#maulusque's writing

[allclonesneedkisses]

I posted 545 times in 2022

That's 545 more posts than 2021!

28 posts created (5%)

517 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@chopper-base

@kaminocasey

@maulusque

@kote-wan

@twistedstitcher27

I tagged 216 of my posts in 2022

#star wars - 91 posts

#the clone wars - 37 posts

#my writing - 27 posts

#acnk writes - 23 posts

#acnk - 23 posts

#captain rex - 19 posts

#the bad batch - 17 posts

#the mandalorian - 16 posts

#my writings - 16 posts

#clone fic - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 84 characters

#*looking directly at tad* i guess shes always just been bad at dodging things huh :)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Summary: Your bad day takes a turn for the better when you wander into the Arcane Public Library.

Pairing: Viktor x f!Reader

Word Count: 642 Rating: PG, (this is like a teaser for the stories to come)

Tags: fluff, slice of life, library au, summer library vibes, language

Masterlist

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54 notes - Posted July 28, 2022

#4

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73 notes - Posted June 18, 2022

#3

Summary: The gang's spending the evening at the saloon, but you and a certain cowboy can't seem to take your eyes off each other

Pairing: Arthur x f!Reader

Word Count: 2.3K Rating: T+

Tags: mutual pining, flirting, drinking, unwanted advances (just words and light touches), smoking, kissing, banter

Masterlist

@writer-wednesday

“Care for another round Arthur?” You had to bite your lip to keep from laughing at the downright venomous look he shot you across the worn camp table. 

“Nah, I know when I’m beat. S’not as much fun when you know you're being cheated.” You gave a feigned gasp of indignation as you laid your well-worn playing cards flat on the table.

“Mr. Morgan, I’m appalled that you’d even suggest that I cheat.” Arthur tried to hide his own smile with a cigarette that he was placing between his teeth but it was a lost cause. He patted his pockets looking for his matches and gave a huff of annoyance when his search came up empty. He readjusted his hat and gestured at you with his unlit cigarette between his fingers.

“Don’t you try and sweet talk me, I know your games and I ain’t playing them.” You arched a brow at that, your smile edging more towards a smirk.

“I assure you, the only game I’m playing is cards, Mr. Morgan.” You dipped your hand into your bodice, pulling out a thin gold lighter from between your breasts. 

You flicked it to life and leaned forwards over the worn table to light his cigarette, your eyes locked. You had to admit that out of all the men in camp Arthur’s sheer self-control was the hardest to break. Not once did his blue eyes stray from yours, even though you knew he had a perfect view down your bodice.

“Are you sure I can't tempt you?” You rested your elbows on the table, your chin balancing in your palms as your tongue darted out to wet your lips. It was only then that his resolve slipped. It was just a fraction of a second but it made your pulse quicken when his eyes darted down to your lips. The curl of smoke dripping from between his teeth did nothing to hide the glance from you. But as soon as it happened it was over and Arthur leaned back in his chair, his eyes focusing behind you as if that had been his intention all along.

…

“Now what about this one, the one with the lady?” You pressed yourself tight against your mark, making sure your breasts were on full display to both him and his companion across the table as you delicately tapped the card in question.

The saloon was packed with customers just off the train and itching for a drink along with those too drunk to stop buying. The burly man you were clinging to was your third victim of the evening. He was too drunk and too enamored by your display of interest that he’d never noticed when you stole his billfold or lifted his pocket watch. In all honesty, he probably wouldn't even notice if you stole his spurs right off his boots, but that was a risk for another day.

He chortled, his laugh loud but not unpleasant as he settled a large warm hand on your lower back to pull you closer. “Alright sweetheart that there’s the queen…”  You tuned out his rambling explanation as his companion stood to grab a couple more beers for the two of them. That was when you saw Arthur watching you from where he leaned against the bar. He had his dark coat flipped back over his hip exposing his low-slung gun belt and cracked leather holsters. He had an empty glass in his hand, one heavy finger hooked over the rim as if he planned to throw it rather than drink from it. He seemed deep in thought, his gaze not altogether focused while still aimed in your direction, but after a moment he seemed to feel your gaze because his eyes locked onto yours. Without missing a beat he raised his empty glass to you as if he were any other man caught staring. The action was slightly spoiled though when Arthur raised his glass to his lips only to find it empty. You smiled and looked away before he could see, not wanting to irk him with your amusement.

As the evening wore on you switched between men, feigning interest in whatever had brought them into town. Most of the gang had either drunk themselves into blissful unawareness or were still working the crowd in one way or another. Arthur was playing poker in the corner with a group of well-dressed horse dealers while you watched him from the corner of your eye. You were done for the night, your pockets and hidden belt pouch were overly full and heavy with your spoils. You had a half-empty glass of cider in your hand, one you’d been nursing for the last half hour while sneaking looks at a certain poker player. 

From his corner seat, Arthur could see the entire saloon, could see Sean making a fool of himself with a couple of ladies on his arms, and Hosea smoking a cigar by the window. But his eyes always came back to you, even as he played the horse dealers for all they were worth. He hadn't missed your surreptitious glances, though he was oblivious to the fact that they were directed at him and not his well-dressed companions. The men were starting to get bored of the game, tired of losing more money than they were winning. A couple of them folded and sauntered over to the bar, settling themselves on either side of you as they called for the bartender.

Arthur lost that round and the next one much to the delight of his companions as his frown deepened and his eyebrows pulled together like thunderclouds before a storm. You were no longer glancing over towards his smoky little corner while the two men chatted around you. Their hands were animated as they drank and inched ever closer to inappropriate territory. Arthur forced himself to look away, his renewed focus winning him back all he’d lost within a couple of rounds. 

He tapped his winning hand on the table and laid it flat with a general nod towards the other players before gathering up his winnings. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure.” His companions grumbled goodnaturedly, too drunk to really mind their losses. Only once he had everything tucked away did Arthur look back towards you. He stood a little more abruptly than he’d intended, not that the scrape of his chair legs could have been heard over the din of the saloon.

…

As soon as the men had settled on either side of you you’d resigned yourself to listening to their boring conversation as you finished your drink. But your patience was wearing thin and both men had boxed you in, one with a foot wedged behind your stool and the other with a hand on your back that was inching downwards. You were used to these kinds of advances, hell you enjoyed them when you were in the mood but you were done for the evening and the men weren't getting the hint. After a glance towards the bartender, he’d offered to close out their tabs to get them to leave but he’d been waved away by the clean-shaven Mr. Werth to your left, who had then let his hand fall to your thigh. 

It was late, and you were tired of playing the interested woman. So with a smile you shifted slightly and looked down at the hand on your thigh as if you’d just noticed it was there.

“Mr. Werth, that is a fine signet ring you have there, mind if I have a closer look?” Lightly you tugged at his fingers as if to bring his hand up to the bar but he ignored your ploy and instead leaned closer. You narrowed your eyes at him, your smile faltering just a hair as the stench of his sour breath met your nose.

His fevered eyes wandered, unfocused but lecherous as he tried to give you a crooked smile that fell flat. “Wouldn't you rather feel it?” The older man to your right let out a loud guffaw as if Werth had told a rather witty joke. You tilted your chin up slightly, your eyebrow rising into a perfect arch like a wave poised above the rocks on the shore.

You turned your working smile back on in full force, even as your words bit into him like spurs. “Only without you attached to it.” At that, the hand of the other man left your spine as he brought his beer to his lips with a cackle. Werth seemed stunned at your answer and you used his lack of attention to pull away from him now that you had an opening. Unfortunately, the shifting of your skirts seemed to rouse him and his hand clamped down on your thigh as his expression darkened. 

“Let it go Werth, there are plenty more women who’ll listen to your ramblings.” 

Werth frowned at his companion. “Shut it, Earl, she’s just playing hard to get.” This time you glared at him, your smile fading as a venomous retort filled your mouth, but you didn't get the chance to spit it at him because Arthur was there, his foot catching on Werth’s stool as he stumbled, yanking the man to the side and forcing him to release you in favor of catching himself on the bar.

“My mistake,” Arthur said, his hands held up to placate any anger. “can't seem to get my feet to go where I want them anymore.” Arthur leaned heavily on the bar, playing the sloppy drunk even as he showily tipped his hat at you with the tiniest of winks.

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77 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

#2

Summary: This is the story of how it all began between the baker and you.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x GN!Reader

Word Count: 1.1K Rating: T

Tags: fluff, baker Bucky, shy Bucky, shy reader, gender neutral reader, guest starring Steve, comfort, falling in love, love at first sight, angst only because everyone is a little anxious, soft vibes

Masterlist

This is the story of how it all began between the baker and you.

…

The second you stepped into the bakery at five A.M running on three hours of sleep you were a goner. How was anyone supposed to resist a hot man with his sleeves rolled all the way up his muscled forearms elbow deep in a mound of dough? You stood rooted to the spot, just inside the front door long after the last chime of the entry bell had faded, just staring at the most perfect man you’d ever seen. From his short dark hair to his soft parted lips he was an absolute knockout, and that was before you even got to his muscles.

Every time he kneaded the dough his forearms would flex, showing off absolutely mouthwatering muscles and tendons, not to mention the breathtaking tattoo that covered his entire left arm. With how exhausted you were you had no defense against his perfect existence and the added warm light and heavenly smell of baking bread was making the whole experience feel like a scene from a romance novel. You knew you were gawking at him as he worked the dough back and forth on the prep table but you couldn't look away. Your only saving grace was the fact that he hadn't seemed to notice your arrival, his head bowed and his thick eyebrows knit in concentration.

There was a jingle behind you and you almost jumped out of your skin as you were forcibly ripped from your heart eyed trance. Quickly you stepped aside, your blood pounding from embarrassment and surprise as you tried to kickstart your frazzled brain into functioning again. An absolute hunk of a man who was all broad shoulders and blue eyes stepped into the bakery and grinned at you.

“Hi! Sorry we’re not actually open yet but if you give me a moment I’ll be right with you.” Your brain was too confused and overwhelmed to come up with a normal answer so you just gave him a smile and a nod even as he turned away and hurried behind the front counter. You stood awkwardly by the door, your hands gripping your purse strap like it was the only thing keeping you from bolting. The new man jabbed the dark haired beauty in the ribs as he passed, making him jump and scowl at him as he removed a previously hidden earbud. And although their conversation wasn't meant for you, you could clearly hear what was said.

“I swear Bucky, one day you’re going to leave the front door unlocked and someone’s going to rob us blind.”

…

From then on every time you came in your eyes were drawn to Bucky. He always had his head bowed as his perfect hands mixed and poured and cut whatever he was making that day. His flour dusted apron was the only messy part of him as he poured over his delicious creations.

He never said anything to you, although sometimes he’d catch you watching him and he’d give you a shy smile which you always returned before the both of you looked away. You didn't mind his lack of interaction, you weren't sure you’d be able to actually say anything to him with how tongue tied he made you. Time after time you came back, always ordering whatever was freshest knowing that no matter what it was it would be perfect because he made it. And every time you met each other's eyes your heart swelled and you promised yourself that one day you’d talk to him.

This ritual of stolen glances and blushing smiles continued until one faithful day Steve was absent from the front counter. You’d stepped inside, inhaling the aroma of whatever sweet treat was currently baking before you glanced up. Instead of being in his usual place at the prep table Bucky stood behind the cash register, his flour dusted apron a little more smeared than usual and his cheeks a little redder. Maybe it was the lack of Steve or any other customers, or maybe it was the general air of hopefulness between the two of you but for the first time since you started coming there you met his eyes and held them as you stepped forwards. 

“Hi.” Your voice was small as you greeted him, a little more breathy than you’d like. 

