Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: Anything about the line 'sext: people died for you. i bet you liked it.' from How to Make Love to the God of War for Leia Organa pretty please, your writing is so gorgeous and it would fit Ashe Vernon's poetry so beautifully. ILY thank you so much I hope this promptathon is fun for you.

notbecauseofvictories:

War—what is it good for?

….well, you.

Mostly you.

Almost exclusively you.

(This is not an apology. It is maybe an explanation.)

.

Something you don’t realize until you’re standing in the control room, watching the battle for the Death Star: there’s very little screaming. 

You’re intel, not military; the only experience you have of a warfront is battle sims and holos. The stories you’ve read have all been infantry battles—sentients dodging blaster fire and scattering their blood on the earth, calling for a meddroid even as the concussive missile shakes the air. The sound of AT-ATs, all creaking joints and thunder; clone troopers calling out commands. Droids, screaming. War was loud, full of mud and blood, you knew.

But here, from the control room on Yavin, there’s just the quiet whir of the servers, orders given and received. You can’t hear the chatter of the squadrons—they’re talking to the controllers, who are bent over consoles furiously reading out data. Sometimes one of the sensors beeps—but quietly, as if it’s worried about making a fuss in the huge, heavy silence. Blue Squadron goes down in a rain of fire, their ships immolated against the vast shell of the Death Star, but all you know of it is Lieutenant Rula’s announcement in a cool, flat voice. 

It’s all very civilized.

Somehow, even in victory, you feel a little—cheated.

.

(This is not true. It is not all battle sims and holos; you remember war.

You are eight when you dream of your father on the battlefield. He is holding a sword of fire, and he breathes too loudly, harsh in your ears—you are scared, and so you reach for him, seeking comfort. He turns on you, and he is shadow and death and that awful sword of fire, not your father at all.

He says in a breath of smoke, who—?

You wake up to your father’s arms, real and warm, cradling you to his chest. It was only a nightmare, Bail says, as you cry wracking sobs. Shh, it wasn’t real.

You can still taste it on the inside of your mouth sometimes, ash and fear. Later—after you kiss your brother and find blood in your teeth; after you watch Darth Vader’s corpse burn from the safety of the treeline—you will learn this is your inheritance.)

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: More Stormtrooper Religion stuff?

notbecauseofvictories:

Nothing loves what is dead like the First Order. A world conceived out of passion for the rotting corpse of the Empire and founded by her widowers—necrophiliacs, to a man. It’s a perversity that shows itself in odd ways, flickering through high ceremonies and the songs they sing. A world caught up in self-loathing for its own existence, a New Republican reporter wrote once. Survivor’s guilt given a permanent residence.

The article was widely touted, might have even won the Regaal Prize—Leia vaguely remembers reading about it over her morning caf, and resisting the urge to throw her datapad at the wall. (Instead, she threw the mug of caf, startling Han and making Ben scream. Maker, won’t someone think of the poor ex-Imperials? Leia had snarled, nostrils flaring. They’re so sad they lost their oppressive empire.)

FN-2187 does not remember reading it, mostly because he didn’t. The article was published to a New Republican holochannel, and never made it past the Order’s censors. It was deemed dangerous for public consumption—not for alleging that the First Order considered living a kind of cowardice, but for the suggestion there was anything at all strange about that.

The holonews reporter never saw any of the stormtrooper training facilities. By design—the First Order’s leaders were perverse, not stupid. They knew what story would be written, if he had seen all those warm-blooded bodies under the tyranny of the grave.

It would have been a very different article.

.

Finn remembers the way Slip wanted to die. And Zeroes. And Ace and Ello and Four—they’d discussed it enough, in whispers after lights-out, or during meals, their heads bent together and eyes bright, hard, planning for fire and glory. Though Crisper had always wanted to go in a daring undercover mission, like in the Black Ops propos—and Ohs had liked the idea of hand-to-hand combat with a dangerous rebel, a vibroblade to the gut.

(You just like that because it’d give you a chance to get out a dramatic speech, Ace had laughed, and Ohs had scowled and flicked protein flakes in her hair.)

Even he and Rey had discussed it, over the patchy transmissions sent between D’Qar and Ahch-To. I used to know for sure, she writes. I’d grow old, too old to scavenge, and then I’d starve. Or I’d fall, and break a hip, a leg, a spine, and starve. Or I’d fall ill, and if the poison in my blood didn’t take me, I’d starve. 

