The Silent Listener

Each of the lyrics comes from an old-time hickory song for fiddles, and is a lyric from that corresponding song.

"Fire on the Mountain" --> "Fire on the Mountain, run boys run"

Fire On The Mountain - Fiddle Player POV

"The House of the Rising Sun" --> "The Devil's in the house of the rising sun"

House of the Rising Sun

"Ida Red" --> "Chicken in the bread pan peckin' out dough"

Ida Red - Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

"Granny Will Your Dog Bite" --> "Granny does your dog bite? 'No child, no'."

FTC #149 Granny Will Your Dog Bite

And for your furthered education, The Mountain Whipporwill.

in a time before things like radios and record players, every time you heard music was because there was somebody in the room with you playing an instrument. and many, many, many social events involved dancing, which requires music. so, if you're planning any kind of gathering in the american south or appalachia, you need to find a fiddler. and the fiddler's job is to play music that everybody knows and likes and can dance to.

the mistake The Devil makes in his bet with Johnny is that he misinterprets the contest as being about technical ability, so he has this big flashy song. he plays fast and impressively with a band of demons playing unfamiliar instruments in unfamiliar rhythms. he's definitely more skilled at playing than Johnny, and thinks he has it in the bag.

solo, so you could actually

HEAR Johnny’s fiddling.

They are not so good with directions.

And yes, that’s Sasha tugging Cherno to shore with a large chain.

This is what happened after the end of the movie. You cannot convince me otherwise!!

(Credit for this idea goes to you, anonymous dude on 4chan. You’re awesome.)

It’s been two years since this episode aired, and this happened:

a spark to ignite by chromyrose | T | Yuuri/Victor | 2k

Yuuri finds out about the real first impression he made on Viktor, and has a massive meltdown about it.

(Good thing Phichit’s there to kick him in the ass.)

Be my coach, Viktor! by scintillations | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

It was never just Yuuri chasing after Viktor.

Captivated by macca (NelyafinweFeanorion) | T | Yuuri/Victor | 3k

Viktor’s side of the events of the Grand Prix Sochi banquet and events after. How was he affected by meeting Yuuri Katsuki and how did Yuuri’s video of Stay Close to Me affect Viktor’s decision to find Yuuri in Japan and become his coach.

Dream of an Eternity with You and Me by GaHoolianGirl | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

“Lover”

“Partner"

Those were new words for them, not just when referring to the two of them together, but also for either of them separately. Before a few hours ago, neither of them had really and truly understood romantic love. Viktor had the (admittedly stunted and tough) semi-parental love from Yakov as well as the platonic love of his fellow skaters, and Yuri had his family and the whole city of Hasetstu that loved and supported him.

But a love that was meant for one person…no, meant to be shared between two people? When had they had time for that?

In this whole wide world that adored them both, they shared a bond that they never had with another person.

I think you should burn that tie by FujoshiFluff | T | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

Victor buying Yuuri a suit would have gone something like this. (probably)

“Uhm.. Victor? I- I think these slacks are too tight-”

“Ooh, show me~ show me~”

i think i may have loved you first by perennials | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

Here are the facts:

Yuuri is drunk. Viktor is not.

Yuuri is riding an alcohol-induced high so far up above the clouds he cannot even begin to comprehend the weight of his actions back in the human realm.

Viktor is falling in love.

I’ve Been Here a Long Time by DawnMalfoy | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

Victor thinks it’s funny that everyone thinks Yuuri is the lucky one for getting engaged to him, considering that Victor has been in love with the beautiful Japanese skater for years.

love at second sight by astrolesbian | T | Yuuri/Victor | 2k

He looks at Victor as if he somehow believes Victor would have come all the way here if he wasn’t desperately, stupidly in love with a drunk almost-stranger.

Memory by pensversusswords | T | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

“You literally swept me off my feet,” Viktor tells Yuuri, smiling softly at him. “You surprised me and you haven’t stopped surprising me since. I never want you to stop surprising me.”

In which Yuuri doesn’t remember, Viktor has been smitten since forever, and they’re both just happy to be together.

Putting On a Show by judgingbooksbycovers | M | Yuuri/Victor | 2k

Phichit is determined to make up for what he missed at last year’s banquet - If that means riling up Viktor Nikiforov, even better.

Resurrection by KennyEchelon | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

Victor Nikiforov was dead, but he’d never felt more alive.

The morning of the Grand Prix Final, Victor can’t stop thinking about his conversation with Yurio.

Something round, something gold by doodeline | G | Yuuri/Victor | art  

The scene in the Sagrada Familia

Something that is embarrassing to remember by Alkie | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

“Hey, Yuuri.” The Russian calls the other, smiling at him lovingly. “Do you still remember the things you said at the banquet?”

stay by my side and never leave by wartransmission | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

Viktor was falling, he knew, in that moment when Katsuki Yuuri clung and clutched to his body like a man possessed by winter looking for warmth.

