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underacalicosky · 1 day

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✨Ficlet: Old Fandoms Not Forgotten

This ficlet was directly inspired by this post about the rest of the galaxy finding out about the events of the OT via meme.

Frannell sets her mug of caf down on the counter too loudly. The clink of ceramic on stone rings in her ears and she knows her kids on the couch and her wife at the sink are looking at her now, to see what caused the commotion, but if Frannell could spare a single thought for any of them, she might be impressed that she is keeping herself together as well as she is.

Because the news—well, the meme staring up at her from her datapad is unbelievable. Her mind might as well be on fire, a hundred thousand thoughts screaming at her all at once that mostly amount to…well, screams.

It’s a picture of a man with a stupid, confused looking face staring somewhere past the camera. The caption reads: “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same person or was I supposed to read that in the New Republic Senate briefing myself?”

When Frannell closes her eyes, she sees the names Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader on the insides of her lids. Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader…are the same person? The Anakin Skywalker and The Darth Vader? Former Jedi Knight and General of the GAR, Anakin Skywalker, posterboy of her youth and Darth Vader, the Sith Lord scourge of all that is light and good? Her brain doesn’t want to hold the two beings in her mind at the same time let alone believe that they are the same person. And yet, even as she has the thought that this is far too insane to believe, the cogs in her brain are already at work piecing together how this could have happened.

He just disappeared when the Republic fell along with the rest of the Jedi. There is a chance he survived. I mean, sure, there were crazier people who thought they spotted him now and again. There’s always been a chance.

“Mom?”

Frannell blinks, realizes she has been staring into the still, brown surface of her caf on the counter with the intensity of a war veteran going through flashbacks. She blinks again and looks down at her daughter, Jeni, who has her backpack perched on her shoulders.

“Isn’t it time to walk to the bus stop?” Jeni asks.

Is it? Frannell looks at the time on her datapad and catches a brief glimpse of the meme again before scrolling, just slightly, away. Jeni is right. She has been staring off into the middle distance for the last twenty minutes and now it is time to take the kids to school. She has wasted the few minutes of free time she gets each day between waking up, taking the kids to school, and going to work. Lovely.

Frannell catches sight of her wife, Lara, and tries to communicate with her eyes that she is currently in the midst of a panic. Lara’s brow furrows in silent question, but she takes the hint.

“I’ll walk you two today,” Lara says, helping Jaxon put his shoes on. She takes Jeni’s hand as they reach the door. Before they leave, she gives Frannell one last troubled look and Frannell shakes her head. There is nothing she can say. She can’t put her thoughts into words just yet. The weight of this revelation is too much.

Absently, Frannell thinks that maybe she should have said something to Lara. After all, this news is of galactic importance and there is no way that Lara has heard about it yet. The timestamp on the meme is dated only a half hour ago. The Senate briefing came out in the small hours of morning on Chandrila and no one but the most diehard reporters has been able to comb through it just yet for important information. Ordinary citizens of the New Republic will have to wait to see how the proceedings will actually affect them.

But Frannell needs to sit with this news for a moment. Because she is not some ordinary galactic citizen—well, in most respects, she very much is. But when it comes to Anakin Skywalker, she is practically an expert, and this news just dropped a bomb onto her whole world.

She doesn’t have to search for her old username and password. A few years ago, she revived her account out of casual interest and a bit of curiosity, to see if anyone she knew still populated the message boards and blogs. It was kind of nice, a warm wave of nostalgia, to see that some were still active and others had taken their place, that despite the slower pace of things there were still people making gifs and edits, even writing fics. There isn’t much new content out there about the old Jedi—in fact the creation of it was somewhat illicit for the longest time, not strictly prohibited by Imperial ordinances but heavily monitored by loyalty officers and outright forbidden on several worlds—but there are still people out there, like her that are obsessed with the Jedi, with The Team in particular.

Today, the site is on fire. Frannell feels like she has just walked into a room, expecting a party only to find everything in flames. Everyone is logged on. Frannell thinks she even recognizes a few usernames from way back in the day, people she hasn’t seen in years.

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader AND Luke Skywalker’s father? How does that even work? What happened to Padme? Did he kill her? Anakin survived TCW only to become the Empire’s top enforcer? I don’t believe it! I can’t!

What about Obi-Wan? Luke claims he was there on Tatooine and gave him Jedi training! Yo, can you imagine the kind of grief raising your best friend’s kid involves? Did he know Anakin=Vader?

