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that-gay-jedi · 1 year

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Really loving this vanilla extract saves Anakin and therefore the Galaxy storyline you've got going on in your polls 😂

Thanks! I got this ask and started writing what I thought would be a few paragraphs and uhhh:

Once upon a time, there was a Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. He was the messiah but he was also a very naughty boy. The fate of the galaxy sat on his shoulders and probably it should have gotten up and sat somewhere else.

Anakin's tastebuds were utterly warped from not cooking bugs before he ate them and from too many years eating ration bars, Obi-Wan's cooking, and unidentified beige squares (the beige squares were, by all accounts, not vanilla flavoured).

Now in those days there was a big ol' war on and nobody was very much pleased. The galaxy had already been circling the drain before the war but now there were overwhelming numbers of droids clanking around everywhere and saying the absolute stupidest shit imaginable or simply repeating "Roger roger" ad nauseam and there was only one way to shut them up (it was with violence).

A lot of very young people who had done absolutely nothing to deserve it died a lot of very gory deaths, all in the name of shutting the droids up. Peaceful civilians turned to refugees and some of the less peaceful ones, or even the simply unlucky, turned to corpses. Oppression and exploitation ran rampant pretty much anywhere that sentients who had anything worth exploiting lacked sufficient money, political clout, or military power to fight back.

When they weren't busy fighting droids, the very young soldiers, doing what young people with too few rights and any shred of free time tend to do, discovered that a number of common baking ingredients had intoxicating or otherwise interesting effects when ingested in unreasonable quantities.

Megnut, for example, one of the central spices in flumpkin spice blends, could in its powdered form be used as a powerful hallucinogen IF one were willing to eat enough of it to hate flumpkin spice until the eventual heat death of the universe. And a spoonful of ground binnamon, though utterly lacking in viability as a drug, was a common enough dare once more conventional intoxicants had already been passed well around as its immense dryness and the immediate violent reactions to its taste were how the physical manifestation of regret entered one's body, hilarious to everyone but the eater.

It was in this manner that the cheapest brands of vanilla extract gained a dubious place of honour on the roster of family-friendly flavourings with a side gig. These contained vanillyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol's gayer, more evil, and more melodramatic cousin, and could get a person blackout drunk within a fairly short amount of time.

Anakin's own legion, the 501st, were no strangers to this sort of experimentation. There were strict orders not to let Anakin set foot in 79's because of an incident that shall remain classified but this did not stop various members of the 501st from getting hammered with him (Anakin also liked to get nailed, but the 501st did not typically join him for it).

Now at a certain point a terrible liquor shortage shook the Republic, and I mean shook. From the most influential senator to the lowest ranking shiny, enough people had been lubricating their sanity with alcohol that Chancellor Palpatine, who was secretly Darth Sidious, who secretly liked spinning in his office chair and tormenting his bodyguards in horrific ways that certainly won't come back to haunt him later, feared rioters on Coruscant would burn the Jedi Temple to the ground before he got a chance to.

And so it was that one fateful evening there was drinking to be done- important drinking, mind you- between battles, but not a drop of drink to be had. No one had flodka, nowhere was selling kniskey, every smuggler was cleaned out of bequila.

There was not, however, any shortage of vanilla extract.

Anakin eyed the bottle more critically than someone who's slurped up a wriggling worm without chewing has any right to, and the men who fought and bled with him appraised him with morbid fascination.

"It's not as bad as you think, sir," said Echo.

"It's worse!" Fives called.

"Quiet, or he'll never drink it."

"Ha! You don't know our general!"

"It can't be any harder to swallow than General Kenobi's-"

"Boys," Anakin cut them off, flattening and raising the palm of his mechanical hand in a gesture for silence.

He unscrewed the white plast cap, the underside of which was stained by the liquid inside. Anakin was pretty sure they were pranking him, but after how bad the last campaign had been, he'd drink it anyway if that's what it took to take their minds off this karking war.