But his was equally as quiet, betraying just how nervous he was to talk to you too. “Hi. What can I get for you?” 

Luckily your order was always the same so even though your heart was beating at stroke level you were able to get it out without stumbling over your words.

“One of whatever’s freshest please.”

Bucky's smile widened as he turned and scooped a still hot cinnamon roll off the cooling rack and deposited it in a perfect white paper bag which he placed on the counter. When your eyes met again you couldn't help but flush even warmer and you let your gaze fall as a pretense for digging for your wallet. 

There was a crinkle in front of you as Bucky pushed the paper bag closer. “Uh, It's free today.” 

You paused and looked up in surprise only to find him fiddling with the corner of your bag. “What?” 

He seemed to take a deep breath as if steeling himself before he met your eyes once more. “It’s your thirteenth order. Like a bakers dozen, so the thirteenth is free. Not that I’ve been counting how many things you buy, well I have but not in a weird way. Wait no, that came out wrong. What I mean is you’re a customer and you come a lot and-” As he’d rambled you’d just stared at him open-mouthed as he got redder and redder before he forced himself to stop by biting his tongue, his eyes falling to the counter in embarrassment.

All your shyness and quiet longing was replaced by a spark of confidence that made you feel like a live wire. You gripped the edge of the counter as inspiration struck you and before you could chicken out you went for it. 

“What if I wanted to change my order?” You couldn’t keep the hopeful grin off your face even as you licked your lips nervously.

Bucky's eyes were downcast, his cheeks still flaming with embarrassment from his earlier outburst. “Sure, no problem.” 

You let out a little huff of air and let yourself hope as you watched his face. “Can I get your number instead?”

His hands were wrapped around the bag to pull it away but he released it in surprise as he looked up. His eyes found yours and he must have seen the nervous hope there because his face broke out in an excited smile and he nodded, all of his shyness replaced by joy.

…

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130 notes - Posted August 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

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528 notes - Posted June 13, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[corriegardenia]

I posted 3,984 times in 2022

That's 3,984 more posts than 2021!

7 posts created (0%)

3,977 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@obi-wobi-kenobi

@phoenixyfriend

@maulusque

@howdidthisevenhappenanyway

@padawansuggest

I tagged 206 of my posts in 2022

#commander fox - 30 posts

#star wars - 23 posts

#the clone wars - 16 posts

#cc 1010 - 10 posts

#coruscant guard - 10 posts

#op does content - 8 posts

#oc ??? - 8 posts

#clone commander fox - 7 posts

#kenobi spoilers - 7 posts

#concussion posting - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#(medic assigned to krell. got transferred to the guard but v v quiet about her everything. shes v... captain holt w/ malicious compliance)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Hey. Reply to this post with your clone OC if I have permission to use them as once off characters in an O66 fic, and also to feed me your OCs, because I genuinely love talking OCs

7 notes - Posted December 5, 2022

#4

Amatakka - How to Write in the Tattooine Slave Language

For anyone not running in these particular fanon circles, Amatakka is the fake language of the star wars slave people, Amavikka, like Anakins family at birth. It was originally made by @fialleril, adapted by a whole lot of fan authors like @blue-sunshine-mauve-morning, and grew a life of its own from there.

It has a community dictionary with several hundred words, (https://at.tumblr.com/booklindworm/amatakka-dictionary/0dvnmuhlusq3) and a very basic phoneme dictionary (https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=AMAT ), but absolutely no script, other than the vague idea that it'd be written in the Tusken script... which also does not exist. This is my attempt.

(The conlang fundamentally can't be separated from the slave experience, if anyone is disquieted and wants to step off. The way canonical star wars treats slavery is... weird at best; this is supposed to be a language of empowerment. I'll link some folktales at the end!)

In spite of being a communal conlang for an oral language, and my linguistics training being... sporadic, and mostly based on what helped me pick up my current four languages, and two pick-and-drop-and-pick-again languages.

I'd start with something like the inuktitut script (https://youtu.be/xW4hI_METac ). Amatakka is very polysynethic, and the idea of basing my script cataloguing an extant language off of another script cataloguing an extent language tickles me. But a lot of sounds have a specific cultural meaning that is used almost every single time that sound is used in the entire conlang. (Which is desperately impressive, considering it was primarily created by one author, extended by another, and then absorbed into damn near every fan work concerning Tattooine, but I digress.)

For that, i'd use something like Japanese's mixture of three writing systems: kanji, complex and symbolic pictograms; katakana, phonetic representations of loan words; hiragana, phonetic representations of original Japanese words.

In my Amatakka script, I'd put certain heavily symbolic sounds, like ur (wrong) ama (mother, heavily connected with their main goddess) and ani (rain/freedom) into 'kanji', which allows them to be represented as a concept even if the pronunciation changes a little (ani as raindrop and an- as rain, anumakkar as rainstorm, all symbolic of freedom)

Then, I'd put the remaining sounds in an inuktitut based system of syllables, based on the conlang dictionary of phonemes and an analysis of the Google sheet collection of amatakka words.

A system like this seems to fit the language we have well, which would make sense as - both in Canon and in fandom - the words came first, then the writing down of them. Multiple 'kanji' with one component being the same could represent different words, like how levrukka and er-amma are both names for ar-amu, and 雨、雪、電 (rain, snow, electricity) all contain the same radical. (There are probably better examples from folk more fluent in Japanese than me).

Example of this in practise, Depurekta, a slave who enslaves others. This is made of dep, chain, plus ur being something like twisted / wrong-but-less-morally-judgemental, which together is the word for slave owner, plus ekta, healer, one who heals the chains that bind.

Lets look at just that ur in the middle. It appears in japur, a scraggly and twisted native tree where ja- is being native to tattoine; also in kotovur, skin hunger, where ko- is mere skin contact; kusur, sarlacc, where kus- is nourishment; murek, a purple that also symbolises wealth and otherness, where me- is you, yourself; nuro, judge, where no- is son <twisted son who cooperates with slavers judgements>; tovur, starvation, where though we don't have a translation for to- specifically we have torazu and toris, both forms of edible seed; urs-gillig, a tusken relic cave, where I imagine gillig is a regular cave.

This said, when placed inside larger words, ur loses its symbolic meaning, eg shursu, root or foundation, where shulku is suitability; suru, puddle, where sudu is spinning/whirling air movement; kurra, strengthening food where ku- itself is nourishment; kurio, with the same root, appears more in line with ur as a symbolic sound.

(The third person pronoun tur has interesting connotations in this model, but I digress.)

So! Depurekta would probably be fully kanji, with ur being one radical in the kanji for depur, since that's such a key word for the amavikka people.

Kotovur, skin hunger, would have that ur kanji after an inuktitut style descriptive of its first two syllables, with ko- possibly getting its own kanji, as it is also used in words relating to skin contact with less desperate connotations.

Murek, purple associated with otherness, would probably be entirely inuktitut with the kanji in the middle.

Perhaps the system would, in the interest of becoming compact, turn into a hybrid model, with the symbolic pictogram in the middle and small lines off of it representing the inuktitut syllables, so that the whole word could be compressed small and hidden. Amatakka is an oral language, so any amount of writing they do have is likely to be hidden and special, like japor snippets or carvings worn close to the heart.

I am NOT planning on fleshing out the entire writing system, because that would take either hours of manual labour or an understanding of how to make a database spit out the symbolic sounds in words, both of which are not possible for me right now. I MAY write some of my favourite words, after my exams. I only have experience with the celtic and romance language families, barring a spattering of Greek, my Japanese, and English as my native tongue. I'd love to see someone else try and puzzle out how to write in amatakka; this is my attempt.

And, for those who are curious, the folk tales promised - I absolutely recommend a deep dive!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4678835

https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510809

https://archiveofourown.org/works/206521

(This one is a good sample of amavikka culture, but is part of a larger fic. Its a good larger fic!) > https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538078?view_full_work=true https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087303/chapters/45669586

12 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

#3

Ponds, Fox, and the no good very bad epistolary

Tw: corrie guard abuse, references to suicide, references to upsetting canonical events

Dear Fox,

Stop ignoring my comms. Do you know how hard it was to get physical letters from this far out in deep space? The courier laughed!

Your (irritated) brother,

Dear Ponds,

Ponds.

...

You misspelled irritating.

Regards,

CC-1010 "Fox",

Marshall Commander,

Dear Foxiest fucker this side of wild space,

Coruscant Guard Division.

...

You're alive! That's good. I wasn't sure, you see, because you've been ignoring my kriffing comms since we shipped out. I worry about you, yknow? Tell me about coruscant, and maybe I'll tell you about my jedi ;)

With love,

Dear Ponds,

Ponds.

...

Coruscant is big.

Regards,

CC-1010 "Fox",

Marshall Commander,

Dearly detested batchmate o mine,

Coruscant Guard Division.

...

That's fair. I forgot to specify. What's the best part of the Coruscant posting? What's the worst? Cmon, vod. I miss you.

Beginning to get worried,

Dear Ponds,

See the full post

29 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

#2

What if, concept, Fives didn't go to a bar and then to his doom? For day one of whumptober, imagine: he just straight up captures commander fox, ties him to a chair in his own office, and monologues at him.

31 notes - Posted October 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

what your favourite clone (commander) says about you

Rex: you are an older sibling.

Cody: you are a bottom, (affectionate). Major competency kink.

Bly: you are also a bottom, (derogatory). 

Fox: you have mental health issues and probably a caffeine addiction

Wolffe: you have daddy issues and probably a hug addiction

Monnk/Ponds/Bacara: you are an introvert who finds the idea of actually having content for your faves overwhelming

125 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #What a good first year for this blog! #Heres to many more <3 #BIG loves to my main blogs

[maulusque]

ok so Fox and the Guard never had a Jedi assigned to them. They also didn’t have any other nat-born commander, apart from the chancellor himself. So they never had anyone to advocate for them, or serve as liaison to the senate, or even help them deal with all the governmental organizations they had to coordinate with, most of whom didn’t want to deal with clones directly. Fox asked the Jedi Council if they could have a Jedi, preferably a council member (more respect and influence) to represent them and help them out. He was told no, all the council members are busy leading huge chunks of the army, we don’t have the time. So, in the 15 minutes between Anakin joining the Jedi Council (but not being granted the rank of master) and everything subsequently going to shit, Fox swoops in and bullies Anakin into agreeing to be the official Jedi Responsible for the Coruscant Guard. After all, Anakin only has like, one legion under his command. He’s totally got the extra time. Anakin immediately takes his new job Super Seriously (also he wants to spend more time on coruscant now that Padme’s pregnant). He tells Appo “you and Rex are in charge now call me if you need anything bye”. He turns down palpatine’s invitation to the opera, saying “sorry super busy with my new job, gotta practice my speech” and while palpatine is ruminating about how he can subtly hint to anakin that he’s totally a Sith, anakin marches into the senate and starts yelling at people. He makes rounds of the Senate building and personally intimidates over four thousand senators into voting for longer caff breaks for the Guard. 

Palpatine never has another productive conversation with Anakin; every single talk they have is derailed into earnest explanations of the trials and tribulations of the Coruscant Guard. Meanwhile, Grievous is killed, and Palpatine doesn’t have all his pieces in place yet. He grinds his teeth and keeps agreeing with Anakin’s righteous fury about the treatment of the clones, hinting “maybe you should ~do something drastic~ about it” (hoping to turn Anakin against the Jedi council) and Anakin’s like “you’re absolutely right!” and goes and makes the senate vote Palpatine right out of office. Palpatine is forcibly retired to Naboo, meanwhile Anakin bullies everyone into electing Fox as chancellor. Anakin and Padme retreat to Naboo for the birth of their children, and Palpatine spends the rest of his sad little life pretending to be a doting godfather to Anakin’s two little terror-beasts while desperately trying to scrape together the funds/influence for another galactic takeover.  

