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The story of a generation comes to an end. Watch the #D23Expo Special Look for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. See the film in theaters on December 20. (via @starwars on twitter)

The brain when AO3 goes down:

As someone who lives in the US, they’re not wrong.

Lmfaaooooo Norway just called the US a dusty ass bitch and they ain’t wrong

Alex Danvers is completely oblivious to any time someone is flirting with her because she just has that much raw dumbass lesbian energy OR Kara Danvers has no idea what the human idea of normalcy and platonic behavior is and Alex grew up with someone who gives all-night hugs and kisses just to be friendly and on multiple occasions sent platonic nudes just because she thought she looked nice and completely messed up Alex's radar.

I mean, both is always an option…

yes i am smart. yes i am stupid. it’s called being flexible.

Secret Clones AU

Short version: Secret Clones AU is the clones going into hiding in plain sight across the galaxy to force a fair wage and also to keep the babies safe from Kaminoans

The clones figure out the plan to take advantage of them, brain chips, etc. several years before the war hits. IDK how, maybe Jango decided to take a closer look with Mij and went Oh Shit. Doesn't matter. Point is, they caught on and decided that they needed to uhhhhh get Out.

There are millions of clones, yes, but there are tens of thousands of planets.

Once the chips are out and someone's jabbed them with anti-aging serum... they're not that different from standard humans.

And it's not exactly hard to tie up the Kaminoans long enough to get off planet.

So what happens is that a while, let's say a year and a half, before the war kicks off, you have a mass exodus from Kamino, and a wide dispersal of clones. They are generally staying together in groups of about half a dozen, claiming to be brothers, so that there's a 16-18-ish looking clone to take lead, with progressively younger cadets to look after. Each one has a commander they can 'report' to in case of emergency, and if something goes real bad, they can call in an Alpha (and Alphas can call in Jango in a worst case scenario).

It's still sort of a military structure, but... it's a phone tree.

And you have one of these groups of half a dozen clones in every major city. There are thousands of planets, and most of those planets have more than one city. Denon and Coruscant are nothing but city, so they can get counted as dozens of cities on their own. It's easy to disappear in places like that.

It's so easy for the clones, before anyone knows them, to just... disappear. Go into hiding in plain sight.

It's not like more than a handful of people know what to look for.

(It's not like they have a centralized record of who went where.)

(It's just the phone tree.)

They still get real excited-happy-eager when they run into a Jedi.

They want to work with Jedi. They're the good guys! And they're cool!

But your army did a mass desertion before the war started and finding/recruiting all of them is going to take a stupid amount of money. You cannot hire a bounty hunter for each and every clone.

And as @bytebun put it:

Somebody two years later: you look …familiar. Have we met? Clone: haha I get that a lot just one of those faces

AND THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE THE GALAXY IS HECKING MASSIVE

I think the Republic has to like… negotiate with Jango and the Alphas and set up paid contracts if they want these Ultra Skilled Warriors to fight for them.

The clones can fight. Some of them even want to fight. They are good at this and they recognize that many of the things that are occurring under Separatist invasion are Mega Bad.

But like. Pay them and treat them as citizens, first.

The Jedi are even more confused about this identical army that really loves them than they are in canon Where the heck did you guys come from Who trained you Why do you like us What the heck is going on

"Someone wanted us to be a trap for you but we took the trap out. Here we have a sample if you want. Anyway. We like you guys and want to fight with you because honestly civilian life is way understimulating. Let me punch a droid."

I think a few of the clones do 'scouting' where they voluntarily help a Jedi in the field to gather information on their validity as Friends. Cody keeps a number of spreadsheets that are just Various Jedi Encounters.

Rex does a scouting mission with Kenobi&Skywalker and just goes to Cody like "Listen. I know he's insane. But. I want that one."

Rex just "I call dibs" "Cody. Cody did you hear me. Dibs, I call dibs."

@catboydogma: stats for pong krell are all zeroes

Absolute shit tier Jedi They play rock paper scissors to decide who has to deal with him

A solid half of the clones don't get recruited because the lack of advanced aging (past a certain point) means they're physically still minors and My Dad (Alphas and CCs) Said No. They stay behind on their various planets to look after The Real Babies.

"Let me ask my dad" "Wait--" "He said no."

Just want these boys to have Civilian Lives they can return to or at least experience before war gets them all fucked up.