But I don’t know anymore, she writes.

When he asks Poe how he wants to die, Poe blanches, the humor vanishing from his expression. What? Why would you ask that?

It takes a fumbling, long and terrible explanation, with Finn backtracking desperately and Poe struggling to keep all emotion out of his eyes. What was yours? he asks, after Finn has finished, and they’re sitting in awkward silence. Finn is trying not to notice how white Poe’s knuckles are, where he clutches the mug of caf.

My what?

The death you wanted.

Finn blinks. He lived on the edges of those conversations, FN-2187 with no nickname; no one’s ever—asked him before. He answers without thinking: I didn’t…I didn’t want to die.

.

Death is a flat plain endlessly, a stormtrooper sings, my voice opens and calls you in.

Hail, hail, the line of troopers answers as it marches; death, we come in.

.

Finn spends the entirety of the Resistance funeral sweating cold and shaking, his hands fisted so tightly that his nails leave crescent-marks on his palms. Afterwards, he has to excuse himself to the refresher, and his knees give out under him.

He cries, something hollow and yet heavy in the pit of his stomach. (No one is there to see, so he laughs too, against his fist, wild and terrible, an animal sound.) I guess there’s something the First Order does better, he says bitterly, to no one in particular.

.

When Leia mentions going back to collect the dead, Finn stares at her like she’s suggested he split open his ribcage and hand her his still-beating heart. Are your orders unclear, Lieutenant Finn? she asks, and he quickly schools his face back into blank stillness.

No, General.

Still, he stares throughout, they fold hands over bellies and shut unseeing eyes. (He twitches, whenever this is done, but Leia could not say why.) Even when he helps—he’s not squeamish, not the way Leia used to be around the dead—he stares, as though he can’t follow the sense in what his hands are doing. 

The sun is much lower in the lavender sky when Leia comes to stand beside him. He is staring down at the blue-shrouded body frowning, a faint line between his brows.

It’s rare, that we have the chance to do this, Leia says, and Finn blinks at her. Often battlefields are compromised, we can’t…go back. X-wings are built to implode upon impact. Most of the time, our dead are lost to us.

(A field of rubble, where Alderaan hung amid the stars.)

Do you—believe they’re still in there? Finn asks tentatively, glancing down at the shrouded body.

No, they’re dead.

Why, then?

The First Order never retrieved bodies? He shakes his head, and Leia considers this for a moment. What did you do with the armor of dead troopers?

Finn blinks. If it was still in—working condition, their squad got first pick. I had a…a friend’s armguards.

Leia nods. The principle is the same. It’s easier, when there’s something to hold. Otherwise it’s just absence. Open wounds heal more slowly.

Finn’s expression flickers on ‘heal’, and his mouth shapes the word almost uncomprehendingly, trying to sound out a strange language. (She wonders how they speak about mourning in the First Order—necrophiliacs, she suddenly remembers. Then she wonders if they mourn at all.)

Yes, General, Finn says, finally. I understand. 

They stand there together in the gathering violet dusk, as the bodies are carried up from the dust.

Anonymous asked: Where does Leia see death?

notbecauseofvictories:

She set out two cups—Alderaanian silver, a gift from those few, miserable and scattered few, who were elsewhere when their world dissolved in fire. Leia’s hands shook badly as she poured out a share of wine into each, and for a moment she was afraid it might spill.

But it didn’t, and the game board stayed immaculately white, pristine as when she had last put it back in its box. Leia set the decanter down, and lowered herself into the chair with a sigh. The games board was not hers either, a gift from Mon Mothma back when they were all holed up on Hoth at close quarters, the abrupt loss of momentum resulting in flashpoint tempers and a restlessness that threatened to drive them all mad. Leia hadn’t touched it in—Force, it would be—

The sound of a chair scraping on the floor startled her out of her reverie.

He was still the same as he had been all those years ago, a young cadet in Imperial grey, handsome and rosy-cheeked. Only his eyes gave him away, the same unholy green as the beam of the Death Star. 

There was blood in his teeth when he smiled. “General,” he said, and his voice was the same awful metallic scrape that made Leia shudder. “It’s been some time since you invited me in for a game.”

“It’s been a while since there was something I wanted to wager for.”

“Your brother?” he asked idly, running a long white finger along the rim of the cup nearest him.

“We already played that game,” Leia reminded him coolly, and he grinned.

