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

skymurdock asked: hello I am here to tell you about Worst Time Traveller Han Solo, possibly post-TFA, grumpily rolling through the Clone Wars and accidentally earning a Reputation for knowing, strangely, exactly where to invest his money and what to do when confronted with Completely Unexpected Events. also, for some reason, he keeps running into baby-Vader a lot. STOP SHOOTING AT ME, yells Anakin, possibly just before they find themselves in another hot mess. sorry, force of habit, says Han.

buckygreyjoy:

letslipthehounds:

theotherguysride:

hamelin-born:

buckygreyjoy:

hamelin-born:

buckygreyjoy:

hamelin-born:

also, at least once, somebody’s like “ok dude you’re a bit TOO accurate with your blaster shots as Anakin keeps complaining, lemme take your midichlorian count” “midi WHAT NOW” “I mean, you’re clearly Force-sensitive” “NO I’M NOT IT’S LUCK.”

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.)

Padmé thinks Anakin’s new padawan is v lovely. Han actually splutters bc holy shit this is Leia’s MOM. holy shit he needs to find a way to get these two together, fuck what the Jedi Order says about attachments, Luke and Leia’s very existence DEPENDS ON HIM. and he will ensure it by locking the senator and baby Vader into a closet.

he does it regularly. strangely, he does it whenever he hears Anakin talking about meeting with the Chancellor. “I have no idea where Anakin went,” he says, and it is a baldfaced LIE.

that first meeting with Palpatine goes - badly. Han has to be carted off before he can kick Palpatine’s shin v hard, which prob tips Palpatine off to the fact that Han Solo might know something he should not.

words-writ-in-starlight asked: *appears to harass you again* Okay but for real, talk to me about the disaster that unfolds as Anakin has to deal with Padme's insistence that no one OWNS him, because he's a PERSON, not a thing, and also how that turns into handmaiden!Anakin, and also whether this eventually turns into Padme/Anakin, and also whether this still ends with Vader or if Anakin loses it completely and they have an untrained Dark Side nine-year-old. I swear I'll get out of your inbox someday, but clearly not today.

suzukiblu:

(I’ll be honest there’s a lot here so I just wrote The Next Thing That Happens, lolll. hopefully it satisfies?) 

Anakin cries for a very long time, surprising Padmé exactly not at all. She guides him a little further away from the funeral stragglers and does her best to disappear him behind her robes in the shadows, suspecting that later he might be ashamed to know the Jedi had seen him do it, even if he’ll never see them again. Perhaps some part of her just wants the excuse to disappear him, but that doesn’t make her wrong either.

It doesn’t hurt to get him to sit down somewhere, either. He looks so exhausted.

So Padmé takes a seat, and she lets Anakin lean in against her side and weep silent tears into her chest. She does not reflect on why a nine year-old might cry hard enough to shake without making a sound. Her fists curl inside her sleeves, though, and she makes no effort to disturb his grief.

Anakin cries and cries and cries, and Padmé lays a hand on his back and watches the embers of Qui-Gon Jinn gutter out into nothing. Even with as long as the pyre has burned already, it takes a very long time.

She is so very tired, and there is so very much to do.

“Your majesty,” Sabé murmurs sometime later; Padmé blinks, slowly, and looks up at her. The gesture feels thicker than it should, padded by exhaustion and borrowed pain and a tinge of grief.

“Sabé,” she says, the name coming out slow too. Sabé and Rabé stand side-by-side in front of her, as close to mirrors as any two humans could be. Padmé wants to say more, but the right words won’t come. Words don’t seem to want to come at all, in all honesty.

“Anakin Skywalker is asleep, your majesty,” Sabé says; Padmé glances down automatically and finds that she speaks the truth, although she had not doubted it anyway. “Shall we take him to the Jedi’s rooms?”

“No. He is not a Jedi,” Padmé says, her fingers flattening against Anakin’s back. “He is one of the Naboo. He will stay with us, until such a time as he chooses not to.”