I think some of them try to Make Connections with influential people (whether politicians or like... Space Influencers) so they have people vouching for them once the war kicks off. And there can be at least some public pushback on functionally enslaving them.

"I can't believe you manipulated people into liking you! That's so mean!" "Well you see. I wanted to survive past the age of eleven. So."

i like my coffee how i like my coffee—i like my coffee :- )

what we have now

Cal awakens on Tanalorr, and what seems to be a perfect day begins to go wrong. Post-Jedi: Survivor with spoilers. Rated PG-13ish for established Merrical. Angst, grief, hope, love, ~2450 words.

--

The morning light of Tanalorr filters gently through cracks in the temple ceiling, sending down soft, gold-edged rays through the small private chamber where he and Merrin have set up a room.  Cal mumbles, rolling over on the makeshift bed and taking half the covers with him.  Merrin is warm and sleepy beside him, her skin soft against his own, and he draws her closer, breathing in the sweet smell of her hair.

“We have slept in again, Cal Kestis,” she murmurs throatily.  “I blame you, of course.  You kept me from my rest.”

“Someone was awfully frisky last night, I seem to recall,” Cal yawns.  He hardens slightly, remembering her insistent kisses last night, how she eagerly undressed him, her hands, her mouth, her --

He lets out a long breath.  They have work to do this morning with the others, and he knows he shouldn’t let himself get distracted.  No matter how much he might like to be.

“Still thinking about it, are you?” Merrin asks, amused.  She rolls over and props herself up on one elbow, leaning over him.  He drinks in the sight of her, soft gray skin and dark tattoos, a wicked grin.  He bites back a groan.  

Her gaze flicks back, and she peers under the covers with a knowing smirk.  “Ahh.  I like the way you think.”

“Hey, come on, now.  We promised we’d check in,” Cal half-protests.  “The Path needs us to get this housing ready, and we need to have that meeting with --”

The familiar sound of BD’s servos whirs as the little droid hops over to them, blithely ignorant of their nudity and innuendo.  Cal sighs, drawing the sheets higher over Merrin and himself.  

“Cal, my dear Jedi, you said you were going to teach the droid to knock.”

“I’ve been busy!” Cal says.  Merrin simply raises one eyebrow and gives him one of those looks, the sort that makes his brain short-circuit and his pulse quicken.  For a moment he’s tempted to tell BD-1 to come back later, that he’d made a mistake with the time and really the meeting with Cere was for tomorrow, not today.

But something disquiets him, a frisson rippling through the Force, there and gone before he can put a name to it.  His arousal vanishes, and he looks away from Merrin, unsettled.

“Cal?”  She sits up, the blanket falling down around her waist, the golden light bathing her skin in a warm glow.  “What is it?”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t know.  Something felt… off.  I’m not sure what it means.”  He sighs.  “Probably just guilt about how late we’re going to be.  We’d better get going.  Make it up to you later?”  He gives her a small smile, and is gratified when she returns it twofold.

Cal sends BD-1 off to wait as they get dressed, but they meet him at the front of the temple, where he is waiting patiently for them.  Cal bends to lower a hand and BD clambers up to his regular perch as they step outside into the fresh air.  The glorious Tanalorr morning greets them with misty light, and brightly colored banners ripple from the temple in the breeze.  Gardens stretch alongside the path, tall leaves fluttering in the wind, fruits and vegetables beginning to swell and show in colors of scarlet, violet, emerald.

The three of them travel through the gardens and back along the creekside path leading away from the temple.  Merrin seems content, but Cal cannot help but look over his shoulder as they walk.  There is only BD-1 there, cheerful and loyal as always, but there’s still a nagging feeling, something skittering at the back of his mind.  

He tries to ignore it, his feet tracing the familiar trail alongside Anchorite Creek.  They cross the new stone bridge, a beautiful melding of angular Jedha architecture with jeweled motifs unique to Tanalorr; the lilac-blossomed larien tree, the clever waterhare, the carvings of the Koboh Abyss.  He always appreciates this bridge and the way his footsteps ring on the stone, but for a moment it almost feels like its solid arch tremors beneath his feet.

“Did you feel that?” Cal asks.  BD lets out a beep in the negative.  Merrin shakes her head.

“Feel what?”

“Nothing,” Cal says, stone solid beneath his feet, and he tries to believe himself.  We’ve made a perfect world.  What is there to worry about?