Mixed in with the screaming are old photos and videos of Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala, and The Team. Frannell has seen most of them before but they are such a throwback she spends nearly an hour scrolling through them before realizing she is desperately late for work.

Frannell throws on a coat and runs out the door with her own speeder bus to catch. On the way to the office, she keeps her eyes glued to her commlink. The situation keeps getting worse somehow. There is too much speculation, too many wild rumors flying around, and Frannell cannot keep up. She nearly misses her stop because she is about to argue with some idiot who thinks Padme Amidala must still be alive with the rest of the Jedi Order somewhere on Tatooine.

How can anyone expect her to cope on a day like today? Frannell glances around at the other heads just visible above the walls of their cubicles. Everyone has their eyes down, dutifully focused or at least committed to the act of looking busy. This is galaxy changing stuff! Surely, she can’t be the only one absolutely losing her mind.

She keeps one hand on her datapad at all times throughout the morning. Whenever she can steal a quick look at the message boards she does. Frannell wishes she could pull it up on the dual screens in front of her, surround herself with the sheer chaos and excitement of fandom grabbing hold of new information like a lothwolf shaking prey caught in its teeth.

Her boss nearly catches her speculating that Obi-Wan Kenobi must have known about Anakin’s fall to the dark side and stole Luke away to Tatooine in order to keep him safe. She has her head down with both hands tapping furiously away at her personal datapad when they clear their throat behind her desk chair causing her to bolt upright in alarm.

After that, Frannell puts in about twenty minutes of work organizing supply orders before she decides she can’t take it anymore. She clocks out for an early lunch and spends the entire time fixated on her pad. With droid-like focus and precision, she is trying to figure out if there is any resemblance between the Republic-era holos of Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the few images available of Luke Skywalker. Some absolutely insane person is insisting that Luke must be the product of an affair between Kenobi and Amidala and Frannell has to be the one to prove them wrong.

There’s just no way. Not possible. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Negotiator, Jedi Master and High General of the Galactic Army of the Republic, would never. He is—was, too noble. Too much the perfect Jedi to carry out an affair. Even Frannell has to admit that a forbidden romance between Anakin and Padme is far more likely. A flame burns in Frannell’s heart for the complicated relationship between Master and Padawan, brothers in arms, but the lengths to which Kenobi would stick to the teachings of his Order above and beyond the call of his own heart is part of what draws her most to the relationship. If Obi-Wan wasn’t going to break his vows for Anakin, there’s no way he would do it for Senator Amidala. There’s just no way. There’s also some fringe theory about Luke being the child of Kenobi and a former ruler of Mandalore, Duchess Satine Kryze, but anyone with sense can see that the timing on that is completely off.

When Frannell returns to her desk—late, of course, it’s just that kind of day—she notices her boss hovering over a coworker’s shoulder a few cubicles down. Promising herself that she will at least focus until they find somewhere to lurk that’s farther away from her desk, Frannell stows her datapad in a drawer and fires up a few neglected spreadsheets, determined to get to work.

But with her mind half on her boss’ head poking above the cubicle walls a few desks down and half on the datapad she can’t see in her drawer, Frannell has very little attention left to pay to the rows and columns of boxes on her screen. None, in fact. She stares at the little white grid until her eyes blur but she can’t seem to make any headway.

Frannell taps her fingers on the arm of her chair. She can’t do this anymore but she can’t just leave. She doesn’t have the sick time or vacation days to simply walk away from her desk. Maybe she could make up some excuse about one of the kids?

Her hand lingers on the drawer handle before she makes up her mind and pulls it open. Just a peek. It’ll take two seconds just to see if anything new and explosive came out and then she’ll put it back and move on with her life. A minute, five minutes tops. And if her boss heads this way, Frannell is more than capable of hiding her datapad away again before they notice what she’s up to.

She opens her account to posts that are mostly keysmashes. For a moment, she thinks the server must be malfunctioning or something. Frannell is ready to reboot the whole thing when at last, she scrolls down far enough to see the post that started this fresh wave of madness.

It’s a different meme format from before but one that Frannell is familiar with: two stills from a semi-popular holodrama with a cult following, two actors emoting heavily for the camera. The first is captioned with the actor saying, “I love you.”

The second says, “Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa are twins separated at birth.”

Not a single thought crosses Frannell’s mind before the decision is made. She powers down her desktop screens, grabs her coat, and waves to her boss as she passes them on her way out of the office for the day. With her datapad firmly in hand, she knows she has work to do.

#sw fic #anakin skywalker #darth vader

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