#implied clonecest

Fact 1:  In this universe Sheev Palpatine is not a Sith.  

He is what he claims to be in canon, a career politician trying to do his best. He is no saint, he is still a career politician after all, but he is not the ultimate evil. He is still force sensitive, with a sensitivity that is enough that he could have trained as a Jedi if his parents had given him up, but not so high that he is a danger to anyone without training. But he does not keep it a secret from the Jedi, and has essentially been tutored by a few Jedi in the ways of the Force.  He does not let on in the Senate about his sensitivity (Which amounts to a better than average sense of people’s emotions, and a good sense for danger and being able to move very small items with his mind.).   

Fact 2: Yan Dooku is the Sith Master, as of the clone wars, Hugo Demask was his master.

Hugo Demask survives 5 years longer than in canon, he corrupts Dooku, is Maul's Master and is ultimately killed by Dooku.  The background steps needed for the clone wars to happen, that in canon were Palpatine, were performed by Demask or Dooku. 

Fact 3: The Clones are not chipped.

There is no project Knightfall, no Order 66. The clones were not a co-opted project by Sith. Master Sifo Dyas did commission them, but (like with Palpatine), they are not a trap for the Jedi. While Jango Fett still died on Geonosis, he had been there on a bounty, separate from his job to be the progenitor and trainer of the clones.  He trains them because he is paid, rather than for revenge. 

Fact 4: Anakin Skywalker does not slaughter the Tuskens.

Shimi still dies, though it is an accident rather than being captured by the raiders.  Anakin still has grief and horror and loss but it is tempered here because there is no group of beings that can blame, and he is not one to turn that anger inward.  He does see his mother one last time, but there is closure rather than murder.

Fact 5: Jedi can get married. 

It’s not common. Marriage as a legal institution doesn’t actually make sense to most Jedi.  The rights and protections that a marriage grants by and large are not applicable to Jedi. Even as an expression of love, it just tends not to occur to most Jedi to want a wedding. They are more than happy to have the ceremony if their partner or partners want, but won’t seek it out.  

There are only a few Jedi that end up with partners outside the Jedi. There are two reasons for this. The first is that most of the galaxy has some weird ideas about Jedi and Jedi relationships. Most of the time it is not worth the effort to navigate. The second is a bit more convoluted. There is a higher rate of asexuality and aromanticism, or the equivalent, in Jedi than in their native populations (of Jedi whose species has sexuality), by a significant amount (Something like 10%-20% of the Jedi, with a sexual identity, identify as either asexual or aromantic, as opposed to the galactic standard of 1%). Incidentally there is also a higher rate of polyamorous leanings. This combines with the fact that the Jedi truly are a melting pot, different species growing up alongside each other, going through reproductive maturity together. Relationship Norms and Mores for Jedi look nothing like anywhere else in the galaxy.

Fact 6: Anakin Skywalker's marriage is  ‘secret’ and causes much giggling in the Jedi temple.

The secrecy is actually part of Naboo wedding traditions. Nabooians are expected to elope, and the longer the marriage is considered a ‘secret’, the more luck the marriage is said to have. The Jedi are well aware of this tradition and try to adhere to reasonable traditions when possible. So when Anakin effectively broadcasts to every Jedi in the galaxy that he was now Mister Padme Naberrie (the legalities of being married may not matter to Anakin as neither the Jedi nor the slave culture really have any use for it, but the idea of giving someone else their name as a way of giving them belonging was very important in Tatooine slave culture), approximately 45 seconds after their marriage, there is a collective silent agreement by the Jedi to let newlyweds have their ‘secret’.  There is a semi-formal betting pool as to who is going to give in and give away the secret first (Shortest odds are on ‘Anakin, finally doing something that is so obvious that the Jedi can’t ignore it anymore’, ‘Obi Wan, after Captain Rex is forced to lie badly to him again about what Anakin is doing’, or ‘Mace Windu after he catches Anakin and Padme in the Room of a Thousand fountains for a third time that day).     

Ladies, gentleman, and everything in between of the jury, now that we have established these facts in evidence it is time to turn our attention to the reason we are here today.  Without the Sith Master at the head of the Republic the Clone war does take a slightly different trajectory, faster in some ways without their intelligence leaking quite as easily(The Senate still leaked intelligence like a sieve but at least the Separatists weren’t getting it right from the source), slower in other as there was no real overarching goal. No one is actually sure what victory would look like for either side. 