#maulusque's writing #maulusque's stuff

[clonecest-bin-account]

Can I request some established relationship Fives and Echo having sex in the cockpit on the way to (or coming back from) an ARC mission away from the rest of the 501st? Playful and affectionate if possible 🙏 Bless you for writing these.

(You got it anon!)

(Fic under the cut)

A good thing about the ship he they’ve been granted for this mission is that it has a function to turn on the automatic pilot, so that neither Echo nor Fives need to worry about where they’re flying to.

They suppose that since ships of this kind are usually meant for just one person, they had to implement a way to make so that it could still be going even when the pilot needs some rest, though that’s not the reason why they’re using it right now, not at all.

Echo’s view is completely obscured by Fives’ massive frame, as he’s sitting on his lap, but he can’t say he doesn’t like it; besides, he can see a bit beyond him, and isn’t it incredible, to have Fives like this, with the stars surrounding them?

His behavior doesn’t go unnoticed, and Fives can’t help but to smirk at the way Echo’s looking at him. “Like what you see?”

In response, Echo draws him closer by the hair for a heated kiss. “Very.”

He doesn’t get him naked despite how much he wants to, but only because who knows, something might happen and they need to be prepared for that. Maybe another time, he will.

He still manages to lower his blacks enough to uncover, well, let’s say the “important parts”. There’s nothing he loves more than the sound Fives is making as he jerks him off, getting him all nice and relaxed; Fives immediately goes slack against him - it has been a while.

“Mmmmh, Echo…” he moans. “Please, I want you.”

“You have me already,” Echo, the smartass, replies with a small smile on his face.

“C’mon…” Fives grumbles. “Please, fuck me…”

“Don’t have lube,” Echo replies. Sure, he’d love to fuck Fives so much that he wouldn’t be able to stand straight, but he doesn’t want to break him. “When we get back,” he adds, then, because as much as they can’t do it now, it doesn’t mean that the prospective has been barred from them forever.

At his words, Fives groans. “Yes. Later is fine.”

They go back to kissing, while Echo still continues playing with Fives’ cock.

He does feel a bit bad about not being able to go along with Fives’ request, so he still brings a hand behind him, first cupping his ass, squeezing it when Fives begins to grind against him, then stretching a finger between his cheeks, circling his rim.

Fives tenses for a moment, his body twitching, and when Echo lightly prods inside - very lightly since he doesn’t want to make it burn - he moans. “F-Fuck… Echo…”

Echo loves hearing his voice when he gets like this, so whiny and desperate for him to take care of him - and he will take care of him, oh yes.

“Wanna come? Make my armor all dirty?” he asks, speeding up his movements without even waiting for Fives to actually reply. As if he doesn’t know the answer already; he doesn’t need to be a Jedi to see into Fives’ mind.

“Yeah!” Fives exclaims. “Echo… Please…”

Echo chuckles, leaning to leave a trail of small kisses on Fives’ neck. “Your wish is my command.”

He speeds up his movements, and this time he presses a digit inside Fives, wiggling it a bit, just to give him something more.

A chuckle erupts past his lips again at the way Fives swears, coming immediately thanks to the intensity of Echo’s ministrations, getting all his cum on Echo’s armor, painting it white - not that he cares.

When Echo lets him go, it’s like he deflates, collapsing over him with his head resting on the space between Echo’s neck and his shoulder.

“You’re an ass,” he grumbles, but even though Echo can’t see him, he can feel the way his lips are smiling against his skin.

“Shut up, you love it,” Echo retorts, though there’s no bite in his voice.

They stay likes this for a while, but eventually Echo’s “problems” become too big for him to ignore them, something that Fives understands immediately when Echo pushes against him hard, hoping that the added pressure on his codpiece might alleviate his need.

Fives shakes his head. “You’re hopeless,” he teases Echo, though he gets off of him with the intention of helping his cyare in need… but not without having some fun first: he begins with cleaning the stains he left on Echo’s armor by licking them off, something that of course has some effects on Echo, who shivers and whines when he realizes what Fives is doing.

“You’re going to kill me,” he mutters, covering his face - now a few shades darker - with a hand.

Fives chuckles. “You’re a big boy, you can handle it.”

He goes lower and lower, until he’s kneeling between Echo’s spread legs. With some difficulties he manages to get his codpiece off and to free Echo’s cock from the constraints of his lower blacks, looking up at him and winking before going to town.

Knowing that Echo’s at his limit, he doesn’t even bother teasing him or going slow, opting instead to take his whole length in his mouth, grabbing the other’s thighs to keep himself steady as he rhythmically bobs his head up and down, not without making wet sounds that would’ve made Echo cringe if only he wasn’t so lost to the sensation. All he can feel is Fives sucking his dick; outside of that there’s nothing.

He comes quite fast, and relieved that Fives hasn’t decided to toy with him instead of giving him what he needed - that would’ve been a low move, very low.

Only after he’s milked every last drop out of Echo, Fives pulls away. His throat is a bit sore for the effort, but it’s nothing too bad. He’ll live.

He gets distracted from his thoughts when he feels Echo brush his thumb against the angle of his mouth, then Echo takes his face between his hands, guiding him up so that he can kiss him. Fives hums in the kiss and he lets Echo do as he pleases, both enjoying the aftermath of two very pleasant orgasms, though it soon ends when Echo pulls away.

“When we get back,” he begins in facts, “I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll barely be able to stand.”

“That a promise?” Fives teases him, but it’s just so that he can hide how much he likes that prospect, though Echo still manages to see through him if the way he voraciously kisses him is of any indication.

They couldn’t get back fast enough.

Frankly, Fives can’t wait.

Tag list: @maulusque @captainrexwouldnever @anameofanykind If you want to be added feel free to let me know!

#assorted clonecest fics #clonecest #cloneshipping #echo5 #arc trooper echo #arc trooper fives #my fics #spicy tag

[nevertheless-moving]

I love your blog! I actually have notifications on for when you post because it’s always a highlight of my day ✨ (I hope that’s not weird to say oof) Anyways, do you have recommendations for other blogs similar to yours with lots of star wars AUs?

thank you! no thats not weird that’s very flattering :) 

other star wars blogs with lots of star wars AUs? if you’re looking for another blog that meticulously numbers their aus so you can search star-wars-au-no-2/chrono and just change one digit at a time in the url to maniacally read every single au in order one at a time without fear of missing out on au content because of inconsistent tagging, i’m pretty sure that’s literally just me, because that’s my ideal consuming experience. 

uh.

if you’re looking for aus with the most similar vibes to mine I would check out @willowcrowned, since we occasionally hivemind, and she’s been on tumblr and ao3 writing fanfic longer than me so she’s got an even greater wealth of content floating around. 

i love all of @waukrife ‘s and @swbumblebee ‘s aus, and their tumblr’s have good vibes.

chancecraz and blue_sunshine are huge time travel inspirations for me, but the bulk of their stuff is on ao3; i get the feeling that tumblr is very much a secondary platform fo them.

misskirby , and forcearama have a plethora of aus and star wars takes that make me go absolutely FERAL. I strive to make my Anakins as unhinged as misskirby and as sappy as forcearama, 

(Note: Forcearama’s stuff is overwhelmingly obikin, which is not my cup of tea typically but she’s SO FUNNY. Great to follow but if you’re like me and want to read someone’s entire tumblr it’s a bit of an oof. She’s been in sw fandom forever, tags inconsistently, has infinite scroll enabled, and her privacy settings are such that you can’t ,,like open her tumblr normally (on desktop at least, no idea what it looks like on mobile). I strongly get the impression that’s on purpose because of fandom ugliness and attacks over the years, so totally valid, you know? anyway that’s why i literally have specifically created a tag just for her content so someday i’ll be able to read her blog on my blog.

...hopefully that’s not weird ms. forcearama. please let me know if so and i’ll stop.

*clears throat*

 maulusque , necrophatic (some cloncest) , pencilscratchins (dinluke) , kurtssingh (quiobi) , midnightmeatsubway i feel like i might just be listing blogs i really like as opposed to ones that have anything in common with me...

Oh! oh my gosh oifaa ! She’s got a bunch of sw aus, she actually consistently tags things, AND they’re gorgeous and hilarious COMICS! Actually everyone i listed in the immediate paragraph above can draw AND write so you know WOW.

Yeah I would maybe just take a scroll through who i’m following - there’s a link at the top of my my blog. I didn’t touch on people who aren’t really active in sw fandom anymore, but if you want me to give you the rundown of ~10,000 page ‘older’ blogs that i comb through slowly for buried treasure send me another ask i guess.

#Anonymous #star wars #fic rec #kinda #tumblr rec #ask #tumblr

[thetookasnest]

A Look Back on 2020

So, I really wanted to write a thank-you post to all the amazing people I’ve met here and talk to, and also to the people whose art and fic have helped me through this year. I want to thank @sithsdoinshit for all their hilarious Sithmates comics and Opress brothers content.

Want to thank my fellow Maulibers/Maulers/whatever we call ourselves. @xplore-the-unknwn @littlekmac @a-dorin @fallenrepublick @justalittlecloud (your lemons and tomatoes are adorable and I love them bunches) @savagesbonergarage @wolfangelwings @grievous-doodles @maulusque @maulieber @laoness @brilliantbutbatty @arwenkenobi48

My online bestie @thebisexualmandalorian My other good friend @kristsune My roomie and fellow Star Wars nerd @cell113 Tau Squad by @chimeowrical (I adore your Rooster) All of @ollovae3 ‘s boys.  All the little comics and clones by @ollikah  I very much look forward to all your clone doodles. Soup by @boba-thot (he has his own account at @clonetroopersoup All of @luminousbeansarewe ‘s boys.  Getting to know your boys and play with my boys has been a blast. Roleplaying with @lord-darth-maul  I’m really enjoying our rp. All the Maul art by @scuttlebuttin The inspiration from @shittydinosaurdrawings The funnies from @thezabrakbrothers Mutuals with @letitrainathousandflames  I like your headcanons and little stories All of @cloneplatoon clones The doodles of @icpe All of @iskelan ‘s amazing Thrawn art! Pretty much all of @aces-to-apples ‘s stuff The lovely post by @angelwars11 that included me.  That post really did make my day.  Happy New Year everyone and thank you for everything you’ve done to help me through this year. 

[kanrakixystix]

Congrats, you made me ship Cody and Wolffe! If you're still taking prompts, could you write something fluffy about them please? The boys need some happiness T_T

(Well, I’m impressed! Thank you! I’m so glad that my writing was able to introduce you to a new ship. They definitely need something soft, though, despite the word I had a friend choose for this. Enjoy!)

***

“I remember when these shoulders weren’t so hard,” Wolffe comments absently as his hands squeeze at taut skin. “Your whole body was softer, actually.” 

“We’re war-hardened men now, cyare,” Cody argues weakly as rests his forehead on Wolffe’s. “There isn’t anything soft left about me.” 

Wolffe snorts. “That’s not true. I can think of four things off the top of my head that are still soft about you.” 

The Marshal Commander narrows his eyes skeptically as Wolffe continues. 

“There, your eyes,” Wolffe starts, “are soft, warm, like melted honey. Your hands,” he kisses them, “touch me softly when you need reassurances. And your lips,” Cody kisses those, too, “they’re always soft, even when you’re wound up.” 

Wolffe pauses to relish in the beautiful pinkish blush that settles high on Cody’s cheekbones. He’s gorgeous like this, when he’s stubbornly swept off of his feet. 

“You said four,” Cody huffs, “that was only three things.”

