#caterina is still high-key kind of a terrible person

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I hate you so much. As per our conversation, you absolute heathen: Borgias Star Wars AU Cesare as Leia Lucrezia as Luke Micheletto as Han Fucking go. I hate you so much.

This is the first of two Star Wars AUs, this one is mostly because I profoundly wanted an AU where Cesare was literally a prince of an entire planet and also I wanted Lucrezia to have a lightsaber.  I am currently working on another one for @wildehacked in which everyone is in the much more obvious position of being Sith.

Cesare doesn’t expect a rescue, as he sits inhis cell, back to the wall and one leg stretched out in front of him with theother bent close to his body.  Theceremonial robes of Alderaan are heavy, uncomfortable at the best of times andthese…these are not the best of times. Deep red cloth rubs against his skin, raw and tender from a few roundswith a torture droid, and he ignores it. He told them nothing—he has no profound alliance to the Rebellion, butthe image of the great and terrible Darth Sixtus wading through the endlessdunes of Dantooine had amused him, and after their young general turned theirweapon on Alderaan…

Well. Cesare is (was) hardly beloved of his people, raised by the stern andaustere Viceroy of Alderaan, della Rovere, but that was his planet, and afterit was gone, he denied the Empire information out of sheer spite.  It had been worth it, to see the toweringdark figure of Sixtus storm out of the room in a rage.

Still, though.  His planet is gone, and they didn’t lovetheir distant prince, and the Rebellion trusts him only on the weight of hisadopted guardian, who was well known in the right circles for his totallyruthless devotion to the cause.  Cesaresent away the information he had been told to care for with the droid, a PA-L0unit more willful than was good for it. It might make it to the Sforza woman della Rovere had intended it for,or it might not—either way, it is out of his hands.  The Rebellion won’t expend the manpower tosend a rescue mission, and the Empire has a new planet-killer to play with.  He’s confident he won’t live long enough tofind out whether PA-L0 made it or not.

It’s something of a surprise, then, whenalarms go off and his cell door opens to admit the shortest Stormtrooper he’sever seen.  

Cesare silently arches an eyebrow.  Princes grow up in the public eye, especiallyon bustling Core worlds like Alderaan, and Cesare prides himself on the abilityto show no response to any disaster. He’d had to cultivate it, after the second time he was caught withsomeone who, perhaps, should have been off-limits.

“Are you lost?” he asks dryly, and theStormtrooper reaches up to wrestle off their helmet, and Cesare’s mouth snapsshut in surprise.

It’s not the hard-faced man he expected.  Instead it’s a woman, a girl, really, with ayouthful face and hair like sunlight pinned up in a knot, and she smiles athim, perfect tiny teeth a string of matched pearls behind her pink lips.  She looks about his own age, maybeyounger.  There’s a sharp tug, like acord anchored somewhere in Cesare’s spine is pulling him toward her, and he hasthe sudden inexplicable urge to brush her hair back, the wayward coils of spungold escaping around her face.

“I’m Lucrezia Borgia,” she says, dimpling athim, and he tries to assemble words to reply. “I found your Paolo unit.  I’mhere to rescue you.”

Cesare has made worse snap decisions in hislife than take a rescue wearing the face of an angel, he concludes in under asecond.  They run.

They find another false Stormtrooper, andthis one is far more like what Cesare expected, a man with eyes like stone anda dispassionate expression under the smudged blood on his cheek.  Lucrezia calls him Micheletto, and Cesaresnatches a blaster off a dead Stormtrooper to toss at him.

“My lord,” Micheletto says with a slightincline of his head.

“This is Cesare della Rovere,” Lucrezia says,as if Micheletto doesn’t know who he is. “He gives your orders now.  Takeus back to the Condottiere, and we’llfind Caterina on the way.”

They do find Caterina.  Just in time to watch Sixtus cut herdown.  

“I knew her brother,” Lucrezia says coolly asthey crowd into the cockpit of Micheletto’s ship, the Condottiere.  It’s a bit of awreck, but he pilots it like a master, as skillfully as he had cut down anyStormtrooper in their path.  “He was anunpleasant man, to say the least.”  Shefingers the silver hilt at her hip—a lightsaber, she tells Cesare quietly, apparentlyonce the possession of her father.  “You’llforgive me if I don’t shed any tears over her corpse.”

