For the Gay Pirates

relearning lightsaber skills with a prosthetic comes easily enough, but learning to draw again takes time

breaking a few utensils because he doesn’t know how to grip delicate things anymore

ripping out pages of sketches where the paper is torn because he’s pressed too hard. balling them up and throwing them into a heap on the floor because he’s too distraught to take them to the incinerator

anakin is up and grouchy and dismissive and obi-wan, having none of it, wedges himself inside and is greeted by quite the sight. and not anakin’s usual mess, either

scattered remnants and balled up sheets of half sketched figures and technical diagrams litter the floor almost wall to wall. every surface not covered in tools and parts and oil splashes is covered in art

intrigued, obi-wan stoops down to pick one up while anakin isn’t looking. but too quickly, anakin throws his cloak on and announces that he’s ready and promptly shoulders obi-wan out of the way before marching out and down the hall towards the salles

in a matter of weeks, his braid and ponytail are cut short as is his apprenticeship. after a night of celebratory drinks and some other less mentionable choices on the lower levels, anakin stumbles home to the temple and makes his way to his now spartan dorm for one last night before he’s flung off to some far reach of the galaxy to fight the republic’s war for them

he can’t say what pulls him to do it, but on his way back to his room he makes one stop

obi-wan is awake when anakin knocks, which shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. anakin always took his master for being fastidious about his sleep hygiene, early to bed early to rise. but anakin supposes he has been wrong about more… significant things, too

equally surprising is the finger of whisky sloshing until it settles in the glass where obi-wan has set it down on the low table

“anakin. you’ll have to forgive me for not expecting you. i’d figured you’d had enough of your old master for one decade,” obi-wan says, eyes crinkling as he beckons anakin inside

“just… wasn’t ready to go back to my room yet, i guess.”

obi-wan hums in response and settles back in his seat, nursing the dregs of his drink, seemingly content to let anakin meander around his space unannounced at such an hour.

feeling a little wrongfooted and awkward and not quite sure what he’d meant to do here in the first place, anakin paces obi-wan’s rooms, dragging his gold tipped fingers across the little trinkets collected across the galaxy over the years that dot various surfaces.

it’s a drawing. of obi-wan, in profile, eyes closed, bathed in warm light, his handsome face tipped towards the sun: the way anakin has seen him dozens, if not hundreds of times, in conversation with the force as he meditates

the fat hatches of pencil strokes wobble on the page as anakin blinks and heaves a breath through the sudden wave of nausea threatening to buckle his knees. he fights the urge to tear the thing to shreds right then and there, wondering how and when and why and—

“master,” anakin says, hot flush rising from his chest to his ears as he stares down at the offending scribbles. “this is… where…?”

anakin jolts at the sudden warmth at his side. he hadn’t even heard obi-wan get up

“i… i meant to return it the moment i realized what i’d—well i suppose i shouldn’t have taken it at all.” obi-wan clears his throat, fabric rustling as he shifts his weight. “i apologize, though i understand if you’re—“

anakin nearly balks at the novelty of such genuine emotion freely given, but he pushes past it. he needs to know something. he turns, and finds himself nearly nose to nose with his old master, pupils blown wide

“you don’t hate it?

“… pardon?”

exasperation ripples through him like hot sparks. he swings his right hand behind him, reaching blindly until his fingertips catch the drawing, sliding it behind himself and hiding it from obi-wan’s view

“don’t pretend it isn’t awful!” anakin throws his hands up, nearly whacking obi-wan in their proximity. “it’s not like before. i’m practicing, but you wouldn’t know it. anything i make with this thing looks like it belongs up there on the wall with the younglings’ finger paintings. i hate this kriffing thing!”

pinking high on his cheeks, in a way that anakin knows isn’t just from the alcohol, obi-wan furrows his brows with seriousness typically reserved for unruly dignitaries and anakin’s idea of ‘following the speed limit’

“i don’t think it’s awful,” obi-wan says, quiet and measured. he takes anakin’s mechno hand in his own and begins uncurling each clenched and shaking finger, one by one, before pressing the metal palm to his own bearded cheek. “and i don’t hate it.”