Sabé looks at Rabé, who looks back at Sabé. Padmé looks at neither of them, because Anakin is small and soft and sleeping against her side, body half-hidden by the heavy length of her sleeve but tear-stains still visible on his face.

“We will prepare a room for him, your majesty,” Sabé says, she and Rabé both inclining their heads in perfect unison.

“If you would, please,” Padmé murmurs, and lifts her arm a little higher to better hide Anakin. He shifts in his sleep and lays heavier against her side. She wishes, again, to disappear him–make him unremarkable, unnoticeable, uninteresting. As if she could take his Force strength and his grief and uncertainty off him as easily as she herself takes off Amidala and vanishes into a handmaiden’s cloak.

Of course, even when she takes Amidala off, she is always still Amidala, and Anakin would be no less Anakin if she could do the same for him.

Still. It’s nice, sometimes, to not always be looked at as though she is.

And even without everything he’s done for her people and planet, Anakin is someone who looks at her the same way no matter what she’s wearing. Padmé meant it when she told him he was valuable, and not just in the inherent way that any sentient is, not just for what he’s done–Anakin is valuable to her, for how he treats her. It’s one of the few truly selfish things Padmé has allowed herself to feel since being elected, and she has no intention of changing it.

Honestly, Anakin might need more people to be selfish about himself. Especially now, with Qui-Gon Jinn dead. Who else does he have, now that he’s left his home?

Her.

He will have her.

The rest of it … the rest of it they’ll just have to see, she supposes.

*opens mouth*

*screams forever*

Anonymous asked: But what if Han had actually been raised in the Temple, ie, Anakin never went postal, so when the council decides it's time for Anaking to take on another padawan they give him Han

suzukiblu:

Then the Council has made a stupid-ass decision, but they’re the ones who’ll be paying for the property damage so I guess they have the right to. >> 

“Uh no I’m leaving the Order, the war’s over, I’m not–” Anakin attempts, except suddenly there is a cranky and untenable nine year-old in his apartment and Anakin realizes that at some point he has been tagged as the Problem Padawan Whisperer, oh no. 

Welp, time to do the logical thing and make sure the Council regrets ever letting them meet each other, then. 

“Hey, kid, what are your feelings on pod-racing?” 

Initiate Solo has NEVER perked up so much at something a master said. 

buckygreyjoy:

liking Anakin Skywalker is strange bc you want to give him a hug but at the same time

you also want to punch him in the face

(Source: skymurdock)

real-smug-caryatid:

cywscross:

3fluffies:

mmelolabelle:

tally-ho-mother-fucker:

indigobluerose:

airyairyquitecontrary:

mmelolabelle:

But what if Anakin isn’t ignoring Kylo Ren?  What if that great pull Kylo feels towards the Light is Anakin Skywalker desperately trying to save his grandson from his own fate, the way his wife and son tried to save him?

what if Anakin is literally constantly standing behind Kylo Ren, sputtering with ghostly frustration, going, “No! No! No! Do not do that! Do NOT do that! oh for fuck’s sake.”

This is almost certainly what is actually happening.

“Ben if you skewer my son-in-law with that lightsaber then SO HELP ME”

“Ben Solo your mother is blaming me for this, get your ass home and apologize now or I swear-”

And Yoda and Obi-wan are watching, shaking their heads. “Now you know how we felt,” Obi-wan says.

Yoda agrees: “A bitch, karma is.”

I love this. So many people can just totally see Anakin trying to strangle Ben from the afterlife.

I love this idea so much

(via skymurdock)

clones-away-deactivated20161015 asked: Padme is gonna fix it right? I mean, we haven't even gotten to the handmaiden-ing thing. Those girls will raise Anakin well, I think. ;)

suzukiblu:

“No one owns you, Ani,” Padmé repeats, not understanding how he can ask that like he’s worried. Except–she does. Of course she does. 

He’s nine. And she’d even thought it herself, too. 

Of course he’s worried about not being owned. 

