#willow's aus

[willowcrowned]

I’m always a slut for ‘Anakin decides not to murder children and it saves the galaxy’ AUs, but I’m also always a slut for ‘Anakin decides not to murder children and it doesn’t save the galaxy’ AUs, partially because I’m sure Palps had several contingencies in place for Anakin not falling, and partially because the concept of baby Luke and Leia being raised by their Mom, Dad, Uncle Obi and Aunt Soka while they run the Resistance kills me.

There are so many incredible directions it can go, but my personal favorites are:

Leia gets a lightsaber and becomes a terror of the galaxy, eventually killing Sidious through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness and no little amount of vigorous stabbing.

Luke and Anakin bond over piloting while Obi-Wan is sick in the back of the transport.

Obi-Wan and Padmé getting drunk and taking the piss out of Sidious. (“Have you— *hic* have you seen his hair?” “Atrocious.” “Fuck, and the robes.” “No sense of panache whatsoever. I was never so unstylish when I wore robes.” “Yes, you were very hot.” “What?” What.”)

Ahsoka, Leia, and Luke prank wars. Blue milk in the pillow is how it starts. Three imperial bases burning while R2 cackles in the background and Padmé and Obi-Wan yelling at them is how it ends.

R2 and Luke are Best Friends. R2 and Leia are Mortal Enemies. Anakin takes Luke’s side. Obi-Wan takes Leia’s. Ahsoka and 3PO form their own team. Padmé privately decides that she can’t be bothered and lets her family have their stupid feud while she establishes another rebel base.

Hondo Ohnaka frequently kidnaps Luke and Leia and tries to get them to join his crew. Leia scams him every single time in the hopes that it’ll get him to back off. It just makes him try harder.

Han Solo shows up when the twins are 16 and both of them get horrible crushes on him. Anakin hates him for it. He shows up again when the twins are 22 and gets a horrible crush on both of them. Luke thinks it’s kind of sweet. Leia is not impressed. Anakin still hates him.

Luke goes out on a routine supply trip and comes back two weeks later with a whole covert of Mandalorians, including one named Din to whom he is very attached. Anakin blames Obi-Wan for it (“It’s your genes. Your stupid, defective, mandalorian-attracting genes.” “Luke and I aren’t even related!!” “You did this.”)

Padmé ‘three outfits a day and no less’ Amidala, Leia ‘braids and floor-length bodycon dresses’ Skywalker, and Luke ‘Chanel boots’ Skywalker, are fashion icons. Anakin, who is almost always covered in grease stains, is consistently mistaken for their escort and/or servant.

[willowcrowned]

I mean really, the best part of any 'Leia is from Tatooine and Luke is from Alderaan' AU is how they meet up, because you KNOW little 'I'm a sunshine twink' Luke is going to have a very different experience on the Death Star than 'If I knew how to burn people with my mind, Vader would be a giant torch right now' Leia.

So Luke gets captured with the Death Star plans, sends R2 and 3PO off with the plans, and does the whole 'who me? a dangerous rebel? well I NEVER' bit before getting tossed in a cell. In between doing his 'I'm totally innocent' routine (which he does a lot better than Leia, since he doesn't give off the impression of champing at the bit to tear people's throats out all the time), he sits around, is generally depressed, and dreams of the heroic Ben Kenobi coming to save him. One notable impact of his rather better lying is the fact that it takes a hell of a lot longer for Tarkin to blow up Alderaan, since, you know, there is a chance that Luke is an unwitting accomplice, however slim.

Meanwhile, down on Tatooine, Leia does not take off R2's restraining bolt, because she's not an idiot, and instead takes him straight to Ben Kenobi, because Biggs is gone and she's bored and she's got no interest in sitting around moping and playing with toy ships.

Ben sees Leia show up at his front door with R2, and sighs, because he knows what's about to go down. (Leia, for the record, doesn't immediately believe him when he tells her that her father was a Jedi Knight, everyone on Tatooine is a liar, and no one on Tatooine is a stupid space wizard. (She tells him this to his face. He sighs again. He seems to be doing quite a lot of that.))

