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

Anonymous asked: force ghost!Anakin's adventures in being an asshole even while dead. go.

peradii:

• Here is how it does not happen: Anakin Skywalker dies. Fluid mouldering in his lungs, internal organs collapsing into puddles of useless rancid slurry, blood thickening with toxins – but he dies at peace, he dies with his eyes wide open, he dies with his son (his beloved and only boy) crouched over him and he wakes on the other side with softness and light gracing his unscarred brow, his wife at his side, flowers twisted in the starlit curls of her hair.
  
• This is how it does not happen: the ghost of Anakin Skywalker is a thin, flimsy thing, coming to life here and there, always bright blue, always smiling, offering paternal advice to those who would listen.
  
• This is another thing that does not happen: Rey sees a strange man cresting the red dunes and she never sees his face, only the brightness of his eyes, and she is comforted – for she does not know his name, only that he is a kindly force, only that even in the feral iron heart of Jakku she is watched over.
  
• Here is something that does happen: “Listen to me, you bastard, you bastard, you have to listen –” and Kylo Ren does not hear. Rather: he chooses not to hear. He is meditating. Sunmatter dances around him, catching on the flick-curl of his blackened cape. Well. He thinks that it is sunmatter; this is what Snoke has told him it is; and so this is what he believes; and of course it is not sunmatter but the fire-bright venom of Anakin Skywalker’s ghost. He’s not white-blue and delicate. He is burning.
  
• Of course he burns: he’s full of fury and everything I died for you are unmaking and if you want I will tell you how it feels to die drowning in your blood I will tell you and if you lay a hand – a finger – on my children, my darlings, then grandson or not I will show you –
  
• “You tore down every I built!” Padme screamed, when she saw him for the first time. His mouth half-cooked. His body spectral and quivering. And his lovely wife – no longer delicate and pale as a shivering lily but quicksilver and burning, bright as Alderaan falling into dust. Livid spots of colour on her cheeks. “You burned my diplomacy! I loved you but Maker above – I loved the council just as much – my sweet children were torn from my arms – I loved you so much and you destroyed everything I loved –”
  
• My darling –
• I love you –
• You were everything good in my world; the only good thing in my world –
• Skywalker, Skywalker, she had said, that is the – that was the problem –
• So here is the boy Anakin Skywalker, skin full of fire, and his afterlife is anything but easy.
  
• You wouldn’t, his son says to him, slack-jawed with horror, he’s your grandson, he’s –
  
• He’s destroying everything I built. You know I once knew a good woman. And she watched as someone she loved burn all she loved down. And she let him live. And I won’t make her mistake. Do you understand?
  
• You’re not Vader anymore; you don’t have to be so ruthless, Luke says, fretful and old and when did he become so old? Why does he look so much like Kenobi, bent-backed against the assault of the Force?
  
• “This isn’t Vader,” says Anakin Skywalker, “this is all me.” And it is true. He is a soldier. He is the saviour of the known and unknown world. He was torn from his mother’s arms and given a sword to hold instead of a hand. How else could he grow up? How else could he die?
  
• Listen to me listen to me listen to me he snarls in Kylo Ren’s ear and with each day the boy listens less and Anakin tries less. He is dead and he is furious and perhaps this is hell; this irony. He tore down Padme’s love and her lifework and now he must watch a sickly imitation of Vader do the same to his love, to his life.   
  
• Kylo Ren will, one day, lift his lightsabre against his mother – or his uncle. The blow will never fall. Anakin will pour his fury and fire and limitless power into the boy’s skull and burn him from the inside out. One day, the Knight of Ren will attempt to fufill what he thinks is Vader’s legacy. One day, he will learn – too late – that Vader is nothing, nothing, nothing compared to the anger of Anakin Skywalker.  
  

thesallowbeldam asked: If you're still doing prompts? Cry-lo Ren travels to Korriban (for whatever reason) and takes shelter in a Sith tomb. The spirits of the dead take this fantastic opportunity to rip this pathetic immitator a new. I'm talking Com. Plete. Savage. Bollocking. (that means a lecture btw)

My buddy, my pal, it’s safe to assume that I’m ALWAYS taking prompts.  (I might get to the point where I’m busy enough that it might take me a while to fill them, but I’m always taking prompts.)  Now, I’ll admit that I’m not super well versed in Sith history, and the Sith Lord I’m most familiar with is…well, Vader, who failed to die a Sith Lord and didn’t get entombed on Korriban.  I’ve always kind of liked the mental image of Darth Sidious being disappointed in Kylo, though, so yeah.  Also, I don’t know what happened to Palpatine’s ghost and it appears that neither does anyone else, so we’re going to handwave some stuff because Force.