“You are a friend to Naboo, and you have done a great thing for our people,” she tells him quietly, again barely resisting the urge to grab his hands. She knows she would still grip them much too hard, especially now. “You will never be a slave again, but I promise, you will not be abandoned. Naboo will take care of you as one of our own, if you will have us. We would be honored to take care of you.” 

“I can fix things,” Anakin says, ducking his head in a very young way, his hair hiding his eyes. "And I can fly–you saw, I’m a really good pilot. And I know how to–” 

“Ani,” Padmé interrupts carefully, and allows herself to settle her hands very gently on his shoulders. “I know that you are valuable. You are very valuable to me. You are kind and you are brave, and–”

“I’m not brave!” Anakin blurts, shaking his head. “The Council would train me if I was brave. But they looked, and I’ve got too much fear in me.” 

“That makes you no less valuable. We all have fear in us,” Padmé says, mystified as to how fear could possibly be a hinderance to a peacekeeper. Fear is like pain–a needed warning, and a lesson. “Fear is a thing that you feel, but brave is a thing that you do. And I have already seen you choose to do it time and again.” 

Anakin ducks his head again, looking very small, and Padmé wants so badly to wrap him up in her arms and all her regalia and disappear him someplace where the Jedi and the Gungans and the Supreme Chancellor and just–none of them are, not a one, just herself and Sabé and Rabé and Eirtaé and– 

Someone like Anakin should never look so small. Really, no one should, but Anakin of all people even less so. 

“I can read Huttese and Bocce and I understand Binary, and I can fix anything I can take apart, and I can take apart anything if I’ve got tools. And I know how to build a portable vaporator and I built C-3PO all by myself, and I know how to find food and water in the desert and cook porridge and stew, and, and I–” he stutters, and Padmé just listens helplessly as he keeps obsessively rattling off his skills like he thinks needs to prove something about himself to her. She lets him, because he seems just as helpless to stop himself. She doesn’t know what to say anyway. 

Maybe she has a little more sympathy for Obi-Wan holding back from telling him about the Council just yet, though. Listening to this hurts. 

“That’s very good, Ani,” she manages once he finally runs out of words, or maybe just runs out of breath, and swallows hard at the sight of him. He’s flushed and half-panting and looks like he might cry. She feels like she might cry, and she wants to disappear him more than ever. She wishes Master Qui-Gon had lived. She wishes Obi-Wan could do–something. “I’m sure you’ll do very well on Naboo, if you stay.” 

“Stay where?” Anakin asks, giving her an unnerved look, and Padmé thinks of his fear and uncertainty and poorly-defined concept of “freedom” and has a strange, irrational urge to never trust another sentient near him again. 

“Wherever you want to,” she says anyway, because Anakin is free, even if he still doesn’t fully understand what it means, and she can’t answer that question for him. “We’ll help you find a place you like. Naboo will take care of you no matter where you are.” 

“I’m scared,” Anakin says, shoulders hunching again and expression ashamed. 

“That’s okay,” Padmé says, tightening her grip on his shoulders hopefully not too much. “You can fix things and fly, and you are a very good pilot. And you are so, so brave and kind.” 

“I’m not,” Anakin says, shaking his head. 

“Would an angel lie to you?” Padmé asks with a weak attempt at a smile. Anakin tries to return it, she thinks, but his attempt is even weaker. She does not blame him. “You can feel as afraid as you like. That’s fine. We’ll be here to help you be brave, too. We are Naboo. That is what we do for each other.” 

Anakin stares at her for a long moment, nods helplessly, and then starts to cry. Padmé is certain she grips him too hard when she pulls him into a hug, but he only pushes in harder. 

Anonymous asked: Dark Suzukiblu show me the handmaiden au

suzukiblu:

“Obi-Wan told me about the Council,” Padmé says gently as she stops beside Anakin, and he looks away from the smoldering remains of the pyre to give her a confused, worried look she can just barely see by the light of the dying fire. He looks exhausted, unsurprisingly. He’s just a little boy, and the pyre has been burning for hours and hours. It’s a miracle he’s even awake, much less standing. 