Some members of the Separatist leadership decide that the best way to be victorious is to take out the GAR leadership, the Jedi High Council.  A chemical weapon was created, then tailored to each member of the High Council so it could be released and only affect the targets. It took a year to develop and tailor (so specific that it included the genetic code of each member of the council), then another to maneuver the release mechanisms into place.  This chemical weapon included a powerful hallucinogen and a chemical agent that links the hallucinations of everyone affected (through the Force).  Once deployed it would create a shared hallucination of the worst possible case scenario that could be created by the group. The aim being to hobble the GAR without their high command. 

That shared hallucination is Canon, starting with the Jedi confronting the Sith Lord. 

It is entirely possible that the Separatists greatly underestimated the amount of horror the mind of a Jedi could generate.  And how well they would be able to keep moving when under the hallucination. 

When a Jedi died in the hallucination, they would fall comatose and though none did, the chemical weapon would, for lack of a better way to explain, go a step further and try to convince them to give up(which would kill them in the real world) by continuing to show them this hallucinatory world as ‘part of the Force’.  Until this comatose state they would act in the real world according to the hallucination, including reacting as if injuries within it existed in the real world.  

The High council is spread throughout the galaxy when weapons are deployed. The members of the council that fell to Sidious immediately fall into a coma, while the rest begin to act in varying degrees of strangely (Depending on where they were and how different that place was from where they now thought they were). Mace Windu drops into something that is not quite a coma as his body reacts to having his wrist cut off and falling from a high window, with all the trauma therein.  As Order 66 goes out in the hallucination, more of the council drop until the only ones left moving are Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, both of whom escape the planets they were on. It is only luck that neither hurt anyone in escaping. 

There is immediate confusion, that is true.  The unexplained coma of 9 members of the Jedi High Council, Mace Windu’s collapse (Physically nothing is wrong but brain scans and the healers say that his brain is acting as if he is in severe pain, as well as severe shock), and the disappearance of Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda. 

The Officers, both clone and nat born, rally quickly and it becomes very obvious, very rapidly that the separatist were responsible for what happened to the Jedi Councilors.  This gives the GAR, particularly the personal battalions of those same Jedi, a new vigor and driving force.  In trying to destabilize the GAR, the separatist actually provided them with a rallying point (Fighting for freedom or protecting the innocent is a great tagline but hard to turn from concept to reality. Fighting because someone fucked with our generals is much easier to put a face to).

It takes eight months to track down the architects of the chemical weapon, who never developed a cure (During this time the war is categorically won by the Republic). Before being captured they managed to destroy about a quarter of the notes regarding the weapon. Using what is left, it takes two years to recreate the missing portion of the notes and another 15 months to synthesize an antidote. 

By this point Mace Windu had to be under constant sedation to alleviate the strain of the injuries he sustained in the hallucination. Because of this it was Plo Koon who woke first. 

Yoda and Obi Wan were still missing.

Plo commented that the Force felt so much lighter. He jolted when he saw Commander Wolffe sitting next to his bed. Thankfully he accepted that he had been in a hallucination easily. And as he described what had gone on within the hallucination (As he had died early, he was cursed with the helpless knowledge of exactly what was going on: the chips, Anakin's fall, The march on the temple, all the evils of the galactic empire) the horror only increased. No one could even blame his slight flinch whenever Anakin spoke, not even Anakin after Plo described the march on the temple in devastating detail and the fight on Mustafar (It only takes a few moments to realize this was a worst case scenario specifically from the Mind of Obi Wan, who could not think about much worse than his beloved brother becoming Falling and becoming Vader).

Eventually Plo is asked if he knows where Obi Wan and Yoda are, even as the other members of the council begin to wake. 

He does, but he recommends that it is not the Clones or Anakin Skywalker that go after either. For a moment Anakin considers being offended, this was his lineage after all, but after hearing what had happened in the hallucination, what Obi Wan and Yoda currently remember him doing, it only makes sense. 

And Cody may be chomping at the bit to go after his general (he was only on Coruscant to see the antidote be administered in hopes that it would give them a clue as to where Obi Wan was, he has spent all of his time since the war ended with the rest of the 212th,searching the galaxy for their general) but he can also see the wisdom of not spooking the general.  

Unfortunately the cure had to be administered intravenously, so there was no gassing the planet. 

Aayla Secura is sent to Dagobah to make contact with Yoda. He is not able to sense her, because she is dead in the hallucination.  He sees her and hears her but believes her to be the hallucination, come to torment him with his failures (Look I imagine that Obi Wan and Yoda have really similar headspaces regarding the genocide of their people and the self isolation that they enacted because of it.).  She is able to administer the cure and get him back to the ship and headed toward Coruscant.