Strength in Numbers by sinemoras09 | T | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

A seduction.

Sway with me by mikararinna | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

And god said, struck him with the arrow, make him fall, deeply in despair, endlessly in love.

The Biggest Sock of Victor Nikiforov’s Life by aloserkid | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

Victor looks back.

The Snow Will Melt by HolidayHabit | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

Yuuri is terrified of the future, but Victor reassures him that everything’s going to be okay.

the history books are made for us by d10smessi | NR | Yuuri/Victor | 6k

Victor thinks, I’ll never love someone this way again.

or: Victor Nikiforov, on loving Katsuki Yuuri.

tonight and always by DuendeJunior | G | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

Back at the hotel, they talk.

You Must Remember This by terunakamura | G | Yuuri/Victor | 1k

With Victor so upset he can’t remember it, Yuuri wonders what kind of impression he made at the previous year’s banquet. Phone snooping ensues.

you saw the light of gold and rushed by renaissance | T | Yuuri/Victor | <1k

My latest piece: Our Blessed Rebel Queen, Carrie Fisher

done in watercolour and ink. 

Carrie Fisher has always been a great inspiration to me. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, I wanted to create a piece to bring me and comfort and strength. To look upon Space Mom and say “yes, I can face today.”

prints available: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/lindsayvanek/blessed-rebel-queen/

Chirrut: I told you - just order for me. I don’t need to know the menu.

Art by Shima Spoon

these were originally on Tumblr

Ten Ways To Redeem Kylo Ren Without Screwing Over Finn, A List I Made Up Just Now Because I Am A Creative Writer, And If I Really Try I Can Imagine Lots Of Fictional Scenarios To Get Characters To Interact And Change Without Doing Either A Disservice In Terms Of Their Overall Arc or Characterization

With Rey gone trying to persuade Luke Skywalker to come back from Ahch-To, the newly-woken Finn is left to his own devices on D’Qar. Fascinated by Major Calonia’s work—stormtrooper “healthcare” was either bacta or termination, none of the physio or preventive care; pain relief is totally new to him—he becomes a medic. However, he really struggles when Leia brings him a severely injured Kylo Ren, who gradually is redeemed.

Finn wakes up, and after making sure that Rey is safe, wants absolutely nothing to do with the Resistance v. First Order grudge match. He leaves D’Qar on the first freighter to some uncharted planet where no one will go looking for an ex-stormtrooper. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one who had that idea. But for him and Kylo Ren both, galactic conflict isn’t so easy to escape—and the First Order isn’t likely to welcome either of them back with open arms. 

Finn wakes up, and begins climbing the Resistance chain of command like the general-to-be and gunner he is. He struggles with learning how, not just to be a leader, but to be one worthy of the Resistance. In another plot-thread, Kylo Ren is sidelined after his failure on Starkiller. Resentment for his replacement and the growing realization that Snoke and the Dark Side are not everything he’s been promised, Kylo defects. Finn does not like it, but he settles into grudging acceptance when Kylo’s intelligence shows itself to be valuable.

Finn wakes up, and after spending weeks and weeks with Resistance Intelligence, decides to become Intel. He’s devastatingly good at spycraft, because who wouldn’t spill everything to that smile, that air of absolute sincerity? One of his informants always has good First Order info, and turns out to be a front for a Kylo Ren, who knows now he’s picked the wrong side but doesn’t know how to claw his way out of the hole he’s dug. 

In a move that stuns everyone, Kylo Ren surrenders to the Resistance. Finn, still working his way up the Resistance chain of command, is assigned to guard his cell—one of the only officers who Leia trusts not to kill Kylo. (And, luckily, Force-sensitive too.) Finn struggles with his complicated feelings about the First Order, which he thought buried—all while separated from the breathing symbol of the First Order by bars. Kylo Ren is struggling himself, trying to figure out what parts of him aren’t Snoke’s. They find an uncomfortable equivalence in this.

Rey and Luke bring Kylo Ren back from Ahch-To for whatever reason. Finn is busy being a general/spymaster/medic/ruler of the galaxy and driving the primary plot (the war with the First Order) forward, and does not interact with this plotline except to express his opinion sometimes.

Finn has his own, separate plotline, which does not intersect with Kylo Ren’s redemption arc at all, except that during the Final Duel To The Death, Kylo Ren shuts his eyes, and lets Finn run him through with his grandfather’s lightsaber.

Finn has his own, separate plotline, except when Kylo Ren kills Snoke. Finn is the diplomat chosen to accompany Leia to dismantle the First Order (by Ren’s invitation, no less) and has a lot of complicated feelings about how he grew up, where he came from, and what to do with all the kids who panic if you take their helmets off.

Any of the above, but Finn feels actively antagonistic towards Kylo and interacts with him only negatively. This continues even after Kylo has done the majority of redemptive work, because even if someone is working to make themselves a better person, it does not obligate forgiveness.

