wildehacked asked: UH tell me everything about the star wars au immediately
So this is the OTHER Star Wars AU. It was the second variant I came up with and, while it ruins fewer childhoods (this is the one with Prince Cesare of Alderaan and Lucrezia as the first of a new Jedi Order), I feel like it’s much truer to the characters. Plus Lucrezia still gets a lightsaber. This time with 2x the Dark Side! It’s been a million years because HA I forgot this was done and I didn’t want to work on it anymore.
Cesare, no last name because slaves don’t have them, is a very small boy on Tatooine when a pair of Jedi Masters and their padawans show up with a child-queen. Cesare is only nine, but nine is already nearly an adult among the slave quarters, and he brings the whole lot of them back to his mother before they can get in trouble. Queen Bonadeo is shy. She doesn’t matter in this story. One of the padawans, a fierce woman named Sforza, is almost through with her training, but the other is a pretty girl like a shaft of sunlight, just a little younger than Cesare. The Jedi, Padawan Sforza’s Master and Master Farnese, want Cesare to come with them, to be trained as one of them, and he goes for the sake of the golden-haired girl who promises a better life.
When they return to the Core, they are greeted by a man just beginning to pass middle age, steel-grey hair and a steady, trustworthy voice, who is very interested in Cesare. Cesare has never been interesting to anyone before. It is incredible. The man introduces himself as Senator Borgia, and tells Cesare to keep in contact. Cesare does.
Padawan Sforza becomes Cesare’s Master after her own Master is murdered. She and Master Farnese could not be more different—Caterina, which Cesare is forbidden to call her, is fierce and military, while Giulia is gentle and fluid and diplomatic—but their opposing styles are beautifully complementary, and they are often put on missions together. Cesare comes to know the golden girl as Lucrezia, and they are best friends, as like as two halves of a coin, and as they grow up, they train together, fight together, live together, until the entire Temple speaks of them in a single breath, as Cesare-and-Lucrezia.
Lucrezia is the only one who knows about how often Cesare and Master Sforza clash, about the times that they shout at each other until Cesare is screaming and Master Sforza is all but glowing with rage. If Cesare cannot control his emotions, cannot master this lightsaber form, cannot do this simple Force trick, cannot be a Jedi, Caterina shouts, then what did her master die for? Lucrezia is furious—she is shaking with it, she has never been so angry in her entire life. She destroys Giulia in a sparring match and is advanced to her Knighthood trials at sixteen, the youngest Knight in living memory. And living memory stretches back quite far, with Master Innocent being several centuries old.
That’s not quite true. One other person knows. Senator Borgia. He does not think Cesare is a failure, he does not think Cesare was an ill investment, he thinks Cesare is bright and clever and strong and full of potential. Cesare tells him everything.
Despite Master Sforza’s endless criticism, Cesare is right on Lucrezia’s heels, earning his Knighthood at eighteen, a prodigious rise through the ranks for anyone and downright unheard of for someone who started training at nine. He stares down the same Masters who tried to cast him out nine years before, and this time it is not Cesare who looks away first.
The two of them, two orphans with no last names, are turned loose on the universe when the galaxy goes to civil war. They are each handed a regiment of cloned soldiers and told to keep the Republic safe, and Cesare-and-Lucrezia turn together toward the stars.
The clones are identical, or they’re supposed to be, but life has its influences, little quirks of the worlds they’ve served on. The commander of Lucrezia’s battalion, the 212th, is darker than any of them with sun exposure and never quite manages to shake it off. He is soft-spoken but efficient, with a mind for espionage that clicks well with Lucrezia’s talent for negotiations—both of the genuinely diplomatic bent and the more violent variety. Lucrezia fights with a joy and brilliant ferocity that makes something in Cesare’s chest ache, and he thinks that her commander, the one the clones call Paolo, agrees with him.
