd go see Master Jinn, talk to him about missing his recent appointments with the mind healers and maybe…..maybe finally get the chance to talk things out. Yeah, maybe.

But a moment turned into two. And two turned into three and before Feemor could help it, he was clutching at his knee with both hands. The agony unparalleled.

It burned like thousand knives being sliced through his skin simultaneously. Feemor grimaced, head throbbing with the nausea bubbling in the pit of his stomach, screaming at him in aguish. 'Make it stop,' he thought, squeezing harder, fingers digging into the joints, face ashen and bottom lip bleeding. 'Kriff, make it stop.'

And then, it did. Not by much, not even half way but enough to bring a sense of clarity to him. And it was only when his mind wasn't being clouded by the bolt of sheer agony dancing through his body; paralyzing him in place, that he noticed the cold hand resting across his forehead and one atop of his joined hands. Soothing sense of warmth intermingling with his force signature and somewhat dulling the pain coursing through his veins. And Feemor breathed, raising his eyes to come face to face with one Obi-Wan Kenobi.

----------

"Stop," he ordered when he finally found his voice behind the sudden lump in his throat, gently pushing those hands away even as he instantly missed the soothing force healing that came with them. But Obi-Wan looked like death warmed over himself and Feemor would be force damned if he let his first action back home be to hospitalize his Padawan brother. "Thank you, but I'm okay."

The young man kneeling in front of him didn't look convinced, brows furrowing slightly and lips pursed, but he did back away, choosing to sit down next to him; grunting as he adjusted himself against the wall, cane coming to rest by his side. Feemor raised a brow in question, making his Padawan brother laugh lightly.

"Anakin had his first lightsaber practice today," he said in answer, tapping his cane lightly. "I still have a hard time getting around so---" His smile is hallow and Feemor felt it echo in his soul.

"Yeah," he muttered back, looking down at his knee, toes curling with each pulsating burst of electric pain shooting down his leg. He shouldn't have walked on it for so long. "I get it."

"I suppose you do."

Feemor snorted. "When you say Anakin?"

"Skywalker, yes." Obi-Wan's voice was much more lighter this time. "He was….really excited about it and asked me to come so I did. I was on my way back when I----" here he trailed off, but Feemor knew exactly what he was trying not to say, and it made him flush with embarrassment.

"When you found me lying on the floor trying to tear my leg off with my bare hands?"

"Well," Obi-Wan muttered. "I wouldn't exactly say, lying." Feemor stared and Obi-Wan snorted. "Okay, you looked pretty helpless."

"Hey, you don't look so great yourself."

The answering grin was a lot brighter and more real than Feemor had expected and it tugged at his heart. Because somehow despite the dark circles under the kid's eyes, despite the paleness and the fragility to his frame, somehow, when he smiled, really smiled, Feemor could almost drown in the regret of all the wonderful years he'd missed with this kid. The years he could have known him if he had been less of a coward.

Checking up on him religiously didn't make up for not being there for him. For not protecting him against what was likely Qui-Gon's darkest years. To not be a buffer, a confidant, to be a brother. In that sense, Feemor supposed he was a lot like his former Master. Who was just as guilty in tracking his movement as he was in tracking Obi-Wan's without ever taking the first step in meeting the other party half way.

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

His not so Padawan brother. Or all the more his Padawan brother for being tossed aside like himself.

Running a bandaged hand over his head; still feeling that momentary flicker of surprise at brushing against tufts of growing out blonde hair, the broken Jedi Master breathed in deeply and let it all out.

"Feemor," he said, pointing at himself. "My name is Feemor Einar."

Obi-Wan's eyes glittered. "I know."

"Oh?"

The Padawan nodded, fingers tapping away at his wooden cane. "You're the talk of the Temple."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan's voice was neutral as anything and Feemor silently allowed himself to be impressed. He'd never been very good at keeping his emotions in check. "Sounds to me like you stopped a force sensitive trafficking ring and ended a barbaric gladiator tournaments in one single mission."

Feemor couldn't quite suppress the flinch at those words, and it made him burn with shame. "Not soon enough I'm afraid."

"I didn't mean---" Obi-Wan started, clearly noticing his sudden change in demeanor. The harshness in his force signature, the darkness and Feemor internally cursed himself for losing his grasp over his emotions, for his Padawan brother should never sound so uncertain and worried around him. "I didn't mean to bring it up I only heard----"

"It's okay," Feemor cut him off, careful to keep his voice gentle this time despite how his soul screamed and his heart longed for him to hide away for all eternity. "I didn't mean……" He sighed. "It's just been….tough."

Obi-Wan nodded. "Yeah."

Digging his nail into the crack between the tiles, Feemor focused on the pressure on his barely growing in nails and opened his mouth, keeping his voice playfully light. "I hear you're pretty famous around these parts yourself."

A beat and then another, silence filling up slowly between them and it's all Feemor could do to try and find a way to backtrack and try again? Figure out another way? Help? When his Padawan brother, pressed himself even tighter against the wall and clutched at his cane. "You could say that," he whispered, tone strained and part way broken. "You could say that."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

A single shake of the head.

Feemor hummed softly in understanding. "Then Obi-Wan Kenobi, it's a pleasure to officially meet you."

A huff. "Likewise Master Einar."

"You know who I really am, don't you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Not for long. Just after," The kid pulled at his braid. "Thanks for the bead by the way."

Dragging his focus away from his knee, Feemor nodded. "Of course."

A welcoming silence fell between them this time and Feemor was content with it. To sit there with his Padawan brother, after everything, just sit there with him. Not moving, not doing anything. And enjoy his company even if he didn't quite know how to connect with him yet. Even if they still had so much to talk about. And it's not like he didn't have a good reason. After all, the simple thought of trying to stand on his busted leg made his stomach do nauseating flips. But he couldn't stay here forever, not when he needed to see Qui-Gon and sort this all out, not when he still had that medical check up and the kids back at----

So when Obi-Wan bumped his cane against his shoulder and said "You look like you need this more than me," it's all Feemor can do not to drag the haunted looking kid into a desperate hug meant to suffocate with affection. Instead he grinned, taking the offered cane but still remaining seated.

"About Qui-Gon---"

"What about him?"

"I'm sorry that he did that to you."

Obi-Wan paused. And then, "I'm sorry he that to you too."

Feemor nodded back. "Thank you." And he meant it. Of course he meant it for there were very few who could truly understand what he'd been through and sympathize, even if he would never wish this on the kid given a choice, he was still so very grateful for the shared understanding no matter how much it grated on his dignity to admit so. "And I know it doesn't mean much, but I promise you Obi-Wan it wasn't your fault. Master Jinn, he's just…." He should really be getting up, but----. "He lashes out when he's cornered and that reflects badly on him and not you." He really really needed to get up and or he might never get up at all today and yet----. "You are wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi, I promise you that."

He should get up, but when the kid took a sharp intake of breath, then tentatively rested his head on his shoulder after a brief second of hesitation; auburn hair brushing under his chin, Feemor couldn't quite make himself do what he had to do because there was something that was so much more important right here, right now. "I'm going to punch him in the face." He didn't know why those words came out, but he meant them. And---

Obi-Wan laughed, it sounded a little bit broken and a little bit wet but it put a smile on Feemor's face and this one didn't quite ache as much. "Good luck with that."

"Thanks," he said, shifting closer so the kid could rest on his shoulder more comfortably. "I'll make it a good one."

Obi-Wan bumped their shoulders together and Feemor bumped him back, eyes feeling suspiciously damp.

Repudiated Padawans of Qui-Gon Jinn ought to stick together after all.

The End

Chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

#Obi-Wan kenobi #obi wan fanfic #feemor #master yoda #star wars #sw #sw fanfic #star wars fanfic #qui gon a+ parenting #ch 8 #you are wanted obi-wan kenobi #fanfic #fic

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Text

RWBY Recaps - Volume 8 “War”

Hello, everyone! Story time.

Yesterday food was delivered for my two idiot dogs (they’re thrilled about it) but, because it was delivered by Fed Ex, shenanigans were bound to ensue. These particular shenanigans involved realizing that the food had not been left at the front door like tracking said it had. Instead, it was down the very long driveway by the mailbox. Specifically, it was on a low wall beside the mailbox, currently inaccessible due to a mound of plowed snow.

Now, how the delivery guy managed to get it there I’ll never know, but given that our postal system is currently killing itself to get us our Amazon orders for Christmas, I shrugged, let it go, and resigned myself to lifting an 18 pound bag plus box over that snow without dying. Which meant that in reality I just dragged it, uncaring what bumps the bag might accumulate along the way. What are the dogs gonna do? Complain about presentation?

Snow successfully circumvented; I was home free!

… until I was lifting the box into the car, hit a patch of black ice, and was suddenly looking up at the sky, my right hip and leg screaming.

I’m fine. Bruised, but fine. It’s 2020. Did I expect to not fall? C’mon, Clyde. Be sensible.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because falling on ice at 10:00pm with an oversized bag of dog food was less painful than watching this episode.

I jest... but only a little. To be fair to RWBY, it admittedly wasn't painful in any new way. Everything that's a problem this week has been a problem for years now: confusing motivations, changing semblances, unpersuasive character beats, etc. So in some ways this episode — especially as a hiatus episode — is rather underwhelming. I expected RWBY to do something big before taking six weeks off, but this episode simply set the (unstable) stage for what's to come. With the exception of Ren, nothing changed this episode, which makes for a rather "Okay..." note to end on. It's not inherently bad, it's just a bit of a letdown after hyping ourselves up over the expectation that something even crazier than grimm soup will happen. Which, to again be fair, is on us as opposed to the writers. But that feeling of, "If this was last week, what in the world will we get right before an unpredicted hiatus?" was palpable. Turns out the answer was, "A pretty tame episode."

As always though, let's start at the beginning. This episode is titled "War" — straight to the point — and it's actually a little shorter than our last three episodes, adding to that "Okay..." feeling overall. We open on the outskirts of Atlas, amidst what appears to be a wheat field, or something similar. Upon reflection, it makes sense that the bubbled city would be able to grow things not normally growable in the tundra. This might also explain Cinder's strange beginning. Perhaps her orphanage existed on these rural outskirts and then she was brought into the city proper? We'll probably never know for sure, but at least this is a simpler answer than, "The Madame went off to an entirely different Kingdom to secure her child slave." Occam's Razor and all that.

Ironwood's army has assembled to hold off Salem's army. Wow, aren't we glad Ironwood invested in thousands of trained professionals rather than a handful of independent fighters? Seriously though, this is now a battle of numbers. May says later in the episode that Ironwood's forces are doing their best to assist Atlas, so they should go help Mantle... but that help only exists because years ago he recognized that the tiny class sizes of the Academies, this

wasn't going to be enough if grimm attacks suddenly increased. Sure enough, now they're in a situation where Ironwood needs even more men to keep up with Salem's creation magic. The fact that he has any at all is crucial to what little hope is left. How do Jaune, Yang, and Ren think they're going to get the time to look for Oscar without everyone dying while they're gone? Because Ironwood's army is keeping the attack at bay. I love how the story keeps angling for the "Military people are evil" message while actively showing us how much a military is needed in this world. If Ironwood had been a generic Good Guy who dismantled his armed forces because others wanted to ignore that they've always been at war against objectively evil creatures — both the grimm and Salem — then there would have been nothing to hold Salem off until small team rescue/bomb plans could be implemented.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual. The army is on the front lines and one guy is scared enough that he's shaking. Can't say I blame him. As always, RWBY functions best when it leans towards horror, with skeletons rising alongside the normal grimm and intense music playing to convey the stakes. Ironwood watches the onslaught and immediately calls for a civilian evacuation into the subway system. Get people below ground, behind a few, defendable entrances, rather than wandering about the city where land or sky grimm can pick them off easy-peasy. Makes sense. Yet I'm already seeing fans make snide comments about how Ironwood is "still running," which just demonstrates how many viewers take the emotions of the show at face value — who is Good and who is Bad — rather than considering the situation and deciding for themselves. What's far more egregious than viewers enjoying a story however they'd like on a Saturday before the holiday though (seriously, my salt aside, no one has to enjoy RWBY any one way) is that RT again tries to paint Ironwood as crazy when he's... just not? Beyond the choice to animate him with scary expressions

once he gives the order the soldier starts to say, "But sir — " and Ironwood yells for him to obey right now. The scene makes it look like Ironwood is doing something shady again. Here's this goon balking at the order, but we're not told why. What's bad about getting the people to (relative) safety? Why is this order treated like something to question at all? We're not told and, from what we do know, it's not something that would be questioned, so unless we learn something new post-hiatus, that line exists only to make Ironwood look bad. It's a (nonsensical) excuse to have another ally turning against him (slightly) and to give Ironwood the chance to look scary and violent again. Nevermind that his city is under attack and if a subordinate started questioning a completely sensible and time-sensitive order? I might yell too.

So we're off to a great start. The above looks particularly stupid given that we immediately see the flying grimm arriving in a populated area, terrifying all the civilians there. Everyone bolts for the subway and we cut away from a man trying desperately to reach his daughter, unsure if either of them survive. But people want Ironwood to not use what few resources he has? See, this is why generic messages like, "You have to stand your ground" don't work. Sometimes there are situations where you should run and that doesn't automatically equal being a coward. It means you're smart enough to take the actions necessary to save as many lives as possible.