Any of the above, but Finn is busy diving the plot and does not interact directly or meaningfully with Kylo’s plot.

They treated her like a curious pet for the first few weeks. Something to be petted and fed scraps from the table, taken on walks through the warfront. (She made a good distraction; not even stormtroopers thought to question a woman and her child on their way to market, even when it was to meet with a weapons supplier.) Jerhon tried to brush her hair once—though Jyn had bitten his hand the minute he reached for one of her long plaits. 

He’d overreacted, in her opinion; screeching curses and demanding to know if humans were poisonous. “She’s a fighter, Jerhon,” Saw had laughed, and Jyn had smiled, just a little. “Don’t blame a manka cat for turning on you after you poke it with a stick.”

Afterwards, Saw made her a cup of l’allach to wash the salty taste of trandoshan blood out of her mouth.“My mother did my hair like this,” Jyn said quietly, when he placed the cup in front of her.

“I know, little cat,” Saw had said, and he had rested his huge hand on the top of her head. He kept it there, heavy and warm and solid, even when she started to cry.

After the first few weeks, they put a blaster in her hands, and that was the end of that.

.

She was the only one allowed to help Saw into his armor every morning. (She’d begged him for a solid week, and he’d finally agreed, smiling indulgently.) He was patient as her clumsy child’s hands struggled with the straps and catches—“Slow down, little cat,” he would say, even as Jyn flushed, embarrassed. “I’m in no hurry. Take your good time.”

Jyn slept beside him for years, curved into the bulwark his body made against the darkness.

.

They didn’t call themselves the Partisans. They didn’t call themselves anything, really—Saw Gerrera’s people, maybe, when they had to pick a designation, differentiate themselves from the resistance movements they were supporting. It was everyone else who called them names, ‘Partisans’ being among the nicer of them. (Jyn had always liked ‘rebs’. She heard it in cantinas, once she was old enough to get into cantinas—a toast, to the rebs! slurred by Imperial officers who were still breaking in their boots, young and shockingly blind when it came to Jyn picking their pockets.

Of course by that point, she wasn’t a reb anymore, so what did it matter?)

If she had been older—though there’s an upper limit to how old Jyn Erso will get, the end of her life’s thread scorched with green fire—if she had been older, she would have pushed for something better than ‘partisan’. 

It wasn’t earthen enough, there wasn’t enough blood, not for Saw Gererra and his warrior band. ‘Partisan’ sounded like one of the grand old Republican parties, like the Trade Federation—not a handful of hungry hard-scrabble fighters, who could teach you how to short-circuit trooper speeders and rig transceivers out of spare wire; who had no qualms about torching distribution centers or firebombing Imperial officers’ quarters.

‘Partisans’ wouldn’t have sewn an infra-mapping chip into the lining of a little girl’s robe, and taught her how to cry on cue. They wouldn’t have sent her into a training base, thick with stormtroopers, to wander around sobbing for her father, taking advantage of soft-hearted Imps to fully map the facility.

(Jyn can’t imagine the vaunted Alliance doing that, at least until she meets Cassian. It stings, somehow, inexplicably. She’d thought that she was special.)

None of Saw’s people were ever going home again. She wasn’t even sure which worlds some of them called home, if they had planets to return to. (There were some questions you couldn’t ask, not on a warfront.) None of them could afford politics, at least not in the way the Alliance could—Jyn had lost count of how many times she’d watched Saw through grimy cantina viewports, speaking to a handful of sentients around a table, all of them nodding, serious. 

The words she read off his lips weren’t ‘freedom’, or ‘democracy’.

She wasn’t old enough to question it, though. She was sixteen when Saw put a knife in her right hand and a blaster in her left, and looked at her for a long moment, like he was memorizing her face. But she had trusted him, and thought nothing of it, because—well, every time they parted was treated like the last. (A self-fulfilling prophecy: at some point, it would be true.)

But she woke up alone the next morning, and she wasn’t Saw Gerrera’s people anymore.

.

Sometimes, when she’s lying in her bunk in the prison camp, she shuts her eyes, pretends she’s back on—but that part doesn’t matter. Some backwater planet, a nameless moon. One of the wild places they’d stop for cover, under purple-green trees. Their bed rolls in a circle around the fire; Saw wheezing with laughter as Shyentha acted out a holodrama she’d seen five years before, forgetting what came next. Jerhon shouting out absurd suggestions, which got progressively filthier until Jyn was blushing and Cerarr told him to shut off. One of them would insult the other’s blood, and they would play-fight over it, laughing as they wrestled by the fireside. 

Falling asleep to Darent and Arddan’s voices, lifted in the half-song of prayer. Jyn never found out which religion. (There were things you couldn’t ask a soldier, even when you bled for them.)

