how do you do fellow outcasts

The finest Imperial ship to crash and burn at the battle of Jakku. Blog dedicated to the villainous pairing of Rae Sloane and Gallius Rax from the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy. Sideblog of permian-tropos. CONTAINS SPOILERS for the Aftermath trilogy. Header by @isacchili

[gallirae]

unexpected update: I haven’t posted anything onto this blog in ages, mostly keeping it around as an archive, but since a few people have been visiting it as far as I can tell in the activity, I might post content here again; it would only be reblogging stuff that’s already on my main @permian-tropos but I don’t mind building up the archive of content 

[operasuggestion]

complain that your favorite diva is not getting the respect she deserves

[gallirae]

some feels I got from writing fic: 

for all that rax goes on about testing people, sloane literally does fail most of his tests and he doesn’t care, in his mind she’s still the rightful leader of the empire and the only thing keeping her from that position is rax’s responsibility to execute the emperor’s will. “I admire you, but I have to finish this” puts his feelings on one end and his duties on another, as if he’s tempted by the option where he gives her command of everything and he does actually take that option when he fails at the other

he likes sloane because she stands up to authority. he doesn’t stop liking her when that authority is him. rather liking her for being a challenge, for being something to tame and control -- this coming from someone who notably uses brainwashing in his evil schemes -- he would really rather have her rebel

galli was such a rebellious spirit but he’s had to utterly submit to palpatine for thirty years and he wanted a hero, a force of vengeance like the dark witch cora vessora who would tear down the system. he tells sloane he wants to make her a hero. it’s what he’s doing by being her villain. 

[gallirae]

I love rae sloane and sometimes I think about how I don’t even know why it honestly feels like a fluke. I thought after I realized I really found her attractive I’d start falling for lots of female characters but I’m still just here thinking about Her. 

the other day I remembered she chucked a bottle of wine or something across her office after wedge antilles blew up his ship in her cargo bay and the narration hides that fact so she’s talking to one of her officers as if things are normal and then notes ah yes the ceremonial bottle I got for becoming an admiral but then I got sidelined because I made enemies and couldn’t keep my chill. all bubbling on the floor in a heap of shattered glass. anyway from now on I’ll be more even tempered 

and I was just like “yeah thats what im TALKING about good shit” even though it’s not that amazing I just love anything she does ever

[gallirae]

I want to know which Imperials she made enemies out of!!! who did she Fight(TM)

[gallirae]

I love rae sloane and sometimes I think about how I don’t even know why it honestly feels like a fluke. I thought after I realized I really found her attractive I’d start falling for lots of female characters but I’m still just here thinking about Her. 

the other day I remembered she chucked a bottle of wine or something across her office after wedge antilles blew up his ship in her cargo bay and the narration hides that fact so she’s talking to one of her officers as if things are normal and then notes ah yes the ceremonial bottle I got for becoming an admiral but then I got sidelined because I made enemies and couldn’t keep my chill. all bubbling on the floor in a heap of shattered glass. anyway from now on I’ll be more even tempered 

and I was just like “yeah thats what im TALKING about good shit” even though it’s not that amazing I just love anything she does ever

[gallirae]

at some point I spent time wondering what rax’s sith name would be, until I realized 'rax’ is already as fake a name as ‘vader’ or ‘sidious’ and created under equivalent circumstances. it already is his evil dark side alias. so he’s darth rax. 

[gallirae]

omg shout out to ranaverse rae sloane who’s probably been really emotional about the opportunity rover going offline

[absolxguardian]

Rae @ Rax: Do you have any friends on Mars? Can they save her?

[gallirae]

Galli: oh... I was all alone on Mars... who do you think repaired the rovers

Rae: *crying into a pillow* THATS WORSE STOP 

[gallirae]

omg shout out to ranaverse rae sloane who’s probably been really emotional about the opportunity rover going offline

[gallirae]

sloane is canonically a “knock everything off your desk in a fit of ire” type of person

[gallirae]

so many neurodivergences are vilified in media but I’m much more used to ADHD coding making a character childish or trivial because being scatterbrained doesn’t seem very menacing

and then you have Gallius Rax, who is so ADHD his villain backstory is that he got distracted by something shiny

[starwarsgenerator]

hes more guardian of the sand now than man. twisted and evil

[gallirae]

*where I would put my canon pictures of galli IF I HAD ANY*

[kuzkuza]

trying to find content for your rarepair like

[zareleonis]

Grand Admiral Rae Sloane – Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy by Cryssy Cheung

[ao3tagoftheday]

[Image Description: Tag reading “also y'all need to open your third eyes they’re a good pairing, and deserve more than three (now four) fics”]

The AO3 Tag of the Day: Welcome to rare pair hell

[starwarsgenerator]

from the moment i met trash son all those years ago, not a day has gone by i havent thought of trash son. how predictable

[permian-tropos]

owo whats this

cw character death

11. “But I will never forget!”