Later on we'll have a similar issue with the message, "You have to trust people" when my darling Oscar briefly loses his mind.

Now though, we see that the "fugitives" Yang, Jaune, and Ren have been taken into custody. Of course they have. Look, when the preview dropped yesterday I saw a number of takes along the lines of, "How dare the Ace Ops do this. They need to put aside their differences until the attack is over!" but no, they really don't, because it's no longer their responsibility to extend trust towards this group. Especially when doing so, to their mind, has a high chance of making a horrific situation that much worse. What are they going to do if, in the middle of a Salem attack, the kids they decided to trust betray them, attack them, and leave them knocked out somewhere while the world burns?

...Oh wait, they already did that.

See, the group broke trust first. Numerous times. The Ace Ops listened to Yang admit that she and Blake had betrayed Ironwood days ago. Then they watched Ruby betray him again by alerting the rest of the team, turning them against him. They swore they wouldn't attack, so Team RWBY attacked them first. They learn that Qrow had a hand in murdering their leader. They encounter the group again and Weiss gleefully asks if they want a second defeat. They watch Ruby tell the entire world to dismiss Ironwood because he’s the one who can’t be trusted. Outside of JYR not immediately attacking them when they arrived to help (something I praised them for), this group has never put their trust in the Ace Ops. So why do they — and we — expect the Ace Ops to do so now? Imagine for just a moment that it was reversed. We find out that someone betrayed the group for no good reason, set themselves against them, continued to do so as everything fell apart, told the rest of the world they’re the enemy, and then a close associate is involved in Ruby's murder. How many people would expect the group to just shrug all that off? Would they put their differences aside and embrace these people because blind trust is (supposedly) the right thing to do? Of course not! Yang would punch their lights out and everyone would cheer, but that's because they're the established heroes. Outside of that role, no one else is allowed to mistrust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy and take precautions against getting betrayed again. To say nothing of how these characters don’t have our meta perspective. Meaning, they live in a world where this trio is not a part of a protagonist group destined to remain a part of the plot because that’s how story conventions work. They’re three random teens who were promoted to huntsmen early. They’re three soldiers out of many who can, at any time, be taken out of the fight. No one on the Ace Ops is working under the belief that they “have” to be a part of this fight. From their in-world perspective, you could toss them in jail for the rest of the battle and that’s that. Outside of their fugitive status they are entirely unimportant.

So yes, Jaune, Ren, and Yang are in handcuffs. They deserve to be. Don't worry though, they get out very soon.

Yang makes a snide comment about Winter "Still just following orders" and honestly? I've lost the love I used to have for her as a character. Yang is just an exercise in frustration whenever she speaks now. Thus far she's blamed Ruby for everything that's gone wrong (ignoring her own choices there), did a 180 to yell at Ren for acknowledging how bad things are, worried nonsensically about Blake being disappointed in her even though Ruby is the one she fought with, and is now back to the "You just follow orders" shtick. Yang will label anything she personally doesn't like as evil order following, but conveniently ignores how following Ruby's orders helped get them into this mess, and how the one time she went AWOL made things even worse. These characters don't actually have beliefs they stand behind, they just say whatever is currently necessary to make themselves look good, even if that contradicts previous statements or actions.

She also gets mad at Vine for saying that grimm don't take prisoners, ignoring that she only found this out a few hours ago. No one in the group is equipped to navigate the emotional minefield that is this war because they can't even take two seconds to put themselves in another’s shoes. Weiss doesn't bother to consider Whitley's situation. Jaune points at the snow and gets frustrated that Harriet doesn't magically know there's grimm soup flowing nearby. Yang snaps at Vine for stating what she also knew to be a basic fact about grimm up until Oscar's kidnapping. It's all framed as, "How can you be this stupid?" rather than, "Oh yeah, these people haven't had the experiences I have. If I was randomly told this I'd doubt it too. I should try to explain this in a way that will make sense to them and increase my chances of being believed."

This is the group who decided it was a good idea to tell the whole world about Salem and did it just as badly as I suspected they would. The story has shoved a delicate, information-based war into the hands of punch-happy teenagers and refuses to grapple with how that's a bad thing.

Anyway, Ironwood comes on the radio to say that the whale is pretty indestructible on the outside, but it might be vulnerable from the inside, so let's get a bomb in there. Seems like a good enough plan as any, especially given that the grimm is currently on the very outskirts of the city, away from the civilians if/when it's blown up. What kind of bomb might this be though?

Could it, perhaps, end up being a now severely damaged android who is based off of Pinocchio?

Time will tell. For now, the group is quite obviously upset that Ironwood is planning a big BOOM while Oscar (and Ozpin! Tellingly, no one mentions Ozpin...) is still inside. Here's the thing: Both sides are right here. YJR are right to be worried about their friend, while the Ace Ops — who have no emotional ties to Oscar and, as just established, are questioning whether or not a grimm really kidnapped him — are right that they cannot prioritize a single life over the entirety of Atlas. They just can't! And any hero worth their salt is going to recognize this. You cannot knowingly sacrifice thousands of people (if not more) for one (admittedly awesome) farm boy. It would be a different situation if the people of Atlas volunteered to remain in danger to give Oscar a chance at escape, but that obviously isn't the situation here. If someone told me, "Sorry, Clyde, we can't get you out because the place you're in is super dangerous and attempting to extract you would likely cause the rescue party to die. Also, the longer we don't blow this location up the longer lots of other people die" I'd be like, "Fair enough. Have a nice life!" I mean, obviously anyone would be terrified and devastated by the news, but if you're still thinking straight and have even an ounce of compassion for others, you don't trade all those lives for your own. Spock does not open the door to flood the whole Enterprise with radiation!

And notably, neither does Kirk. Oscar isn't given the chance to sacrifice himself — ignoring his choice to try and undermine Salem's forces rather than escaping — so Jaune, Ren, and Yang are deciding that for him. Which, again, makes sense for them emotionally, but it's still a selfish choice. They're prioritizing their family over everyone else's. If someone ever told me they’d risked a whole city for my sake I’d be touched, but also pissed as hell. Because what were you thinking?

Which is really my biggest issue with this divide. It would have been nice if the show had done more to make me believe these three are that ride and die for Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are and I'll take this characterization over the apathy we had in the past, but let's be real, it kind of came out of nowhere. The group as a whole pretty much ignored Oscar up until the movie invite and two of these characters — Yang and Jaune — have actively hurt him in the name of getting at Ozpin. Now suddenly they're willing to toss aside their huntsmen duties — protect the people — in order to save him? Nice sentiment, it's just that, as always, we have very little development for it, especially given the level of emotion shown. Particularly when it comes to Ren. The prospect of someone sacrificing Nora? I 100% believe that he draws a hard line and this kick-starts a change in his semblance. Ren is shown to be thinking about how he lost his teammate Pyrrha? Totally believe it! Someone is sacrificing the kid I'm not sure he's ever had a conversation with? That's less persuasive. At the very least, it would have been nice to have the trio grapple with whether they can or should prioritize Oscar over everyone else, rather than taking such a black and white stance of, "Of course taking the time to save this one guy while everyone else dies is worth it. You're evil for thinking otherwise."

We even get a shot of Winter's hand shaking and clenching like Yang's used to, just to hammer home who the correct party is.

While they begin this argument we cut to Salem who is literally conducting her grimm in their attack against Atlas.

Very nice. I love when a villain has

Emerald watches her, clearly freaked out, and then sneaks off to where Oscar is held. In the hallway she encounters one of the jellyfish grimm, so she casually makes it not see her until it has passed.

Her semblance works on grimm, but not “real girl” androids? Okay.

We all realize how crazy powerful Emerald is though, right? The stuff that she could do in a fight is staggering and I'll be forever salty that all she managed in the Penny battle was to create a couple different Cinders. Emerald, Marrow, Salem herself... RWBY has a real problem of having the antagonists conveniently not use the power at their disposal when the heroes need to win.

So Emerald starts listening in on Ozpin's torture. We learn that Hazel was recruited when he tried to kill Salem numerous times and had to watch her keep reforming. Which, if I remember correctly, is a technique she used back when she and Ozma were playing at Gods. It worked and now Hazel believes that they "share a vision. She's going to create a new world order," one without Kingdoms or Huntsmen Academies. No, says Ozpin, she's going to divide humanity past reform, summon the Gods, and hopefully die when they take out all of Remnant.

...My god, did we finally get Salem's motivations after seven years?

Seriously though: seven years. It's way too late, especially when we now have so many questions attached to this supposed goal. If Salem always wanted to divide the world irrevocably, why didn't she attack, oh, say, a thousand years ago? Why has she kept to the sidelines until now? None of this answers why she held off until our simple soul was conveniently ready to fight her. We also have the issue of Salem's knowledge, or lack thereof. So she obviously knows about the Relics and that they'll summon the Gods, but not how to work them? How did that come about? Even Ozpin's motivations are murky now. He repeats Salem's curse word-for-word — though notably, minus the "You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest" part — yet unless Salem told him this herself when they first reunited — and we know they both hid things from the other — Ozpin could have only gotten this line from the lore episode, something he witnessed along with us just a few weeks/months back. So is he only now realizing that this is what Salem wants the Relics for? Might he be wrong? Or did he somehow figure this out lifetimes ago and we're just not told how? If this is the case, why haven’t Salem’s motivations come up before now?

This sudden, "Oh yeah, she's always wanted to die" feels pretty tacked on. Like RT had Salem arrive last Volume because that's ~cool~ and then suddenly realized that they have to deal with her motivations now, so they hastily cobbled this together. But, as said at the start, this is entirely expected for RWBY nowadays. A problem to be sure, though one we've been putting up with for a couple of years now.

During all this, Hazel shouts that this is what Ozpin deserves and the first word out of his mouth is, "Yes."

But Oscar and the rest of Remnant don't deserve it, so make the right choice for them. How did RT think they were going to make this guy an antagonist? Ozpin has so much self-hatred and yet is still trying SO HARD that he makes Ruby Drinking Tea While The World Burns Rose look laughable.

Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that scene in just a second, but for now I just want us all to appreciate Ozpin as a character, even if the story won't.

....

.......

..............

...Okay, moment done lol. Sorry, Oz, there's a lot to cover this episode.

We cut to a semi-conscious Nora who asks Weiss, "Now what am I good for?" So that’s a double serving of oof. That's when Ruby arrives with fine china steaming with tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. Whatever it is these girls are drinking. What comes next is accompanied by a strange kind of vindication for me. I mean, the fandom dragged me so hard for taking issue with their snuggly smiles during Ruby's message, yet now we literally have the girls sitting back in a mansion as everything goes to shit around them. I know the knee jerk reaction to this will be, "They have to watch over Nora" and “They deserve a break” but really? All three of them need to watch her? And a break during the height of the action? Blake says she hopes everyone else is okay, but who is actually out looking for information about the rest of their team? May. Who's going to do something to get Nora help? Whitley. These characters are so good at telling us they're the heroes while rarely ever displaying those traits. They all (somehow) saw the attack on Atlas and have the ability to get out there and defend people — the job they wanted — yet Ruby looks out the window and asks, "What can we even do?" while taking a long sip of tea. The people of Mantle are (supposedly) freezing to death, yet one of the few with aura, Weiss, sits by a roaring fire going, "Do we just wait for someone to come? If they even come.” I'm sorry, you didn't consider this before you told the whole world about Salem? No one questioned whether asking for potentially non-existent help was worth the risk and what they'd do if it never came? Or even just what they’d do in the meantime? I’m not saying the girls can’t have basic necessities like drinks, or that it can’t be done in style when that’s conveniently available. I’m saying them enjoying the food, warmth, and relative safety of the Schnee household (built on racism) while casually talking about what, if anything, they should do for the people dying outside looks a bit Not Good. "Should we wait for the fire department?" Asks the character as their kitchen burns, sitting beside a number of water buckets that could help slow things down. "If they even come," they sigh, taking another sip of tea. This is ridiculous! The city is currently under attack by the series' Big Bad and half our heroes are just sitting around, watching the evil lightning, wondering if they should try to do anything about it.

"How did it all get like this?" Ruby asks her cup, ignoring the many steps she took to make things this bad. It continually boggles my mind that Ironwood is out here trying to keep people safe in the subway, coming up with a plan to blow up this whale, sending out an army to kill countless grimm... yet "What can we even do?" Ruby is supposed to be the hero here. You know, the one who has silver eyes and could one-shot huge numbers of Salem's army if she actually went out there and tried to help.

Ironwood is taking action... and so is May. As said, she's the one out looking for info on their teammates and when she returns says that they should all get back down to Mantle. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, Atlas at least has an army to help with things. Mantle only has them.

Yet suddenly, Weiss doesn't want to leave.