Sometimes when she dreams, the flames are a pyre, but the scene does not change. “Dying is no sorrowful thing, little cat,” Saw had said, each time he found Jyn crouched by the ashes, her knees pulled to her chest and weeping. “They were warriors. They fought, and we honor them by seizing all the gladness we can in their place. It’s the living, Jyn. It’s about the living.”

.

“I don’t know what my father saw in you,” Jyn says sullenly, turning away. (She is fourteen. Everything out of her mouth is sullen.) 

Saw snorts. “What makes you think it was your father?”

.

She should have asked—

.

The first time she killed a man, she was eleven. 

It was some moon whose true name she still can’t pronounce—you really needed two mouths and an extra aperture in your vocal folds. But the Empire named it Imperial Moon 213-X, and so the Partisans had taken to calling it Ex, because that was as good as anything else. Saw had told her to go and amuse herself while he talked to the local resistance movement, and so she had—

It’s not a good story, in truth. A slaver in the marketplace who saw her as a perfect target, grabbing her by the braids and dragging her into an alley. Her scalp ached even as she dug into her pocket, and it kept aching—even when she brought the knife up into the vulnerable underside of his jaw. She doesn’t remember how many times, when her stabs turned sloppy, when she managed to get his jugular. He never let go of her braid, even when he collapsed to the ground, his eyes unseeing. The weight of him brought her to her knees.

It was very quiet, in the aftermath, just a distant repetitive crackle, like a rush of static from a broken transceiver.

After a moment, she realized that was her, breathing.

“You changed your hair,” Saw said later that night, eyeing her from his seat at the table. He gestured, and she stepped closer, letting him inspect the hacked-off shortness, the messy ends. After a moment, he reached out and cupped her face in his hands. (He had just lost all the skin on his left side, due to a badly-timed blasting, and she remembers, he smelled of bacta and the particular metallic of meddroid’s touch.)

Jyn had shaken herself free, and met his gaze as coolly as she could. “Braids are for children,” she said.

.

She had Saw’s lectures all but memorized, at that point; enough to tune them out and glower at him silently as she watched his mouth move. But she must have slipped up that time, rolled her eyes, because Saw had drawn himself up to his full height and spat, “By the Force, Steela, I cannot believe—”

“Who’s Steela?” Jyn interrupted with a grin.

She’d never seen Saw blanch before, but all the blood rushed from his face, leaving him grey, his eyes white around his dark irises. “What?” he whispered, and Jyn’s smirk dropped away, her bravado gone cold at the expression on Saw’s face. 

“What did you say?” Saw repeated, more insistently. “Jyn, tell me—”

“You—you called me ‘Steela’.”

Saw had shut his eyes for a moment, his mouth a stiff, unforgiving line. When he opened them again, Jyn thought he might cry. The thought frightened her. “No one you need to concern yourself with,” he said, very gently. 

For the next few days, he couldn’t quite look at her, and Jyn had been—well. She hadn’t asked.

.

The first time she killed sentients on purpose, she was thirteen and Saw had crowed like a proud father, kissed her hair. The Partisans all chipped in to buy a dozen honey-cakes and she ate half of them herself, shoving them into her mouth like she was starving, trying to block out Saw’s voice, the glowing pride of all the others, with her own chewing and smacking.

When she stood, the whole world lurched, and Jyn barely had time to double over before she was sick on her own boots. 

She still can’t eat anything too sweet without feeling it again, honey-full and nauseous, the smell of blaster-charred flesh in her nose. (She’s never told that story to anyone. She would have told it to Cassian, but there wasn’t really any time, was there?)

.

Jyn had stayed in the safehouse on Salient for three standard months after Saw left her there, trying every secure frequency she could remember, and then just scrolling through comm channels. Pleading with ghosts and static.

Finally, she’d gathered her things together, tucking the knife into her boot and the blaster under her coat. It was cold that morning, and no one thought twice about the plume of smoke, rising up over the city.

She was already three systems over by the time they managed to put out the fire. 

.

She forgives him. She doesn’t forgive him. She’s never entirely sure.

.

“I had another nightmare,” Jyn whispers, as Saw’s hand comes to rest, heavy, on the crown of her head. He’s half-asleep, she knows; his eyes still shut, but he smiles a little into the dark.

“Krennic?”

She nods, because he can feel it with his hand there.

“Don’t be afraid,” Saw says, and his voice is deep, low, the sound Jyn imagines rocks make when they talk to one another. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“Promise?” Jyn whispers.

There’s an art to being on your knees. 

Rey has studied it her whole life—exactly where to balance on your kneecaps so they won’t ache for the rest of the week, how to tuck your calves to your thighs, the particular angle of your ankles so your feet won’t fall asleep and you won’t stumble, walking away. Whatever Grandfather says, she doesn’t find that pain centers her, makes her more at One with the Force—it just makes it hard to concentrate on what he’s saying, sift through the confused mix of past and present, orders, invective, praise for her, for himself. He’s begun calling her by the wrong name lately—‘Padmé’ instead of Reyvan. Leave me alone, he always says then, his voice trembling. I have no patience for ghosts.