“What about the Council?” he asks. Padmé’s lips thin. Obi-Wan at least could’ve–no, no. She won’t blame a man who’s lost someone so dear to him for being unwilling to immediately break bad news to a child who’s grieving and frightened himself at a damn funeral. 

Well. She might, a little, but she won’t dwell on it, and she won’t hold it against him. 

But Anakin saved her people. No matter her own grief, Padmé could never treat him so poorly just to spare herself. She would’ve thought the same of a Jedi. 

“They’ve told him that they will not see you trained as a Jedi,” she says. It’s not the entire truth–it leaves out Obi-Wan’s own silence, and the way he’d denied her eyes as he held it–but it is true, all the same. 

Kinder, she thinks, where there cannot truly be a “kind”. 

“Oh,” Anakin says. There’s a listless numbness to the response, and his already dull eyes unfocus, drifting to a point just past her shoulder. Something stabs into Padmé’s chest at the sight. 

“You will be coming with me,” she says abruptly, drawing herself up as her hands tighten inside her sleeves. She’d meant to ask it, not declare it–that had been her intention on the way over, leaving Obi-Wan behind–but all she can think when she sees that look on Anakin’s face is how abandoned and unwanted he must feel. He could not possibly think a worse thing than that.

“Yes, Master,” Anakin says quietly, looking at the ground. 

Anonymous asked: nooo he called her master omg

suzukiblu:

“Ani,” Padmé says, her expression stricken, and Anakin flinches. She wants to throw her damn title on the fire. “Ani, no, I didn’t mean–I would never take your freedom from you. And even if I would, no one can do that here. This is the Republic.” 

“I don’t get it,” Anakin says uncertainly, his shoulders hunching. Padmé grits her teeth against the sight. She is wearing Queen Amidala’s face and should not let so much show on it, but she can’t help it when his face looks like that. 

“I swear to you, Anakin Skywalker, no one is going to own you while I breathe,” she tells him fiercely, dropping quickly to her knees in front of him to put them on a level with each other and only resisting the urge to grab his hands because she doubts he’d find any reassurance in the grip. Especially not how tight she’s sure she’d make it, whether she meant to or not. 

“But–you won’t own me either?” Anakin says, looking even more uncertain. “And Master Qui-Gon’s dead and his heir isn’t allowed to inherit me, so–so then I–”

“You’re free, Ani,” Padmé reminds him. She thought he knew what that meant. He does, doesn’t he? 

“But who owns me?” Anakin asks helplessly. 

Anonymous asked: usually in redeemed!vader fanfic obi-wan crops up at some point, but i'm honestly glad he doesn't in your double agent vader series, mostly because it allows more room for vader/leia interaction, but secondarily because i don't think even obi-wan can come up with a reply to vader's (inevitable) scathing, "i'd risk life and limb for you, but i don't have any," and i'm not ready for obi-wan to be that thoroughly roasted

fialleril:

ialreadyreadthatfanfic:

fialleril:

Oh my God.

I started reading this thinking I was gonna give you a long and thoughtful reply, but then I got to the end and I just.

That’s the sickest burn I’ve ever seen. Like damn. I am in awe of you, anon. I never would have thought of that one myself.

tbh i saw this post 12 hours ago and it took me that long to recover from being caught on the fringes of this scathing nuclear blast of a sentence

the only way you can respond to it is to immediately self-vaporise and don’t even show your force ghost ass around for next ten millenia

#by the way this anon was me if anybody was looking (via @jerseydevious)

I am so glad you came forward because you deserve to be recognized for this majesty.