Because Leia didn't faff around with R2, they get back to the farm in time to rescue Owen and Beru, and when Ben pulls out his saber, Leia gets to see first hand that there are actually stupid space wizards on Tatooine. (She still thinks Ben is lying to her about something, which, well, he is, so point Leia on that one.) Owen and Beru go into hiding, Leia grabs her dad's laser sword, because weapons are useful (not because she's going to be a Jedi, shut up old man), and she, Ben, R2, and 3PO head to a cantina. (The second Han sees her, he starts getting funny ideas about showing innocent, naïve, Tatooine girls the ropes. Those funny ideas last until she opens her mouth to verbally eviscerate him. Then he starts getting funny ideas of a different sort.)

In any case, because of Leia's efficiency, and because Luke is really rather good at pretending to be a harmless fop, the Falcon gets to Alderaan before it's destroyed.

'Great,' Han thinks. 'Easy ride, easy payout.'

"Land on that," Leia orders, pointing at the Death Star.

'Kriff,' Han thinks, because he is very, very, kriffed.

Leia emerges onto the bridge of the Death Star just before Tarkin gives the order to fire.

"Hi," she says, lightsaber humming dangerously. "I'm Leia Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you."

Vader keels over, reeling, and Luke takes the opportunity to shoot Tarkin in the back with his own blaster and run.

By the time Vader can think straight again, Leia and the Falcon are gone. He makes it off the Death Star just in time to see it explode. (Luke, after all, is a very, very good shot, and the TIE fighter he stole is state of the art.)

The Empire never stood a chance.

[willowcrowned]

au where anakin right at the beginning of rots gets sent to the FUTURE, right at the beginning of a new hope. he meets up with old obi wan and luke on tatooine and obi wan is internally really just imploding internally the whole time. anakin thinks luke is a long lost sibling and really wants to merc this darth vader guy.

okay I’ve had this in my askbox for days because I don’t think I can do justice to the pure chaos that would occur, but here are my thoughts:

Anakin has just rescued the Chancellor and found out Padmé is pregnant. He is running on so much adrenaline and endorphins that it’s a miracle he hasn’t (a) burst in to song or (b) passed out.

and then he touches whatever contrived time-travel device we’ve decided on, and ends up in a pile of sand

a lot of sand.

Here is what happens next:

Luke finds Anakin, helps him into the landspeeder, and continues to go looking for his droids. When the tuskens attack, Anakin (who has somehow lost his lightsaber), beats them up with his bare hands. 

Luke, who has not told Anakin his last name, is both impressed and a little horrified.

And then Obi-Wan shows up.

A short list of things that one Obi-Wan Kenobi expects to find in the canyon: Luke; sand; tuskens

An even shorter list of things that one Obi-Wan Kenobi does not expect to find in the canyon: Anakin

Anakin, at this point, has no more endorphins or adrenaline left. He’s been up for several days at this point, and his body has just been through yet another taxing fight. He keels over on the spot.

Obi-Wan resists the urge to do many things, including shriek, sob, or shoot what must be a hallucination.

Then Luke picks the guy up, the droids emerge from hiding, and Obi-Wan realizes that this isn’t a hallucination, it’s something much much worse— Skywalker Bullshit (tm)

Obi-Wan presses down every instinct he has to yell a series of swears that aren’t repeatable, and calmly asks “Who is that?”

“Anakin,” Luke replies. “I found him in the sand.”

Of course you did, Obi-Wan thinks, at which point R2 beeps something rude and he ushers them back to his house.

Upon seeing Leia, Obi-Wan realizes that this isn’t just Skywalker Bullshit (tm), this is Skywalker Bullshit (tm) cubed. 

It is very good, he thinks, that Anakin is passed out cold.

In fact, he also thinks, maybe he should keep Anakin passed out cold for a little longer, until the rest of the storm has passed.

Anakin, who is delirious and half asleep and still trusts Obi-Wan, lets Obi-Wan push him into a Force-assisted slumber.

(He looks kind of like sleeping beauty. Luke brushes his hair away from his forehead. It’s very cute.)

((Several thousand light years away, Vader gets very jealous all of a sudden and has no clue why.))

The plot continues as it did, only with Obi-Wan, Luke, and R2 lugging two dead weights around instead of just the one.

When they get to the Death Star, they leave Anakin on the ship, asleep.

He does not stay that way.

Luke and co. are rushing back to the ship as Obi-Wan ignites his lightsaber in front of Vader, ready to sacrifice himself.