The Emperor is getting old, his detractors would say, if his detractors had been allowed to live. The power of the Dark Side cannot hold back death forever.

There are generals who come to her for orders now. 

Rey doesn’t flinch when Kylo goes to his knees beside her, though he does it gracelessly, a heavy collapse of limbs and the clatter of armor. (She still doesn’t understand how they both trained beneath Darth Vader and found such different lessons in it. But then, perhaps that is the curse of his blood—) 

Rey watches out of the corner of her eye as Kylo removes his helmet and tucks it under his arm. He is red-faced and there is sweat on his brow; he must have only just docked, and run from the bay. “Lady Reyvan,” he greets her, and she refuses to rankle at the faint thread of amusement running through his voice.

“Darth Vader,” she replies coolly.

“How long has he been talking?” he asks lightly, and she does rankle at that.

“The Emperor is wise,” she whispers, lashing out with the Force for good measure. Kylo winces at the blow—he’s grown sloppy, his shields out of reach and his reflexes slow—and his thin smile is quickly replaced by a scowl.

“Everyone from here to the Outer Rim knows you’re more the Emperor than he is these days,” Kylo says sourly, not seeming to feel the desperate stab of panic that goes through Rey. (She forces herself to exhale, self-consciously checking her Force-shields. It is one thing for Kylo, but Grandfather is still strong in the Force, and he could not be allowed to see her weakness. She breathes.)

“If you were a true Sith Lord, you would kill him, and assume his place,” Kylo adds, when she says nothing. “Is that not the way? Didn’t I kill my master to take up the mantle of Vader?”

Rey thinks about reminding Kylo of the weeks he had spent locked in his rooms, lost to grief and refusing to eat, after he killed Anakin. How, when she had taken her lightsaber and carved through the durasteel of his door, he had met her on the other side ready to die himself. (She’d clung to him, and they’d cried.)

Instead, she settles for a withering look. “Your opinion is neither asked for nor required.”

“What are the two of you whispering about?” the Emperor demands suddenly, and their attention jerks back to him, where he sits on the raised dais. He is looking at them through filmy eyes, and Kylo straightens up, looking suddenly very serious. Rey lifts her voice:

“Nothing, Grandfather. I was simply informing Darth Vader of what he had missed, by coming late.”

“Ah, yes,” the Emperor says, relaxing back against the seat. He looks increasingly dwarfed by it, more with each passing  “How goes the fight for the Devaron System?” 

Kylo darts a look at Rey, but she stares steadfastly ahead. “It goes well, Emperor,” he finally says. “They will fall soon, surely.”

Rey focuses on her breathing, on balancing her weight perfectly so her knees won’t ache when she stands. She does not think about how the whole Duluur Sector was under Imperial control before she or Kylo were born. 

It does not go on too long after that, though it feels longer, with Kylo throwing her a look every time the Emperor says something that is no longer true, or wanders far afield in his musings, and has to be reminded of why they are there. At last he sighs, and tells Rey to come and kiss him. 

Rey can feel her ears burning, but she rises to her feet. “Thank you, Grandfather,” Rey says like an obedient child, and kisses him on the cheek as she did when she was small.

He pats her hand, and she does not shiver at how many veins she can see, grotesquely, beneath his papery skin.

“Rey…” Kylo says, once the doors to the audience chamber shut behind them. She just barely resists the impulse to draw her saber, for daring. (It has been long, too long since they had a good sparring match. She misses the burn of muscles and the humming gladness of having an opponent, a singular individual whom she could fight and conquer, and not a creeping grey, an unnamed fading and the gathering weight of destiny.)

“I have outgrown childhood petnames, Lord Vader,” she says instead, with as much ice as she can dredge up from within her. “And you know it.”

“He’s worse than when I left, Rey,” Kylo echoes. His eyes are hard. “And that was only a few months ago.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, because by the Force, they are in public. Anyone could wander down this corridor, and Grandfather’s enemies, her enemies, are everywhere. It’s so like Kylo to barrel into this with as much grace and thought as a bantha in a tea shop. 

“The Emperor is wise,” she adds. “He rules with strength and the Force is with him. That you would think to question his might—”

“You’re worse too,” Kylo interrupts, and it knocks the air from her lungs. She stares, but Kylo bullies through: “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? You’re miserable and drowning in the Dark Side, I don’t know how you can even reach out for the Force like this—”

When the anger arrives, it is a whiplash—bright and hard, filling her up with something strong as kyber crystals and yet brittle, sharp-edged.

She curls her lip at Kylo. “And that is Jedi talk, Skywalker-Solo,” she spits, and all the color drains from his face in a rush. Rey grins—or bares her teeth, she’s honestly not sure the difference at this point. “Oh, I’m sorry, do you not enjoy being called by your name? Perhaps you’d rather I lisped ‘’ky’lo’ as I did when we were young?”