“Your heart, cyare,” Wolffe chuckles and places a hand on Cody’s chest, covering the beating muscle, and he smiles when he feels his pulse jump. “Your heart is still tender. You’re still able to love and care about your men.” 

Cody shivers involuntarily and his lashes flutter at the compliment. Slowly, he laces their fingers together and exhales slowly. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and Wolffe doesn’t need to respond. He only needs to kiss him, and that’s exactly what he does. 

***

Tag List:

@blazesurrender, @mysticperfectionbird, @clonedefencesquad, @chaoticblueblog, @maulusque, @mackstrut, @alienoresimagines, @mrdickgrayson, @galaxymysteryelephant, @sirena-melodie, @maplerosekisses

If you would like to be added or removed from the tag list, please let me know.

#commander cody #commander wolffe #cody x wolffe #clonecest #star wars: the clone wars #five sentence fic #ask #anon

[gffa]

I was tagged by @maulusque for a get-to-know-the-blogger meme and it seemed fun! I HAD THIS IN MY DRAFTS FOR EIGHT MONTHS AND FINALLY FOUND IT AGAIN.  orz Rules: Tag 8 people you want to know better. Name/Alias: Lumi Birthday:  May 1st Zodiac Sign:  Taurus Height: 5′4″ Hobbies: I bounce around, so most of my free time is spent watching/reading stuff and then yelling about it on tumblr, which I consider to be my main hobby, but occasionally I also play video games, I’ve been known to crochet, I enjoy playing badminton and swimming,  Favorite colors: Blue and black Last song listened to: Embarrassingly enough, the last song I listened to was Caramelldansen, IN MY DEFENSE, it was because I was watching a video set to it!! Last film I watched: Revenge of the Sith, I LOVE THAT MOVIE SO MUCH, SOBS.  It is the most rewatchable SW movie for me, whether in pieces or rewatching the whole thing, it’s that movie that I mean to just want for a quick scene and then end up getting sucked back into the whole story, IT’S SUCH A GOOD MOVIE. Meaning behind your url: When I wanted to change from darthluminescent, I was trying random things from the SW canon and after about six or seven tries, I could not believe someone hadn’t already taken GFFA, so I snapped it up and will never given it up, unless someone wants to give me “anakin” as a username or something.  ^_~  Anyway, it’s short for Galaxy Far, Far Away, the easy to use acronym to refer to the galaxy that Star Wars takes place in, as indicated by the opening crawl of the movies. Currently reading: Pretty much everything on my fic recs list, but for books, right now I’m reading (listening) to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the Animorphs series, both of which are really intense, but really worth it.  I was reading the SW novelizations, but I’ve been a little burnt out on them lately. Lipstick or chapstick: Chapstick all the way, especially because you don’t have to feel guilty about wiping it off if you need to eat or bite your lip or whatever, or just slap some more on whenever you feel like. Dream job: Honestly, probably being a member of the Story Group for Star Wars.  In reality, it’d probably be way more stressful than I’m daydreaming of, because I’d have to Let A Lot Of Shit Go, but in my dream world, my joy at being a nerd over minute details would let me go, “*HAND SHOOTS UP*  OH, I KNOW THIS ONE!” and be able to write up like a six page document on what we do or don’t know about Jedi Temple Culture.  (....I say like that isn’t exactly what I have in that meta post on AO3 anyway.)

#lumi.txt

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

The Catch Up Meme

I was tagged by @maulusque

3 Ships: cody/obi-wan, glorfindel/erestor, cullen/bull/dorian

Last Movie: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (which is truly a garbage movie, entertaining only in its absurdity, and also as inspiration for someone also writing a vampire western)

Currently Reading: uh Thucydides “The Peloponnesian War” for school and like 10 books on historic weapons also for school 

Currently Watching: Ponderosa (2001) (which is quite mediocre but enjoyable enough and also western inspiration) 

Currently Consuming: blueberry bagel with cream cheese and tea with milk and honey

Currently Craving: polish food... but specifically something fried with sour cream and dill or just fucking white borsht which i cant find in the PNW, or also i want white cake with fluffy frosting 

tagging, under no obligation, @blackholesun321 @exlibrisastra @wrennette @atelier-dayz @halwardpavushatersclub @bubblebucky @10-dutchies-12-bicycles 

#about me #im gonna see if safeway has pierogi in the frozen section but i am extremely doubtful and if they do i bet its the shit brand #i havent had kielbasa in so long bc the polish deli back home was closed bc covid #and i havent had kabanosy since i was in poland a year ago #i was looking at my poland trip photos and the food was so good i miss the food so much #out of the countries i have spent a significant amount of time in - poland had the most consistently delicious food #perhaps also my familiarity with my preferences in polish food helped but

[thefoundationproject]

heyyyy it's maulusque, any chance you have an inclination towards writing something with Dogma? my boy needs a hug and a high five

I could be convinced..... @quousque @maulusque

[blue-haired-grace]

For the ask game: S, T 💙

Thanks for the ask! <3

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Hurt/comfort is probably one of my favourites, for any fandom I participate in. With that comes a bucket load of angst as well, which, sign me up ‘cause apparently I’m an emotional masochist (it’s all Dogma and Fox’s fault; it’s so easy to write angst for them!). I also can’t resist the trope where everything is super cracky and nothing in that AU would happen in actual canon, but you can see that it’s an exaggeration of the characters. That last one is the fault of @maulusque, who got me hooked on Fox marrying Palpatine, divorcing him, and saving the galaxy.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

I believe I’m an open-minded person, so I can read pretty much anything and find some enjoyment in it. One thing that just rubs me the wrong way is completely changing the characterization of a character so you can needlessly bash them. I see this most commonly in the Harry Potter fandom.

[captaingondolin]

This will be a collection of ficlets starting from these two changes from canon:

1) Owen and Beru can’t care for Luke 2) Jango Fett survived Geonosis and has been in hiding with Boba and pretending to be dead the whole Clone Wars

--

I claim no responsibility for this. I was minding my own business and I most certainly didn’t write 1,032 words in one go fuelled by found family feels.

(people who might be interested? @wrennette @maulusque)

#rots #fic #family feels #jango pov #obi wan whump #my tag #space dads extraordinaire #oh look another series #and another collab #ops #i should be sleeping #i should have been asleep TWO HOURS AGO #jango fett #obi wan kenobi

[sl-walker]

Happy birthday! Your writing (specifically, Witness Me) was what drew me into the Clone Wars fandom in the first place, and your thoughtful, thorough, and deep characterization of Maul is what made me love the character (that, and you sent me a totally legal ebook of Wrath of Maul about a year ago) (my star wars sideblog is maulusque because i was eye-ball deep in all your Maul content when I made it). You make this fandom a wonderful, welcoming place! Happy birthday!

Oh, wow.  That’s-- incredibly kind of you, and I’m blushing so much right now.

Seriously, thanks.  So much.

#quousque

[maulusque]

WHAT IF MAUL KIDNAPPED ANAKIN RIGHT OFF OF TATOOINE

(I started writing this and then it got out of hand and now it’s 3:30 in the morning, rest of it’s under the break so i don’t monopolize your dash)

So for whatever combination of reasons, Maul spits out the kool-aid and gets really disenchanted with Sidious a lot earlier than in canon. He starts wondering things like “why is he not telling me his master plan if i’m so important to it?” and “why do i get nothing more than vague promises of power sometime in the future, when i should be guaranteed a position as his second-in-command, after all I’ve done for this guy?” and “why does he treat me like i’m disposable, and then constantly tell me i’m crucial for his plans?”

and he starts thinking things like “hey wait a minute, none of that childhood torture made me better at anything sith-related, it just gave me crippling trauma that actually impairs my capacity for self-control and incredible violence” and (possibly due to his experiences at Orsis Academy) “oh whack looks like kids learn a lot better and faster when they’re, like, having fun? Whatever ‘fun’ is?”

and anyway by the time he gets to tatooine with orders to “find that stoner jedi and kick his ass”, Maul is pretty annoyed at his master. And when he senses not one, not two, but THREE powerful force-presences on Tatooine, one of which vastly eclipses any other force presence he’s ever felt, and belongs to a nine-year-old slave boy, Maul gets an idea. You know, (he thinks), his master sure would love to get his hands on a force-baby like that. Master Sidious sure would be evilly thrilled to have an extremely powerful nine-year-old delivered directly to his doorstep on coruscant, with the jedi having to do all the heavy lifting of training the kid. Master Sidious would probably want nothing more than to have this kid be taken in by the Jedi, so he can start grooming a new apprentice. 

And Maul, full of spite and an as-yet-undiscovered need to adopt every force-sensitive in sight, decides to deprive Sidious of a potential apprentice. He follows Anakin to Naboo (in this universe, Anakin still wins the podrace, still wins his own freedom), and, after the fighting is over, sees a prime window of opportunity, and kidnaps Anakin right out from under the Jedi’s nose. 

(In this universe, Obi-Wan does not cut Darth Maul in half and dump him down the garbage chute- Maul, unwilling to do his master’s bidding any longer, doesn’t go full out against Qui-Gon, doesn’t kill him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t get that grief-and-rage filled boost that helped him dismember Maul last time. The fight ends, the Jedi are convinced that Maul is dead, and Naboo is freed).

Once Maul has the kid, since he’s a pragmatic guy, he also returns to Tatooine and takes the kid’s mom. Maul doesn’t know how to cook, do laundry, tie shoes, or any of that shit. He doesn’t want to have to PARENT the kid, he just wants to train him. 

Maul has zero money, and also zero subtlety, so he stomps into Watto’s shop, grabs him by the neck, and says “The boy's mother is coming with me. You will disable her slave chip and let her leave unharmed, or I will squeeze your head off.” Watto complies. For Anakin, this is his first real impression of Maul- storming the junk shop and threatening his former master for the freedom of Anakin’s mother.

Maul is determined to do a better job training Anakin than Sidious did training Maul. Because FUCK Sidious. Maul can be a WAY better Sith than Sidious ever allowed him to be. And since Maul is slowly realizing how... unhelpful... the way he was raised was, he’s determined to figure out how to do it better.

So he reads. He reads training manuals, child psychology books, teaching books, studies on motivation and performance, anything he can get his nerdy little hands on. He learns that frightened children don’t perform well. He learns about “trauma”, and how “trauma” makes it hard to control your emotions sometimes. Well, you can’t have THAT in your ultimate sith apprentice. Okay, so no scaring Anakin and no traumatizing him. Maul quickly realizes that literally everything he does frightens Anakin or his mom, and frightening Anakin’s mom also frightens Anakin (cut him some slack, he’s literally never been in a positive relationship, Maul has no model for any behavior other than “evil abuser” and “subservient slave”).

Maul is not an idiot. He knows he’s not doing it right. He’s reluctant to start teaching Anakin ANYTHING until he knows he won’t accidentally damage his precious spite-apprentice. So he mostly ignores the kid while he reads and learns.

He also observes. Specifically, he observes Shmi Skywalker. Somehow, she seems to be able to interact with Anakin without scaring him. She can even tell him what to do without scaring him. She can teach and correct him without scaring him. And she never physically hurts him at all. Maul is kind of blown away- he didn’t even know it was possible to interact with people like that? HOW does she DO it???

So Maul watches and learns. He practices. Shmi helps, guides him, tells him when he messes up and tells him how to do it better. Maul gets a lot better at restraining his murderous urges. Turns out, if you immediately kill everyone who annoys you, it’s hard to ask them for advice after. The other person Maul gets pointers from is C3PO, the protocol droid the kid dragged along. Maul understands 3PO better than he understands Shmi and Anakin. 3PO is a droid. Maul was raised by a droid. Maul knows how to talk with 3PO, whereas talking with Shmi or Anakin feels like wandering around in a fog full of landmines.