The commander of Cesare’s 501st is not sun-darkened at all, but an encounter with a chemical bath has turned his hair from the clone-standard black to a rusty red-brown-yellow, and he wears scruff on his chin and jaw. He is a killer, born to it and made for it and thriving on it, and Cesare could—and has—put his lightsaber to the man’s throat without seeing a single flinch. No one knows where he got his nickname of Micheletto, but he did. The popular story is that it’s the name of the first man he killed, and that he liked it so much he kept it. Cesare doesn’t give a damn, honestly, as long as Micheletto continues to be brutally, ruthlessly efficient in everything he does.
Cesare knows that Lucrezia is sleeping with Paolo. He is happy that she is happy. He is so bitterly angry it makes bile rise in his throat. He pins Micheletto under him with the Force and kisses him until there is someone’s blood on their lips and Cesare cannot hear Master Sforza’s voice in his head anymore—let go of attachment, attachment leads to the Dark Side, be a Jedi, be worth what you cost. Micheletto, loyal, fearless, lethal Micheletto, does not stop him. He does not stop him again, and again, and again.
It does not cure the wanting under Cesare’s ribs, no matter how many times he falls into bed with his commander. He is guiltily relieved when Paolo dies in battle, saving Lucrezia’s life.
This is the first thing in his life that Cesare has not readily, gladly told Chancellor Borgia.
Chancellor Borgia finds out, eventually. Not about Micheletto. Plenty of things happen among the military, it would be easy for Cesare to write that off. No, Chancellor Borgia finds out about Lucrezia.
Here is how it happens. It begins, as these things so often do, with a fight. Lucrezia is captured, and Cesare feels her vanish from the Force. Not dead, he realizes after nearly destroying the nearest bank of computers, merely muffled—Force-blocking instruments are rare, but they exist. This, whatever it is that is blocking Cesare’s link to his—to Lucrezia, will not exist for much longer.
Cesare takes Micheletto and a handful of his best soldiers and cuts his way through to the heart of a Separatist stronghold. They leave a trail of blood behind them. Cesare finds Lucrezia.
Cesare also finds Giovanni Sforza, the Force-neutral brother of his old Master. He is…a casualty of the situation. But Cesare leaves with Lucrezia safe at his side and therefore does not give a damn about the Separatist fuck who kidnapped her to leverage the Jedi.
Lucrezia slips silently into Cesare’s quarters that night and sits down on the end of his bed, twisting her hands together as he sits up and rests a hand on her shoulder. The quiet stretches, until Cesare thinks he can hear her heart beating in time with his, and then it breaks all at once as she twists around, sinuous as wind, to slide into his lap. She twists her hands into his hair and he settles his hands on her hips and she kisses him, and presses him down onto his bed, and Lucrezia is warm and alive and here and it is the best thing that has ever happened to Cesare.
Micheletto knows. He still does not stop Cesare when Cesare ends up in his quarters, tips his head in concession, and moreover he does not change his treatment of Lucrezia—Micheletto might not allow Lucrezia to hold her ‘saber to Cesare’s throat, but he wouldn’t stop her from doing it to him. Cesare thinks some of the rest of their respective battalions are aware, but they would rather die than betray their generals, to a man.
It makes them overconfident.
Because, you see, Caterina Sforza knows how her brother died. It makes its way to her, and for all her insistence on the dangers of attachment…she can’t bear the news.
But she doesn’t set out to kill them. She wants to ruin them first.
Cesare doesn’t know how she gets the pictures. They’re from one of their few days off, in a hotel on some remote jungle moon, taken through a window. Lucrezia’s head is tipped back, Cesare’s lips pressed to her neck with his arms around her bare waist. It’s an intensely private moment, but more importantly, it is two of the most famous Jedi generals in the galaxy, having an affair. The Jedi are supposed to be above these failings of the flesh. The only way this could feasibly get worse is if they were related—and, Cesare admits to himself, he has no idea who his father was, and Lucrezia was a foundling. For all they know, they could be.
Caterina Sforza sends them one of the pictures with a demand that Cesare meet her, in person, or face the consequences.