“Yes, we did. Best of five, if I remember correctly—one for distal, one for phlanages, one for proximal, for metacarpals and carpals. For your brother’s hand.”

Leia swallowed. She only vaguely remembered that strange and dreamlike night on Endor, the board balanced on her knees because there was nowhere else—Shall we keep playing? had asked with her heart in her throat, because if he said, One more round, that meant Luke was all right and the Emperor hadn’t…that meant her brother was alive. (Alderaan had an old tale like that, a woman who told a story, and the story kept her from dying—Leia had always hated it, wanted that long-ago princess to pick up a blaster and fight, but she was older now. She knew that sometimes, all you could do was sit in the dark, and tell a story that will keep you alive.)

He’s watching her. “Han Solo, then. We are almost at the end of our contract with him, I suppose—”

“You said it would protect him as long as my love lasted!” Leia said, her heart suddenly in her throat. There was no question she loved Han, even now—the width of the galaxy between them and an ocean of bad blood (hers, of course, because when had Darth Vader’s blood not been a curse?) but a broken heart was still a heart, and hers was Han’s. There was no question.

“Your affection, General,” he said quietly, and if those sickly green eyes could hold pity, she suspected they would have, then. “We wagered on your affection for Han Solo. And where your love is steadfast…that has cooled.”

Leia exhaled shakily. “I meant love. You know I did. I was—” The white rooms of Cloud City, the sun bright and high and the sky painful-blue to look at; knowing—knowing—what this feeling was, but unwilling to admit it, even to herself. Not ready to use the word that would make it real.

“That was not strictly the agreement,” he said. His nail scraped across the silver cup, his gaze lingering there. “Does that change your wager?”

“I—no,” Leia said. She had summoned him for a reason, she had to stay faithful to her battle plan.

The awful green eyes flick up, and to her. “Your son, then.”

Leia swallowed. The wine looked tempting, just to steady her nerves, but she could not drink it yet. “Yes. He—left us. I want him back.”

“That is not within my power to grant.”

Leia shot him a withering look. “I want him to be alive long enough to get him back, then.”

“Hm. What terms?”

“You can’t come for him until he is as old as I am.”

“A son will never be as old as his mother, General. I am too wise to fall for word tricks.”

“You can’t come for him until he is returned to the Light.”

“I will not come for him until you hold him in your arms again.”

“No,” Leia snapped, choked with sudden awful fury. She was wiser than these games too; she could easily picture her son bleeding out in her arms, the terms of the contract fulfilled. “I refuse. That’s not enough, I want—”

“I cannot offer more, not without more consideration.”

“Then come for me first.”

He threw his head back and laughed, blood trickling out of the corners of his mouth as he shook. (His laughter was a howl, was the sound of wet flesh and metal, and awful—Leia made a soft noise, resisting the urge to clap her hands to her ears like a child frightened of thunder.) 

“Oh, General,” he finally wheezed. “Thank you for that.”

“I am serious,” Leia said, in the voice she had used mostly to frighten senators and lower-ranked officers. “Those are my terms—you have to come for me before you come for Ben.”

His eyes flashed dangerously. When he spoke, his voice was soft too, almost gentle. “You know I will not come for you until you ask me, Princess. We played that game too.”

Leia knew. No board or pieces then, just her in that narrow Imperial cell,   shaking, almost delirious from the torture droid. A handsome young cadet with eyes of green fire crouching down beside her. Stroking her hair, and saying, come with me, I can take you away from this place. 

He had reached out to grab her wrists and Leia had fought him, clawing at his terrible eyes and snarling, kicking. You get that from your father! he had laughed delightedly, cradling her against him even as she struggled, close enough that Leia had been able to smell the stink on his breath.

I will make you a deal, the cadet had finally said, and Leia’s skin had crawled at the fondness in his voice. I will not come for you until you ask. Say yes?

Please let me go, Leia had whispered, half-sobbing, tired and—Please.

Death had kissed her, and his mouth was cold. Deal.

Leia looked at the Imperial cadet, youthful and bloody-mouthed with his eyes like the fire of the Death Star. “Then let him decide.”

“What?”

“You have to come for me before you come for Ben, but Ben can decide when that is. I give the deal over to him. I give—him that choice.”

The green eyes flickered. “You would let your son kill you?”

That didn’t deserve an answer. “Do we have a wager?” Leia asked coolly, picking up her silver cup and holding it out in a silent toast. The wine sloshed, looking like blood.