So anyway, Maul and 3PO become unlikely friends, and, as Maul, determined to out-parent Sidious in every conceivable way, learns more and more social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills, he truly comprehends how fucked up his own childhood was. There’s rage. There’s grief. There’s murderous desire for vengeance. But there’s also Anakin. Who would be scared if Maul smashed the ship or killed random people to vent his anger. Anakin, who needs something called a “positive role model”, who needs to be taught how to use the Force, and who needs the adults around him to have their shit together. There’s also Shmi, who makes him soup and hot chocolate when he’s feeling bad, and tells him off for breaking things, and who helps him get better at being a real person, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from him other than a general expectation of not hurting her or her son. So Maul deals. He grows. He heals, slowly. There’s setbacks, and gains. And somewhere in there, he starts teaching Anakin how to use the Force.

The problem is, Maul learned to access the Force first through fear and anger. Turns out, it’s really hard to teach someone fundamentals of force usage via fear and anger without first having to traumatize them. So right away, Maul hits a barrier. He doesn’t have any clue how to teach Anakin a different way though. He needs help.

But also, FUCK the jedi. NO WAY is Maul asking the Jedi for help, he hates the Jedi. Maul is still a Sith, he’s just a new, better kind of Sith, the kind that trains apprentices who are gonna kick WAY MORE ASS and be HEALTHY WELL-ADJUSTED PEOPLE while doing it (let him dream, ok?). So Maul starts hauling Shmi and Anakin around the galaxy, seeking out any non-Jedi Force-users they can, to learn Force techniques that the Sith didn’t teach Maul.

They spend time with the Guardians on Jedha, with those weird duck-people from that one episode with Jar-Jar’s girlfriend, with some wacky monks on a tiny island in the ass-end of nowhere, and even some time with a long-lost sith cult in a box system in the middle of the Unknown Regions. Maul learns. Anakin learns. Maul uses what he learns from the other force-users, combines it with what he knows, and teaches Anakin even more. The Jedi and the Sith are really the only two groups who really use the force for Big Impressive Things, like telekinesis and lightning and whatnot, so while the other force groups would have a lot to teach them both, they wouldn’t really be able to teach Anakin how to levitate something. And you can’t be the kick-assiest, bestest Sith Apprentice Ever if you can’t levitate shit. So Maul takes takes all these new techniques, like “being calm and chill when you meditate instead of super pissed off” and “using the Force while not being filled with incredible rage” and “mindfulness techniques” and “who knew you could do cool stuff like floating rocks without having to exhaust yourself by hating everything in existence, including yourself” and applies them to the skills and methods he already has. He and Anakin have to do a lot of fumbling and exploring and mistake-making, but they figure it out. And Anakin learns. And he kicks ass.

When Anakin is 11, Maul hauls him off to Ach-To to dig a crystal out of the roots of an ancient tree. He tells Anakin to hold it and meditate, to let his emotions rise around him, to feed them, to pull them through the crystal, let it resonate, let it take on the shape of his strongest feelings. After all, that is how Maul was trained to bleed his crystals. Maul’s pain and fear and anger yielded him red crystals.

Anakin comes out with yellow. Determination, fierce protectiveness, drive, hunger for justice, righteous fury. That is Anakin’s lightsaber.

Anakin grows up, planet-hopping with his Mom and Uncle Maul in a beat-up freighter with under-the-hood enhancements out the ass (Maul ditched the Scimitar right after Tatooine so his master couldn’t instantly track him down, and Maul and Anakin are both huge mechanics nerds and bond over things like “but what if you put ANOTHER PLASMA CORE IN THE ENGINE”, so this ship is, uh, certainly some sort of thing). Anakin grows up learning a hundred different Force traditions- just about every major Force tradition in the Galaxy (except for Jedi), and more than a few obscure ones. He grows up, tinkering with his droid, learning Juyo from Maul and how to sew a button from his mom. He grows up, beholden to two destinies only: “Help me take down Sidious, because he’s an asshole and a shitty Sith Lord” and “do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a Sith and no one gets to tell you what to do” (”except me.” Shmi interrupts. “Sith Lords still have a bedtime.” “Sith Lords still have a bedtime,” Maul amends, having no desire to repeat what happened when he encouraged a ten-year-old Anakin to ignore all the rules on purpose).

And what Anakin wants to do is what he’s always wanted to do- go back to Tatooine and free the slaves. Maul thinks that a big project like that would be an excellent learning opportunity for Anakin. He also wants Anakin to succeed, so he sits him down and talks logistics. How do you free the slaves without hundreds of slave owners detonating their chips when they hear what is happening? How do you keep them free once you do that? How do you get them jobs, clothes, food, houses? What about the ones who want to leave Tatooine? What about the ones who want to stay? And what about the economic upheaval that will happen when you deprive a whole planet of its cheapest source of labor? When Anakin is fourteen, they start planning.

When Anakin is eighteen, they make their move. Anakin, coordinating with Shmi, who returned to Tatooine three years earlier to organize things on the ground (living with a woman named Beru Whitesun, who is a gateway to the Freedom Path network), activates several massive orbital EMP devices, frying every electrical device on the planet, including slave chips. (The EMPs came from a pirate friend of his mom’s, who seems to do whatever she wants as long as she makes him hot chocolate). All over the planet, lights go out, slave chips fry, and radios go silent. And Shmi’s agents get to work. Ordinary citizens all over tatooine grab their rifles and head out. They meet up with others in their settlement, and the teams sweep the area, following a plan devised by Skywalker and Whitesun. They systematically visit every house in every settlement, city, spaceport, and town that is known to house slaves, and tell the slaves to grab their families and most treasured possessions and follow them.

(Tatooine is a sparsely populated planet- you can count the major settlements on two hands. If it weren’t, this would never have worked.)

Not many slaveowners put up much of a resistance- fifty angry masked people pointing guns in your face tend to make you compliant. The only slaveowner who puts up more than a token resistance is Jabba the Hutt. His resistance, however, lasts about thirty seconds, before Anakin cuts off his head.

Maul meets Anakin at Jabba’s palace, where he’s rounding up the last of Jabba’s cronies. 

“No trouble?” Maul asks.

“Nope,” Anakin replies. “You?”

“None.” Maul said. Turns out, it’s like, super easy to take down an entire criminal organization when you can turn up to a meeting of the Hutt family heads, kill them all, and waltz out past all their security forces without breaking a sweat. (Seriously, it’s kind of hilarious how Maul is literally just that good). 

“The slaves here are freed?”

“Yep,” says Anakin. Then frowns. “Hold on...” He senses a presence. Big, hulking, simple, and starving. He can sense that, whatever it is, it hasn’t seen the sunlight or been able to move freely in years. 

So anyway, that’s how Anakin turns up at Mos Espa at first sunrise, riding on the back of Jabba the Hutt’s pet rancor. “Who’s a good girl,” Anakin says, scratching behind her ear nubs. “You are!” And she is a good girl. Padme (”I just think it sounds like a nice name, you know?”) is very good at dispersing angry slaveowners who look like they might start rioting. 

The slaves freed overnight have been gathered together at pre-designated safe zones-mostly warehouses or large buildings that Shmi has been buying up over the years for exactly this purpose.

(The slaves living in remote settlements, at moisture farms and homesteads, didn’t get a visit from the freedom teams. However, Shmi had a plan for them too. She has made overtures to the Tusken tribes. Once she managed to negotiate her way into speaking to one of the leaders without getting killed, she sold them a story, a dream. A revolution. Free the slaves. Transform Tatooine. She doesn’t promise the Tuskens to expel humans from the planet entirely. She promises them equal rights under the law (she also promises the existence of laws in the first place). She promises them the right to raise Banthas, the right to traverse their ancestral lands and the return of sacred sites taken from them, the right to trade, the right to control who passes over their lands. She promises them the right to water and shade. And, she promises them half the seats on the ruling council she plans to set up. And so, on the night the EMPs blow, Tusken raiders visit every homestead on Tatooine (again, there’s only a few hundred, a thousand at most), and kidnap the slaves. Perhaps not the most reassuring experience for enslaved peoples who have been taught their entire lives to fear the Tuskens, and not without reason, but, nevertheless, it is freedom).

As the new day dawns- Tatooine’s first dawn as a free planet- Anakin, Maul, and Shmi know that the easy part is over. Now, they have to house tens of thousands of people currently cooped up in warehouses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They have to establish and keep iron-tight control over the planet and its settlements, and quash any violent reprisals before they gain momentum. They also have to completely rebuild an economy completely upended by the overnight emancipation. 

However, Shmi’s not the only one who’s been busy for the past few years. While Shmi was on Tatooine, planning a revolution, Anakin and Maul were traversing the galaxy, gathering resources, using the Patented Maul Method (TM)- breaking into the headquarters of powerful organizations and threatening to kill everybody in charge unless they did what they said.

As the second sun rises, ships begin arriving in Tatooine’s orbit. Pop-up housing is dropped onto the outskirts of Tattooine’s settlements, the kind that mining companies use to set up new bases on mineral-rich asteroids. The accommodations are small and sparse, but each family has a kitchen, bathroom, beds, and private space. Huge generators are hooked up to cool the new housing. Anakin knows that the already-existing slave quarters, made of stone with no windows and mostly underground- are already built to keep the occupants cool, but he refuses to make the former slave population live in slave quarters. Some of the freed people are moved into Jabba’s old palace, some into buildings abandoned by rich business owners who fled the planet when they saw what was happening. Food, water, medicine, clothes, books, toys, tools, and shoes are deposited. (the Republic’s equivalent of the FBI had been utterly baffled when Galaxy’s three biggest criminal organizations started moving cargo that looked less like a drug trade and more like a disaster relief mission). 

Anakin walks among the newly freed slaves, reassuring them- yes, you are free. Yes, you will be fed and housed and clothed as long as you need it. Yes, we will try to find your child/husband/wife/mother who was sold years ago. Yes, you can go home, you can do whatever you want.

He also asks for volunteers. And he gets them. Hardly anyone would say no to the chance to work with the Skywalker, who once was a slave like them, but freed himself and returned, who freed the slaves in one night of glory, and appeared at sunrise riding a rancor.

Anakin sends out messengers, all across the planet. “Tatooine is a free world,” they say. “All slaves are hereby freed, by order of the He who Walks in the Sky. Any slaveowners who, by their own free will, turn over their detonators will not be harmed. Any who resist, will be.” Not many resist.

At the end of that first day, as the suns are setting, once the freed peoples of Tatooine are fed, and given water, and sheltered, Maul comes to Anakin.

“I am proud of you.” He says. “You have come into your power, you have mastered yourself, and so have mastered the Force. You have the freedom and the power to do anything you choose. You are no longer my apprentice. Lord Skywalker, you are a true Sith Master.” Anakin pulls him into a hug. He maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe also feels mildly annoyed that Anakin is a full head taller than him now.

(Sidious would be truly, utterly offended at Maul’s criteria for Sith-Lord-ness. “THAT’S NOT SITH” he would have said. “THAT’S BARELY EVEN DARK SIDE ADJACENT, YOU ARE DILUTING OUR THOUSAND YEAR HERITAGE-” but Maul wouldn’t care about Sidious’ stupid opinions, anyway).

And Anakin and Shmi get to work. They employ the newly freed people of Tatooine, constructing permanent houses, tearing down slave markets, building critical infrastructure. Anakin pays them more than a living wage, thanks to the extremely deep pockets of Crimson Dawn. He brings in doctors and teachers, and guarantees healthcare and education for all who want it (whenever one of Crimson Dawn’s higher-ups says “wait, why are we dumping massive amounts of money into this one random-ass planet?” Darth Maul just casually sidles up behind them with his lightsaber until they remember that he can literally just show up anywhere, at anytime, and kill them unless they do what he says. If Maul’s busy, he sends 3PO instead- 3PO’s been outfitted with about ten times as much weaponry as is legal, and can be very convincing when he wants to be).