Where did this come from? They succeeded in their preferred plan of telling the world what's going on over Ren and Yang's plan of helping what people they could, and now they're looking for something to do. Why wouldn't they head back to help? (Especially now that the shields are down.) Weiss yells that there are people dying in Atlas too but, as established, Atlas has the army. And where was this concern when they refused to let Atlas leave? After a Volume and a half of pro-Mantle content, this seems to come out of nowhere. Worse, Weiss tries to guilt May by asking if she has family in Atlas, which leads to the reveal that she's trans. Her family rejected their daughter.

I want to be clear that I'm very happy RT made this canon. For what she is — a side character we know incredibly little about — I really like May and the fact that they were clear in her identity rather than keeping it to twitter deserves recognition. Yet I'm not going to pretend that the reveal didn't leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, simply because we have this incredibly privileged cis girl, who knows a great deal about shitty families, hearing how horrible May's was and still trying to tell her she needs to suck it up and help Atlas over Mantle. When May angrily asks whose side she's on, Blake makes a comment about hearing that before, comparing her to Ironwood. May is painted as the misguided one here, but can you imagine if someone told Weiss to go help Jacques over her found family, Team RWBY, regardless of what he's done to her? The fandom would explode, and rightly so. There's something to be said for realism here, showing us Weiss and Blake's inability to see where May is coming from... but it doesn't feel like a commentary on that. It feels like another Penny situation: May is put in her place for being inconsiderate, even though this time it's her choosing to help people who are ALSO in danger over the people who represent family she's broken with.

I wanted conflict this Volume and I absolutely got it, but damn if it isn’t badly thought out at times.

Because rather than grappling with these personal motivations, Ruby brushes them aside by yelling, "There are no sides! We want to help everyone."

Does that extend to Ironwood? Ruby's speeches started falling flat when she betrayed Ozpin, attacked Cordovin, betrayed Ironwood, attacked the Ace Ops... This girl does not want to "help everyone." She wants to help those who agree with her.

Yet her rock solid optimism generates the question, “So how exactly do we get out of it?” which, as expected, Ruby has no answer to. The story keeps showing us how bad a leader Ruby has become, yet no one is actively responding to that. They kinda disagree about lying to Ironwood, but still go along with it. Yang kinda criticizes her sister, but that's then lost to general worry as they split (on Ruby's end, anyway). They want to know how she'll lead them next and are seemingly fine when Ruby continually says, "I don't know." At this point I'd be like, "Well... you didn't like May's plan of going back to Mantle, but apparently can't come up with a plan yourself... so I'm going to go with her."

This is the same conflict we had last Volume: Ruby spoke optimistically about saving everyone, yet was unable to come up with a way to do that. Ironwood had a plan that, while horrific, might save a lot of lives. Yet Ruby is presented as the one to back. Now here she is, hours later, still unable to figure out a way to achieve her perfect outcome. Ruby wanting things to be a certain way is not going to make them so and I’m wondering when someone within the group is going to recognize and act on that.

As Ruby fails to answer this crucial question, we pull back to see Whitley listening in at the door.

Cutting back to Ozpin and Oscar, Hazel has listened to all this craziness about Gods, immortality, the destruction of Remnant... and literally goes, "Cool story, bro."

Okay, he says "Nice story" but the emotion is the same. Which I'm really happy about! I mentioned in a recent post that, as far as we know, Hazel hasn't been told anything about the Gods up until now. What Ozpin is telling him sounds like gibberish at worst, incredibly hard to believe craziness at best. Now chuck in Mercury's point that as a tortured prisoner he'll say anything to get free, as well as the fact that this is Ozpin talking to Hazel... and I'm really glad Hazel just ignored his speech (for now at least). It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Granted, this means that the plan literally amounted to, “Let’s info dump a bunch of nonsense-sounding lore on our enemy in the hope that he’ll believe us and betray Salem.” It’s something to try, certainly, and it admittedly is a much better plan than what Oscar is about to cook up.

So since Hazel won't listen to Ozpin, Oscar wants to try instead. Why did you two switch in the first place? It's really obvious that RT is having the characters do weird things in order to stretch out the plot.

Either way, our farm boy is in control again. What new strategy will he try?

"Her name is Jinn."

This is BEYOND stupid. No, none of this "You have to trust people" nonsense. This is not “people,” this is Hazel. There is a Grand Canyon's width of difference between learning to trust your allies and blindly trusting an active villain who just rejected your "Please defect :(" speech. Even if we remove Hazel from the equation, this is still a monumentally foolish move. I mean, has Oscar considered where he is? This isn't some random warehouse he's been taken to, this is a semi-sentient grimm, a creature creating other creatures out of its ceiling

and whose doors automatically open when people need them to (Mercury). This is a living being created by and connected to Salem herself. How does Oscar know Salem can't hear everything he says? Or that the whale can't relay information to her? That the grimm in the walls won't pop out and run to their master? Or even that a normal person isn't listening in at the door — like Emerald is. If that had been Tyrian instead, that's it. They're done. Game over.

Someone: "Wow. Salem got the Lamp and managed to ask where the Beacon Relic is. Since the school is still overrun by her army, she snatched it up quick, finished destroying Atlas, and is now on her way to Vacuo. She's nearly completed her plan in days! How did all this happen?

Oscar: I, um... told her what she wanted to know?

Someone: You what?

Oscar: But not Salem! I just told Hazel! ... and then the information somehow got back to her.

Someone: "Somehow?" You deliberately told one of Salem's henchmen this crucial piece of information, in a place where there was a good chance you would be overheard by conventional or magical means, and you're surprised that she "somehow" learned it and used that information to doom us all?

Oscar: ...Yes?

This is so staggeringly stupid it... well, it could only have been done by a kid. So at least that fits lol. Oscar, I love you, but Ozpin should have been screaming in horror the second those words left your mouth. Generations of precautions undone because a kid wants to believe the best of the guy currently pummeling him. Sweet, but stupid. I’m all for optimistic characters, they just can’t risk the whole world on that optimism. Oscar risking himself on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is one thing, Oscar risking all of Remnant on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is another thing entirely.

Even though you know this is precisely how the story will go. Oscar willingly hands over Jinn's name to Salem's forces, but happily none of the THREE who hear about it will tell her. The story's unwillingness to follow through on consequences doesn't change what a bad move this was. I mean, Oscar himself accused Ironwood of playing into Salem's hands by disagreeing with them about how to not die, yet a few hours later he will willingly give Hazel the one piece of information Salem needs to move closer to world-wide destruction? That's uh... well, that's something.

They should have just had the poor boy be tortured, spill the beans to make it stop, and start an arc of self-forgiveness. Oscar can be awesome without coming up with world-dooming plans.

So yeah, Oscar is hoping that Hazel will use the Lamp himself and find out the truth. He wants Hazel to trust him and the man he despises most in the world enough to go against the immortal woman he's terrified of, get the Lamp away from her somehow to use for himself, wasting a once in a generation question to confirm all this, so that Salem will lose a guy with muscle who, to be frank, is absolute insignificant in the grand scheme of her power. Fantastic.

As said, Emerald overhears all this and immediately runs to Mercury, who is less than convinced by her "Salem wants to destroy the world" talk. Just as he's expressing doubt, Tyrian appears to confirm that this is exactly what she wants to do — and he's loving it.

“Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate!”

It's a legit point. Are our villains so dense they never considered that Salem might do something to the world they didn't like? It's like the group not thinking about how Salem is still around if Ozpin has been fighting her for a thousand years. RWBY continually gives the impression that these characters don't think about their situation past what they're doing at any given moment.

Tyrian maintains his title as best villain though, simply because I understand what he's doing, why he's doing it, and he's so damn good at it.

Also, can we appreciate Mercury's face here?

Amazing. This is the kind of humor we should be getting in such a tragedy-laden Volume.

The two of them, Tyrian and Mercury, head off to Vacuo for the Secret Mission, despite Mercury's newfound hesitation. I quite liked these quiet moments between him and Emerald. It has a very "Do what you've gotta do" vibe while showcasing their care for one another, something we haven't seen in a while.

Back with the airship group. YJR are still horrified that Ironwood would blow up Oscar (even though he has no idea Oscar is there), begging the Ace Ops to give them "a chance to try to rescue him first.” Ren goes pretty hard on the "no one is replaceable" bit, which is frustrating not being what he’s saying is inaccurate (it’s not), but because that's not the issue here. The writing has Harriet start yelling about Marrow replacing her old teammate and Winter replacing Clover, but the question is not whether you'll just forget a teammate and move on with someone new, but whether you're willing to sacrifice them for the greater good. That's the stance: Should we sacrifice one life to save thousands? Will you, as a protector of the people, put those people before your own found family? Yet what RT has Harriet say is: Oscar is replaceable. Which obviously makes her come across as an ass. Like the random soldier questioning Ironwood — or making Elm about to punch a defenseless Ren in her anger — it exists solely to show how bad these character are... even as they say pretty persuasive things.

The writing also continues to be confused about whether the Ace Ops are friends or not. Yang certainly didn't think so... up until she asks (rhetorically) whether Marrow would sacrifice himself for Elm, Harriet, and Vine. Since their introduction, the story has loudly insisted that the Ace Ops aren't friends... up until it's revealed ("revealed") that Harriet is actually gutted about Clover. So which is it? Are we supposed to believe that these are cold soldiers who only work together out of duty, or that they're a team who clearly love one another? I'd say that show has shown us the latter, but it doesn't seem to understand what point it's trying to make. Does this look like a soldier who doesn’t care?

It’s especially weird when Ren again makes the claim that this is why they lost to Team RWBY. Because they're not a team.

...So is this why they did such a fantastic job fighting the geist, demonstrating such perfect teamwork that the group was open-mouthed impressed? Is this why they nearly took down a Maiden together? Is this why Ren, while furious at Yang and Jaune, was still able to work seamlessly with them to try and rescue Oscar? Do we think if Yang was suddenly beside Ruby again that the two would fail spectacularly in a fight because they had a minor disagreement?

This is now the third time RT has tried to excuse nerfing the Ace Ops with, "They disagree about things and are thus not friends and thus can't fight well together" — despite all evidence to the contrary — and it's getting really old.

At one point Harriet tells Ren, "I had you pegged as the most level-headed of the bunch, but I guess you’re just as naïve" which, ignoring her then random claim that people are replaceable, is correct. I also pegged Ren as the most level-headed of the bunch considering he was just yelling at Yang for how much damage they've caused, all the mistakes they've made, and that maybe — just maybe — they should have tried harder to work with Ironwood. Yet now here he is, in a position to start that process, and the Ren we got in the snow is simply gone. He's fully Team Yang and Jaune again, facing off against the evil Ace Ops.

I knew this was going to happen, but it's still disappointing. The story gave Ren a great speech to appease those of us frustrated with the direction the story has taken... and now we’re back to ignoring that. Ren was told off for daring to question how great the group is, apparently thought it over in the snow, and is now of the opinion that yes, they are that great. People are going to die because of us? Who cares about that anymore! We will absolutely, single-handedly rescue Oscar and there's no reason why this might be a questionable choice when an entire city is on the line. Again, emotionally understandable (if we buy into the group suddenly loving Oscar this much), but it rings hollow right after making Ren the one person who was willing to look at the big picture.

Good news though: Jaune got the braincell this week! He suggests that they go in to try and rescue Oscar/provide intel, but won't stop the Ace Ops from launching the bomb when necessary.

See, this is heroic. This is what the group should have done during the Mantle conflict: Volunteering to take the personal risk of facing off against Salem while letting Atlas try to escape. Basically, not forcing everyone else to risk their lives for their pipe dream, which is what Ren and Yang want by rejecting the bomb entirely. Jaune recognizes here that they can't prioritize Oscar over an entire city, but also that they may still be able to save him before the bomb is complete and ready to go. So they compromise, with JYR the only ones at risk.

Good job, Jaune!

Winter agrees to this plan with a firm, "I outrank you" to Harriet. People are going to love that.

Oh, but in his anger Ren's semblance suddenly changes. So we're back to the ridiculous.

Truthfully, I like this direction. Granted, I would have liked some buildup to it, especially since this is the second time this Volume that RWBY has dropped a major semblance change on us, but the idea itself is really cool. Ren can now see emotions! Awesome! And I don't mean that sarcastically. I actually think that’s a neat extension of his original semblance.

Too bad the story seems to think he's a mind reader.

Seriously, take a look back at the dialogue. What Ren sees are confetti-like petals floating around a person, their color seeming to determine their emotional state. Red means Harriet is mad, blue is sadness for Marrow, etc. But what Ren ends up saying is a great deal closer to mind reading. Harriet is angry about Clover and is gutted at his loss. Marrow is questioning his place here and wants to leave. These aren't base emotions, they're targeted thoughts and feelings about situations not immediately apparent from the verbal conversation. “In fact, you don’t want to be a part of it at all anymore." How does Ren know that? They just gave him telepathy instead of the cool power with firm limitations that the imagery suggests.

There are also some, uh... iffy implications in all this. For example, Ren allows Yang privacy by not reading her mind emotional state, but has no qualms about reading every one of the Ace Ops’. So privacy is only for the people you care about, huh?

We could also say something about RT perpetuating unfortunate racial stereotypes: the two women of color are pure anger, the marginalized man is pure sadness, the Asian coded character is pure calm... and the white woman set to turn against the others gets a mix of all emotions. AKA, human complexity.

