Anakin has found his next Padawan! (Bonus if timetraveler!Han is the biological age he would have been during the actual Clone Wars - which would have been between five and ten, I think. )

okay, so you’ve got two very interesting ways that could pan out:

ONE. Han Solo either remains the same age he was when he died or the same age he was post-ROTJ when he’s dragged back in time to the Clone Wars. he wakes up somewhere on the planet that Starkiller Base used to be way back in the Clone Wars with lots of vibrant green forests and even a small thriving spaceport, finds some poor sonuvabitch with a ship, and talks his way onto it. conveniently, shit goes down and they crash-land on a planet being battled over by the Separatists and the Republic, and Han somehow finds himself face-to-face with Anakin goddamn motherfucking Skywalker.

he spends like a day in the brig of a Republic cruiser with a nasty bruise bc he shot at baby-Vader out of instinct. (that’s what he will forever use to refer to Anakin Skywalker in his head. Anakin is pissed bc of the baby part, mostly. Han is goggling at him.)

also, he prob uses a false alias, bc Han Solo currently is a tiny eight-year-old happily rolling around on Corellia.

TWO. Han Solo wakes up eight years old, on Corellia, and spends about ten minutes screaming into his pillow because NOT AGAIN. and then he v quietly runs away from home - it’s fine bc home is kind of terrible, anyway - and stows away onto a ship.

the ship gets shot down over a Separatist-controlled planet, Han finds a blaster, and then runs right into Anakin goddamn motherfucking Skywalker. Anakin, seeing a small eight-year-old stowaway, immediately decides to try and get this kid out of this absolute warzone. Han shoots at him and misses bc eight-year-old body does not have the muscle memory and rock-solid aim of seventy-plus-year-old body.

and then Anakin has to save this tiny little runaway child who is also beating angrily on his chest like LEMME GO and screaming obscenities that children should not know but smugglers-turned-war heroes-turned-smugglers again do. Han does not know what the hell kind of shit he’s landed himself in this time, but he does know he has a Very Bad Feeling about all this.

A tiny, foul-mouthed little orphan brat who knows things he shouldn’t, is far more skilled then he should be for his age, had a bad attitude, constantly surprises people, is insubordinate to the extreme, probably makes Obi-Wan and Anakin look at him very sharply indeed when he states he has a Bad Feeling about something, is obviously Strong with the Force…

It’s Anakin Skywalker mark 2.0. (Anakin is not certain why everyone is looking at him.)

(Of course Han is slated to be Anakin’s next padawan. He fights tooth and nail against it - be probably insults the High Council to their faces, and keeps trying to run away.)

Han does not WANT to be anyone’s padawan, especially not - UGH - baby-Vader’s, UGH. he just wants to find his ship and his first mate and also probably keep the galaxy from careening into a trash fire like it did before. he develops a habit of running off on missions - bc for some weird reason he does not ever actually stay at the Jedi Temple for more than a few days despite everyone’s best attempts to keep him there and actually teach him how to use the Force for things that aren’t CHEATING AT CARDS - and on one of these occasions comes back with a ship that he claims to know how to fly.

Anakin spends all of a day silently doubting him until they have to get OFF the planet and he is somehow injured and can’t pilot, so Han takes over for him and does something completely goddamn insane like - dive into an asteroid field, like he’s done it before.

(meanwhile Han is trying v desperately to pilot this brand-new non-modified version of his beloved Falcon without thinking of all the times he and Leia were in this same cockpit together. oh god he misses Leia. oh god baby-Vader is next to him yelling watch out for the asteroid like HE DOESN’T FUCKING KNOW SHUT UP.)

Anakin, you have no room to talk considering the whole ‘won a space battle at age ten’ thing. And the podracing thing. AND the illegal swoop bike racing in Coruscant thing. And your ENTIRE ADULT LIFE thing.

Han’s habit of running away - well, trying to run away - dies the second  he is introduced to Senator Padme Amidala. Han probably takes one look at her and knows - and then promptly starts trying to desperately set up baby-Vader and the Senator. (He doesn’t know that they’re married, he just wants Leia and Luke born ASAP, is that too much to ask?!)