With one last glance sidelong at the label, he tipped the bottle straight to the ceiling and downed its contents in about three expert gulps, then brought his gaze back down to survey each of the men he faced in the dingy little storeroom that currently doubled as command center, rec room, bunker and now bar.

"Whaaa...?"

"I told you!" said Fives.

"You crazy son of a gundark," said Rex.

Having discovered early on that one type of unwanted mental image was an effective cure for another, Anakin gave a satisfied sigh and wiped the corner of his mouth with his gloved right index finger, in a manner juuust provocative enough to invoke the suggestion of having something of General Kenobi's running down his lip instead. The raucous calls from his clone companions assured him he'd hit his mark.

"Get a room, General!" barked Fives, throwing a heavy synthwool sock square against the right side of Anakin's face.

"But Fiivess," said Anakin, suddenly moving and speaking a little more slowly as he took the sock off his face, "you're in it."

Echo stood up rapidly. "Oh kriff, where?"

"Di'kut! Do you actually want to know?"

Rex facepalmed.

Anakin swayed.

He staggered to one of the stacks of boxes, sitting down abruptly on them, knocking over a stack of smaller boxes as he did.

He giggled.

***

Supply lines of normal alcohol had long since been restored by the time Anakin was asked to spy on Chancellor Palpatine, whose hobbies were orchestrating wars in which his dual identities led both sides, using the dark side of the Force, and croquet (he was good at two of the three).

Anakin, however, whose troops had severely underestimated just how warped his tastebuds were, had actually taken a liking to the more flamboyant, eviler alcohol. He still occasionally drank vanilla extract when he wanted to get wasted, sometimes even when there was actual liquor available. It just felt different than being regular drunk, there was no tipsy stage and he'd developed a sick sort of nostalgia for the godawful taste.

Obi-Wan, who had already had his own liver replaced twice due to (non-vanillyl) alcohol consumption since the war began, had very little room to criticize him on it, and even less so while they were busy doing things that would convince Echo his armor would never be clean again if he sat on the same surface. Which they did on nearly every available surface.

Anakin drifted through the streets of a Coruscanti shopping district in a daze. He had been actively avoiding sleep due to the nightmares about people he loved dying, which began whenever he arrived back on Coruscant and receded whenever he was sent to the Mid- or Outer Rim (Darth Sidious arranged these nightmares in the Force during valuable time he could have spent spinning in his office chair, but Anakin didn't know that).

The 501st were currently deployed without him, Obi-Wan and the 212th had already left for Utapau, and the senators Anakin had loosely dubbed "the chaos club" (led by Padme and her friend Bail Organa of Alderaan) were all busy doing senatorial things. Anakin was adrift in a sea of inner conflict and doubts.

The entire row of shops he currently wandered along was too upper class for him, situated in kind of a liminal zone between the Mid Levels and Upper Levels.

He stood out terribly in his plain black and brown Jedi robes and the leather additions that resembled his battle armor just a bit too much for polite company, an uncomfortable reminder to the citizens of Coruscant of the war they'd just as soon block out of their minds with a curtain of shimmersilk and a dozen social calls. But he was enough of a war hero that nobody was daring to say anything.

He kind of wished that at least his weird father figure was in the mood to get drunk. No doubt Palpatine's discerning tastes would involve whiskey that was older than Anakin was and cost a mound of credits equivalent to the GDP of a small planetary system, but all Anakin really wanted was that dreadful cake-making liquid. He smirked at the mental image of offering some to the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

Anakin had a lot more trouble releasing anxiety into the Force than some Jedi, but his friends had lovingly taught him techniques they themselves used.

He had Obi-Wan's lessons in moving meditation. The combat skill of situational awareness was taught to clones provided him an easier segue into awareness of the present moment. Padme Amidala, a Nubian to the bone, liked to deal with stress by looking at something beautiful and contemplating the features that went into its aesthetic appeal.

By window shopping, he could combine all three.