To be clear, I don't think RT is doing this deliberately. Rather, they’re writers who have demonstrated time and time again that they don't have a good handle on depicting the sort of sensitive material that RWBY is infused with, and that extends to the mild, but still unfortunate, implications in scenes like this. Even if we ignore the iffy details — a benefit of the doubt that, at this point, many fans aren’t willing to grant — we're still left with the continuity errors. Visually, we're presented with a woman who is experiencing multiple emotions at once and is, therefore, torn. Yet Ren reads Winter definitively: "I know you [don't want this] either." It's yet another moment that makes me wonder how much communication there is between the writers and the animators, because too often the two seem to be at odds with each other.

As the group prepares to go into the belly of the beast (literally!) we return to Ruby who is, once again, failing to make me believe she's this super compassionate person.

“Wait! What about Qrow and Robyn? Maybe if we get them out of wherever they’re held—”

Please tell me I'm not the only one who took issue with this? Ruby doesn't express an ounce of worry for her uncle, not even when she learns he's been arrested, and the one time she brings him up it's in the context of what he can do for them in this fight? Ruby doesn't grapple with whether to rescue her uncle (personal desire), or get the message to the world (her version of the heroic action) and then realize that, now that her duty is done, she can finally turn to the more selfish act of helping her immediate family. Instead, Ruby seems perfectly happy to let Qrow stay in prison up until she's unsure what to do next and thinks that maybe he has the answer. Heaven forbid Ruby think about rescuing him because she loves him.

Sadly, this Ruby is long gone.

In recent years she's expressed no gratitude for him saving her life, no respect for him as her teacher, demonstrated incredibly little compassion for his own struggles, and outright told him that if he wasn't going to listen to her then he doesn't need to be part of the team. Then he's arrested and she doesn't care until she deems him useful again. Like the fandom wondering where the sisterly bond between Ruby and Yang went, I'm likewise wondering where the bond between Ruby and Qrow went.

May outright rejects this though, yelling that they still don't get it. “This is not a situation where everyone wins!"

She tells the trio they have to choose for once: Are you going to help Mantle, or Atlas?

...which means there's immediately a knock at the door, interrupting the moment where they have to decide.

See, this is just like Ren. The story keeps giving us moments where characters speak absolute truth, dangling the potential for the group to grow from these realizations... only to pull back before it goes anywhere. Ren is once again aligned with Yang and Jaune in their desire to save Oscar. May's demand is interrupted by the plot. If means nothing to give us these moments unless the story acts on them.

It's Klein at the door. Whitley called him to help with Nora because I guess he's a doctor now, as well as a butler? Fine. Let’s run with it. Weiss is super pleased to see him and hugs Whitley for the good deed.

Why so shocked that Whitley would look out for another, Weiss? Could it be because he's had so little reason to be kind when everyone, including you, has treated him horribly? If Klein always had these medical skills — if you’ve grown up with a doctor — why didn’t you talk to your brother and ask if he knew how to contact him? And of course, she apologizes to Klein for her father’s actions, but not to Whitley for her own. Whitley's surprise isn't cute to me.

Weiss stuck a weapon in his face, insulted him, sent him to his room like a toddler... and now is randomly hugging him because he did something she liked. The context of this scene doesn't paint Weiss in a good light. Like the rest of her friends, she only extends basic respect and kindness towards others when they're assisting her. Whitley was nothing to her until he suddenly proved himself useful. That's not cute sibling love, it's a love that's going to run out the moment Whitley puts a toe out of line, according to Weiss' unspoken list of what behavior keeps him in her good graces.

I believe that Klein cares for Whitley because he greets him kindly and gives him that shoulder pat on the way up. Whitley didn't need to first prove himself to Klein somehow and Klein didn't start this interaction by shoving a gun in Whitley's face, just in case he wouldn't let him through the door. They feel more like family than this hug does.

So yeah, Whitley and May have done more good this episode than our entire main cast. How about we just make this story about the side characters instead?

We then hear a massive boom and the group runs out to find a crater. Penny has landed in front of the manor, which is pretty convenient considering we saw her pass out as she fell.

She's somehow still in control despite the hack and apologizes to Ruby, then falls unconscious (again).

And that's where we end! Definitely a cliffhanger, though a rather underwhelming one considering we already knew Penny was in serious trouble. As said at the start, this episode felt rather underwhelming to me, especially as a halfway point before a hiatus, and compared to some of the stuff we've seen previously. It's not bad per-se — especially if we ignore the issues that have been around for an age now, which is most of what this recap deals with — it's just not terribly exciting either. Everything of importance — Salem's attack, Oscar's rescue, Penny's demise, subordinates turning, Nora's condition, etc. — had already been established in previous episodes and very little of it moved forward. Ren's semblance is the only thing the episode gave us that we couldn't have (generically) guessed for ourselves between last Saturday and now.

So yeah, underwhelmed is the mood of the day, with a hefty dose of salt for everything that continues to be a story-breaking problem in this show. I will say though that, as has become the trend for this Volume, all the establishing shots are gorgeous. RWBY is, at the very least, pretty to look at.

As a final note, in lieu of the Bingo board (since, again, not a whole happens plot-wise) I want to point out something mentioned by a friend: how absolutely bonkers our timeline is now. We began the second day last episode with the sun rising (recall that Jaune had tried to sleep that night at the outpost. So it’s definitely sunrise as opposed to sunset).

And we re-confirm that it’s sunrise at the start of this episode.

Yet throughout the episode many of our shots take place at night (note the stars behind the trio).

These moments with Ruby can't take place in the past because they're talking about the attack, an attack that only happened after Jaune's group met up with the Ace Ops and the geyser attacked — during early morning. I doubt I'm supposed to believe that it has been another full day of Salem starting an attack, a full day for the group to fly to the whale, a full day for Penny to fall, a full day which would put us at the end of the Volume’s timeline at only the halfway point... so I think RT is just going for the aesthetic of night shots without thinking about what that does to the continuity. It's a mess.

Not the highest praise to end on, but I’m working with what I’ve got lol. I feel as naïve as Oscar when I say that maybe Part II will be better.

I will, of course, see you all in six weeks. Until then, I'll do my best to catch up on asks. Another doomed endeavor, but one can try!

A very Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate and, as always, thanks so much for reading! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby recaps #rwby war #mymetas

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leiainhoth · 3 years

Text

chapter summary: Luke, Din and the child prepare to leave Tatooine, making one last stop before they go.

work summary: For so long, Din fought the reality of giving the child up, giving him to the jetii and moving on. He had prepared for it, packed a bag and left it all behind, so his son could have the life he deserved. All until he didn't have to. Or the one where Luke rescues Grogu on Tython, and Din rescues Luke in return.

full work

masterlist

Luke let their bond slip open, unsurprised to feel the rushing waves of anxiety, fear, even stemming from the recent turn of events. Luke knew that Din wasn't able to fully control which feelings and emotions he projected. And he wasn't surprised, not really; their bond was still so new, as was Din's awareness to his own force-sensitivity. But Luke could feel the emotions Din was projecting willingly, knowing deep within him that his companion was afraid. Afraid and injured and exhausted, and something deeper, something more desperate. Something that reminded Luke (with an inconvenient blush) of Din's thoughts from earlier, loud and intentional and arousing, thoughts that would hold until he was sure his lover could keep his intentions hidden from Leia and Ben.

He let the words of his promise sink into their bond, feeling Din's hesitation, his reluctance to believe him stain the waters of their connection. It was muddy and wrought with confusion, and the doubt… it was everywhere . Doubt that Luke had meant what he said, doubt that he was enough for Luke now that his family was here.

Cyar'ika, don't feel like you have to hide, not from me

Luke felt Din's shiver, felt Din's grip on Luke's shoulders increase, tighten. Pulling them closer and closer until they were one together.

Your family's here

Luke reached up, pressing his forehead to Din's with purpose, knowing deep within him that this was something precious, words and actions not taken lightly. So as Luke meant what he said, so did Din, and his fears of losing that which they had terrified him. He was afraid that Leia and Han and the others held the power to sway Luke's opinion, and moreover, afraid that he wouldn't meet their lofty expectations.

Luke couldn't pretend to have missed Han's pressing earlier. It was a careful cover for relief, but Din didn't know that. Perhaps all Din had seen was Luke in the arms of another man who wasn't him.

You're my family, too.

Luke felt Din's gasp before it was expelled, felt the tightness of Din's chest, the bounding of his heart and the quickening of his breath before it became outwardly apparent. Did you not know? Luke thought anxiously, letting his thoughts permeate their bond. Not for the first time, Luke wished that he could kiss him, see him again without his armour and pull his lover close if only to prove how deep his affections lie. Do you not know how much you mean to me?

Luke leant against him, feeling the dark clouds of anxiety fade and dissipate, feeling the deep feelings of inadequacy in the sight of others slip into contentment, a deep sensation of peace and safety. Knowing, perhaps, that it would have to hold for now, just the immediate present. They could speak of this and more when they were alone.

And Luke wished that they were alone, wished that he had the space, the privacy to assuage his lover of his intentions. Wished that they still had the X-wing, or the Razor Crest, a ship of their own, space of their own. But they hadn't either— the privacy nor the space— and once Luke was sure Din would be okay, he leant up and pressed his hands to either side of his helm, kissing the place where his forehead lie. Hoping beyond hope that his love was enough, enough until they could speak of this whirlwind of affection their bond had become.

"So kid," Han said, and Luke pulled away from Din as if he was pushed. "You planning on being rescued, or are you just going to stand there all day?"

continued

#dinluke #din djarin/luke skywalker #din djarin x luke skywalker #force sensitive din djarin #force bonds #my fic #the mandalorian #IJADIHIM-xXxVioletSkyxXx #han solo #luke skywalker #din djarin #din x luke

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burnsopale · 3 years

Text

Ashen, excerpt 2

Last time was mostly a big tease. This time, Boris returns to the abbey for the first time in years. It doesn’t go well.

Working title: Ashen Characters in this clip: Takao, Kai, Max, Boris and Kinomiya Tatsuya Setting: 7 years after season one, Russia, the abbey Summary: Volkov has escaped from prison, attacked PPB headquarters and taken back Black Dranzer. The Russian boys have been living with the PPB, and were used and hurt in the attack. Yuriy left with Volkov for unknown reasons. Daitenji Kogoro has gathered the troops and sent them to Russia to find out what Volkov is up to. Meanwhile, Kai’s grandfather is on his deathbed, and Kai is struggling to deal with it.

A stray wind mumbled and whined through the colonnades of Volkov Abbey. In that desolate courtyard no summer lived, only barren winter. The stones were black, the shadows cold, and doorways yawned like sucking mouths while broken windows gave a sharp, jagged edge to the scene.

For a while, Takao, his dad, Max, Kai and Boris stood silent in the middle of the open courtyard, a little overwhelmed by the sheer depressive atmosphere, wondering what on earth they were supposed to find here.

“Home sweet home!” Boris exclaimed suddenly, before laughing uproariously at their startled expressions.

A door opened up ahead. Takao vaguely recalled it leading to the mess hall where the BBA had eaten on their first visit here, years ago.

“That’s probably our liaison,” Dad said and headed towards the young woman who had just stepped outside and was waving.

“Hello, everyone!” she said as they came to meet her. “My name is Myrna Lebedev. I’m supposed to show you around this place?”

She didn’t look much older than the boys. With her ash-blonde hair and glasses, turtleneck sweater and long jeans, she seemed a big-sisterly type.

They shook hands with her in turn.

“You worked here after it was shut down?” Dad asked.

She nodded, gesturing for them to follow her down the pillared walkway towards the fat, looming tower where Takao and Zangief had battled.

Where was Zangief now? Takao wondered. Was he happy?

“I was on the team that mapped this place out, initially. Strangest job I ever did. The police had been here and cleared out all the kids and those cultists of course, but when we first went down to explore, someone almost died; there were traps everywhere!”

“Not traps,” Boris said. “Training gauntlets. You had to be ready all the time.”

She stopped. “Oh. I’m so sorry. Were you ...?” She looked at them in turn.

Max and Takao shook their heads and pointed at Kai and Boris. “Not us.”

Myrna looked at them all a little longer. “You are strange. I was told a group from Japan wanted to see the abbey, so I thought you’d be like the usual tourists.”

“This place gets tourists?” Boris asked, and then started laughing again. “Oh god. Can I work here too? I could be an attraction.”

Kai frowned at him. “We’re not here for pleasure,” he said firmly, voice a little hoarse from his long silence in the car. “The man who ran this place, Vladimir Volkov, has escaped from prison and is in possession of an old weapon of his. We’re looking for any clues as to what that weapon is capable of.”

“Oh!” Myrna’s dark eyes grew very big behind her glasses. “I see. That ... wasn’t really in my instructions ... I’m not supposed to let you wander much on your own or ... well, go that deep, but ...”

“If you need to, we can shut you in one of the cells while we look,” Boris suggested, possibly seriously. “If you need an excuse.”

Myrna certainly thought he was serious, and if her eyes grew any bigger now, they would pop out.

“We won’t do that,” Max said quickly. “But we would be very grateful if you’d let us explore a bit. We won’t tell anyone. It’s very important that we stop Volkov from using the weapon.”