He swallows. “I am a Sith, like my grandfather before me,” Kylo says, but she can hear the fractional hesitation in his voice. “My—mother and father’s choices do not dictate mine.”

“Don’t they,” Rey scoffs, turning away and starting down the corridor. (The anger is still there, simmering under her skin. She doesn’t know what to do with it, except tremble.) 

But Kylo’s legs are longer than hers now, and it only takes him a couple strides to catch up. “In case you’ve forgotten, Lady Reyvan, you loved my mother. When it was revealed she was a spy for the Rebellion, you cried for days. You even had to be sedated for her—execution.”

“I was a child,” Rey said, viciously shoving aside the ache as she remembered Leia’s face, how badly Rey had wished Leia was her mother, instead of just Kylo’s. How, just before she was led out to the executioner’s block, Leia had taken Rey’s hands and said, there is such light in you; don’t let them put it out.

It had taken Darth Vader—the first, the real, because Kylo would never really be Darth Vader to her—almost three months to find Kylo afterwards. His father had kidnapped him, with the intent of delivering him to the rebels. Even now, Kylo didn’t like to talk about it. (Rey never met Han Solo, but she thinks she can see him, sometimes, in Kylo. Not that she would ever tell him.)

“What about that stormtrooper captain?” Kylo asks, as they turned down another corridor. “You weren’t a child with him.”

The mention of Eight-Sevens cuts even deeper that Leia’s name did, and Rey feels the bottom of the world drop out. She whirls on Kylo. “I told you that in confidence.”

Of course, she’s forgotten Kylo has no shame, and he just scowls at her. “I know. You said you loved him. Where is he now?”

“I had him reassigned before we could develop any—deeper attachment,” Rey says stiffly, and Kylo’s face falls.That more than anything brings her anger roaring back, bright and terrible. She could kill him like this, and it would be easy. “What is it you want from me, Kylo?” she demands. “Kill my master and become emperor, fall in love and become a Jedi—maybe I should consider defecting to the Rebellion too! Tell me what I should do, and I’ll do it, I swear.”

“I want…“

Kylo falls silent, chewing on his lower lip.

“I thought so,” Rey says, and Kylo flinches. “And before—before you think to offer me yet another impossible choice, perhaps consider that my master is also my grandfather, and I might love him too. You know what it’s like, to have no family left. Would you wish that on me?”

Kylo is silent, and Rey exhales shakily. “I have to go now,” she says. “I have—a hundred different meetings today, and I’ve already missed half of them. You’re welcome to come along, if you like.“

They walk beside one another in silence, Rey fixing the folds of her robes and the strands of hair that have come loose of her complicated braids. (Grandfather had insisted on a traditional Naboo stylist from the moment Rey’s hair was long enough to run a brush through—she doesn’t remember a time when her head wasn’t heavy with some pile of braids.) She envies Kylo, whose hair has been a wild mess his whole life, and only has to put his helmet on again to become the fearsome Darth Vader.

“You know, that isn’t right,” Kylo says suddenly, as they’re about to cross into the Western Wing. His voice sounds strange, distorted by the mask, and Rey dares a glance at him. (It’s strange to see Darth Vader’s mask and know it isn’t Anakin behind it. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get over the strangeness of that.) 

“What isn’t right?” Rey asks.

“That I don’t have any family left. I have you. And if you—whatever, you’ll have me. So…that’s that.”

They’re to the grand double doors before Rey can think of how to reply. “Lady Reyvan,” Kylo says with a bow.

“You’re not coming?” Rey asks, a little disappointed. It’s always more fun to sit with Kylo and gossip through the Force about how this commander is thinking about fucking this lieutenant, or which of them is wondering about lunch. Without him, she might actually have to pay attention.

“Force, no,” Kylo says, and she can hear him smirking. “I’ve heard the emperor isn’t even coming to this meeting.”

Rey is 273 days on Jakku when the woman with the dark eyes and the faint lines around her eyes bends down, and helps her wash the dust and debris from a hyperspace drive port. (Two and a half portions, never let it be said that Rey doesn’t know her worth.) “There,” the woman says, and when she smiles the lines around her eyes carve even deeper. When Rey drags the brush over the drive port, no sand kicks up. “Shiny and new. Go on, now—you can’t let him run out of portions.”

“’m Rey,” Rey says, breathless, clutching the port to her chest.

“Go!” the woman says, and Rey runs. She gets in line just in time to get the last three portions from Unkar. But when tries to find the woman after—

The sand is empty of sentients, and no one seems to know the human woman with dark hair, darker eyes, not even when Rey wanders among the camps and asks for her. Rey is only 273 days, and hungry, and so she eats there, squatted down in the sand outside someone’s tent—scarfing down half-mixed portions because she’s dizzy with starving, and she can’t wait. If the dark-haired woman wanted some, she should have been easier to find.