While Anakin works on infrastructure and supporting the freed peoples of Tatooine, and unfucking the economic trainwreck they caused, Shmi and Beru work on the government. They write down a few, very basic rules-Tatooine is to be ruled by a council of people, half of whom will come from the Tusken tribes, all of which shall be selected by fair and free election. All citizens of Tatooine shall have the right to vote in these elections, and the right to vote shall be guaranteed to all- except for those who have ever owned or sold a sentient being. (it was a huge debate in the Lars-Whitesun-Skywalker household, this matter of restricting voting rights. In the end, it was decided that slaveowners, and ONLY slaveowners, were to be the sole exception for universal suffrage). Every citizen of Tatooine is guaranteed access to food, medicine, and water, and has the right to have their grievances addressed by the council.

Shmi works quickly to gather her council- she knows she has to do it fast, to prove to the Tuskens that she is as good as her word. The first elections are chaotic, and perhaps not completely non-violent, but in the end, there is a council of twenty representatives, with Shmi Skywalker representing Mos Espa.

The Council proceeds to have raging- and occasionally violent- debates about the structure of their future government. What rights to guarantee citizens. Should they have a court system? What about a financial system? How are they to guarantee water, food, and medicine to everyone? What even are taxes?

The Rebuilding of Tatooine is long, and hard, and contentious. There are arguments and rage and fighting- the repatriation of traditional Tusken lands is especially fraught. But Shmi promised, and so she makes it happen (Anakin and Padme may have helped too). Maul, for his part, keeps training Anakin, and keeps managing the criminal underworld with a careful balance of death threats and actual death, but mostly stays out of the way of Anakin’s Senior Project. 

Soon, Anakin is able to re-purpose the pop-up housing, since most people have moved into traditional Tatooine-built homes, suited to the environment. The newly restructured economy is tentatively taking its first steps, and Tatooine’s baby government is becoming less and less dependent on intergalactic criminal funding (partially thanks to Anakin confiscating the entirety of Jabba’s personal fortune). He spends a lot of time in Council meetings, trying not to scream at people while also trying to stop Padme from eating them. The Council debates what is next for Tatooine, and eventually, they vote to petition the Republic for membership. Tatooinians, as a people, including the Tuskens, are fiercely independant, but, as Shmi points out, joining the Republic would guarantee them to certain things like humanitarian aid, a voice in decisions affecting interplanetary trade routes and taxation, legal legitimacy and the right to call on the Republic for aid should their sovereignty ever be threatened. Most importantly, slavery is illegal on all Republic planets, which means that if any slave-owning organizations ever pushed in on Tatooine, there would be another (much better funded) organization to call on to help quash it. 

The Republic requires that a petitioning planet’s head of state visit the Senate on Coruscant to ask the Senate for entry into the Republic. The Council, grumbling, re-jiggers their constitution to allow for a “chief councilor”, and promptly elect Anakin to the position (”Fuck me,”) Anakin says. Maul laughs at him, then sobers and tells him to be careful on Coruscant (”My former master lives there.” he says. “Mind your shields, and do not let him know your true nature. You are not yet ready to take him on, and you have your planet and your people to think of.” “Yes, Uncle Maul.” Anakin says. “I will be careful.”).

Anakin shows up in the Galactic Senate, sandy robes, uncombed hair, and half smirk on his face. “I am Anakin Skywalker, free person of Tatooine,” he says. He presents the case for Tatooine’s admittance to the Republic in a booming, confident voice, drawing on his inner strength- his righteous anger and determination to ensure his people’s future- to keep his voice from wavering.

There are grumbles. Muttering. No Senator wants to be the one to blatantly say “no”- it’s a sort of miracle story, Tatooine, the little planet that rose up and threw of the shackles of slavery and now wants to join the Republic- the exact sort of mythos that the Republic itself is built on. It’s bad PR to vote against that little planet. But at the same time, Tatooine is a sandy, useless dustball that’ll need fiscal support from the Senate, with nothing to offer in terms of economic value. Many Senators are debating with themselves, not whether or not to say “no”, but how to vote “no” without losing ten points in approval ratings.

Until the Senator from Naboo, a diminutive woman who somehow reminds Anakin of his rancor, stands up. She gives an impassioned, off-the-cuff speech, reminding the Senate of how her own planet had thrown off the shackles of oppression not ten years ago, how the Republic was founded by planets like Tatooine, and how, most importantly, they had no legal basis to deny them entry, and if the Senate voted no, Naboo’s lawyers would litigate the issue six ways from taungsday- which, due to a clause in the Senate’s constitution that forbade them from passing legislation while the issue of a planet’s admittance to the Republic was on the floor, would effectively paralyze the Senate until the courts made a ruling. And, as Padme made sure to emphasize, if the court’s decision was not favorable, she would appeal. She could feasibly stop the Senate from doing anything for years, if necessary.

Tatooine is admitted to the Republic.

“Two Senators,” Anakin demands. “In order for my people to be fairly represented, my planet requires two Senators.” When complaints are made, Jar-Jar Binks threatens to explain the complicated dynamics of a planet attempting to grapple with a colonial past. He doesn’t have to. Tatooine gets its two Senators.

Anakin meets with Senator Amidala in her office, to thank her.

“Of course,” she said. “I remember a little boy who helped free my planet- how could I not help you when you needed it?”

“Uhh, thanks, yeah, that’s, really nice of you. Like your hair. Which is nice. In an objective sort of way,” Anakin says, because there is no universe in which Anakin is not a complete idiot in front of Padme. “I named my rancor after you,” he blurts.

Before Anakin is scheduled to leave Coruscant, the Jedi send a knight to scope out the new planetary leader. Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up at Anakin’s hotel room, and goes “Oh. It’s.... you.” 

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin grins. He only knew him for about two days when he was nine, but he still greets him like an old friend, like a brother. They fall into easy, teasing conversation. “I thought you were dead, I confess, after you disappeared from Naboo,” Obi-Wan admits. “I am truly sorry that I was unable to fulfill Qui-Gon’s promise to train you as a Jedi Knight.”

“That’s ok,” Anakin waves his hand dismissively. “I got trained as a Sith instead.” Then he freezes. Oops. He was not supposed to say that. Maul would be so disappointed in him.

“Beg pardon?” Obi-Wan says.

“I, uhh, got trained, as a, uh, sift...er? Instead? A sand sifter? I sift sand for a living?”

“You said Sith.”

“No I didn’t, I definitely said sift.”

“No, you said Sith.”

“I definitely did not.”

Anakin changes the subject, and Obi-Wan lets it drop. He’ll tell the Council, of course, but he honestly cannot fathom the concept of this kid being a Sith. He senses nothing Dark about him- well, at least no more dark than is present in any sentient. Besides, it’s not like there are any Sith Lords around anymore, ever since he killed Maul (luckily, Obi-Wan doesn’t see the picture in Anakin’s wallet, a candid shot 3PO took in the cockpit of their family’s ship. Fifteen-year-old Anakin, at the controls, hyperbrake still on with his hands on the hyperdrive lever, Maul, standing behind him, hands gripping Anakin’s seat and face distorted half-way through a panic-induced rant about flight safety, and Shmi, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, laughter on her face and knitting needles in her hands).

Anakin contacts his mother, tells her the good news. The Council, moving with alacrity, elects Tatooine’s first Senators. And four days later, one year after the Dawn of Freedom, Senator Shmi Skywalker and Senator Ooutrigh (a Tusken warrior) of Tatooine arrive on Coruscant and address the Senate for the first time. 

Of course, while Anakin has been growing up, planning for Tatooine’s future, and annoying the shit out of Maul, Palpatine’s own plans have continued apace. Barely four months after Tatooine is admitted to the Republic, Obi-Wan finds himself in an arena on Geonosis. The battle goes much differently this time, partially due to the fact that Anakin has retrofitted the cargo bay of his family’s ship to house Padme (the rancor, not the Senator), and descends onto the Arena sands just as Yoda and the Clone Troops arrive, and deposits both Padme’s (the rancor, and the Senator) into the melee. 

“Hi, Obi-Wan!” Anakin calls, whipping out his lightsaber to deflect the hail of blaster bolts (Maul would disapprove, but Maul isn’t here, he’s ten clicks away, chasing down the Jedi dropout Sidious replaced him with). 

“Anakin, what the FUCK” Obi-Wan says, staring at Chief Councilor Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, riding a rancor and swinging an honest-to-Force yellow lightsaber. 

“Master Yoda, what the FUCK” Anakin says, later, after the battle is over, when he finally gets Yoda to answer his questions about the clone troopers. “You found out about an entire-ass army of slave child soldiers commissioned AND PAID FOR by one of your own council members, and your reaction is ‘oh thank goodness, now we have an army?’ What the FUCK is WRONG with you?!” Yoda tries to explain to Councilor Skywalker that the situation was dire, they’d had no choice, but Councilor Skywalker just keeps repeating “AN ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS” at him. “No choice, we had,” Yoda says yet again.

“BULLSHIT, you had no choice!” Anakin yells. “You could have chosen to not use the entire army of slave child soldiers that you legally own!”

“Let Kenobi and the others die, you would have? Hmm?”

“PROBABLY, YEAH!” Anakin hollers (”Thanks,” mutters Obi-Wan). “Sometimes the choices you have all really suck, but you still have to make them! You can’t just pretend you didn’t have any options, you HAD OPTIONS, and you chose the one that involved using a SLAVE ARMY OF CHILD SOLDIERS.” He gestures behind him to the battlefield, where clone troopers and medics are moving amongst the bodies, white and red stark against the sand, tallying their dead brothers.

Yoda shakes his head. “emotional, you are, young Skywalker.” he said. “Cloud your judgement, your feelings do.” 

“Yeah, I’m fucking emotional!” Anakin practically screams. “I have personal beef with slavery, so excuse me if I feel emotions about it. Your problem is that you’re able to use an ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS and not feel bad about it! Your lack of emotions is clouding YOUR judgement!” He stomps off. Yoda shakes his head. Skywalker is young, and too close to the issue of slavery to really have perspective on it. He does not understand. It was a great loss to the Jedi Order when the Council rejected him, all those years ago- if he had been trained as a Jedi, he would have learned to put aside his emotions about slavery, and he would have understood why it was necessary now. If Anakin could have heard what Yoda was thinking, he would have turned right back around, picked Yoda up, and punted him like a limmie ball.

Anakin and Maul return to Tatooine. Maul offers to assassinate the entire Jedi Council, but Anakin says no. He’s still fuming about his conversation with Yoda. He knows he gets emotional. He knows that Yoda isn’t entirely wrong- he knows he lets his emotions cloud his judgement sometimes. It’s something he’s worked hard on, over the years, him and Maul. How to take a step back from the emotions howling in your head, and how to view the situation without them getting in the way. And what kinds of situations you should let your emotions guide you. Anakin thinks he’s damn well entitled to strong emotions about slavery. 

Short of declaring war on the entire Jedi Order, Anakin doesn’t know what to do about the Republic’s slave army. The Tatooine Council releases a public condemnation of it, explicitly calling it slavery and calling for the clones to be freed. The Council seriously debates joining the Separatists, until Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor) and Shmi look in-depth at the Separatist Council, which is buried deep in the pockets of corporate interests. Shmi files a lawsuit, under the Republic’s anti-slavery legislation, suing for the freedom of the clones. It’s a battle of miserable inches, and meanwhile, the war rages.