She cocked her head to the side. “But why do you have to stop him?” she asked innocently. “Who are you?”

Kai’s impatience got the better of him then, and he strode past her towards the door.

Boris watched him go, his jesting finished. “We are the ones who let him have it in the first place.”

It grew immediately colder as they plunged into the darkness of the abbey, and more so when they began to descend underground. Takao wished he had worn a proper sweater, like Myrna, but Dad had told him to bring one and he hadn’t done it so he couldn’t complain or Dad would say “I told you so”.

Myrna told them a little bit about the history of the place as they walked, how Borg had purchased the abbey from a group of monks that might, in hindsight, actually have been forced to part with it and silenced afterwards, and how these hallways, once cellars for storing food and other things, had been dug out until they encompassed a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels, where Borg could carry out their clandestine plans.

“What does clandestine mean,” asked Boris, and once Max had explained it, he declared it his new favourite word. “Holy shit, we were so clandestine. Clandestine is now my middle name. You can call me Boris Clandestine Kuznetsov.”

“And now it’s lost all meaning,” Max said.

Kai was continually a little ahead of them, and eventually Takao’s dad called after him. “Kai, where are you leading us?”

“To Volkov’s office,” he replied.

“Really?” Boris said. “Then you’re going the wrong way.”

Kai came stalking back. “I am not going the wrong way; it’s down here and to the left. Don’t fucking mess with me, Kuznetsov.”

Boris grinned wickedly. “That’s Clandestine Kuznetsov to you.”

For a moment, Kai’s face was white with rage, but he only turned on his heel and walked on. Takao looked to Max and found him looking back in concern. Kai’s reactions were way out of proportion lately.

“Sorry about him,” Takao said to Myrna.

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She shook her head disarmingly. “It can’t be easy being back here.”

“I don’t know,” said Boris. “I’m getting the warm fussies myself.”

“Are you sure Kai-kun should be down here?” Dad asked Takao in an undertone.

“Leave him to us,” Takao whispered back. “You just look for whatever it is Daitenji-san wants you to find.”

When they caught up to Kai, he was waiting in front of the door which, as it turned out, did indeed lead to Volkov’s office. Myrna unlocked the door with her bunch of keys, and they stepped inside.

It was empty. Not just nobody’s-here empty, but stripped completely bare. It was just a room, panelled in green and beige, with pale squares on the walls where pictures had hung or cabinets stood and preserved the original colours.

Kai made a dissatisfied sound.

“Did you check for hidden rooms when you were emptying the place?” Dad asked Myrna.

“Yes and no. We had the building’s blueprints, and we did find some discrepancies and discover some rooms that weren’t noted, but we didn’t go knocking on every wall to find sliding panels or things like that.” She laughed a little.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Dad said, looking at Kai for confirmation. “Seems the most likely place he’d hide any particularly sensitive information, right?”

Kai inclined his head. “That was my thought.”

“You two do that,” Max said. “Boris can show me and Takao around meanwhile.”

Myrna came with them, and for a while they wandered from room to room. As Boris led them past dormitories, communal showers, training rooms, recreational facilities and secret corners, he seemed increasingly to veer between high and low spirits. He’d stand for a long time staring at the place where his bed had once stood, and then he’d crack jokes while they walked to the next place.

They came around a corner and were faced with a row of rusting cells, some with their doors ajar. Takao remembered Kai saying he had seen Zangief in a cell all those years ago. Maybe it had been one of these.

“I wonder what happened to Zangief?” he said out loud, idly moving the nearest door back and forth and making the hinges scream and creak.

“He was probably rescued by the BBA,” Max said, eternally optimistic.

“Zangief ...” Boris said slowly. “He was lucky. If he had beaten you, he would have advanced, gone to train with Baba Yaga.” As Takao moved on, Boris took over the door he had left, swinging it back and forth, back and forth, creak, creak, creak, creak. “He would have regretted that fast.” A bit of laughter, low in his throat. His face was lost in shadow. “Zangief was weak.” Creak, creak, creak, creak.

“Boris?” Max was watching him warily.

“Baba would have eaten him alive.” The ceiling light glinted off the edge of his sharp, sharp smile. “Then again, they say that’s what she does to the ones in the cells to.” Another laugh, like quacking. Creak, creak, creak. And then he stopped and stood very, very still. Trembling.

Suddenly, Max grabbed Myrna and Takao and shoved them into the nearest cell, slamming the door behind them. Takao shoved at it, but the lock had sprung; it was shut fast.

“Max!”

“Stay there!” he said, giving them a warning look.

Boris had twitched when the door banged shut, and now he turned slowly towards Max.

“Max, why did you do that?” Takao pressed himself up against the bars.

Myrna was going through her mess of keys and muttering stressfully to herself. “Is it this one or this one or this one? Not that one. Okay, this is scary. This one? No, no ...”

“Be quiet!” Max commanded. He drew a careful breath, inhaling and exhaling. “Boris? Boris, please step into the light for me.”

Boris didn’t move, but Takao could hear him breathing now, a harsh whistling sound like he was in pain.

“Mama told me that you usually get a bit manic before an episode,” Max said gently. “That’s how I knew.”

“Max,” Takao hissed. “Get out of here!”

But Max shook his head. “No. Boris, you said you would be okay, and I believed you. I still believe in you.”

Boris’ hand fell from the cell door to hang limply at his side. It twitched.

“What is happening?” Myrna whispered.

Max took a step closer to the other boy. “When I talk to Mama on the phone, all she talks about is you. How far you’ve come, how strong you are, how proud she is of you. She laughs about your terrible jokes. She says you are so clever.”

Boris sucked in a breath. He was trembling all over, hands closing slowly into fists like he was holding himself back desperately.

Max took another step forward. “Boris-”

Boris’ lunged, grabbing Max by the front of his sweater and slamming him up against the bars. The light caught his face and revealed his eyes huge and staring, and a weird, cruel twist to his mouth. Max clenched his teeth and held still as Boris’ knuckles dug into his throat.

“Max!” Takao cried, reaching through the bars, but unable to touch them. “Boris, don’t you dare! Don’t give Kai a chance to gloat about being right! Come on, fight it!” He turned back to Myrna, who seemed to be frozen in shock. “Find the key!”

She startled and began to fumble again.

“It’s okay, Takao!” Max said, straining. “Boris, it’s just you and me. I have Draciel, but I won’t use it. It’s your choice; you can hurt me, or you can come back to us. I already know what you’ll do, because you said you’d be alright, and because I know you want to make Mama proud of you.”

“Make ... Baba ...” Boris muttered, seeming confused for a moment.

“No,” Max said. “Mama Judy. My Mama ... and yours.”

Another hard shiver went through Boris, and then he sank to his knees in front of Max, letting go of him. His face relaxed until he was pale, but calm.

“The stupid door,” he muttered. “The stupid sound. Every night, all night, our metronome from hell.” He stumbled to his feet and moved a few paces away, sniffing and wiping at his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “Kai was right about me.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Takao said quickly as Myrna finally moved past him to put the right key in the lock. “You came back.”

“Let’s rejoin the others,” Myrna said a little hysterically as the door swung open. She hurried down the corridor without waiting for them.

“Would you like that hug now?” Max asked Boris softly.

He didn’t say anything, but lifted his arm, and Max slipped under it and wrapped his own around him.

“She’s your Mama,” Boris said, almost whispering. “But I like her too.”

“I don’t mind sharing,” Max replied, smiling as he let go again. “I already share her with Emily, and honestly she could use the extra practice.”

Takao grabbed them and pulled them into a double hug. “Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry, Takao,” Max laughed.

#Beyblade #Judin writes #Ashen #Max is a good boy #I had an idea that Boris got overwhelmed by all the affection shown to him by his initial foster mothers #and that Judy's more reserved (read: cold) approach actually worked much better for him #So she kinda took him on #So now Max has even more competition

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ohgodmyeyes · 3 years

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hi! I was curious as to what are both your fav and least fav versions of anakin? (like aotc, rots, old force ghost, clone wars, etc)

This is such an exciting question, but I'll try to be succinct instead of long-winded and boring. (My stories are already there for that.) Here's a quick rundown of a few different Anakins, from my most treasured to the one (and only one) I tend to side-eye:

ROTJ Anakin / Force Ghost Anakin - I'm grouping these guys together, because I love them all for the same reason, and that reason is that they DID it. ROTJ Anakin is the Anakin who finds himself again; who takes responsibility for his family, and a huge step toward atoning for the things he's done. He spends ROTJ slowly changing; we see it in how he regards the Emperor, and the way he regards Luke. The closest thing he’s ever going to do to getting his wife back, realistically, is saving his son and finally openly defying Palpatine. It doesn’t matter that anyone else knows Vader has been rescued from himself, or that he was really a good man all along. Luke knows, and that’s enough; it’s part of why their relationship is so special to me. Luke is the only living person who says a proper goodbye to Anakin: He knew all along that it was worth it to try to know him. That’s beautiful.

His journey isn't finished at this stage, exactly, but his he's in a better place than he's ever been, and I love him for it. He's hope personified, even for the very worst of us.

As an aside— physicality isn't a barrier to any of this; I love him all busted up and dying, I love him as a fully-healed Sebastian Shaw, and as a pretty, young Hayden Christensen.

Padawan Anakin / AOTC Anakin / Jedi Quest Anakin - In second place is a much younger iteration of him— a sad, lonely kid who's easily excitable, and dangerous, somehow, without being at all frightening. He's a mixed-up kid who's had a less-than-ideal upbringing, bound to an ancient prophecy no one knows enough about. He cries out constantly to be held and loved; he's got his heart in his hand, and he's always ready to give it away to the next person who shows him kindness— or who even just needs him.

He's still so compassionate and well-intentioned at this point in his life, even when it doesn't benefit him. He can be petty and sensitive, although anyone would be, if they had to bear the kind of weight Anakin carries on his own shoulders at that age. His emotions sometimes run amok, but his heart is still so good... and more importantly than that, he knows it. He still has hope, for himself and for others, despite the overwhelming sense of 'otherness' he tends to feel. That's what sets him apart from Vader for me, even though I think AOTC Ani resembles the ultimate, 'suited' Darth Vader a lot more than the Anakin we meet at the beginning of ROTS.

Plus— although this is fairly irrelevant— AOTC Anakin happens to be Anakin at peak hotness. No damn wig is going to change that, nor is the sad fact of my own rapidly-advancing age. :)

Little Kid Anakin / TPM Anakin - The sweet baby version of Anakin comes in next for me. The altruism he struggles to hang onto until he finally falls is front-and-centre at this stage. He's tough by necessity (obviously, he's a fucking slave), but he isn't jaded yet— largely owing to his mother. Even when he loses Qui-Gon and gets to the Temple and struggles to integrate, his heart just stays enormous. God knows what he's already been through, but he never stops trying, and there's nothing fake about his confidence at this stage in his life. I love that; I think we could all stand to be a bit more like nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker.

There's an Anakin & Reader story on ao3 by @itohan called 'Kuebiko', and it's a beautiful depiction of what it might be like to be a caregiver for a very young Anakin. It's headed for some pretty sad places, to be sure, but there's a lot of sweetness and lovely (sometimes chilling) little insights into his character that I don't otherwise get to see very often. Anyone else with a soft spot for child Ani should go and read it.

'Classic' Vader, between the end of ROTS and the end of ANH - This is an enormous chunk of time, but again, I think it's more helpful than not if I just group these iterations of him together, at least for the purpose of compiling this list. It's horrific and tragic and a devastating waste of potential, but Anakin really does spend a huge amount of time mired in a thick, dark cloud of grief and anger. He convinces himself of a lot of stupid shit during this period in his life: 'Anakin is dead, I'm fulfilling my destiny, I can get Padmé back, she'd love all this ORDER I'm bringing, blah blah blah'. Every ounce of his extraordinary control is purely surface-level; he's a raging wildfire inside for a longer period of time than I think nearly anyone else could realistically sustain (as in, Kylo Ren was always going to die at 30, and I'm surprised I didn't, too lol).

He's empowered by his shitstain of a 'Master' to hurt and kill people against everything that once made him who he was, and no one can know he suffers for it (or for the loss of his wife, or the family he wishes he could have raised with her). No one can know anything about him; he's a man playing a part who can't ever take off his costume. Everything hurts him, and the only places he can turn to for comfort are the battlefield, and the inside of his own head. He has profound disabilities of every imaginable nature, and receives no more than the most cursory physical maintenance to remedy them. He escapes into his missions, but every one of those is a slight against his own better nature. His personal pursuits don't benefit him either; for basically twenty years of his life, he's living in an emotional storm— it ebbs and flows, but it never lets up, and his entire existence is set up specifically to reward the most despicable of his behaviour.

He doesn't make very many genuine emotional breakthroughs, because he's not allowed— just tricked and lied to and manipulated and taken advantage of, even when he's the one ostensibly in 'control'. His life only starts again when Luke comes into it; again, one more reason their connection is so special to me.