“mast— o-obi-wan…” anakin’s heart threatens to make a break for it

“i may no longer be your master, but anakin, you must know i will always cherish our growth together. you have much to be proud of.”

the pounding beat against anakin’s ribs sends him swaying forward towards an unnameable warmth in obi-wan’s eyes

“and if you haven’t yet learned that progress is not linear, then i have done a poor job. i only hope that i have given you the tools you need to grow on your own now.”

time stops

obi-wan leans in, crowding anakin back against the desk

his voice drops to a whisper as he closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against anakin’s

“i should be so lucky to catch even a ray of the light you emanate.”

no longer able to fight the burning in his eyes, anakin shuts them, awash in shame and relief alike as tears begin to wet his face

“master,” he whispers, voice cracking, “thank you.”

this close, anakin can feel when obi-wan smiles. his real one, all teeth

“i do think you were rather generous with my features, though. my nose isn’t quite so handsome.”

I did a thing after so long since you posted this passage op lol- I need a break from drawing and making stuff for my upcoming con

also I was going to draw this a few years back when my ma has a bump on her arm - and she is the main cook in our hourse hold, and despite she went:"eh, if I lost my arm, I will just get a prosthetic lol" I was really, really scared for her.

fortunately the bump wasn't cancerous.

also yes please cry happy tears Ani lol

Idk if it’s common knowledge how a nuclear energy is generated. But on the assumption it’s not, I had to learn a little in Environmental science A levels.

I shit you not, they are harnessing the power of splitting the fucking atom just to boil some water. It’s just a high tech kettle. When you boil your kettle you are doing the same thing these people are using Uranium for.

All these crazy energy generation methods and almost all of them revolve around boiling water to turn a turbine.

Earth is not just a Terrestrial World; it’s an Exotic Terrestrial: a Water World.

Water is weird, ok? Everything else that’s anywhere close to its molecular weight is very much vaporous gas at similar conditions to water’s triple point. It’s weirdly easy to make carry an electrical charge (we call it an acid or a base when it’s doing this). It’s polarized as fuck, so it’s squirrely, infiltrating all kinds of stuff you normally think of as being solid, like metal and stone.

Water bonds to itself really well, so the transition from liquid or solid to gas, and back, involves a really profound change in volume.

The Water Cycle, whereby Water goes from solid to liquid to gas in all kinda directions, runs a lot of our geologic and mineral cycles, like the nitrogen and carbon and silicone ones. Plate tectonics is partially enabled by lubrication from the ocean infiltrating the earth’s crust.

It kinda… makes sense? That we’d have Water-based technology? As inhabitants of a Water World? From a world-building standpoint I mean.

We hacked one of the driving forces of our world, and use that power to run our civilization.

black hair? check. bad parent(s)? check. trauma? double check.

bruce: how’d you get your scar?

zuko: my dad got mad at me for saying that killing people is wrong so he lit my face on fire and banished me.

J: "wan na kno w h ow i go t thes e sc ar s"

Consider

Iroh: you too must learn patience. Boiling the water ruins the delicate flavor of the white jade

Alfred: oh I'm dreadfully sorry - for some reason I expected this tea to have TEA in it

(later)

Alfred: *aggressively laying out full tea service with milk, lemon, sugar, and, just to drive his point in, jam*

while Zuko is enthusiastic about cream and sugar

Because um, no, that’s not what Jamie’s telling her in this scene. It was a test, kind of, but not in that way.

"I meant to see, ken, what sort of man he might be, for sure. This man who would take my son for his own." …I moved to him by instinct, wanting somehow to patch the open wound beneath those words. He was stiff when I touched him, not wanting to be embraced-but he took my hand and squeezed it. "Could you...really tell, do you think?" I was not shocked; John Grey had told me of that offer, years before, in Jamaica. I didn't think he had realized the true nature of it, though. Jamie's hand tightened on mine, and his thumb traced the outline of mine, rubbing lightly over the nail… "Ye canna be so close to another," he said finally. "To be within each other, to smell their sweat, and rub the hairs of your body with theirs and see nothing of their soul. Or if ye can do that ..." He hesitated, and I wondered whether he thought of Black Jack Randall, or of Laoghaire, the woman he had married, thinking me dead. "Well...that is a dreadful thing in itself," he finished softly, and his hand dropped away. There was silence between us... Had I ever done that? Lain with a man, and seen nothing of his soul? Indeed I had, and he was right. A breath of coldness touched me, and the hairs rose, silent on my skin. He heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his feet, and rubbed a hand over his bound hair. "But he wouldna do it. John." He looked up then, and gave me a crooked smile. "He loved me, he said. And if I couldna give him that in return-and he kent I couldn't-then he'd not take counterfeit for true coin." He shook himself, hard, like a dog coming out of the water. "No. A man who would say such a thing is not one who'd bugger a child for the sake of his father's bonny blue eyes, l'll tell ye that for certain, Sassenach." "No," I said. "Tell me ..." I hesitated, and he looked at me, one eyebrow up. "If-if he had ... er... taken you up on that offer—and you'd found him..." I fumbled for some reasonable wording. "Less, um, decent than you might hope-" "I should have broken his neck there by the lake," he said.