“Of course,” Cesare says, and she smiles athim, and he takes it like a blaster bolt to the heart.

Some other highlights…

Lucrezia brings down the Death Star, her eyesclosed and her X-Wing guided by something at the center of her chest, somethingcold and bright as a Tatooine moon.  Whenshe lands, laughing and giddy with triumph, Cesare snatches her up around thewaist and spins her around, and he smiles at her, and she thinks idly aboutkissing it off his lips.  Michelettosmiles his faint smile and kisses her cheek like she’s a lady of status.  Lucrezia gets an award.  Micheletto, a killer and a criminal and abloody hand for hire, insists that he should not, and Cesare does not arguewith him.

Cesare finds the leader of the Rebellion, anex-Senator named Machiavelli, very much to his liking.  It is common knowledge that Machiavelli hassomething of an affection for the ex-Prince of Alderaan (it’s something Cesareasks himself often—is he still a prince at all, if he has no planet?), andCesare is not above leveraging this to his purposes.

Lucrezia kisses Cesare on Hoth, after shealmost dies in the cold, her skin still flushed from the incredibly hot showershe just took, and he clutches her to him like she’s as ethereal assunlight.  Her golden hair hangs aroundthem like a curtain, in her quarters, and the red lines her nails trace over hisshoulders and chest sting bright and clean, and Cesare thinks that he has neverloved someone like he loves this woman.

Cesare kisses Micheletto in an asteroidfield, during an argument, and again on Cloud City, where an old acquaintanceturns them over to Sixtus, and it’s harsh and bloodied and hungry.  They fuck in dark corners, still half-dressedand breathless, and Micheletto swears allegiance like he’s praying to a god,like Cesare is a force of nature, like Cesare is the Force.  Cesare leaves bruises shaped likefinger-lengths and the curve of his lips, and they’re still there whenMicheletto is frozen in carbonite by Darth Sixtus.

Lucrezia spends all of thirty secondstraining with a withered old Jedi named Orsini before she rushes away again,not even pausing at his warnings as she takes flight for Cloud City.  When she arrives, there are terriblerevelations about her family—Darth Sixtus, once Rodrigo Borgia, a power-hungrygeneral from the Clone Wars.  On the Condottiere, she cries into Cesare’sshoulder, her severed hand aching, and he kisses her tears away, her sunlight curls spilling over themboth.

Cesare saves Micheletto.  He does not care to be asked why he takessuch a risk for a man he professes to be a simple instrument.

Lucrezia, with a new silver hand like a piece of art, discovers that there is anotherBorgia—there was a third, an elder brother gone missing as a small child,before the Death Star was destroyed, but the young general died with his weaponand now there is only one.  Her twinbrother, Cesare Borgia, Prince of ex-Alderaan.

Cesare does not care.

#the borgias #cesare borgia #lucrezia borgia #micheletto #cesare x lucrezia #cesare x micheletto #let's be real this is one whole big messed up poly arrangement #in which two of the three people were already fucking when they discovered they were twins #asked and answered #my dear laurens #right so here's some details that didn't make it into the thing #lucrezia is raised by her big-sister-figure giulia farnese who was the handmaiden of senator vanozza #juan was the general and by default had to be older than cesare and lucrezia who by default are twins #giovanni doesn't exist #cesare got pawned off on della rovere because caterina was feeling vengeful #caterina is still high-key kind of a terrible person #micheletto is not a lovable rogue he is still very much an assassin and a murderer and basically cesare could tell him to cut his own throat #and he'd do it #so like micheletto is still exactly canon #idk probably cesare pulls a cannon stunt and steals the death star plans and he and machiavelli convince some people they're building one #a planet killer of their very own #and also rodrigo is just kind of a power hungry motherfucker like he's not a tragedy here #vanozza is a tragedy vanozza has been conned and then murdered but rodrigo pretty much got what he wanted #except he also wanted his kids with him and to have all his limbs #let this be a lesson to you everyone if you go dark side you get everything you want except for your limbs #honestly everyone is still kind of a terrible person except for lucrezia who...well #lucrezia is still fucking her brother and has definitely killed a few people for revenge but the war's a lot shorter with them in charge #so idk where she falls on the terribleness scale #moran writes stuff