I'm going to go ahead and recommend another Anakin/Reader story by a different author; it's called 'mrfiveohone' by DarthDoritos, and it's on ao3. It's a brilliant exploration of what a strange, budding relationship with a youngish Vader might look like, and just an overall beautiful portrait of escalating intimacy on top of that. Another one I would highly recommend (completion status notwithstanding) is called 'Afterimage', and it is by garnettrees, also on ao3. It's a very dark Vaderdala story that gets right inside Anakin's head in the most wonderful ways. He never stops loving Padmé, and in that, he never truly stops being who he is.

This is the Vader I (admittedly somewhat dramatically) see the most of myself in. It puts us at-odds sometimes, but my urge to get up underneath that mask and make him feel worthy of his own name is insurmountable. I love him because if I didn't, I'd be in trouble.

Which brings us to TCW Anakin… who is, perhaps, the only version of Anakin I can honestly say I don't care for. Which is fine, because the show itself really isn't my kind of thing. Suffice to say, that particular depiction of him departs so dramatically from any of the other ones I've known (or listed here) that I just can't get into it, no matter how hard I try.

I'm going to end this with a shout-out to Lego Anakin! I've never seen a shitty version of Lego Anakin, whether in a cartoon or on my desk at home. :)

Thank you for asking, anon. That was fun to write out!

#anakin skywalker #thanks anon #fanfiction #headcanon #boring to everyone but me #i am trying to answer all of my asks #the nice ones anyway #late #too long

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capricornus-rex · 4 years

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Could I uhm by any chance have a cal x reader where they're kids and meeting for the first time and the reader's a human who's been adopted by wookies? If not that's fine. Love your writing btw😊

“A Time Where Innocence Prevailed” | Cal Kestis x Reader

Summary: The young Padawan Cal Kestis joins his master, Jaro Tapal, to a campaign in Kashyyyk in order to give aid to the warring Wookiees against the hostile Trandoshans. During their trip, little Cal meets an unlikely friend that he’ll surely keep it in his memory for time immemorial.

A/N: I so love this prompt because this is the very first time I’ll be writing about smol Cal!! I can imagine all of the sweet, pure fluffiness that transpires in his adventures with Master Tapal and oh good god my Cal Kestis-loving heart will melt into the goopy mess that it is!!! A sweet little angel that must be protected at all costs! Thank you Anon for sending this beautiful prompt to me, I’m really glad you did give it to me because I wouldn’t have made such an adorable story! On a serious note, some of the italicized dialog lines will be the direct translation from Wookiee to the protocol droid’s Galactic Basic—I personally thought it’s redundant and looks like sentence filler to switch between Wookiees speaking and protocol droid when they’re basically saying the same thing to the Basic-speaking characters.

Also in AO3

Tags: Young! Cal Kestis, Padawan! Cal Kestis, Non-Jedi! Reader, Non-Force Sensitive! Reader, Child! Cal Kestis, Child! Reader, Young! Reader, Orphaned but then Adopted! Reader, Adoptive Family, Childhood Friendship, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories

Masterlist

“Good morning, General Tapal,” a clone waiting outside the ship greeted the Jedi.

“Good morning, Captain Prell. Are the preparations done for travel?”

“Yes, sir. We’re ready when you are!”

“Good,”

There was a long pause after their exchange. Captain Prell slightly bobbed his head to the side. Normally, he would find a little ginger boy tagging along behind the tall Lasat Jedi.

“Is something wrong, Captain?”

“Err… I was wondering where you little Padawan might be, sir.”

Jaro Tapal looked to his side and then angled to his behind only to find nothing there. He thought he had his Padawan walking close to him ever since they exited the Jedi Temple and walked to the open landing pad. He looked to the path behind him and saw his apprentice being held back by some of his fellow younglings chatting with him.

When the boy saw over his friends’ shoulders that his master was waiting for him, he quickly bade goodbye and came sprinting towards Master Tapal.

“Come along now, Cal, we mustn’t delay,” beckoned Jaro in his prim, baritone voice.

“Coming, Master! Sorry about that,”

“Watch your step now, child,”

“Watch your head, Master!” Cal quipped as he strode on the entry ramp of their shuttle. He was received with a throaty chuckle as Jaro himself enters the vessel.

They make for the cockpit and settle themselves on their seats. The ten-year-old was so small on the chair that he had about five inches of space on both of his sides! Even so, he made himself comfortable and leisurely swung his legs as they prepared for take-off.

“You ever been to Kashyyyk, kiddo?”

“No, what’s it like there, Captain?”

“Well, there’s sure a lot of trees,”

Upon the shuttle’s arrival through Kashyyyk’s stratosphere, Cal’s amazed, widened eyes could not fit the vast, green expanse of the planet; so much so that the color of the landscape has already taken over his natural jade-green irises. His mouth formed into a full O. The sight from above was breathtaking, and he wanted in on every inch they pass over the dense jungles and grand treetops.

The boy leaned forward, struggling to match his height with the windshield of the shuttle in order to get a better view—as if his perspective right now wasn’t satisfactory. He couldn’t control his excitement and hopped on his toes as they zoomed through.

Cal had unintentionally ignored Jaro Tapal’s gentle warnings to come back to his seat in time for the landing.

“Cal, come on now, sit down before the captain lands the ship,”

“The general’s right, kiddo. We don’t want you bumping your head when we land!”

Cal resorted to following both of them. He jumped back into his seat and watched the landing cycle commence. The clone captain flew into one spot in the forest that provided enough coverage from possible threats—especially the Trandoshans—then settled the ship in one section of a Wookiee settlement on the ground—for they are known to dwell in the higher levels of the trees.

A group of Wookiees flocked the landing area with great curiosity about their new visitors, tilting their heads and lowing in conversation with one another. Jaro Tapal and Cal—along with a protocol droid, named KP-475 or Kay-Pee, for translation—exited the ship; when they stepped out of their vessel, they’re greeted by the leader of the settlement, apparently subordinate to Chieftain Tarfful. When the Wookiee spoke in his native language and protocol droid obliged after every sentence.

“Welcome, friends, to our peaceful home. My name is Khevariik, leader of this village.”

“Khevariik welcomes us in their peaceful village,” the protocol droid relayed.

Khevariik offered shelter for Master Tapal, Cal, Captain Prell, and even Kay-Pee. The four obliged and followed the Wookiee—and his warriors flanked them as they walked on. They stayed in a bigger hut situated in one tier of a high tree trunk. Cal’s wonderment hasn’t run out as he discovers that the cottage were connected with sturdy wooden bridges made with the exact same kind of lumber where the Wookiee homes are built with; but it doesn’t stop there—the bridges appeared like an intricate network, connecting from one tree to another, some of them even connected to the higher levels that if one is to look down, it ought to be a fifty-foot drop!

“Watch your step now,” Jaro warned a jittery Cal.

The cottage was relatively larger than the rest of the cottages they spotted outside, Master Tapal assumed that it could have been some sort of council hall and he was correct. Khevariik situated himself at the northerly side of the room, across him sat Master Tapal and Cal—they were offered libations by Khevariik’s mate and they sincerely accepted.

As the Wookiee conversed with the Jedi Master and filled him in on their situation against the Trandoshans, Cal’s attention is elsewhere. He studied the interior of the cottage, how surprisingly well-lit it was—until he counted all the crude sconces on the parapets around and made sense of the brightness in the room. In the corner of his eye, he noticed a couple of the Wookiees seated along the wall shuffling and lowing in a reactive manner.

The boy gasps at the sight of you: a child, more or less in the same age as him. Similar to the Wookiees, you had ornaments adorning your hair—woven, patterned ribbons that snaked along the braid that crowned your head and beads fastened into locks of your hair.

Master Tapal caught wind of his Padawan’s reaction and unintentionally cut his conversation with Khevariik. The Wookiee leader mewled to acknowledge your presence.

“I saw the ship that wasn’t ours, so I figured to take a look,” you reason out.

“You understand them?”

You nodded.

“A human child?”

The Wookiee lowed a series of growl and yelps, to which KP-475 instantaneously translates.

“Khevariik says the child is part of the clan. The real parents have… erm…”

The droid trailed off, it needn’t to continue as it might offend you. You immediately turned the awkward, somber mood around, but only projected your bright, cheeriness to Cal.

“Hey, wanna come play with me?” you beamed to him, not waiting for his answer a second after you asked him. You looked to Khevariik and then to the tall, purple Lasat who is his apparent custodian. You repeated the same permission to both of the adults.

Cal then turned to Master Tapal, in subtext, he was pleading he’d be allowed to go with you. Before Jaro could even say anything, Khevariik allowed you but there was an underlying tone in his growl.

“Yes, I promise. I won’t stray too far!”

“Well, run along now. Just don’t wander too far off then,” Jaro finally caved in and patted Cal’s head, nearly messing up the top of his hair.

“Yeah!”

Cal scrambled up to his feet and immediately joined you on your way to the door—or lack thereof.

“I’m Cal!”

“Name’s [Y/N]!”

You took the lead, of course, and gave your newfound friend a tour of your home. Along the way, Cal bombarded you with a lot of curious questions—you didn’t mind though, because likewise, you had the same curiosities about him as much as he does with you. The path that you’re taking led to one of your personal playgrounds—spots that only you knew of, your precious secret hideaways.

“So, uh, [Y/N],” Cal grunted as he scaled up a short wall. “How did you end up living here?”

“Oh, well, my parents and I went to live here. But when I was, like, seven… some Trandoshan hunters got caught in a fight with my parents. Good thing the Wookiees are a friendly kind and they rescued me. I owed my life to Khevariik and Itaahka, his mate.”

“Must be hard, missing your parents like that,”

“Yeah, it sure is, but… I’m not lonely. I have another family—the Wookiees!”

For some reason, Cal was relieved that you weren’t in your lonesome—given that you’re being taken care of by the Wookiees—but he wondered if you were lonely because you’re not their kind. You balanced on a thick enough branch that crept along the tree trunk as Cal continued his questions in getting to know you better.

“It felt weird at first, though. Sometimes I see people like me talk to Khevariik, but it’s my first time seeing someone really like me—and that’s you!”

You hopped down from the tree trunk and landed right in front of him. Now, it was your turn to ask the questions.

“Do all Jedi children have that braid tail on their hair?”

“O-Oh, yeah but… I’m not called a Jedi—not yet, at least,”

“Well, what do they call you?”

“Kids like me—who are learning to be Jedi when they grow up—are called Padawans,”

“And that tall, purple person is the one teaching you how to be one?”

“That’s right! So… Um, where’ve you taken us, [Y/N]?”

Your eyes lit up. Cal didn’t notice the wall of vines and limp branches that hung downward until you swept them to one side—revealing a large hole in the wall; it appeared more to be the mouth of a cave, but when he peeked over your shoulder, he didn’t see a cave, rather he saw a slope.

“What’s through there?”

“Oh,” you started in a singsong manner. “You’ll see!”

You turned tail and let yourself drop into the slope. Your whoop of enjoyment echoed and then faded out, leaving Cal in the starting side while you’ve already gotten to the other end.

“Come on, Cal!” your faceless voice called through the mudslide.

Cal angled his entire body slight sideways, his knees buckled, and his ankles locked on. Clumps of damp soil flew and sputtered upon his wake as he slid down. The thrill eventually brought out the laughter in him, all the way until he plopped and landed on his bottom, over a soft carpet of grass.

It would appear that you’ve brought him into a thicket. You called the mudslide your portal to your secret hideout.

“Whooaaa…!” Cal gasped as his pupils widened, absorbing all the sights, lights, and colors that pooled the entire thicket. “This place… is amazing!”

“You think? I found it months ago and no one else knows about it—well, except for you!”

He slowly brought himself up to his feet, eyes still fixated at the entirety of the little paradise, and then dusted off the shreds of grass and dust that clumped on the hem of his tunic.

“Let’s keep this our secret, yeah?” you chirped.

“Of course! My lips are zipped!”

You hold out your hand in front of him, only your pinky finger is sticking out. Cal looked at your hand quizzically and then to you for some clarification.

“Pinky promise?” you initiated.

In response, Cal hooked his own pinky finger with yours, sealing the promise.

“Pinky promise!”

With your pinky fingers intertwined, the two of you shook on it as well—bobbing your tangled hands up and down until one of you withdrew. Your curiosity seemingly has no end, and you continued to bombard Cal with questions about the Jedi and how their way of life works differently from the one you’ve come to know.

He demonstrated his skill in using the Force—this was the very first time you saw someone move an object without touching them! Your eyes popped with wonderment, watching Cal manipulate a bunch of rocks simply by waving his hands slowly—to you, it felt like his arms were dancing—and he willed them to stack on top of each other until he made a small mound of them.

“Wow…” you sighed, staring at the neatly-arranged, miniature mountain of rocks that your new friend has made without ever touching a single one of them with his own hands!

The boy was rather proud of himself that he’s able to impress you, but you didn’t allow him to one-up you in your own home turf.

“My turn to show you something cool! You know how fireflies only light up at night?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, what I’m about to show you says otherwise!”

He followed you further into the thicket, the sunlight was gradually getting dimmer; it began to worry him when he looked back and noticed that you’re getting a bit farther from where you came from. You reassured him that you know this place better than the back of your hand. There was another enclave in front of you, sunlight still pooled through the canopy of the trees, shafts of light spotlighted in random parts of the forest, however a vast majority of the space remained untouched by the sun—not too dim, not too light either, it was the right amount of shade.