Personal shuttle crashes are, generally speaking, remarkably easy to survive.  Battlestars or cruisers are bulky and built to survive damage in the black, but a planet-side crash turns them into an avalanche of wreckage.  Fighters, small and quick and light, shatter like glass more often than not, and even when they don’t, their mostly-engine structure doesn’t play well with the heat of a crash.  A personal shuttle, though, is small and sturdy and designed to survive an emergency landing, even if the emergency in question is ‘falling out of the sky.’

“Engines do not just kriffing fail,” Kylo Ren hissed as he pulled himself out of his shuttle and trying to adjust to the heavier gravity.  He snarled a string of curses in a handful of languages, giving a sharp kick to the hull and repressing a grimace of pain.  Snoke would be furious if he missed his ordered arrival time, no matter how good his explanation was, and Kylo felt a shudder down his spine.  He refused to admit that it might be fear.  “There isn’t even anything wrong with this piece of bantha shit,” he shouted, thumping it with a fist.  He raked a gloved hand through his hair—the helmet was still inside the shuttle somewhere—and stared around him at the valley he’d wrecked in.

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fever-rey:

ngl I want an eventual Ben/Leia reunion for no other reason than to watch 6'3" brick shithouse Adam Driver crumble like a Nature Valley bar all over tiny Carrie Fisher

(Source: chalcedonywaves, via leupagus)

Anonymous asked: So how do you think Rey accepting Kylo's offer to teach her would go down? It seems less like she would accept immediately and more like she would slowly, year by year, conflict by conflict, edge a little closer to saying yes. Well, provided the thought festered in her mind enough.

notbecauseofvictories:

           I could teach you the ways of the Force—

i. The fifth time, he is on his hands and knees in the mud of Daluuj, rain sluicing over the both of them, turning her into a shaking, drowned thing, hair plastered to the fine line of her skull. He can only imagine what he looks like—panting like a winded bantha and gritting his teeth around the pain, down on his belly in the filth.

There are two lightsabers in her hand (both of them his, one by blood, the other the work of his hands.) He hopes, with a bright bitterness, the cracked crystal chooses that moment to fly apart, and swallow her in light.

It does not. Instead, she steps forward, rests a hand on the wet tangle of his hair, very gently, like he is a wild animal to be quieted. (He wants to twist, bite out the soft skin of her wrist, bury his teeth in the tangled thread of veins and nerves and pull, tear. He wants to eat her whole.)

She says, stop asking me that.

ii. He is always asking from his knees, flat to the earth, down on the ground in the mud and snow and grass (once, still spitting out pond scum, green at the corners of his mouth.) She stands above him ever, a tower, a pillar, a thing unmoved. He could batter himself to death against her, and the rain would wash away the blood and she wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t care.

He thinks about tearing down those ramparts, finding the fear he knew still lingered in her, curled up like a sleeping animal. (It was all he had recognized in her mind; everything else was so bright.)

He never tries to coax her out, to persuade her to open the gates and allow him inside. He’s only ever been the tower, or the lightning that fell on it; anything else would be futility. No one welcomes the lightning in because it spoke a few honeyed words.

Also, it never occurs to him to try.

iii. The twelfth time, it’s Glottal and he is on his back, thinking that he should not have worn his cloak—the humidity is thick enough to choke on, and this fight was particularly vicious. She had wanted to end it quickly, and he had not wanted to let her. He tastes salt and blood, when he licks at his lips.

She crouches down beside him, cocks her head. what would you teach me? she asks.

It’s the first time he’s ever seen her eyes without the refracted red and blue of their lightsabers to fill them. They are dark, which he had not expected. The ways of the Force.

She glances down at his body, which struggles under the great invisible weight that will not let him rise, nor reach for his lightsaber. I already know the ways of the Force. What else?

He bares his teeth. Is this how you used to bargain for scraps on Jakku, scavenger?

Yes. What else?

The lightsaber forms. The ancient ones, developed by Jedi and Sith, not some half-trained moisture farmer.