The thing is this hallucination has been active in his mind for 3 years. For the comatose Jedi there was an extra degree of separation from the hallucination (Because they could only watch, the horror was somewhat muted). So while the cure works, breaking Yoda of the hallucination he is utterly changed by three years of horror and isolation and the press of a created darkside. He abjectly refuses to take any seat of power (The entire order has been restructured by necessity since they had no idea when they would cure the high council) and retreats to the creche. It takes years before he stops being hypervigilant when he sees trooper armor in the temple (particularly if that armor is 501st blue). The troopers never begrudge how he stills at the sight of their armor, and it becomes a policy that troopers who want to enter the creche will change into anything but their armor. 

Mace Windu also needs years to recover, having spent three years ‘healing’ from having his hands cut off and being thrown from the Chancellor office.  His mind expects his hands to be gone, which causes all kinds of issues (Kind of the reverse of having a phantom limb). Sheev Palpatine was a friend of Mace’s (It was friendship born of being leaders, doing their best and knowing that their every decision held the weight of a galaxy) and a frequent visitor while they were working on a cure. The first time he enter’s Mace’s room after the cure, Mace lashes out with the Force and throws him through the door in pure panic. This wild panic reaction lasts for three months (with countless attempts by Mace and the mind healers to break it) before Mace growls and decides that it would not happen again.  He then would go to camp out in Palpatine’s apartments for two weeks to train himself out of the reaction. 

It is Quinlan Vos that is chosen to lure Obi Wan out of hiding. Now that they know that the hallucination is affecting Obi Wan’s ability to sense with the Force, the 212th insist that they will provide Vos with hsi transportation to Tatooine, though they do agree not to actually set foot on the planet.  

As far as the residents of Tatooine are concerned, Ben the hermit showed up one day to wander into the Wastes and give himself heatstroke.   He is considered crazy but mostly harmless, and slightly obsessed with the Lars family. In this world Beru and Owen Lars did adopt a baby born right around the time Ben arrived. This little boy, whom they do name Luke, is the son of an escaped slave woman who died in childbirth on their farm. Like many slaves and children of slaves, she took the last name Skywalker. 

Ben thinks he is watching over the son of his brother, and that Owen hates him for failing Anakin. Owen is leery of the strange hermit that watches their farm (particularly Luke) from afar and vanishes into the Jutland Wastes when approached.  Particularly since the few times they have talked to him, he hasn’t actually made much sense.  Every so often other moisture farmers would come to the farm to chat and ask Owen or Beru about Ben. Both are forced to nod and go ‘yep, he’s still out there raving about a galactic empire and apologizing for killing Owen's brother. No, Owen doesn’t have a brother’ (Having only met Anakin once, and though he knows that Shimi had another son, really doesn’t connect Shimi’s son to this brother). 

Vos is eventually able to track Obi Wan/Ben down. It takes some trickery for Vos to administer the cure (Ben tries to kick him off the planet three times, hissing that Vos can’t draw the empire’s attention to Tatooine) but once it does, it knocks him out enough for Vos to carry him back to the spaceport. 

The Lar’s happen to be in town when Vos comes through carrying Ben. Beru asks what Vos is doing with Ben.  Vos responds that he is bringing him home. Owen asks if Vos will be able to get Ben the help he needs. Vos answers yes, and they all go about their day. Ben the hermit will remain a story told on Tatooine for years, particularly after High General Obi Wan comes back a decade later and awkwardly thanks the Lars for the kindness they exhibited.  

Like Yoda and Mace, the time in the hallucination affected Obi Wan deeply.  He keeps a constant ‘watch’ though the Force on his men (within the hallucination their force presence flattened and fell away in the wake of Order 66) and feels deeply protective of all these individual lights that died just as surely as the Jedi did.  He also clings to Anakin’s force presence, but cannot stand to be in a room with Anakin and children. He knows it is irrational but can’t quite help it. At times even stepping foot on Coruscant or at the temple is difficult. 

Obi Wan decides to take a step back from being a knight and Master. He and many of the clones, primarily of the 212th though there are others, plus a few Jedi and others they pick up along the way decide that they will take a survey mission to begin to map some of the wild space beyond the outer rim. He, Cody, and Rex end up entering into a relationship that forms the base for a polycule with the majority of the crew (with the exception of the children they acquire, those all call each member of the polycule some variation of mom/dad/parent).