The first shop was mostly baby clothes, and he looked away with a jolt in his gut- my fault, dying, dead, all my fault- but the second consisted entirely of upscale cosmetic parts for service droids, which was more up his alley. The third, however.

Home baking supplies.

Coping techniques and anxiety alike forgotten, Anakin's sleep-deprived brain lit up with the brightest idea he'd had since the glorious victory of Kenobi and Skywalker aboard the Invisible Hand.

Using a minor Force trick to make himself appear not invisible, but unremarkable to observing eyes, he stepped into the cute little shop and briefly pretended to scan the 63 different kinds of diced nuts and a bright crimson filling that reminded him just a little too much of a red Sith blade. He reached the aisles of concentrated flavourings.

Quickly and quietly, Anakin used the many swaddling layers of his tunics and oversized robe to help him be a disgrace to the Jedi Order in the pettiest way he could think of.

He bought a pack of Ahsoka's favourite candies at the till to cut down on suspicion, pocketing them in the hopes of seeing her again when all this was over. And then he left, straight faced and still holding up the Force impression of undistinguished mediocrity as his disguise.

Only a few minutes and a few shop doors later, he dropped the Force impression and took off at a run when he realized he was running late to meet with Palpatine.

***

Disheveled after arriving unfashionably late, Anakin settled into his seat in the Chancellor's private box with its premium view of the Mon Calamari water ballet. He'd never been to the Opera House before, and once Palpatine ordered his hangers-on away, it wasn't so bad.

As Palpatine elaborated on his distrust of the Jedi Council, Anakin grew slowly more concerned. Finally, with meaningful eye contact: "They asked you to do something that made you feel dishonest, didn't they?"

Caught off guard, Anakin froze. He wanted out of this conversation.

Palpatine continued. "They asked you to spy on me."

"Excuse me." Anakin held up his index finger in a 'wait' type gesture, left hand rummaging in his robes. He found what he was looking for and, pressing and twisting off the childproof cap, sucked back about 3/4ths of a bottle of vanilla extract.

Palpatine's expression slid gradually from mild surprise to intense curiosity to dawning horror. "My boy, are you quite-"

"Want some?" Realizing he could, by his own actions, turn the deliriously irreverent vision of earlier into a reality, Anakin tilted the remainder of the bottle in Palpatine's direction. "There's more where that came from."

***

An hour and an unspecified amount of vanilla extract later, staggering out of the speeder from the Opera House and back toward Palpatine's office, Anakin was trying to listen to the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

Trying to, but Palpatine kept losing the thread of the conversation while attempting to rein in Anakin's drunken antics. The Sith lord had never realized how quickly The Hero With No Fear could become The Hero With No Volume Control.

The Republic Executive Building was nearly deserted at this hour, but it never truly closed- least of all to the Chancellor himself. Anakin's ambulation could scarcely be labeled "walking" along the fine crimson carpet of the corridors, but he kept up with Palpatine easily, if clumsily.

"He could use the midichlorians to create-"

"Life, yeah yeah, you got to this part already. A HUNDRED TIMES!"

Palpatine pursed his lips. "Anakin, if you would let me finish-"

"HE COULD SAVE THE ONES HE LOVED FROM DYING BUT NOT HIMSELF, RIGHT?"

"Yes, that's-"

"WAIT!"

The gaze Anakin fixed on the leader of the "free" galaxy was oddly lucid for one so far from sober. "I GET IT! I GET WHY YOU'RE TELLING ME THIS! YOU KNOW! YOU KNOW ABOUT MY NIGHTMARES! HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

"-I want what's best for you, my boy-"

"DO YOU HAVE THE FORCE?"

Anakin had never reached out to probe the Chancellor's presence in the Force for Force sensitivity before. Had never had reason to. But even Obi-Wan, whose deductive reasoning caught Anakin's secrets more often than anyone's, did not know about the recurring nightmares he had been having.