With Dooku gone, Sidious’s only means of controlling the Separatists is through Grievous and Ventress, both of whom are loose cannons whose loyalty (and competence) he seriously doubts. It’s frustrating for him, and not necessarily better for the Jedi and their army (of slave child soldiers). Sidious needs to keep the war in careful balance, neither side gaining too much ground, to draw it out and grind the Jedi down and manipulate their public image until he can heap all the blame on them. Without Dooku to pass down his orders, he has no way of keeping a firm check on the Separatist Council, and the Seps are in serious danger of completely overrunning the Republic. The droid army is fifty times as many as the clones, and the Separatists have the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and all of the major military tech corporations on their side. Honestly, it’s a testament to the Jedi and the Clone Army that they haven’t lost the war in the first month.

Speaking of that first month, Anakin doesn’t spend long on uninvolved in the war. Scant weeks after Geonosis, the Separatist Army threatens to roll right over Tatooine on their way to gaining control of the Outer Rim Hyperlanes. Tatooine has no army, doesn’t even have a police force. It has no fleet, no orbital defenses, and the droid army headed their way has ten times more droids than there are guns on the planet. The Council faces a choice. Ask the Republic to send in the GAR to defend them- ask for an army of slaves to be sent to die on Tatooine, to stain the sand with enslaved blood so soon after Tatooine clawed her way to freedom, or do nothing, and almost certainly ensure the annihilation of Tatooine and her people. To die, or to live by the blood of slaves who died for you. It’s not a pretty choice.

In the end, the choice is taken away from them (and perhaps it’s a kindness, that they weren’t forced to choose, perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but it is what it is). A GAR cruiser shows up in orbit, and the Council is hailed by a man identifying himself as Captain Rex, commanding officer of the 501st legion of the GAR.

“The Republic sent you here?” Anakin asks, incredulously. 

“Well, not exactly.” Captain Rex hedges. “The 501st is due for leave on Kamino, but the hyperdrive was making funny noises, so we decided to stop off in the nearest Republic system to check it out.” Rex shrugs. “If a bunch of tinnies just so happen to show up, it’s not like we’ll just sit back and watch.”

“Why are you doing this?” Anakin asks the clone captain, once they’ve got him on planet and in the council room. He’s got a lump in his throat, and his eyes are stinging. The 501st has no Jedi on board, no natborn officers, and no orders to go to Tatooine. Rex and the 501st showed up here of their own free will. Because they wanted to. To defend Tatooine.

“Geonosis.” Rex says. “On Geonosis, you saved the lives of over two hundred of us. Including me. We couldn’t stand by and let your planet fall to the Separatists, Councilor Skywalker.”

After the battle, during the cleanup, when Tatooinians are passing through the rows of injured, giving out water- giving out life- Rex tells Anakin the other reason.

“We all know about Tatooine, sir.” He says, quietly. “A bunch of slaves who stood up and said “no,” and took their freedom.” He shrugs. “Stories like that, it gives us hope. For the future.” He fixes Anakin with a stare. “If we let that hope die, we die too. Tatooine cannot fall.”

That is the first time Anakin and Rex fight together. Somehow, when the 501st leaves Tatooine, Anakin goes with them- officially, as a consultant/observer, appointed at the request of Senator Skywalker to observe the GAR and monitor the health and wellbeing of the troopers. Unofficially, Anakin and Rex become a lethal team, making the 501st one of the most effective legions in the Galaxy. Anakin isn’t dumb. He knows he’s being a massive hypocrite, running around with an army of slave child soldiers. Rex, however, insists that it’s different.

“First of all, we asked you to come with us.” he says. “Second of all, it’s not like you staying behind would have made any difference in our situation. And besides, scrapping clankers isn’t the only reason I asked you to come with us.” Anakin raises an eyebrow.

And Rex introduces Anakin to his older brother, Cody, commander of the 212th (Anakin is happy to see Obi-Wan again, but appalled to meet Obi-Wan’s fourteen-year-old togruta padawan, because why would you put a CHILD in a warzone, in a COMMAND POSITION). And Cody brings Anakin in on The Plan. The clones will not remain slaves forever, and they will not wait for some elusive promise of gratitude after the war is over. They will take their freedom, and they will defend their own, and they’re asking Anakin, who freed the slaves of Tatooine, to help them do it. 

“So basically, you want me on as a consultant.”

“Basically, yeah.” Cody says. “And also as a guy with a lightsaber who can leap fifty feet into the air and dodge blaster bolts. Those are always handy to have around.”

So Anakin and Rex and Cody, and Cody’s small circle of commanders, lay their plans. And in the meantime, there’s a war to fight. Shmi’s still on Tatooine, but Maul comes with Anakin and the 501st. He and Rex get along like a house on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them- they do nothing but argue and needle each other. Rex sarcastically calls Maul “Commander Maul” because it pisses him off so much, and it catches on with the whole legion. Maul constantly mutters about murdering and/or poisoning Rex.

But after Ventress almost chokes Rex to death, and breaks into his mind to make him do her bidding, Maul doesn’t leave Rex alone for a week, and clutches his hand tightly in the medbay. Rex doesn’t mention it, so neither does Anakin. 

Padme, on the other hand, makes no secret of how much she loves Rex (the Rancor, not the Senator, though she likes him too). Padme seems to have concluded that Rex is some sort of long-lost hatchling, and can be seen chasing Rex down the hangar bay, trying to corral him into the nest she’s constructed in the corner reserved for her. Rex gets used to surprise cuddles from a massive predator.

The Jedi Council are at their wit’s end with Skywalker, but their hands are full and honestly, he’s a benefit to the war effort, so they assign Obi-Wan to “supervise” the legion, and leave them to it. Obi-Wan and Anakin strike up a deep friendship, unfettered by the baggage that comes with being master and padawan. Obi-Wan finds himself having serious questions about the Jedi’s role in the war, since Anakin is not at all shy about challenging him on the whole “slave army of child soldiers” thing. Obi-Wan is also, quite frankly, too busy to effectively teach a padawan, and by this point, he knows that Anakin’s had some sort of Force training. He’s fought beside him enough to be confident in his skills, and often sends Ahsoka on extended missions with the 501st, and explicitly begs Anakin to help him fill in the gaps in her training. Anakin obliges enthusiastically. 

Of course, Maul helps train her too. Obi-Wan shows up on the Resolute one day to pick her up, and asks how her training’s going. 

“Great!” She says. “Skyguy’s weird uncle is teaching me jar’kai-”

“Anakin has an uncle?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised. “Who knows jar’kai?”

And so Obi-Wan and Maul meet once again. And Obi-Wan is just absolutely pole-axed. 

“Darth Maul?” He splutters. “Is your uncle?” 

“Not biologically,” Anakin shrugs. “He practically raised me, along with my mom. He taught me everything I know about lightsabers and the Force.”

“...”

“...you did say Sith, Anakin, you bastard, sand-sifting MY ASS-”

“Oh, it’s you.” Maul says. “I won’t kill you, but only because Anakin likes you.” Obi-Wan throws up his hands.

Somehow, Obi-Wan and Maul come to an understanding. Somehow, Obi-Wan doesn’t turn him over to the council. 

At one point, a giant of a zabrak, easily eight feet tall, with skin a poisonous yellow, shows up, claiming that Maul is his brother, and that he’s here to bring him home to Dathomir. Maul takes one look at Savage and goes “Fuck that”. “I will train you in the ways of the Force,” he says. “I can show you power like you’ve never wielded before.” he says. “You shall be a great and feared Sith Lord,” he says. “Have some hot chocolate, you look cold,” he says. “Put on a sweater.” Savage, slightly bemused, comes to terms with the fact that he’s just been adopted.

It’s Maul who figures it out, of course. How could he not? He was raised by Sidious. He knows how devious he is, how his plans have layers upon layers, backups upon backups, contingencies stacked from here to the Outer Rim. Once Sidious moves, you can be sure that any reasonable outcome will be in his favor, because he has completely engineered the situation before you were even aware it existed.

The Sith caused the war and are playing both sides. The Sith caused the clones to be commissioned (these things are trivially easy to figure out, if you’re paying attention). The Sith want the Jedi dead.

“Contingencies,” Maul mutters. “It’s always a trap, and there’s always contingencies.”

When he finds the chip in Rex’s head, he shakes with rage and refuses to talk to anyone, fearing, for the first time in years, that he will lose control and hurt someone he loves. It is Rex who talks him down, who manages to get close to him, who embraces him and lets him cry on his shoulder, then scream and rage and punch the walls. When Maul is able to explain, Rex has to choke back his own terrified, horrified sobs. He holds them back, and calmly looks at Maul and says “What are you going to do about it?”

The surgery, they discover, is simple enough. An astromech can do it in two minutes (C2PO can do it in seventy seconds, and Artoo can’t stand it). When Anakin is told, he goes quiet for a minute, and when he looks back up, it is not Anakin, Rex’s friend, Maul’s kid, who is sitting at the table in the briefing room. It is He Who Walks in the Sky, Huttslayer, Breaker of Chains, who looks back at them. Anakin Skywalker has always wanted nothing more than to free all the slaves. And Anakin Skywalker’s destiny has always been to do what he wanted.

They tell Cody. They modify their plans. They quietly contact medics throughout the GAR, and Artoo quietly sends the details to every military astromech he trusts. When the army is safe from Sidious’ control, Anakin, Rex, and Maul conspire to lure him off of Coruscant. Maul takes over Mandalore, exiling the duchess and announcing a New Sith Empire. Sidious shows up, declaring that Maul has become a rival, disowning his former apprentice and attacking him, with intent to kill. Savage loses an arm. Maul almost loses his life. But as he lies on the ground at Sidious’s feet, arms trembling with the effort of holding the parry keeping Sidious’ saber from his throat, he hears “We’ve got the face shot! Go, go go!” in his earpiece. Gunfire, real slugthrowers, difficult to block with a saber, erupts around him. C3PO and his arsenal, along with Fives, Jesse, and Echo, the 501st’s best ARC troopers, open fire on Sidious. The Sith is forced to back away, raising a hand to stop the bullets in midair. Maul leaps to his feet, and Anakin joins him, lightsaber drawn. 

The fight is quick, but brutal. Maul’s hands threaten to tremble with terror, facing down the horror of his childhood, the monster whose treatment of him is woven fundamentally into his psyche, whose shadow has haunted Maul all his life, and still invades his dreams. But he reaches out to his family, to Rex, beside him, steady, full of faith in him, to Anakin, a blazing sun of love and anger, a shield of raw power, and to Shmi, all the way in her Senate offices on Coruscant, cool and calm and soothing like a desert spring as ever-present as the stars. His hands do not tremble. He raises his lightsaber against his master, beside the blade of his son. Together, they beat the Sith Lord back. Anakin binds the Sith’s blade, knees him in the ribs, and while Sidious is thus occupied, Maul cuts his head off.

“You were a terrible parent,” he pants, and spits on the corpse. Then, he collapses, and Rex is there to catch him, and Maul clings to him and shakes, and cries. Anakin reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, and Rex pulls him in with a look, and together, they surround Maul, a bulwark against the rest of the world, a safe circle for him to fall apart for a little bit. At some point, one of them unstraps the small camera that Maul had been wearing on his chest. Ahsoka has, at that point, already sent the footage to every major news office on Coruscant.

That evening, plastered all over the galactic news, is a video of the Chancellor himself, showing up on a neutral world and attacking its sovereign leader, wielding red lightsabers of all things. And it’s obviously the Chancellor; there’s a clear shot of his face when he knocks Mandalore’s ruler to the ground and the camera gets a good view right up into his hood.