It was about seeing who John really is - and if he’s a safe person to raise Willie - by finding out how he treats someone in bed. Why all this talk about how being intimate with someone like that lets you see some of their soul, if all Jamie meant is that the offer itself was intended to be the test? The nature of this conversation doesn’t make any gd sense if all he’s getting at is saying John gave him the only answer that would have stopped him from killing him to protect William. Claire is so awkwardly struggling to put it delicately when she asks this last question because what she’s asking is what he would have done if John wasn’t found to be decent and kind as a lover. (Her question is not “what if he’d taken you up on the offer?”, it’s “what if he had and…?”) And Diana describes Jamie acting clearly very uncomfortable talking about this because he was prepared to go through with it.

This is consistent with the way Jamie acts in the flashback scene giving us the moment he made this offer from John’s perspective. His body language shows he’s very uncomfortable but trying to control it. After he’s struggled to get the words out John casually lays a hand on his arm and Jamie visibly struggles not to flinch away at his touch. He’s telling himself he’s prepared to make himself do this when he probably never could be.

And the fact that he dodged that bullet because John refused him is so important to their friendship. I really think Jamie at that point in his life was in such a low place, so deprived of agency for so long, that he’d really lost some perspective and any normal expectation of decency in people and the possibility that John would refuse and ask for nothing in return for his kindness did not even occur to him. It takes so much away from their relationship not to recognize that Jamie didn’t have much power here, he was desperate, and it was the first time John had a real opportunity to show him he doesn’t just want to get in his pants but truly loves him. He is finally, in a way that’s not violating Jamie’s clear boundaries, able to answer Jamie’s argument in that stable scene in TBotB that a man can’t actually love another man like that. It’s so important!! It’s this moment I think of in the show when he says “that bloody Englishman bandaged me with his friendship” - it was kindness that was unexpected and coming from an unexpected place, and I think was such an important moment for him beginning to heal from some of the most painful things he’d been through.

Here is Diana’s own explanation of what Jamie’s thinking here:

Why does Jamie offer himself to Lord John? A few readers…said the very thought made them ill…Jamie feels a deep—and deeply disturbing—sense of obligation to Lord John. Lord John, after all, has saved him from a dangerous fate (be-ing transported was often a death sentence, even for those without acute seasickness) and from permanent separation from his loved ones, given him as much freedom as possible, freely offered his friendship-and made no attempt at all to demand any sort of return. Now Lord John has revealed that he knows Jamie's secret—that is, Willie's true paternity-and will not only protect the secret, but the boy as well. Knowing that Jamie must leave Willie, Lord John is willing to alter his entire life-even going so far as to marry Isobel Dunsany—in order to safeguard Jamie's son and ensure that Jamie will still have some connection with the boy. Jamie, in his present position, can offer Lord John nothing at all as a gesture of gratitude or acknowledgment—except himself. His offering this particular gift is both an effort to acknowledge the great debt he feels he owes, and to show his final acceptance of Lord John, as a friend and as a man. That is, he is aware that his earlier rejection (and the method he chose to implement it) has hurt John deeply. Though it is impossible for him to overcome his repugnance at the thought, he can force himself to the action (Jamie's made himself do quite a lot of things that he didn't want to do, after all), and thus show Lord John that he does not hold Lord John's nature against him—Jamie accepts him as he is.

This doesn’t seem to entirely line up with Jamie’s thought process then as he explains to Claire later. But she emphasizes the importance of this moment as a demonstration of his acceptance of LJ and what he is, and the above passage doesn’t retcon that. After what he’s been through he has to trust John a great deal to even consider this. But it’s not hard to imagine, considering this made certain readers feel “ill,” why a lot of the fandom wants to take this as a total retcon of Jamie’s intentions.