“From Jakku?” he asks. He hums a note of — what? acknowledgement? It’s meaningless, an empty gesture.

“I have noticed,” Sloane says sharply, “that you do not like talking about anything.”

Rax struggles for a response to that, proving Sloane’s point.

She presumes he doesn’t want to tell her because he wants to make a spectacle of it. He wants the answer to reveal itself dramatically. Sloane is sure of this much, because it’s the most predictable thing about him.

Yet with his body bursting slowly apart, from a dreadful sympathetic pressure connecting him to a planet already billions of miles away, it seems more as if he holds down this secret, and he could reveal it, but it would have to tear its way out of him.

Sloane backs all the way to the door, clutching the blaster as a lifeline. She wants to kill him, but thinks — it isn’t right, not yet. She fears it being less triumphant than she needs this moment to be. It was easier to put the turncoat trooper out of his misery on Jakku, because his back had been turned, and he’d been holding on to hope. He didn’t deserve it, of course, but it was the only option. And he’d—

The rebel pilot lying on the floor is still breathing. A thin nasal whistle, grating even if it’s slight, because it’s futile. Whether he’s clinging to life on purpose or waiting for it all to be over.

“Fine, then. Don’t tell me.” Spinning on her heel, Sloane flees the room, pressing an arm against her aching side. Kill him, she thinks, both of them, but she’s afraid it would be merciful. Mercy is nauseating right now, it’s a service she doesn’t want to provide. Fate has not been merciful to her — it isn’t fair.

The shuttle has a single gunner’s seat on the back half of the ship, which offers a rear view through a transparisteel bubble.

As Sloane approaches, she thinks — it’s an afterimage, my eyes are being fooled. It’s just a dark blot hovering in the center of her vision. She massages her eyes with the heel of her palm, and it’s like wiping goggles and finding them more smudged than before; the darkness grows.

That darkness grows as an inky cloud bubbling at the distant center of the bright blue tunnel. Staring at it makes Sloane’s tongue prickle as if she’s sucking on a live wire.

And it’s following, chasing, a storm in pursuit. She braces herself against the gunner’s chair.

“What is that?” she whispers. Her hand flies up to cover her mouth. She really thinks she’s going to scream, or cry.

Hyperspace shouldn’t look like that.

“That,” Rax says wanly, “is the Contingency.”

“It’s catching up,” Sloane says, stupefied, pressing her fist to her teeth. No, she pleads silently. I’m not ready to go. I’m not. Not into this perversion of space.

“The ship isn’t fast enough. Would any ship be, though…?” His staggered, limping footsteps come up behind her and he lays his hands on her shoulders. “Then there isn’t much time.”

She heaves in air. “You did this.” What have you done?

His tone is clipped, with raw edges. Angry at her for not understanding, when it’s his own fault. He saved this for the last — the very last — moment. What for? Did he expect her to appreciate it?

“This is your Empire, Rae Sloane. This is…” He makes a resentful jab. “This is real. This was here before you were. I was there before you—“

His fingers dig into her forearms. She doesn’t bother reacting.

“I saw this built before there was a throne, or an Emperor. Before the war that destabilized the galaxy. This was Sheev Palpatine’s vision. His design. His gift to the galaxy: its death.”

“Why!?” The question wrenches itself from her throat.

“You didn’t know him as I did. If you did? You wouldn’t need to ask.”

It appalls her that he’s reveling in her ignorance. Though it must be the only satisfaction left for him.

Rax sounds like he’s recounting a dream upon waking, in a distant, sing-song tone. “It will spread through hyperspace, from the source, the planet. It… has no name. An insatiable hunger, a dark cancer. That’s all I know,” he adds in a hurried whisper. “I was never told, Rae, that old bastard never trusted me, never thought me worthy. Look! He promised a destiny, and there it is.”

It will spread. She thinks— The Emperor condemned us all. This is what the man who built the Empire believed in. Sloane can’t even push back against this as she has before, because she can be no Emperor, there is no Empire. It must have already been swallowed up. The New Republic fleet is gone. Norra and Brentin Wexley — gone.

“He told me many things, he told me of this in riddles, or in metaphors. I may not have understood it then, but I will never forget a word he said to me.”

“Why—! Why are you… still talking like that? As if you’re trying to teach me a lesson…”

“I thought we’d escape, but it’s enough for you to see as I do.”

“Enough for what!? The afterlife? I don’t plan on sharing that with you!” She shudders, and tears herself away from him. “Is this a lie? A trick? A trap? A test?” Takes aim at his head with the blaster.

Rax flits his eyes between the blaster and the viewport.

He, like Sloane, cannot look at the dark cloud for long. It is flat, like a hole cut out of existence, and the cloudiness at the edges and writhing forms within might be optical illusions. Moving the eyes inward from the edges deadens the mind. A hole cut out of consciousness too. Around it, the cerulean cocoon of hyperspace violently unravels.