Cesare goes alone. It is, he thinks numbly, fitting that this meeting take place on Tatooine, among the slave quarters and dunes that made up his life for nine years. He remembers little of their meeting. He remembers the yellow rage that rose through him when she mocked that they would take Lucrezia away from him, that he would prove he was never really worth the time and blood put into him. He remembers the humming of his lightsaber between his palms and how quickly her voice cut off. He remembers the fury of the battle, and the searing pain of losing his left arm at the shoulder, and the tacky feeling of her blood on his hands—and then there’s nothing, for hours.
Micheletto came to find him, Cesare later discovers, and carried him—alone—back to Lucrezia. Caterina Sforza, Master of the Jedi Order, vanishes without trace, and five shiny new ‘troopers are lost in the same battle that officially costs Cesare his arm. Micheletto’s lie is ironclad, bound in blood, and Lucrezia kisses the knuckles of Cesare’s black and silver prosthetic, unflinching as he cradles her cheek.
Cesare and Lucrezia carry on. For a year, it’s almost like they were never found out. They kiss and Lucrezia leaves nail marks on his shoulders and Cesare leaves handprints on her hips and Micheletto serves them with the same undying devotion as ever.
That doesn’t destroy the records. The holonet is forever, et cetera, et cetera, but it lets them grow comfortable, confident, complacent.
“Cesare,” Chancellor Borgia says in a deep, resonant voice, reaching out to touch Cesare’s dark curls with something like sadness. Cesare swallows and looks down, waiting for the lash of disappointment—be a Jedi. “Why didn’t you feel you could tell me, my boy? You know how I care for you and Lucrezia, like you’re my own children.”
“I—It’s not suitable for Jedi to have attachments,” Cesare says, hating the way his voice cracks over the first word.
“But you would do anything to keep Lucrezia safe and happy, wouldn’t you?” Chancellor Borgia asks, and the right answer is obvious and true and right there on Cesare’s tongue.
“Yes,” Cesare breathes.
“And me?”
“Of course, Chancellor,” Cesare says, and it’s so honest it makes his skin prickle. Chancellor Borgia smiles.
He never thinks to ask how Senator Borgia found out.
The nightmares, Lucrezia’s blood spilled out over the sand and Micheletto’s hand limp with his blaster tossed aside and Lucrezia’s long lovely hair no longer sunlight, only a dead thing on the ground, start not long after. Cesare struggles to manage them, to control the universe and protect them, and when Chancellor Borgia casually suggests other ways to use the Force that might serve better, Cesare takes hold with both hands. How can he do otherwise? He can’t let Lucrezia’s light be taken from the galaxy—it would make every star seem dim and cold. He’ll do anything. And Chancellor Borgia is a good man, with their best interests in mind, loyal to the Republic. Cesare trusts him.
When Chancellor Borgia turns out to be Darth Sixtus, the Sith Lord that Master Innocent has had the Jedi hunting across starfields and planetary systems, Cesare runs. The name Chancellor Borgia—Darth Sixtus, would-be-Emperor Sixtus—called him pounds in his ears and in his blood to the beat of his heart. Vader, Vader, Vader, Vader. Each beat sounds more like my boy.
Lucrezia finds him on the furthest planet he could find, Mustafar, and he sits huddled on a rock bridge like he did when they were young, one leg pulled up and his arms wrapped around it.
They don’t fight. Cesare murmurs his discoveries to Lucrezia as she kneels beside him, her hair billowing in the hot updrafts from the river below. Her hand smooths a circle between his shoulder blades.
“He’s been teaching me the Dark Side of the Force,” Cesare says, slow, and waits for the punch of disgust. It doesn’t come. “It’s been—it worked,” he says, desperately waiting for Lucrezia to tell him right from wrong. He catches her hands and she lets him, looking into his eyes, her face solemn and almost childlike. “What do I do?”
Lucrezia’s hands tighten hard around his. “I will be with you,” she says, low and fierce. “Cesare, Vader, whoever. We will be together.”
“My dreams tell me you’re going to die if I don’t do this,” Cesare whispers.
Lucrezia kisses the knuckles of his mechanical hand, then his matching skin-and-bone one, the brush of her lips like a benediction. “I’m not going to die,” she says, getting a hard look in her eye. “And neither are you.”