Now he did so, his focus as uncoordinated as his body, but still enough. Chancellor Palpatine didn't feel Force null, nor was his connection to it minor, but he didn't feel like any Jedi. He was the cold at the peak of the tallest mountain, power solely for power's sake, all the merciless quiet of the ice of Ilum and none of its promise of peace.

Anakin stumbled back.

"YOU DO!"

And.

"YOU'RE! THE! SITH! LORD!"

Anakin wanted to reach for his lightsaber, but the threads of the war were unraveling before him. He laughed, but even suffused with the unnatural levity of intoxication, it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. This was not like the tricks the 501st pulled on him, nor Obi-Wan's snark.

The war was the worst joke anyone had ever told.

"You're were BOTH SIDES!" He hiccuped. "THIS WHOLE TIME!" Painful laughter broke the cadence of his words. "IT... IT WAS YOU!"

"Anakin, please. You're shouting."

Anakin doubled over, clutching his ribs as if to keep them from falling out of his body. This wasn't funny at all, but he couldn't make the laughter stop. "THE WHOLE WAR... WAS YOURS! YOU... YOU WERE FUCKING THE WHOLE GALAXY..."

Everything that had been fought for, everything Jedi and clone and civilian had endured, everything Anakin had survived, everything he'd done, everyone who'd died- a pointless, cruel joke, like a middle finger from the Force itself.

No, not the Force. The middle finger was from Darth Sidious, Chancellor Palpatine, his so-called friend.

"Quiet!" Palpatine's voice had faded from exasperation to genuine fear. "Please, you're going to get us both killed."

Anakin's laughter had turned to convulsing, and he didn't have enough air to speak anymore even if he'd wanted to. His diaphragm was going to break, his lungs were going to shatter his ribcage from inside, his chest was going to implode. And he hoped they would, because he was going to jail for murdering the Chancellor as soon as his body let him.

There were footsteps in the hallway, but Anakin didn't care.

Behind the laughter, a howl of rage was clawing its way up his spine to reach his mouth. His left hand was trembling and in the dead of the Executive Building, hearing the lights buzz, the fingers of his right hand were tearing the fabric of his robes. Hot tears were already springing from Anakin's eyes.

He fixed Sidious with a glare of such naked, undiluted hatred that Sidious reached into his luxurious robes for his lightsaber.

As if in slow motion, he watched red swell behind the foolish Skywalker boy. The white and crimson of the Coruscant Guard first, then the scarlet robes of his own Royal Guards. They filled his field of vision like a spreading bloodstain, flowing until the worst of all the Jedi and the last Dark Lord of the Sith were surrounded.

Holding his blade in front of himself in preparation for electro-staves and countless blaster shots, Sidious regretted not replacing the Royal Guard with Sith acolytes.

And to think, red had always been his favourite colour.

Skywalker had managed to regain enough control of himself to stand up, and Sidious didn't like the blue of his lightsaber much better than the sea of red. Anakin dropped his robe to the floor in a way reminiscent of his master and grandmaster.

"He knows the ways of the Force." Anakin's voice was sluggish, the words coming slower than frozen molasses, but he didn't slur his consonants. "He's been trained to use the dark side."

Security cameras would later reveal that all Corries present gave the slightest of nods, in almost perfect unison, before opening fire.

***

After the death of the Chancellor, Anakin couldn't tell whether he was sobering up or getting drunker. He cried until he laughed, laughed until he screamed, and screamed until the ceiling shuddered and bits of rubble crumbled down around his ears.

Before the foundations could be split apart by his Force scream, someone shoved a hot cup of tea into his hands, awkwardly tucked his discarded robe around his shoulders like a blanket that smelled of blaster vapor and promised him Obi-Wan would be returning from Utapau very very soon.

Their presence was familiar. Fingers numb on the teacup, he looked up into the tired face.

"... Senator... Organa... ?" His voice was hoarse. The long lights that lined the hallway were too bright.

"Interim Chancellor-Elect Organa," said Bail.

Anakin blacked out.

~FIN~