Sloane jabs Rax’s forehead with the barrel. “Want me to end it before that does?” And how dearly she wants to make one final act of defiance. But it isn’t defiant. It’s what he wants. “How does it feel, knowing the Emperor betrayed you?”

He swallows, cheeks pinched in. The blood from the cuts is drying quickly into dark clots that crack into crumbs as his features shift. In places it’s as if tiny black-shelled insects have swarmed on his skin.

“He strung you along. He promised you greatness. A lie.”

“Yes,” he says.

“You knew this would happen.” An accusation.

“Of course not! Do you think I want the galaxy torn to shreds?”

“I think you did.”

“One wretched, backwater planet! Idiotic squabbling armies. An Empire that failed. Why do you think I sent the New Republic to Akiva, to the Imperial Future Council? To see what the Empire’s future was, in a galaxy that had come to hate it. You… you proved what had to be done. We’re not so different, are we?”

I planted a bomb in my own ship and fled in a shuttle, Sloane thinks.

Then— “No.” She stiffens. First he blames the Emperor and now, in a subtle way, he blames her. But she can turn that against him. “Because if we’re not so different, then you’re a coward and you knew better. And you saw plans in motion and you could have stopped them but you waited for an explanation because surely it would all turn out to mean something, it had to have an answer.”

The ship has begun to vibrate. It wails like a revenant or a dying sea leviathan; the durasteel hum is a keen and discordant note that gets into her very bones and sets them ringing.

“I don’t want to die,” Sloane seethes, and spills tears, elbowing Rax aside, staggering back to the shuttle cockpit. Her throat feels bruised from the clogging mucous alone. There is no room for dignity left. Already, there is nothing left in the galaxy that honors her. “I want to go home.”

She doesn’t know at first what she means by that, and then she does.

The shuttle doesn’t have all the features an Imperial ship would have, but like most cheap commercial transports refitted for war, it’s easy enough to turn it on itself, vent volatile gases from one chamber to another, stall the inhibitors, overload the ventilators. The shuttle’s computer makes it easy for her, as if it wants the same.

He is contrite, which may as well be mockery. “There’s nothing you can do.”

She curls her fingers around a handle and pulls it back. “Yes, there is,” she mutters.

The view of blue becomes black, dusted with twinkling stars. And at the back of the ship, the hyperdrive roars in its death throes.

It isn’t the cold of space she meets at the end, not the void, but searing fire at her back, a bloom of light.

[gallirae]

chronological fic posts

read it on AO3

[permian-tropos]

well okay I wrote another! but… technically i wrote this tomorrow

CW: mild body horror

10. “You think this troubles me?”

The blaster drops out of his hand.

Sloane blinks and twists her head to look at it. A trap? 

He could strike her in the face with his elbow if she leans down. He could grab her by her hair. He could— But she could still shoot him.

A drop of liquid falls from his gloved fingertips.

As Sloane registers that, she also notices the sticky wetness staining her sleeves. She pulls away in disgust, staring at the red smears on her forearms.

When Rax turns around, the skin of his throat is ashen but blotted with blood. His coat is sprouting small stains all over his chest. His mouth is red, lips split and chapped. A thin line, like a papercut, opens up from the corner of his eye down his cheekbone.

“What in hell,” Sloane whispers.

He smiles, gruesomely with how it cracks his lips further. Sloane thinks, bizarrely, of the stitched-mouthed slaves the Huttess kept. She’d wondered what it would be like to pull those hooks out, and now, even seeing it on Rax, she can’t help but wince.

The smile turns sympathetic, which Sloane finds terribly unpleasant, worse than a sneer.

“You think this troubles me?” Rax licks his lips, and, seemingly with effort, wrenches his gaze away from her. “Scars don’t heal. The flesh is never quite the same. At times they can…”

She’s heard of this. “Malnourishment.”

He nods approvingly. “There isn’t just one way to starve. So many flavors of starvation, just as many as satiation, you’d think. Yes. Jakku sharpens a body, doesn’t it?” A flicker of self-consciousness, like he knows whatever he’s done to himself over the past few months, it wasn’t particularly sane. “And it too was… scarred, in a way. The world itself. Waiting to bleed.”

She backs away from him, kicking the blaster along behind her with her heel. “Stop it. Stop talking in riddles. You’ve dragged me out here, tell me something I can understand or shut up.” She darts down to grab the weapon and point it at his chest, though it feels useless now. “What’s going on? And where is this ship headed?”

“Far away.” Rax stares out into hyperspace. “I didn’t reactivate the planet. All I could do was hold it back. There’s only so much longer I can—”

“You’re still holding it back. That’s why you’re…”

“Yes.”

Something about that sends shivers down her spine. Why?

“How… how far away—” her voice wavers— “do we have to be?”

[gallirae]

chronological fic posts

read it on AO3