Oh my god everything about this. 

Han Solo: Angriest Padawan in the Order. Space baby. Refusing to use a lightsaber and instead being /insane/ with a Blaster. 

The Clones adore his face. 

I’m not a big fan of Force Strong Han. I tend to headcanon him as being important to balancing the Force, but not Strong in the Force.  The Force is with him, but he can’t use it.  If that makes sense.  But I would make an exception for this story.

Padme thinks he’s adorable.  She also thinks he has a crush on her, and because he’s late to the Jedi, he thinks the best way to deal with it is to get his Master and the Lady together.

She and Anakin talk about it, and she gets Anakin to humor Han.  And the way Han beams when Anakin is around her is obvious.  Eight year old matchmaker, even if he is a foulmouthed one. 

And can you imagine Han reacting to Yoda?  Or Dooku?  Or Palpatine.  Palpatine might get a lot of bad language.  A ton of bad language.   (Anakin had a premonition, he took Han’s blaster away before they met with the Chancellor, or there would be blaster fire.)

This is fantastic.

On Han and his questionable force sensitivity…. I had a thought.

Pre-time travel Han was not jedi levels strong in the force. Like, sure he had SOME, nobody’s that lucky and borderline prescient without at least a little bit of the force, but he was nowhere near strong enough to become a jedi.

And then he got shanked by his crazypants son and woke up as an eight year old.

At first he didn’t notice anything different really, too busy freaking out about the sudden reset to realize that that niggling sense of STUFF in the back of his head is now much louder. The little whisper that used to warn him when some sleemo was about to draw on him is now more of a shout, and the two second reflexive draw he had is now a five second one. Big deal, right?

He’s wandering through the corellian spaceport a couple days after he’s been so rudely dumped into the past, checking out his options and seeing if he can maybe boost a ride to Kashyyyk, carrying a sack of clothes and all the credits he could swipe off his deadbeat dad, and trying his best to be as unobtrusive as possible (and totally NOT realizing that he’s using the force to make the spacer’s eyes slide right over him with his internal chant of ‘don’t notice me don’t notice me nothing to see here’), and he gets the first inkling that something may be different this time around when he just knows which transports to avoid.

 And when a whole damn chorus alights in his head when he sees a little no name vessel heading who he kriff knows where, he REALLY knows something is up. 

His finely honned smugglers instincts tell him that it’s going to be Trouble with a capital ‘T’ for him if he gets on that ship. That he’s going to get dragged into so much poodoo if he listens to the singing voice that says, ‘YES THAT ONE’. 

He growls a million nasty curses in shyriiwook, huttese, and bocce, and sneaks on the damn ship.

A few days later he’s bruised all over from a decidedly rough landing, stolen blaster in hand when Anakin freaking Skywalker literally runs into him, a troup pf heavily armed clone troopers behind him.

Han is pretty sure he can be forgiven for shooting first and asking questions later. He did miss him after all. And he apologized to the clone trooper he winged with the off shot afterwards!

And he can totally not be blamed for biting the man after he force yanked the blaster out of his hands and scooped him up like a stray puppy. 

I mean, c’mon!

Anakin does not know how this tiny, bitey foul-mouthed eight-year-old somehow got into Separatist space and stole a damn blaster, but he is Impressed, to say the least. he wants v badly to keep him. depending on the timeline, Ahsoka may also be there, and she likes this kid already.

Han is screaming internally. Han does not even want to be here at ALL, especially not anywhere near baby-Vader. Han is - apparently not going to be able to go anywhere in this state bc he is a kid, and tho mentally he’s like seventy and change, physically he is So Fucked.

(“ow! yeesh, kid, calm down, it’s fine, I’m gonna get you home to your parents -”

in retrospect, kicking baby-Vader in the stomach? not one of Han’s finest moments, but he was thinking in terms of “OH SHIT BABY VADER OH SHIT GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE OH SHIT”.)