They meet back up with the others at the village, which is already bustling at this early hour.  The sight cheers him, and his odd mood fades into the background.  He takes a deep breath and smells the morning meal on the breeze, rich with spice; Pyloon’s of Tanalorr keeps Greez busy, even with several residents working with him as sous chefs.  He and Merrin will have to stop in for a bowl of waterhare stew when they next get a chance.

They keep heading toward their destination, passing Narkis Anchorites working with refugees from the Hidden Path, raising another set of new residences.  Cal nods to them as they pass.  He recognizes some of the Anchorites from Jedha.  There are new members of their order, too, only identifiable by the Tanalorr-lilac stripe they wear on their sleeves.

Not everyone wears the garb of the Anchorites; droids roll or walk along the dirt streets on their business, and plenty of people with bare faces wave as they make their way to the Archives.  A few of the refugees he recognizes from his days as a Padawan, other survivors besides himself: a young woman with her dark hair in tight braids, a tall man with olive skin and piercing blue eyes.  Pride unfurls in his chest, pride and a fierce protectiveness.  They’ve built so much here.  And there is still so much more to do.

Many of those who cannot help in the physical efforts of building work in the new Archives, cataloging their growing knowledge of the Jedi Order and its history, and it’s here they head, Cal keenly aware they’re late.  That must be the reason he’s feeling off.  He knows exactly which slightly disappointed look Cere will be wearing --

The smell of smoke, ash dancing in the flame-choked air, red and black --

Cal staggers, sagging against the door as it slides open.  “Cal!” Merrin cries, slipping a steady arm around him.  On his other side, a familiar man in robes braces against him, helping Merrin to keep him upright.

“Cal!  Have you taken ill?” Master Cordova asks.  Together he and Merrin lead Cal to a seat near one of the desks, where he bows over himself, breathing hard.  BD-1 chitters at his shoulder.

“You don’t feel it?” Cal gasps.  He holds out his hands, ash coating his fingertips.  He doesn’t understand.  “Look at my hands.  There’s something terribly wrong --”

Merrin and Master Cordova look at his hands, but they seem worried, exchanging concerned glances.  “I will get Cere,” says Merrin, and claps Cal on the shoulder, her hand squeezing him tightly against his jacket.  “We will figure this out, Cal.  Together.”  

Cal looks down at his hands again.  They’re clean once more, and his head reels.  What’s happening?

“Tell me what you sense, Cal,” says Master Cordova, kneeling carefully beside him.  His brown eyes, always so wise, seem troubled.  Cal knows it’s because of him.  He tries to center himself, reaching for the Force, but it feels muted and hazy, muffled somehow.

“I saw fire,” he manages.  “Fire and ash.”

“A memory, perhaps sensed by your psychometry?”

“No, this didn’t feel like a normal memory,” Cal tries to explain.  “It feels like it’s something that doesn’t belong here.  Like something that isn’t real, that never happened.”  He gazes around the room, drawing comfort from its soaring shelves of twinkling datapads, the silver globes lighting the hall, the sweet smell of larienwood incense.  He tries to ground himself in the library, in all they’ve built here.  “It couldn’t have happened.”

“It may have been a vision, then,” Cordova muses, getting to his feet and sitting down on the chair beside Cal.  “The Force may be sending you a message of things to come.”

Cal shakes his head in frustration.  He’s not a Padawan.  “I know we can have visions from the Force, Master Cordova, but I always feel so tightly bound to the past.  I’ve only had visions of the future in places where the Force is magnified and concentrated, like Ilum or Bogano….  The past has always been so much easier for me to access.  This didn’t feel the same way.”

“Perhaps that’s changing,” says Cere.  Cal lifts his head to greet her, and their eyes meet--

She’s so light in his arms.  How could someone so powerful, so strong, be so, so still?

Cal recoils, panting.  The smoke chokes him, blinds him, engulfs him.  He’s lost in it, reaching for his lightsaber, finding nothing there.  He cups his hands around his mouth, calling, hoping, begging.  “Cere -- I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have been there --”

“You okay there, scrapper?” 

Cal opens his eyes.  The smoke has vanished as quickly as it had come, and the temple soars over him, golden daylight streaming through its windows.  Bode gives him a broad, easy grin, smile lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes.  Dagan’s lightsaber hums in his palm.