“If I go to him, there is no telling what games we we will play,” Death said. “There is a reason we had that game so long ago, where you played to keep me hidden from him.”

“I lost that round,” Leia gritted out. “Do we have a deal?”

He looked at her, then picked up the other silver goblet. They drank, and Leia exhaled. She set down her goblet again, letting the tartness of the wine linger on her tongue. “I assume I am the black and you the white?” Death asked, tapping one of the pieces scattered across the board..

“As we always have been,” Leia said, and Death smiled.

lathori asked: Star Wars Camelot AU Fucking Go <3 Your Wife

• CLEARLY Finn is King of Camelot, destined ruler of all Albion, hero-king snatched from a training center designed to churn out devoted soldiers for a dangerous faction rising in the wake of the previous wicked king’s demise (Palpatine, obvs)

• Rey is his queen and court enchanter, and Finn met her after being separated from his guardsan attack by bandits—she whomped him good with a staff and threw him into a lake with magic.  Naturally, he brought her back to his citadel and was like “This is our new court enchanter, she used to be a feral mountain child” and within a few months everyone went “Hey Finn what if you got married” and he went “Sounds great, meet your new queen!”  And everyone was EITHER really delighted OR completely horrified.  They’re a kickass couple and Rey is really good with seeing possible lines of influence and Finn is actually a killer diplomat and basically they rock.

• With the help of their Most Loyal and Trusted Knight, who would DIE for his king, especially since Finn swooped in and saved him when his quest went horribly awry in the process of booking it from the First Order.  Obviously this is the adopted son of the Lady of the Lake, Sir Poe Dameron (du Lac)…  

• You see where I’m going with this.

Keep reading

a very short star wars meta

uncle-whisky:

jumpingjacktrash:

in the first movie, when leia got rescued, she was expecting some kind of actual military operatives with things like a plan and an exit strategy and a working vehicle. this is why she was so salty about instead being rescued by basically the duke brothers and an angry carpet in a past-warranty space winnebago.

like when the bad guys capture a diplomat you’re supposed to send mission impossible, not cheech & chong

Leia wanted a full D&D party, and what she got was a Rogue with no Bluff, a wizard who left his spell sheet at home, and a barbarian who made charisma his highest score.

(via clockwork-mockingbird)

flaminganakin:

Anyway, Leia has ADHD. 

(via cooties-and-chaos)

copperbadge:

ladybessyboo:

copperbadge:

peradii:

digitaldiscipline:

doctorwithafryingpan:

dafterwho:

arctic-hands:

not-to-worry–fan-not-stalker:

kyraneko:

peradii:

We all know that Hoth was a simmering mess of hormones and stress and I would pay good money for a soap opera about them. Here are some things which Definitely Happened: 

• There’s a betting pool going on who takes Luke’s virginity. The favourites are Han and Leia, but Wedge Antilles has pretty good odds, and there’s a small contingent of aliens who are convinced it will be Chewie (after all, who could resist that Wookie musk? Headcanon: most alien races consider humans soft and gross. Most alien races find Wookies absurdly attractive. Han Solo isn’t the ladykiller; Chewie is.)
  
• Leia and Han scream at each other in every corner of the base. Everyone is desperate for them to fuck. They do not. The sexual tension is so thick that it could be cut into blocks and sold as wall insulation. More than once they are ‘accidentally’ locked in a supply cupboard in the vain hope that claustrophobia will act as the catalyst that enables their frustration to spark into true love – or at least nasty raunchy cupboard sex. It does not. All that happens is that the offender has legally changed their name to escape the Wrath of Organa. 
• Someone paints a shirtless Han Solo on their X Wing. Leia is furious. Han is delighted: both at the highly flattering portrait (he has an eight-pack, he is shredded) and at Leia’s fury (you’re jealous princess/no I am not/you’re jealous, hey I can pose like that for you if you –). Hoth’s winter had nothing on the chilly silence that followed that suggestion. 
• Luke and Leia both have very graphic dreams about Han Solo. Han Solo has very graphic dreams about the twins –  individually, together, he’s thirty fucking years old, why is his brain doing this to him.(Later on they will, individually, realise that due to Luke and Leia’s Force-bond they probably created a circle of Han Solo Sex Dreams: Leia had them, so Luke sensed her lust for Han which intensified his own lust for Han, which led to Luke having Han Solo sex dreams, which led to Leia lusting – and so on, and so on. For the sake of their sanity, they never share this revelation which each other.)
• Luke is SO COLD. All the time. WHY DOES NO ONE APPRECIATE HOW COLD HE IS. He comes from a desert world. Of course he’s cold! What is all this white stuff? It was pretty for the first fve seconds but holy fucking Force it is so cold it burns and what the hell is going on with that? He bundles himself up in so many layers that he waddles rather than walks. Fearsome Last of the Jedi indeed.
• Luke tapes a knife to a cleaning droid (disc-shaped things that swish around the base, sucking up dirt) and names it Stabby. Why, says Leia. Luke, the boy from Tatooine, shining and happy despite everything says why not. Why not indeed. Stabby is very fond of chasing Han. Han wants desperately to shoot the fucking thing– but then he sees big-eyed Luke and sharp-toothed Leia cooing over it and, well. A little bit of light stabbing is nothing, compared to those two smiling. 