It’s a massive scandal. One tabloid shows the footage with a little counter in the corner, counting up every treaty and galactic law that Palpatine violates onscreen. The only thing that saves Palpatine from impeachment and arrest is the fact that he’s already dead. Inquiries are launched, investigators are sanctioned, documents and hard drives and testimony are subpoena’ed. Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor), spearheads the investigative committee, and within a month, they’ve uncovered decades worth of bribes, backroom deals, contracts with droid manufacturers, clear evidence of Palpatine authorizing Republic funds for weaponry that went straight to the Separatists, and even communication records between the Chancellor and the two military leaders of the Separatists. Grievous and Ventress go into hiding (the Tales of Grievous and Ventress, unlikely buddies forced on an intergalactic road trip on the run from the cops, is a story for a different absurdly long post at 3am). The Separatists break down in chaos, and the war grinds to a halt. In the middle of all the political hurricane, Cody enacts his plan, and the entire GAR simultaneously deserts, and fucks directly off to Tatooine. This ignites another scandal, with Senators calling for Tatooine’s expulsion from the Republic. Shmi stands in her Senate Pod, hands tucked into her roughspun sleeves, listening attentively while Senator Burtoni of Kamino accuses her of theft.

“If Tatooine does not return the stolen military assets, the Senate may sanction the use of force!” the Senator from Ryloth threatens.

“Pardon me,” Shmi says, “May I ask what army the Senate is planning sending to invade Tatooine? I was under the impression that the only Republic army was already there.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence.

In the middle of the shitstorm, before Shmi is arrested and Anakin declared an enemy of the state, Shmi’s lawsuit finally receives a ruling. And just like that, the clones are legally free. And the judge orders the Senate to pay reparations. Anakin cackles with glee when he hears. 

Rex and Cody, with the full support of the people of Tatooine, begin the long, hard, work of resettling their brothers and building a life for the vod’e. Shmi files a lawsuit against the Zygerrian Empire. Savage receives a new arm, courtesy of Anakin, who may or may not have added a few extra utilities to it. Ahsoka is knighted, and controversially invites Anakin to be present at the ceremony, along with Obi-Wan. Maul admits, very quietly and where only Rex can hear, that he doesn’t actually want to poison him. “I know,” Rex says, smiling at him. Anakin, meanwhile, finally marries Padme, the love of his life (the Senator, not the Rancor).

And in Mos Eisly, there is a stone slab, pulled from a crumbled wall and stuck upright in the ground in the middle of the square. No one knows who put it there, but someone carved fifty-seven names into the stone. The fifty-seven names of the clone troopers who died defending Tatooine from the Separatist army, at the beginning of the war. The last slaves to spill their blood on the sands of Tatooine.

#maul adopts anakin #and invents a new kind of sith #which is almost nothing like the old kind of sith #just co-opts the name really #rex/maul #kinda? it wasn't on purpose it just happened #my writing #maulusque's writing #might slap this up on ao3 later #we'll see

[clonecest-bin-account]

Assorted Clonecest Fics - Missed you (Alpha-17/Fordo) | E

(First time writing this pairing and these characters. I hope I did a good job!)

(Fic under the cut)

Despite being relegated to instructing troopers on Kamino, Alpha-17 still hasn’t lost his touch. Fordo knows it well, now that he’s pinned chest to the training mat, with 17 that holds him by the arm. If he twists just a bit, he’s going to break it.

“I thought you’d put up more of a fight,” 17 mocks him. “What is it, Ford’ika? Have the frontlines softened you?”

Despite the hurting joint, Fordo still manages to grin as he tries to turn his head as much as he can to look at the other. “And to think that I’m offering myself so willingly to you-- Ow!” Judging by the way Alpha-17 twists his arm, he mustn’t have liked the teasing tone in Fordo’s voice, though he hasn’t broken it like he could’ve had.

“Excuses excuses,” 17 says then, unwilling to leave the last word to Fordo, though the grip on him does lighten a bit, enough that, if Fordo wanted, he could’ve turned them around. Tsk, trying to bait him with such a simple trick.

 Instead of falling for it, Fordo grinds his hips against Alpha-17, pleased by the surprised grunt he manages to coax out of him. “You little--”

Now it’s Fordo’s turn to be surprised when 17 rushes down to bite at what little of the back of his neck that is exposed. Unfortunately for him, he can’t manage to suppress and involuntary shiver, something that Alpha takes notice on. “Did you miss me?” he asks, mocking tone obvious, and yet, Fordo still manages to surprise him with his answer.

“What if I did?” he replies in fact, because despite everything, he’s truly missed Alpha, who is suspiciously quiet.

 Fordo doesn’t have to wait long for 17’s next move though, because soon he forces him to get up and drags him to his quarters. He doesn’t even try to resist him, knowing exactly where this is all leading up to. Well, he was the one who began, after all…

 Once they’re in the privacy of Alpha’s quarters, he slams Fordo against the wall, finally kissing him, if that can even be considered a kiss with all that tongue and teeth he’s putting into it. Fordo wouldn’t want it any other way, and in fact he smiles in the kiss, something that 17 notices. “Having fun?” he asks after pulling away. He looks displeased but Fordo knows it’s just a front, so he’s not intimated at all by the way he’s acting.

“A bit,” he admits, before dragging Alpha for a proper kiss, slipping his tongue between his lips. Alpha’s fingers twitch against Fordo’s hips, and he grips him more tightly, though it’s not like Fordo can really feel it, since they’re both still wearing their armor. Speaking of which… “Shouldn’t we take these off?”

Alpha doesn’t even bother to reply with words; he just grunts as he begins to tear Fordo’s armor off, a gesture that gets soon returned by the other.

 Once they’re bare, they go back to kissing. Alpha hoists Fordo up; now he has to hold onto 17’s waist with his legs, or else he’ll fall. Well, Fordo can easily do that.

A shiver runs down his spine as he feels Alpha’s hands brush against his thighs as they reach for his ass and…

Alpha stops, circling Fordo’s wet rim with his finger, finding it extremely loose already. He raises an eyebrow at him as a smirk - the closest thing to a true smile he’s ever been able to make - appears on his face. “Eager, aren’t you?” He can’t believe that he already opened and lubed himself up, and more than anything that he walked around like this. Truly shameless.

Fordo chuckles. “I said I missed you, didn’t I?” he replies, before grinding down against 17. “So you better get a move on.”

“And if I don’t?” Alpha challenges him.

Fordo rolls his eyes. “Like I don’t know it’s the same for you,” he replies, grabbing Alpha’s already erect cock. Yeah, he definitely missed him.

 17 snarls, slamming Fordo against the wall again, though Fordo laughs at his gesture, still unbothered.

Thanks to the other guiding him, he wordlessly lines his cock up to the other’s ass. He licks his lips - suddenly dry - and narrows his brow in concentration, then he thrusts up, penetrating Fordo in one smooth go. If Fordo hadn’t had enough foresight to prepare himself beforehand, it would’ve hurt like hell, but right now he just sighs, happy that Alpha, for once, has listened to him.

He sets up a very rough rhythm, another sign that he’s missed him. Look at him, he can’t get enough of Fordo.

“Alpha… Alpha!” he moans, his lips dangerously close to 17’s, who decides to shut him up with a kiss - like he doesn’t love hearing Fordo call his name like that.

He thrusts, he thrusts, and he thrusts again, each movement accompanied by the loud sounds of skin slapping against skin. Slap slap slap…

 The first one to break is Fordo. He would’ve loved to play around more, but it’s been too long since the last time they were able to stay like this, so he reaches down, grabbing his cock in hand and furiously jerking off while Alpha keeps pounding inside him.

It takes him very little to come, groaning as Alpha helps him ride the orgasm from beginning to end, hammering down his prostate like he would a simple target.

17 too doesn’t last long. After another couple of thrusts, in fact, he pushes one last time, as deep as he can, and he comes, biting a grin off his face when Fordo squirms at the sensation. He got what he deserved.

 Only once Alpha pulls away, maybe under the effect of that sensation of lightheadedness that always takes him after an orgasm, he whispers, forehead pressed against Fordo, “I missed you too.”

It’s a quiet admission, one that Fordo almost doesn’t catch, but he does, and it’s enough. He knows Alpha, he knows the way he is and he accepts it.

He knows that, deep down his prickly self, Alpha-17 has enough place in his heart to care for some things, and he knows that he’s one of them.

It’s enough.

Tag list: @maulusque @captainrexwouldnever @anameofanykind If you want to be added feel free to let me know!

#assorted clonecest fics #clonecest #cloneshipping #fordo17 #alpha-17 #captain fordo #my fics #spicy tag

[nevertheless-moving]

Ok so do you have an Au guide? Because I love all of your Aus but I can’t keep up with them or find them when I want to reread them. Reading your Aus has brought me such joy and it drives me insane that I can’t find them. 😄

I’m glad you like them! I do have a Masterlist - there’s a permanent link to it on the top of my tumblr just between ‘Ask me Anything’ and ‘Archive’

At the very top of the page, you can click on -

“Read Them All ‘In Order’ Here” 

^ It links you to everything tagged “my au” in chronological order.

Below that, in the Masterlist, you can find a brief summary of pretty much all my aus, and easy links to find everything. It’s not always perfectly up to date but I’ve tagged things so it shouldn’t matter. I’ll explain what I mean; currently, on the Masterlist there’s a paragraph that looks like this:

13. Broken Fight AU - Old Ben and Vader, at the climax of their death star fight, are yeeted 20 years into the past. When they wake up in their younger bodies, much general and personal distress ensues (Blurb).

If you click on the link at the beginning (Broken Fight AU) it directs you to https://nevertheless-moving.tumblr.com/tagged/broken-fight-au/chrono

So even though I have written more than just the one Blurb for that au since I last updated the list, it still works, because it uses the tag, which will always be up to date.

If you want to read everything from my pop star wars au (as an example) from the start, you can use the Masterlist, or search by the au tag (name or number) with /chrono:

“https://nevertheless-moving.tumblr.com/tagged/star-wars-au-no-3/chrono”

“https://nevertheless-moving.tumblr.com/tagged/pop-star-wars-au/chrono”

The two links above yield nearly identical results. The only difference is when I was posting lists with summaries of all my aus, I only tagged the name (pop star wars au), not the number (star wars au no 3). So if you search by name you might occasionally see a summary of the au with slightly different phrasings. That is the only difference, so it really, really doesn’t matter. 

If you want to read the most recent updates to my pop star wars au, just don’t include the /chrono at the end of your search.

“https://nevertheless-moving.tumblr.com/tagged/star-wars-au-no-3/”

“https://nevertheless-moving.tumblr.com/tagged/pop-star-wars-au/”

Even if I haven’t updated the Masterlist to include a new au yet, you can still find it on my blog through the ‘my au’ tag.

I’m afraid I don’t have a tag for small additions I’ve added to other people’s aus but, um, I don’t think anyone does? You never really know if that sort of thing is going to get reblogged or whatnot...like I added a small bit to maulusque’s purge trooper cody au and was really excited when they reblogged it!!! but i’m obvsly not gonna list those times where I scream excitedly about other peoples stuff under my au. (except sometimes with willowcrowned with permission when the screaming devolves into, like, 1000 words treatises). Creative collaboration- especially fandom collaboration- is a beautiful poorly indexed mess in general. So...If you search star-wars au  you’ll find a smattering of my aus and other peoples, some of which I’ve added on to, but I’m not anywhere NEAR consistent about using that because its mostly for my own personal joy. 

...I’ve started tagging some star wars headcanons under nevertheless meta and ficlets i didn’t know where to put under nevertheless-writing but now we’re getting pretty far away from your original question.

Thank you for your message. Have a nice day.

#my au #tumblr #ask #Anonymous