“This isn’t right,” Cal whispers.  “It isn’t real --”

He raises a gloved hand.  Imperial black against crisp ISB white.  He lets the frantic rage shriek through him, a desperate eruption of pure hate boiling forth, he wants this, needs this, a weapon, he’s nothing but a weapon --

The temple shatters around him, Tanalorr shatters around him, and he remembers everything.

***

“Cal!  Cal.  Come back to me, Jedi,” Merrin murmurs throatily.  He realizes her arms are around him, holding him tight against her chest, his cheek nestled against the soft skin between her breasts.  Her twin heartbeats pulse in his ear, a metronome grounding him here, now, safe.

For a moment, they simply stay there.

“What happened?” she asks in a soft voice.

Cal reluctantly sits up, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling.  They’re in the Mantis, back in one of the narrow bunks they insist on squeezing into together.  He knows they could sleep separately, but neither of them like to do it anymore if they can help it.

“I dreamed of Tanalorr.  The way it should have been.”  His throat constricts, and it takes him a moment to steady his voice.  “It was beautiful, Merrin.”  He wants to tell her everything.  The new Archives, the lush gardens, the voices in the streets; Cordova… Cere…. 

Instead he buries his face in the crook between her neck and her shoulder, and breathes in, and breathes out.

She strokes his hair gently, fingers twining through the strands that tickle the back of his neck.  She presses a kiss to his forehead.  “We will make it so, Cal.  I promise you.”

“Maybe.  I hope so.  But she’ll never see it.”

Her fingers still, then shift for her hand to cup his cheek.  She slowly lifts his chin until he’s gazing at her, her dark eyes bright.  “No, she will not.  That is something we cannot change.”  She blinks, and a flicker of her own grief passes across her face, a painful mirror to his own.  “I miss her too.  Cere and Cordova both, but Cere… she was part of our family.”  Tears glisten, unshed but unashamed, in her eyes.

They haven’t talked of Cere this openly in weeks, busy with fighting the Empire on Koboh and taking care of Kata.  But now the loss is here, sitting in the space between their breath, and the wound aches so, so much.  

Anger flares within him.  How can his mind have given him so much detail of Tanalorr vibrant and growing, of a world where they’d truly won, and yet so little of Cere?  When he would have given anything to see her again, to speak with her -- to apologize --

But he remembers how his mind had tried to tell him he was dreaming, and his heart sinks.  He had known.  Even in the midst of a dream that felt realer than real, he’d known.  

There is no bringing Cere back, not even in a dream.

Cal swallows, feeling sick.  It’s all a mess, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel about any of it.  The Jedi Order would tell him to let it go, but the Jedi Order itself is dust and ashes, and he feels the feelings anyway, Order be damned.  

Grief feels different now than it did as a child.  It’s no less confusing than it was then, but back then he’d been so desperate to survive, so powerless to protect himself, that he’d shoved the feelings down as far as they could go.  Now the feelings and the Force are both as powerful as they’ve ever been.  He feels the Force crackling throughout him, body and soul, straining to be used.  He’s healed his connection… but is that such a good thing, now?  There’s violence poisoning his connection, an intoxicating rage, a searing hatred, the darkness…

He shivers, and he steps away from it, for now.

“I don’t know--” His breath hitches.  There’s water tracking at the edges of his eyelids, a burn in his chest.  “Even through everything, even when we were apart, she was always guiding me.  And without her, I don’t know if I can be enough.  For Tanalorr… for the Path… for Kata….”  Imperial black on ISB white.  “For you.”  

“You are enough for me, Cal Kestis,” she says, and he sinks back into her embrace.  

“But the future --”

“Is what we can make of it,” Merrin says, her voice steely.  “We will find the way together, you and I.  That is how we will honor Cere and Cordova.  And the Jedi, and my sisters.  And if you stumble in the darkness, I will lead you by the hand; and if I do not see the path, your light will guide me.”  She kisses him, her open mouth slanting over his, then pulls back.  She blazes with determination, so beautiful he can hardly bear it.  “Do you trust me?”

The world falls away, and Cal lets it.  There is only this moment, shimmering between them.  The grief and darkness will be there waiting for him when he returns, he knows that much, but for now, there is only Merrin.  He takes her hand in his, and he knows that no matter what lies ahead, the two of them are bound together.

“Always,” he whispers.

She smiles, and the world feels perfect once again.

She is wearing a unicorn and rainbow shirt!!!!