Again, she glances away, this time at his abandoned lightsaber. I think I can manage. What else?

I’ll give you the coordinates for the Stormtrooper training and conditioning facilities, he says after a moment, because he remembers the way she wept over FN-2187 on Starkiller. The Resistance would never pass up a chance to save innocent children from the clutches of the First Order, he knows. He has to believe—

She is perfectly still, resting on her haunches, studying him with those dark eyes. Two locations now, she says finally, as proof of good faith. Next time we can discuss terms. I was a good scavenger, she says, and there’s something almost like a smile, tugging at the corner of her mouth. I was never swindled or cheated, and I don’t intend to start with you.

You never answered my question, you know, she says as they ready themselves to return to their separate ships, carefully standing two lightsabers’ lengths apart. What could I learn from you, Kylo Ren?

The back of his throat is thick with blood and bile, and he has no answer.

iv. Two major Stormtrooper training and conditioning centers burn. The next time they meet, she is a tower, a pillar—but tired-eyed too, and he imagines he can still smell the acrid smoke in her hair, see the bruises from where a hundred small hands reached up to hers, begging sanctuary, sanctuary.

you need a teacher, he says. The hilt of his lightsaber remains in his hand, unignited.

what for? she laughs hollowly. (She does not even reach for hers.)

For a long moment, they stare at one another, and there is only rushing wind. Finally, he says, you do not have to be this.

(he means: tired and bruised, he means, a tower, he means, a thing unmoved, standing over him always. he means: he does not know what he means. he has never tried to articulate it before, not-having-to-be.)

She recoils as though he has struck her—but he has struck her before, and this is worse, the way her eyes open into wounds he did not mean to inflict. And I suppose you are the one to teach me that lesson? she asks, her voice cold as the Outer Rim. Tell me, Ben—did you have to be this?.

(He eventually gives her coordinates for the other three conditioning facilities, the heat from her lightsaber pushing at the softness of his throat. She generously breaks his nose with her boot, before going.)

v. The twenty-third time, he is lying on the floor of Snoke’s chamber, and most of the blood is not his. (Snoke had bled and bled and bled, and he had kept hacking, screaming through mouthfuls of foul ichor, pushing all his pain and fury and didihavetobethisdidyouhavetomakemethis into every blow, even when Snoke’s lightsaber buried itself in his belly, when the Force reached into him and snapped and crushed, and kept breaking—) 

hey, he says, though it comes out slurred, half-choking. He can’t seem to draw breath. scavenger, hey. scavenger—I know what I can teach you now.

He is dimly aware of her hands, thin pressure on his skin as though to hold in blood no longer there. Somewhere above him, Leia Organa is screaming for a medic, and he feels a dull pang of regret for that, if nothing else. (something of the boy who once was, cannot bear to see mother cry.) The rest is right though, is fitting (he is always on his knees, on his back, down in the filth and looking up at the ramparts) and

scavenger, he says. She is looking down at him with wide, dark eyes. There is blood on her cheek; he imagines it is his. scavenger, I can teach you this—I can show you how to die. watch carefully, I’ll only demonstrate it once.

don’t—she says in an uncertain voice.

no, you need a teacher, I’ve been saying so since the beginning. watch. watch. are you watching? say ‘yes m—’

Anonymous asked: You know what especially pisses me off about people whining about how "Kylo Ren deserves a Redemption Arc because Snoke has been influencing him since he was a baby"? Because you know who ELSE has been surrounded by Evil since he was small? Finn, that's who, and somehow he managed to avoid massacreing people! (And he didn't even have 2 parents and 3 uncles who loved the very air he breathed (and I'm including Luke, Chewie and gay droid-couple 3PO and R2 in that. 4 if you count Lando)) - H.

kellymarietran:

……………. my god

goddessofidiocy:

im fuckign laUGHING imagining how used the first order members must be to kylo ren’s tantrums like if you’re in the same room as him when its happening its no fucking joke but if you’re like three rooms away or on the other side of the base its like everyone’s radioing each other going “yo ren just tore up another computer station” “duuuuude what happened” “someone told him his darth vader action figure is gonna arrive later than expected and he went fucking nuts” “did u see it happening???” “dave was on door duty and told me about it. he said there was screaming and stamping and everything………o shit bill’s gonna tell him there’s no mint choc chip ice cream left do u wanna come over here me n hux are gonna make popcorn and watch the show”

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)