Rey sleeps that night full—or, at least, what she thinks is full—and dreams of a wattle-and-daub hut, and a woman with dark hair, dark eyes, laughing. The woman’s son sits with sun-bleached hair, his mouth is skewed as he works on a droid to help his mother with the customers that come. Rey helps too, and when he smiles at her, it feels like coming-home.

They are so happy, and Rey wakes crying, even though that is water she cannot afford to lose.

.

“No, not that one,” the woman says, and Rey drops the part like it burns her hand to touch. She whirls around, and there is the woman with the dark eyes, dark hair. She’s smiling, a little bemusedly, at Rey, at the specific part Rey was trying to extract from the mess of decay and rust.

“What’s wrong with it?” Rey demands. She is six hundred and seven days now, and she thought—

“Navigation systems are fiddly,” the woman says, stepping towards her, and then she is there, close enough for Rey to touch, to—“Biologic growth damages them first, interferes with the electro-magnetic signaling. This has—” she grunts, and the part comes away in her hand. “This has overgrown. It’s not worth installing again, it’ll just send the ship off-course trying to follow all those awful fractals.”

“What good does that do me?” Rey asks, thinking of all the portion she’s lost, if this stranger is right. She’d just wanted—

But the stranger smiles, and her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Come on,” she says, lowering herself to sit on the durasteel floor of the mighty star destroyer. “I’ll show you a trick my unscrupulous master showed me, on how to make it look as though tech has never been damaged.”

Rey spends the whole afternoon with her chin hooked over the woman’s soft shoulder, watching as she shows Rey how to reroute, undo, lay down new electric pathways. She smells like something sharp, the way Rey has always imagined ozone would smell if Rey had ever found the courage to leave the atmosphere. Her eyes are older than her face, that much Rey knows for sure.

“There you go,” the woman finally says, pressing the piece into Rey’s hand. “Good as new. Plutt won’t even be able to tell the difference, so you shouldn’t accept less than five and a quarter portions—”

“What about you?” Rey asks. The woman is warm, and alive, and human, and Rey finds herself hoping she’s her mother. Just to have something, someone. And especially her, with her crinkled eyes, the way she rests a hand against Rey’s cheek like—

“Oh, I’m fine,” the woman says, and Rey’s heart falters. “You will be full, on five and a quarter portions. That’s enough.”

Rey eats alone, eats until she is sick on constituted bread and meat, and she lies in her own bed biting down on her fist to keep herself from crying.

.

Sometimes, Rey looks out of the corner of her eye, and there she is, the woman with the dark hair and the dark eyes. “Hello, Mother,” Rey begins greeting her at some point, muttered in between breaths as she extracts another part, as she wakes from her midday nap in the shadowy berth of a star destroyer, as she forces herself to stay longer, work harder.

Sometimes, she hears someone murmur, hello, daughter, but she’s not sure. She’s not.

.

Poor affection-starved Rey, longing for a family, any family, even a ghost. Even the vague shape, even a shadow. Even the hint of a mother, whispering in her ear, droids have always been harbingers of good news, of better things ahead. Strangers may be angels. You are more. Run, go. I will follow you there.

Rey  isn’t sure, really, but in the barracks of D’Qar, Rey tosses and turns, until a cool hand comes to rest on her forehead, her neck. Shhh, a voice that is not quite the Force but might be something similar, whispers. It strokes its cool knuckles over the rabbit-pulse of her jugular. Shh, rest. You have a war to fight in the morning.

Shh.

 Shhhhhhh.

.

Luke has holos of his family—Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru Whitesun-Lars. But it’s the holo of their their step-mother, Shmi, that stops Rey in her tracks, stops her breathing at all. Anakin’s mother, Luke says, but Rey is holding onto he lightsaber too tightly to hear.

I know her, she says, and Luke goes still, blinks. 

Oh?

She used to—sing me lullabies, Rey says, because that’s all she can remember just now, the dark-haired-dark-eyed woman—Shmi Skywalker, chosen to be Mother of the Living Force, blessed, holy—humming in Rey’s darkened AT-AT. Shmi singing in Huttese; warm and calloused hands, a rough voice singing of how much she loved, would protect—

Luke catches Rey before she hits her knees, gathers her up to his chest. Shh, Luke murmurs, stroking her hair as Rey sobs. Shhh, it’s all right. Everything will—it’ll turn out right. It’ll be—it’ll be right.

Rey feels a cool touch at her forehead (impossible, Luke’s hands are hot at her waist, and—) and she sobs again, feeling hollow, feeling like she’s come home, somehow, impossibly. It is a war, she shouldn’t feel….

They are like okay money wise because in this universe Anakin totally gave R2 his bank account info (which Padme made for him). R2 is a little confused about why there ends up being being so much money in it, seeing as he thinks Anakin is dead but ends up shrugging it off. So they just spend the next 10 years flying around the galaxy, raising the baby Skywalkers.