“What’s so special about a boulder?”

“Hah! It’s just not any boulder,” you boasted. With all your might, you hauled away the boulder and out comes an entire colony of Light Beetles—the more docile subspecies of Flame Beetles—and they filled the entire forest clearing, despite the broad daylight! They scattered around the air and lit up the clearing like live stars. The two of you were practically standing in their own field.

Truth be told, you seldom did this—because of the varying days and weather—but apparently today was a perfect day to show it to Cal, almost as if the galaxy permitted it, simply to humor your free and innocent spirits. The little, redhead boy spun around slowly, taking all in the sight of the Light Beetles fluttering and floating about in the dim space like a planetarium.

“This is so awesome! Look at that!” your new friend squeaked, and one Light Beetle hovered close to Cal’s nose—its natural bioluminescent light pooled on the boy’s cheeks and face, warranting a delighted giggle out of him.

On the other hand, you carefully caught the little buggers in your hand, let them fly free as soon as you unclasped your hands and watch them flicker their bulbous buttocks as soon as they realize they’re out of their temporary net. The two of you stayed there for a while, Cal almost forgot that they have a campaign to deal with—it’s just that this is the most genuine fun he’s had for as long as he can remember.

Both of you did all sorts of games to pass the time. As a matter of fact, you’ve played more games than you could care to admit that you and Cal lost track of time. The two of you regained your bearings and realized that you’ve taken long enough in your playtime when you heard a calling roar, followed by the sound of Jaro Tapal’s voice.

“[Y/N]! Cal! Come here!”

“Oop, there goes our fun!” you squealed.

Both youngsters hauled themselves back up on their feet, and walked up to a wall of vines. The two of you were fortunately able to scale the wall and have something to grab on, at least, until you’ve reached the top from where the Wookiee scout and Jaro Tapal have called you.

“Come on, it’s time for us to go,”

“Already?!” Cal objected.

Taken aback and surprised by his amplified fondness of the place, Jaro Tapal slightly angled his head to his Padawan and raised an eyebrow for good measure.

“We still have to report back to Coruscant to tell the Council of the situation here in the Wookiees’ home,”

Seeing that he can’t argue with that, Cal was left to go along with his master’s plan. Eventually, Khevariik personally saw Master Tapal, Cal, their clone captain, and the protocol droid to the landing pad; this time, you tagged along from the high level cottage to the surface level where their ship was situated in.

There was bitter taste in Cal’s mouth. He didn’t want to leave yet, the high of the fun was still coursing through his veins—as well as yours—Cal took a moment and walked back to you, standing in front of the cluster of Wookiees who lent their presence—besides Khevariik and Ihtaaka—to bid goodbye to their visitors.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll see each other again—and we’ll have the same tons of fun like we did earlier!” you chirped.

You spot him make a sniffle and heard him out, “Yeah, I guess. I’ll look forward to that, [Y/N]!”

“Great! Oh, before you leave…”

Cal noticed you unfastening one of the colored cords that added color to your hair. You leaned closer and tied it at the end of his Padawan braid.

“Here, something to remember me by once you leave,”

“Thanks, [Y/N]. I wish I could give you something in return,”

You shake your head and pursed your lips, “No need. I’ve had tons of fun with you—that’s more than enough. It sure was nice to have some company in my secret hideout for once and I’m glad it was you!”

-----

BRACCA, 8 YEARS LATER

Cal—now a young man—stood atop the wing of a salvaged Venator, overlooking the scrapyard that his eye could see. The drizzle was gradually ending and the sun persisted to peek through the dense mixture of post-rain haze and the heavy, cumulonimbus clouds that loomed along the skyline of the landscape.

It was midday, he basked in the rising sun and its warmth as he dries himself from the rainwater that collected on his face. When the rays have beamed strongly through the clouds, Cal shielded his eyes from the light with his hand; the corner of his eye watched the bracelet on his right hand dangle in the wind.

He lowered his hand and gazed upon the band that was once so full of vibrant, dyed colors has now faded or grayed out from the grease and dust that Cal has been exposed to in the scrapyard.

“Here, something to remember me by…” the voice of your younger self echoed in his mind.

His free hand involuntarily went to his wrist, his thumb ran across the cord—the luster of the fibers have aged, the loose ends of the string have puffed out into messy tufts, and it ran coarse under the skin of his finger.

Behind his eyes, he reminisces and reimagines the rich, green vastness of Kashyyyk from a bird’s-eye view, the melodies of your laughs mingling together so well like music, the cold wind reminded him of the air that flew through his hair when he slid down that mudslide leading to the thicket that seemed so surreal even for Kashyyyk’s standards, and finally, the distant sparks of the mechanics’ and engineers’ tools reminded him of the twinkling Light Beetles that filled the clearing where the two of you stood to gaze at the wonder of those insects.

The whole memory warranted a private smile, as he remembers everything vividly, it’s as if it happened yesterday and the nightmare that is the Jedi Purge never happened at all.

I wonder when can I see you again, [Y/N]? Cal thought to himself, with the faintest pitter-patter of the remaining rain.

“Hey, Cal, you comin’?!” a male voice called to him from the safer surfaces of their work area.

“Yeah, Prauf, I’m comin’! Just gimme a sec,”

“Alright, well, I’ll meet ya down,”

“Sure!”

When Cal confirmed that Praud has indeed gone out of sight, he returned his eyes to the horizon, the wind combing through his fiery red hair.

“I hope you’re doing okay, wherever you are, [Y/N],” he muttered under his breath and a smile naturally came to him, as if reassuring himself that you’re in a good place, though he misses you so much and wishes that he can return back to the same bliss of his childhood with you.

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sydneysageivashkov · 3 years

Text

theonsa star wars au, where sansa is a jedi on the run and theon is the smuggler who gets her off coruscant after order 66

sansa is the only jedi in her family - not that she knows anything about her family. she was taken when she was a toddler, and given the last name stone by the order. (all the stark kids are a little force-sensitive, though sansa and bran are the only ones strong enough to be taken by the jedi. after losing sansa, ned and cat go to all kinds of lengths to keep bran once they realise he’s also strong enough in the force. they won’t lose another child.)

sansa does everything she can to be a Good JediTM, keeping her distance from others. sometimes she slips up, but most of all she wants to be a good jedi. she’s okay with a lightsaber but ultimately she’s best as a peacekeeper and diplomat.

when order 66 is triggered, she’s rescued by senator margaery tyrell. what neither of them realise is that there’s a reason sansa was able to escape: chancellor baelish, now emperor, wants her as an apprentice.

margaery has known sansa for a while and has specifically requested sansa whenever she needed jedi protection for a few years now. she worked out sansa’s birth family not long after meeting her: the starks are rulers of [insert planet name here], and as a galactic senator, it’s margaery’s job to know the rulers of all the various planets she deals with. when she rescues sansa, she tells sansa to head to the starks: if there’s any planet that will shelter her from the newly-formed empire, it’s the one ruled by her birth parents.

sansa is more committed than ever to being a Good JediTM, because all the others have just been killed and she wants to honour their legacy. but ultimately, she doesn’t have a lot of options: if she wants a chance to live, then she needs to go to the starks.

together, margaery and sansa find theon, who’s willing to get her off coruscant - for a price, of course. he does genuinely want to help - he wouldn’t be risking smuggling a jedi off-planet if he didn’t, because no amount of money is worth the hell that could be rained down on him if he’s caught - but still.

margaery gives him some money upfront but promises him there’ll be more at the other end. “she’s a princess, after all.”

theon and sansa don’t get off to the best start. sansa would have shut his smuggling ring down if things had been normal. a jedi sticking her nose into his business would have been the last thing theon would have needed. but things aren’t normal anymore. they never will be again. she and theon learn to adjust to the new normal of running and fighting, and slowly they come to be on better terms.

it’s a narrow escape from coruscant, in the end. the only reason they’re ultimately able to escape is because littlefinger gave the order for sansa to be captured alive.

seeing her own features reflected in the faces of her mother and brothers is one of the strangest things sansa has ever experienced.

arya really wants to learn how to use sansa’s lightsaber.

winterfell and the starks slowly become the centrepoint of the rebel alliance. the remaining jedi slowly begin to flock there. sansa’s torn between her family and what remains of the jedi order. she ends up running more and more missions just so she can escape that choice, and usually her pilot is theon.

she falls in love with theon almost without noticing it. she’s so busy with the rebellion and with her family and the order, and time with theon is a well-deserved break, even if they’re flying into a firefight.

theon, for his part, is basically going through han solo’s arc. he starts out cynical that the rebellion is ever going to get anywhere - or that it’ll set up a government any better than the one they started with. but watching sansa fight even when she’s lost everything else, watching the starks give up anything and everything to protect the daughter they lost, watching as daenerys stormborn forces the rebellion to take up arms against slavery on the outer rim same it does against the empire, watching all these good people struggle to build something good - well. it’s a little harder to be cynical.

sansa starts to pick things up from bran, and vice versa. bran’s never had the dedicated training she’s had, but he’s spent some time with a bunch of other force-sensitive groups over the years - groups that generally have much healthier approachs to love and attachment than the jedi order ever did. she even starts to teach basic stuff to her other siblings, especially arya and rickon.

this pays off when the death star emerges from the sky above winterfell, and it’s arya who makes the final shot.

ultimately, when the rebels win out over the empire, she and bran form a new jedi order: one that encourages healthy attachments, including family ties and romantic love. not every jedi follows them, but enough do to build a stronger, better jedi order.

#theonsa #got #sansa stark #theon greyjoy #can you tell I'm not a fan of the prequels era jedi 🔪

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supermarvelgirl15 · 3 years

Text

Home- Chapter 1 (The Sin)

Summary: Jesla lands on Nevarro where a certain Mandalorian and Force-sensitive Child catches her attention. Din is helped by an unexpected ally.

Pairing: Eventual Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) × OC!Jesla Gavdo

Word Count: 1,750

Warnings: Violence, gun TW

A/N: This is the first official chapter! I hope you all enjoy it! Comment if you would like to be tagged in this series! Chapter 2 will be up Wednesday!

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

××××××

Jesla's hand fishes in her bag for some credits as she makes her way off the ship that had just landed on some planet called Nevarro. Finally, she grabs them and places them in the hand of the Twi'leck that brought her there, thanks him, and then makes her way through the town.

Now, all she had to do was buy some supplies before she made her way out of the town, away from all the inhabitants. She just needed to buy enough supplies that would last her a couple weeks. After a few years off on the run, she learned that the less she was in a populated town, the better.

She makes sure that her hood is down over her face- even though she doubts she would be recognized here- as she wanders down the streets, buying food and necessities for her survival from the vendors. She didn't have much credits left, she realized as she paid for some fruit. Hopefully this town had a place that hired bounty hunters.

Jesla was placing her purchased items into her bag when it happened. When she sensed him.

Her eyes scan around the crowd until they finally land on a pod that was following a Mandalorian. The last Mandalorian she had ever seen was a bounty hunter named Boba Fett, but he had been killed on Tatooine. Since then, she had never seen another one, which caused her to think that there wasn't anymore. Until now.

Whatever was in that pod was extremely powerful, Jesla sensed. Possibly even more powerful than her. Her curiosity got the better of her as she starts to follow them, making sure to blend in with the crowd. When the Mandalorian turns down an alley, she climbs up onto a roof of an adjacent building, following him from above.

She watches as the Mandalorian walks up to a building and knocks. A entry sensor appears and scans him before going back in. Then the door opens and two Stormtroopers walk out, making Jesla hold her breath.

The New Empire was here? And the Mandalorian was handing over the poor creature over to them?

They all walk into the building, the door closing behind them. Jesla waits for a few moments before the Mandalorian walks back out with a camtono. Alone. Without the Child. She watches as the Mandalorian looks back at the building and she senses his hesitation to leave.

The Mandalorian shook his head, muttering something to himself before he began to walk back through the town. Jesla looks back at the building, suddenly worried for the creature that was inside. What did the New Empire want with him? Did they know that he was Force-sensitive as well? Was she also in danger?

Something inside Jesla told her that if she wanted to help him, she had to follow the Mandalorian. She wasn't sure where it came from, but her old master told her to never ignore her instincts. Jesla frowns slightly as the thought of her old master crosses her mind, but she quickly shakes it off before she sets off to find the Mandalorian.

∞∞∞

Jesla is sitting in a common house nursing a drink when she sees the Mandalorian again. He's wearing new armor, made out of Beskar if she had to guess. She watches silently as an older man starts to talk to him.

“Ah, Mando! They all hate you, Mando. Because you're a legend!” The man exclaims loudly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

“How many of them had tracking fobs?” The Mandalorian asks gruffly, looking around at all the other bounty hunters that occupied the house.

The older man scoffed. “All of them. ALL of them! But not one of them closed the deal. Only you, Mando. Only you. And with it, the richest reward this parsec has ever seen. Please, sit my friend,” he says as he gestures to the seat across from him. The Mandalorian takes the rifle off his back and sits.