And then Anakin stumbles out of the ship, lightsaber in hand (he swears he lost it earlier, but it was right next to Luke’s bed so maybe he was just hallucinating) and sees Obi-Wan (old, but it’s undeniably Obi-Wan) about to get mowed down by a guy in tacky black armor with a red lightsaber— which is to say, a Sith Lord.

Anakin does what Anakin does best— panic.

He Force shoves Vader out of the way, pulls Obi-Wan, Luke, and everyone else into the ship, and closes the blast doors with his mind.

The very last image Vader has of Obi-Wan is him standing next to a young Anakin, glaring at Vader like he’s the root of all evil.

Vader, for the first time in nineteen years, feels an ebbing of rage, overwhelmed by outright confusion.

It wouldn’t be much consolation if he knew, but Obi-Wan is having an even worse day than he is.

[willowcrowned]

okay currently very consumed with the idea of an au where Qui-Gon comes back during the last few months of the clone wars... only he has no memories, is stuck on an outer rim planet, and is just wandering around trying to figure out who he is. Cue Ahsoka, who left the Order three weeks ago and ran as far away from Coruscant as she could (but now doesn't know what to do and is contemplating going back), running into Qui-Gon.

Being Ahsoka, she spots some kind of shady business going down and tries to interfere. Being Qui-Gon, he tries to get them out of it, which works for approximately three minutes, and then they have to run.

"You know," Ahsoka says, once they've found a good tree to hide in, too tall to be climbed by any humans not using the Force, "I didn't expect to meet a Jedi out here."

Qui-Gon blinks. "What's a Jedi?"

[willowcrowned]

hiiii i absolutely adore your starwars au, can we get some more 'luke travels back in time and is also coincidentally a terrible liar'?

oh man, it's been ages since I've looked at that. thanks for giving me the opportunity to go back through and read it!

-

About three things Leia is absolutely positive: first, Han is an idiot. Second, Luke is an idiot. Third, she is going to have a headache for the next however long it takes her to get out of the past. Because she is getting out.

There's no hard and fast research on temporal physics—and she wouldn't have studied it if there was—but she has a working frontal lobe, which means she at least knows there's a future to go back to. Wherever Luke went, wherever she followed, it's not their past, otherwise it would have stopped existing the second Luke went and showed his lightsaber to the nearest Jedi like the world's second most idiotic dick measuring contest. (The first most idiotic goes to Han on Hoth, and boy does she have a reason to be glad she caught him before anything froze).

She can get back. She can get back. Which means she's going to. She just has to find Luke first.

[willowcrowned]

One of the things I love about star wars time travel AUs are that they allow you to stick characters together and manufacture the situation for Maximum Chaos. Some of my favorite iterations of this are:

Leia gets sent back to the prequels. Because she’s Leia, she verbally eviscerates everyone she deems either incompetent, downright malicious, or both. Because it’s the prequels, that means she verbally eviscerates everyone. Please imagine 5′1″ Princess Leia Organa staring down 6′4″ Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and telling him that he’s an idiot. Please imagine him losing the stare-down. Please imagine her repeating this process on the entirety of the Jedi Council, before shooting Palpatine while giving him a withering look. Palpatine technically dies from the blaster shot, but everyone agrees that it was the glare that really did him in.

Obi-Wan gets sent forward in time to about a week a week after ANH. Vader, who has presumably been doing his brood-in-his-evil-futuristic-hyperbaric-chamber thing, suddenly feels Obi-Wan again. This does not surprise him, because Obi-Wan disappearing just as he was about to get sliced in half is a little too convenient for a man who faked his death on four separate occasions. When he hunts Obi-Wan down, Obi-Wan is young, ginger, and under the impression that Vader is a Sith Lord that he’s never met. Vader’s fury that Obi-Wan is somehow alive is only matched by his fury that Obi-Wan doesn’t even remember barbecuing him, and, as such, he cannot figure out what to do. Queue Vader standing stock-still, having an existential crisis while staring at Obi-Wan, who just wants to know what the hell is going on.

Luke from just before ANH gets sent back in time to the height of the Clone Wars. He and Anakin get captured and stuck in a cell together, but neither of them reveal their names. Eventually Luke starts talking about his dad, the spice freighter pilot, and how he died in a tragic brakes accident while on Tatooine. When he does mention his dad’s name, Anakin’s only reaction is a horrified “I die on Tatooine????!!!”