Luke totally spends at least one year speaking only in binary. Leia knows more languages then any one child should ever know. Both twins are highly offended by the existence of restraining bolts.

Then one year Vader has like a lackey like doing his taxes or something and the lackey is like “uh lord Vader do you know what these monthly withdraws from you bank account dating back ten years are about” and Vader is like what the fuck.

So Vader decides to go after who is committing Identity fraud reasoning that the only people who would have Anakin Skywalker’s bank info would be someone he wanted to track down anyway. Meanwhile poor Obi-wan has been trying to track the twins down for ten years, and is just so fucking tired.

Obi-Wan.

Now Obi-Wan has been tracking the droids and the twins for 10 years and he looks like a proper spacer (he’s had to to blend in and avoid the Inquisitors) and he’s finally found them (He will never make another loose wire joke again in his life), and there’s VADER and he’s frantic.

And so Vader thinks Obi-Wan has been keeping his wife from him. And Obi-Wan thinks Vader has found out about the twins so in the middle of this seedy docking ring they draw sabers and fight only to be interrupted by R2 who is just DONE. You hear me? He is just DONE with organics and their stupid malfunctioning logic circuits. He has raised the twins with 3PO for 10 years and they’ve done a damn good job and he’s already watched this fiasco once on a lava planet and he is NOT WATCHING IT AGAIN. It is not good for the children. Their circuits are impressionable at this age. He doesn’t want them glitching. L0-K3 and L3-1A are his babies. He is not having them hurt.

So armed with is zapper and extending his little arms he rushes down the gangplank, swearing up a storm while 3PO stands guard over the children and keeps them from watching the fight. He screams at both me, tears into them like no ones business. 

And Obi-Wan is just like, what the hell is going on? Am I being yelled at by a droid?

And Vader who understands binary staggers in shock when he hears what R2 his saying. There are children. Padme had children, twins! He has twins and while Padme’s “processor has failed” R2 and 3PO have raised and protected his children and Vader and Obi-Wan better knock it off or ELSE!

Vader turns to Obi-Wan in horror. “They’ve been raised by droids all this time?” he roars. “Those two can barely go to the market to buy fruit without disaster striking!”

“Don’t blame me!” Obi-Wan shouts back, at the end of his rope. “They’re your droids! They kidnapped the children after you decided being a Sith was a good life choice! I’ve been trying to find them this whole time and I would have found them sooner but you’ve been hunting me across the whole blasted galaxy!”

Meanwhile the twins (not being dumb) realize something is up and while they care too much about 3PO to just force their way past him, they do start up the engines and turn the weapons over to target the two of them to protect R2 from their lightsabers.

The comm system crackles and a young girl’s voice commands both of them to drop their weapons and put their hands up unless they want to be blasted to dust.

Vader is both furious and strangely proud. He clips his lightsaber to his belt and raises his hands and asks to be let on board to talk.

*At the Cantina*

Cantina Bar owner: Hey, we don’t serve their kind here, your droids will have to wait outside.

Leia: Excuse me? Fucking EXCUSE ME? What the fuck do you mean ‘You don’t serve droids here’? What kind of racist bullshit is this shit?

Luke: Oh boy now you’ve gone and done it.

C-3PO: Honey, its not a big deal really, we don’t mind.

Leia: OH NO. WE’RE DOING THIS RIGHT FUCKING HERE AND NOW.

Bartender: Now look lady I don’t want any trouble.,.

Leia: Walks up to bar and grabs Bartender by the scruff of the neck.*: Oh, you don’t want trouble. You decide to try and discriminate and devalue my dads and you don’t want fucking trouble.

Bartender: I… what?

Leia: Those two are my FATHERS. They raised me and my brother since were were babies. They loved and cared for us and worked their transistors to the circuits so we would want for nothing. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO THROW THEM OUT?

Bartender: Well, its just….Droids don’t buy drinks you know? So if I let them in, those are seats that could be going to paying customers.

Leia: MOTHER FUCKER YOU GOT LIKE A ENTIRE BAR FULL OF PEOPLE HERE. I THINK YOU CAN SPARE TWO SEATS. HELL R2 DOESN’T EVEN SIT AT ALL. (No offense dad).

R2: Beep bwoop

C3P0: Please don’t encourage her R2.

Leia: But tell you what, money that damn important to you. Here *Pulls out a handful of credits and jams them into the barkeeps mouth, then shoves him back into the wall behind him.* That should cover it. Now we’re gonna find ourselves a table. If you don’t mind….. AND WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO STARING AT?

The alien that hassled Luke in the original A New Hope: Um, nothing Miss. In fact me and my friend were just leaving. Right Buddy?

Other alien: HWORK! HWORK!

Force Ghosts

Anakin Skywalker: WHY are they here?