Jesla looks around the room, hearing bits and pieces of the other bounty hunters' conversations. They all seemed a bit heated about not being the one that was currently being praised by whom she assumed was their boss.

Her attention is brought back to the Mandalorian when he stands up, acting as if he was going to leave, but halts. “Any idea what they're gonna do with it?” She hears him ask the older man.

“With what?”

“The kid.”

“I didn't ask. It's against the Guild Code.”

The Mandalorian didn't know what the Empire wanted with the kid either?

∞∞∞

Jesla is perched on a rooftop across from the building that the Mandalorian had taken the kid into earlier, planning what her first move should be. If she showed herself to the Empire, they would know she was still alive. However, if she did her job right, there wouldn't be anyone left to spread the news after she was finished. All she knew was that she had to rescue the kid.

She is brought out of her thoughts when she sees the Mandalorian walk up to the front door and knock. When the entry sensor appears, he breaks it off and quickly hides himself. Stormtroopers walk out and one of them orders the other to check the perimeter. The Mandalorian then blows out a wall and enters the building.

Getting her MK-modified rifle ready, Jesla patiently waits for the Mandalorian to return. After a short while, he exits the building, the Child in one hand and a blaster in the other. He starts to walk through the town streets, Jesla jumping rooftops as she follows him.

He is finally stopped on the main street by the older man from the common house. As bounty hunters began to circle him, the Mandalorian trains his blaster on the man before him.

“Welcome back, Mando. Now put the package down,” the older man orders him.

“Step aside. I'm going to my ship,” the Mandalorian states sternly, his grip tightening around the Child.

The older man brings his hand to his chin, acting as if he was thinking about it. “Hm. You put the bounty down and perhaps I'll let you pass.”

“The kid's coming with me.”

Jesla lines up her scope with the older man as they try to negotiate with each other. Before she can take the shot though, the Mandalorian suddenly starts shooting at the bounty hunters and jumps on a speeder, hiding behind the cargo. He yells at the droid and it starts moving down the street, the hunters continuing to shoot at them. Jesla races across the rooftops, hitting some of the hunters with her blaster, causing some of them to take cover.

Finally, the speeder gets stopped by the older man shooting out the droid pilot. The Mandalorian disintegrates a few bounty hunters with his pulse rifle before he takes cover with the Child. Jesla notices someone creeping up behind him. Quickly, she snipes them before they could get him. The Mandalorian looks up and sees her for a brief moment before he pins himself down in the speeder.

“Someone find that sniper!” The older man yells as Jesla continues to snipe the other bounty hunters that try to approach the speeder. They eventually spot her and make their way to her. Jesla tries to take out as many as she can, but there are too many of them and she needs to reload. Her hand grips her lightsaber tightly. She never used it unless it was an emergency because she knew if she did, people would know what she was.

Suddenly, multiple Mandalorians appear and start fighting the hunters, drawing their attention away from her. The Mandalorian gathers up the Child and flees towards his ship. Jesla swings her sniper rifle over her shoulder and takes off after them.

She gets to the ship just in time to see the older man get blown out of it. Without thinking, Jesla slips in just as the hangar door closed. The ship takes off and flies away from Nevarro, disappearing into hyperspace.

Jesla takes a deep breath as she takes in her surroundings, her eyes widening when the realization finally hits her. What was she doing here? She didn't have the right to be here. So why did she get on?

“Trust in the Force,” a familiar voice tells her.

Before she could even wonder where that voice came from, she sensed a precence behind her. Swiftly, she draws out her blaster as she turns around, being met with the end of the Mandalorian's.

“Who are you?” He questions, his grip tightening around the gun.

She rolls her eyes, placing her blaster back into its holster. “I save your life and this is the thanks I get?” She asks sarcastically, placing her hand on her hip. The Mandalorian doesn't move. “Lighten up, will ya? Put the gun away, I'm not here to hurt you. The name's Jesla Gavdo, by the way. And you are?” She says as she holds out her hand.

The Mandalorian still doesn't move his blaster. “Then why are you here?” He asks, ignoring her question. She drops her hand and opens her mouth to say something, but stops when her eyes land on something behind him.

“Because of him.”

The Child looks back at her, a small ball in his hands. The Mandalorian watches as the Child walks up to her, neither of them breaking eye contact the whole time. Jesla slowly kneels down in front of the kid, taking her hood off and pulls down her mask. She holds out her hand to him, and after a few moments of hesitation, the Child places his hand in hers.

Din Djarin watches the entire interaction before he finally puts his blaster up. “You were the sniper,” he realizes as the woman before him stands back up. She nods as she continues to look at the kid. “Why?”

Despite it being a very vague question, Jesla understands what he means. She finally looks back at him, making eye contact through the visor of his helmet. “To protect him, just as you did,” she answers.

The Mandalorian looks down at the Child that was at his feet, as if recalling the events that had just occurred. He looks back up, his head tilted just slightly. “Why does he matter to you?”

Trust in the Force.

She hesitates for a few moments before she finally speaks. “Because... I'm just like him.”

××××××

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struwwelzeter · 3 years

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So I read your reply to Nyarisu's comment on Lionheart and I'm really intrigued by your comments about how people understand punk compared to what it was initially. Could I possibly ask you to expand on this? Pretty please?

Yes you could! This is a very (very?) personal point of view and I know a lot of people will disagree, but here goes nothing, I guess. If you disagree with me (and somebody will), that’s fine, but I will not engage with anything that’s not a constructively put argument. I’ve spend too much time thinking about this for a “I don’t like what you’re saying and that’s why you’re wrong” anon to change my mind. Just putting that out there - with love 💜.

The thing is, especially on tumblr but I think just in generally aswell, the idea of punk is presented as this ... Robin Hood kind of thing. Beat the system, stand up to bullies, live your own truth, all of that, but it always is presented as something that is supposed to come from a ... dare I say, nice place? Like those pictures of people in studded and sprayed leather jackets rescuing puppies. All of that, you know? And I don’t want to say that is wrong, because it isn’t, and I love the idea of that, it’s just not the entire truth.

Especially in the early to mid 70s, when arguably punk started, there was a lot of fatigue between an old and stuffy establishment and the lovey, dovey peace and love “let’s all be happy” movement of the hippie scene. I was at Force Attack in 2006, which is a punk festival (and possibly dirtiest place in the world) that got established in the early 90s and went on til 2008 (?), and even then some of the “death to hippies” sentiments ran pretty deep. And I know the counter argument to that will be a well meaning “well, that’s not real punk,” the problem is that I think it actually partly is. (Please keep the partly in mind for the rest of this argument.)

The problem with having the exact choice between “get a good job, built a nice house, think of what the neighbours will say, and don’t ask me about what I did in the war” and “we’re all a big part of one human family, and isn’t nature beautiful, lets all make peace, and btw we would have never done what our parents did” is that both models aren’t a sustainable life style for everyone. That’s why you get alot of people saying this is all fake bullshit, and they start being purposely offensive. This is why you get alot of Swastikas around the sex pistols, you get all these artists singing about suicide and incest and rape. It’s not that uncommon for some of those early acts to play with Nazi imagery, or claim that homosexuality is disgusting (despite the scene always being full of LGBTQ+ people), or idk, thinking it’s fun to piss on someone while they’re asleep. It’s alot of outcry, of saying life actually is this shitty and disgusting and I am gonna be that because in a way you will hate me either way. And it’s not always nice. Disdain and hate and petty selfishness are common human emotions and many of them are low and unhealthy, and honestly not nice or helpful or inclusive, but they are there, and I think alot of that early spirit was just about stopping to pretend that they don’t exist.

I think a reason for why we don’t think of the scene that way anymore is that many people very quickly outgrew that, and said “actually, we’re better than that, that’s not who we actually are. I sadly can’t find that interview right now, but Die Ärzte are actually a good exemple of that and they even admit it themselves, that there was a sense of “enough with the happy hippie bullshit, let’s disgust them” and then later going “uhmm - maybe that went a bit far.” I mean offensive or not, but ultimately a scene that is centered around artistic expression always ends with that question of creation, maybe like “if the world isn’t like what we want it to be, how do we make one we like?” - and then you end up with having to come up with answers that are more than just destruction. And then it turns into something else - something that I think is alot more like what tumblr seems to think punk is. And that’s a wonderful thing. Still - a side of punk, whatever that is, has always been what people like GG Allin (please read the wiki for context) have taken and pushed to the limits, and it just - isn’t nice. And here is where things get a bit tricky.

Because against that backdrop, things like John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) suddenly being a dirty old Trump supporter aren’t that surprising anymore. And then you get these 20 year olds “cancelling” the Sex Pistols, and I think there is just a bit of ... missing the point going on. I’ve read a comment on here recently, that basically said something like Richard should stop supporting the Sex Pistols (because he has that album in the back of the studio), and it’s just ... asking for a history to be erased that has rightfully been made obsolete but has still happened and was necessary at the time. You can take any of these early bands and pick their lyrics apart and find something that from our perspective now is disgusting, mean, exclusive, or outright racist. Songs about Fucking? Part of that record is a mysogynisy shitshow, something they were very aware of even at the time, and they still did it anyway because being disgusting was part of the point. The thing is though, the Sex Pistols were hugely influential, and alot of the positive things that grew out of that wouldn’t have been possible if kids like young Richard, or any of the bands you love that were influenced by them, wouldn’t have gotten that moment of “finally a place where I can put all of my petty hate”. It matters, and just because that moment is overcome, it doesn’t mean it should be forgotten, or stops existing in the people that lived through it.

I understand that the question of how much we should justify things with “it was the time” and how we deal with the result is an ever ongoing debate and their are many good arguments for why maybe we shouldn’t try to defend the wrongs of the past that way, and I want to point out that while I rarely agree on that in the first place (because I understand history as a natural learning curve where people aren’t perfect at the first try and it’s doing a disservice to humans just doing their best, but I digress and that’s a bit of another duscussion), I want to point out that I don’t want to defend anyone, rather I want to say “actually, being that horrible was often calculated, part of the point, and if you don’t like it, just leave it, fight it or debate it, but don’t pretend like it was a “missstep” or just a few black sheep of a scene that was never as nice or perfect as you want it to be.” You don’t get to erase half of a movement simply because you wish it wouldn’t exist the way it does - or well. I guess in this case mostly did - past tense.

The ugliness is part of the story to me, and it’s actually the bigger part of why I love this scene. I don’t need “punk” to define my politics, I need it to soothe my soul, and so did many, I think. The Sex Pistols breaking happened 20 years before my time, but I still feel connected to that world, and in particular the ugly parts of it. I often feel like I look at the world, and there are people that seem honestly shocked by the idea that maybe sometimes I find doing the right thing really hard, that I want petty, self serving revenge, that I don’t find it easy to not be selfish and unkind or sometimes want to hurt people because I am hurting myself and see an opportunity to do that. Obviously those aren’t nice things and I don’t want to be that way, but are you honestly telling me you don’t feel that? I find that hard to believe, and it leaves me with an ongoing question of if I am just worse than most people or if most people are just more fake. Both scenarios are equally shit. The ugly side of punk provides - not an answer to that - but maybe a partial solution, at least for me.

Another discussion we have all the time is about how what we consume or allow in artistic expression is influencing how we act as people in real life and how we want the world to be. Where do we draw the line? What is still ok? If I put me entertaining ideas about murder on a canvas, is that still good? what if it’s racism? What if it’s rape? We argue alot about how providing a safe space in art for those feelings is actually preventing us from acting on it in real life, how it’s an outlet of something we would never actually want or do, but then where is the limit to that? I am putting this intentionally controversial, but if we admit that most of us grow up with internalized racism and mysogyny, by that logic, why can’t I paint something that is blatantly hateful if I have those feelings? Maybe that is my way of fighting it, you don’t have to look at it? Not saying that’s what I am doing or would want to do, but what if? For some people Rammstein singing about not wanting to be Angels is crossing that line, for some of us that line is drawn alot later. Who is right? Isn’t that just personal sensitivity? Can you honestly rationalise that? Isn’t it just processing our different levels of petty hate in different ways? I don’t have the answers to any of that, it’s just questions I often have and that I think have to do with this, because alot of the nasty bits in punk will justify it exactly that way, as artistic expression. Alot of it isn’t as political as this scene is made out to be, it’s simply asking those things. I personally relate to that alot, as someone who arguably would draw the line of “we should stop doing this” in art very, very, very late - and certainly later than my own personal comfort zone.

I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense at all. I hope it does - and if it doesn’t it’s probably because I don’t know either, or because I don’t want to fully blow this up into an essay (sorry, too late?) or because I suck at making a point, or maybe because we simply disagree. All I know is that I sometimes see these posts of “what is punk and what isn’t” and it leaves me with this taste of “you’re describing a utopia and it’s cute and I want that too, but it’s not everything punk as I know it is, and it feels like you don’t want to see something that mattered too - even if it was brutal and disgusting.” And everytime I see it I feel alien, like something that mattered to me so much as a teenager and young adult gets taken away from me and made into something so sleek and pretty it becomes something unattainable to be that I simply don’t manage to live up to in the way I would like. I guess that is a petty, selfish way of looking at it too.

«It's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.»

- John Lydon

#sorry for this getting out of hand

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