STABBY THE SPACE ROOMBA!

I am torn between wanting Stabby to be grabbed and evacuated along with the Rebels and make it to the next base, and wanting Stabby to get Vader.

Compromise: shortly after losing the Millennium Falcon, Vader, storming through the Rebel base, is startled to feel a sudden jolt of pain from the artificial sensors on his left leg prosthetic: a sharp sensation on his ankle. Surprised, because he sensed no threat–is the limb malfunctioning?–he looks down, and there is a cleaning droid with a knife taped to it, a little painted-on Rebel lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY written on it.

He stares down at it, completely and utterly taken aback for the first time in over a decade. Fearlessly, it chitters back at him, sounding very triumphant.

He picks it up.

Off in the fractal weirdness of hyperspace, Rebels on several ships are surprised to find an update on Stabby’s kill-update feed, and then thoroughly shocked at the accompanying image: the upward-pointing camera has captured an image of Darth Vader staring down at the droid.

It’s the fastest news ever to travel through the Rebel grapevine, the mix of triumph and loss that is, they are certain, Stabby’s heroic last stand.

Until a day later, when the thing updates again, this time showing an extremely confused Imperial officer. And another, and another, and another, day after day.

They cancel the funeral.

Vader hasn’t done much just for the fun of it in two decades. Watching Imperial officers swear and clutch their ankles as a cleaning drone with a knife taped to it, an Imperial emblem, lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY painted on it, bumps into them and then chatters triumphantly, he’s figured he’s earned.

STABBY FIC!  STABBY STARWARS FIC!  YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY!

But do they send in a rescue unit to reclaim their most honorable POW?

no, the rebels are all too happy to have vader backing one of their most valuable psychological weapons.  stabby’s antics are invaluable for their ability to escalate tension within imperial ranks, and vader’s personal amusement means stabby will get to keep running his miniature interference mission for a long time to come

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS

STABBY LIVESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Grand Moff Tarkin limps into Vader’s quarters. Again. “Lord Vader, enough of this.”

“I have altered the droid; pray I do not alter it any further.”

(If there’s one thing young Anakin Skywalker can appreciate, it’s a hot-rodded maintenance droid, c’mon.)

VADER PUTS A LIGHTSABRE ON STABBY

HE CALLS IT HIS APPRENTICE

MY SON WILL NOT TURN TO THE DARKSIDE BUT MY SON’S STABBY SON WILL

Stabby is eventually recovered and given a medal after the defeat of the Emperor, but his poor little chassis is too badly damaged by then to even hold onto the knife anymore. His internal mechanism is removed and upgraded, and then the Master Droid Tech charged with fixing him casts around for a new casing to put him in.

“Hey!” calls a teenaged Poe Dameron, walking into the Droid repair shop. “I got this decommissioned BB-8 chassis they said to bring in here. It needs a new owner. Captain said I can have it if I can find a new mechanism for it.”

The Master Droid Tech looks at Stabby, then at the BB-8 chassis, then back at Stabby. Stabby turns his unsheathed ocular sensor to Poe and beeps adoringly. (This is a common if relatively new reaction to Poe Dameron, who has just graduated from his Awkward Stage.)

“Yeah, I got one for you right here,” the Tech says, grinning. 

oops I slipped and podfic happened

(big thanks to @platinumvampyr for making the Stabby fanart!)

THIS IS GLORIOUS.

(via primarybufferpanel)