Anonymous asked: Okay, so with this new Vision 'verse, how does Padme fit in later? Is Shmi all about this girl and when they first meet weirdly attached to this baby senator? Is Obi-Wan also weirdly attached, or is he conflicted because this woman caused his padawan to form Attachments? And lastly, we have Anakin. Fully-remembering-bad-timeline Anakin. How does he act around her, knowing that in another timeline he killed her and she had his children?

suzukiblu:

hamelin-born:

suzukiblu:

Shmi is definitely all about her and definitely weirdly attached. Obi-Wan is … weirdly CONCERNED, more than anything else, but also attached because yeah, it’s not Padmé’s fault Anakin went Dark Side, Sidious would’ve just found some other way to get into his head. She didn’t handle everything perfectly, but neither did HE, so it’s not like he’s got a damn leg to stand on. 

Anakin, now. Anakin is gonna be the concerning thing. Because I know you all think this is gonna be awkward hilarity but honestly? Honestly? LOOK, WE’VE COME THIS FAR WITHOUT ANGST, GUYS, AND GODDAMN IF I’M GONNA LET DOWN THE SIDE AND MAKE A FLUFF-ONLY AU WHEN I’VE GOT THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO RUIN LITERALLY EVERYONE’S LIVES. 

“Are you alright?” Padmé asks softly, ducking under the table just enough to clearly see the little boy hiding underneath it. Rabé and Captain Panaka and the others are in the throne room with the Jedi, still, but when she saw the unfamiliar boy peering in from the doorway and then fleeing in alarm the moment he was noticed, she couldn’t just leave him alone. “You’re not from the palace. Are you lost?” 

The boy lets out another cracked little sob, and huddles back against the wall. 

Anakin crying is usually the signal for Shmi and Obi-Wan to descend on whatever the fuck made their (padawan son child brother Anakin) upset with the fury of a thousand impassioned demons. I can’t help but see them bursting into the room, screaming something along the lines of ‘ALL RIGHT JERKFACE PREPARE TO DIE - oh Miss Naberrie, we didn’t see you there, so sorry about the accidental threats is Anakin okay?!’

Padmé is SO CONFUSED and also kind of instinctively wants to stab the people who burst in and scared the boy even worse, except then the boy runs right to them and hides behind Master Skywalker’s robes while Knight Kenobi crouches down to wipe away his tears and fret over him, so–he came with them, then? She didn’t see him earlier, and she isn’t sure how else he could’ve gotten into the palace. But also, why on EARTH would the Jedi bring a boy this young on a MISSION? She thinks she’s insulted, if that’s how seriously the Order is taking the plight of her people.  

And his robes do look a little Jedi-ish, she supposes, now that she can see them better. He has an unusual little braid tucked behind his right ear that Knight Kenobi is tugging on as he whispers to him, and she SWEARS that’s a Jedi thing, isn’t it, doesn’t it mean … something? It’s some kind of identifier or another–she’s sure of THAT, at least. She wishes she’d had more time to read up on Jedi before they’d come, but obviously the situation was not ideal for that. 

She does wish it, though. Maybe she wouldn’t have frightened him so, if she’d been able to. 

OKAY I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS TO COME UP.

Like, Anakin is still in love with Padme, I assume.  His nine-year-old/ancient/forty-something brain is all tangled up with itself and with the Force (slightly more benignly tangled up than last time, so, like…there’s that), but it’s still tangled up around the fact that Padme is the sun and stars.  No, say better, Padme is space and holds all other things within herself and Anakin is in love with her like he’s in love with lungs, okay.  

But.

Once upon a time, in another galaxy, far from now, he kills her.  

And he’s coped all right with that, he’s at least reasonably okay, not least because, um, Shmi and Obi-Wan are probably not here for the stoic Jedi act, certainly not in wee little Baby Space Jesus/Possible Space Antichrist (pretty sure this makes Palpatine the Devil, right, that seems accurate).

So they go to Naboo and Anakin is going to be fine, all right, even if it kills him, he’s going to be fine, and besides they need him to fly the mission on the droid ship, so it’s going to be fine, it’s going to be fine, it’s going to be–

Padme walks into the room, handmaidens in tow.

Anakin is not going to be fine.