Luke and Han get sent back to AotC and end up on Kamino. In between Han trying not to punch every clone he comes across (they all look like that bastard), Luke makes friends with a lot of the future officers. Since he’s technically a Jedi, when he suggests overthrowing the Kaminoans, they decide to follow him. What ensues is the shortest revolution in the history of ever. The Kaminoans have no defenses, and they can’t activate the chips themselves. When Jango Fett gets back, Han actually does punch him in the face, because hitting a kid is beneath him and this guy is technically also a Fett, so it counts. Luke, Jango, and Han start a union for the clones. Whenever Palpatine tries to conscript them, he gets thoroughly and politely told off, until he makes the visit himself, at which point Luke tosses him down a reactor shaft.

Padmé from the Clone Wars gets sent forward in time to a year or two after RotS. She finds Vader, convinces him to kill Palpatine, and goes to find her babies. She spends her days splitting time between building a new Republic, helping Anakin through his redemption arc, and playing with her kids. Also, she gives Obi-Wan a hug. Because he deserves it.

[willowcrowned]

You know how TCW threw in that one line about Palps getting the Zillo Beast cloned and then never did anything with it? Well, what if it escaped and ate someone— but it wasn’t Palpatine.

Look, we’ve all thought about Palpatine getting eaten by the Zillo Beast, chomped in half and then slowly dissolved in acid as he throws round after round of Force-lighting into its intestinal lining, only to be absorbed. We’ve all thought about that specific permutation of Palpatine dying, hubris having convinced him that as unlikely as it was his black metal android servant would toss him down a reactor shaft, it was even more unlikely that he’d die getting eaten by animal he’d already subdued.

But that’s not what I’m suggesting. No, what I’m suggesting is that the Zillo Beast escapes and eats a different old, important, vaguely frog-looking, person. I’m suggesting the Zillo Beast eats Yoda.

Yoda, unlike Palpatine, is not a dick. Yoda, unlike Palpatine, is small. Yoda, unlike Palpatine, does backflip practice every morning at 6am. My point being: Yoda doesn’t get chomped in half. What he does do is find a little corner of the Zillo Beast’s mouth where its tongue can’t reach, and sit down to meditate.

Being a feral little creature himself, he connects with the Zillo Beast’s mind quite easily. On one hand, this is great— the Zillo Beast is no longer trying to eat him. On the other hand, this is very very bad— Yoda sees every single one of Sidious’s little evil sith experiments, and everything slots into place real fast.

(It is laughably easy to direct the Zillo Beast towards Palpatine— the only thing it wants more than peace and quiet is Palpatine dead. It is slightly harder to find a way to keep it from injuring anyone, but he manages admirably.)

The Zillo Beast ends up ripping the top off the senate dome, causing millions in property damage and filling Yoda’s feral little heart with glee. Palpatine barely has time to look up before the Zillo Beast’s head snaps down and slices Palpatine neatly in half, tossing him back and catching him in his mouth for an extra crunch before he goes sliding down the gullet. Yoda, still sitting in the crevice between the last tooth and the back of the Zillo Beast’s mouth, waves at him as Palpatine’s severed body slides down the Zillo Beast’s gullet.

Later, everyone will have conspiracies upon conspiracies about how the Zillo Beast was still alive, only answered when they find Palpatine’s evil laboratories. Yoda will not be around to answer, because he will be on a swampy planet with the Zillo Beast, who he’s named Gorf, wreaking havoc on the natural ecosystem and finding new and creative ways to get them both in frame for his annual Christmas Cards to the Jedi Temple.

[willowcrowned]

Regarding Han and Lando's Bogus Adventure ...what's happening with Shmi? Han and Lando did kind of tell all of the gamblers that her son was part of a rigging of the race.

Here's the thing about being owned by a guy with a gambling addiction—a guy who was seen talking with the offworlder before Anakin even entered the race, a guy who bet on Sebulba but now clearly has the prize money in his accounts: no one thinks you're the one who rigged it.

Shmi lets the angry mob drag Watto to the Hutts for punishment, grabs some cash and the control for the slave chip out of Watto's hidden lockbox, and doesn't say a word to anyone about the deal he'd made with Qui-Gon. She's off-world within hours.