For a mining platform at the end of nowhere Bespin was kind of pretty. Lots of pastel clouds framed by white plasteel, clean layout with lots of public areas, no sign of blaster residue on any of the walls… Wolffe would be quite content here were it not for his own uncertainty.
Travelling around the galaxy as hired security had seemed like a good idea at the time. Gen… Master Koon had been very insistent about the need for he and his brothers to take advantage of the current political climate and experience the wider galaxy before accepting the offer to re-enlist. And honestly, Wolffe was rather grateful to be away from the mess left after the whole “apparently the Chancellor is a Sith” debacle. Especially given how close it had been – if it hadn’t been some unknown slicer decommissioning those karking control chips…
Wolffe wasn’t naive enough to think that it was all over, the Chancellor Sith Master is still out there and still has his supporters, but for the moment things were stable; he and his brothers have full Republic citizenship, and his fatherGeneral Master KoonPlo wanted him to experience “personal freedom and agency”. So here he was. On Bespin.
Stuck.
The transport ship he’d arrived in had been declared dead on arrival, the hyperdrive apparently less than a day or so from a catastrophic meltdown, and so far his efforts to find passage off the station had come to naught.
He knew that should worst come to worst he could probably comm one of his brothers for assistance but… The famed Commander of the Wolfpack? Requiring an evacuation from civvie space because you couldn’t find a ship? Wolffe would never live it down. Never.
And then there’s his Jedi: oh they’d be kind about it but he can already see Plo’s eye smile and General Fisto Kit’s stupidly handsome grin and Force damn it Wolffe had just gotten ahead in their unofficial snark competition!
So no. He would find a way out of this.
Somehow.
“NYAH!”
Wolffe stops.
His wanderings have taken him down into the lower levels of the station, where gleaming white gives way to industrial brown and most of the inhabitants are robotic in nature.
Which makes the small animal staring at him imperiously from its perch in one of the exposed conduits all the more startling.
It’s a Tooka. Dark indigo fur blending almost seamlessly into the shadows, broken up only by bright green eyes and sharp white teeth as it demands his attention.
“NYAOOOH!”
Determining that its target was well and truly aware of its presence the Tooka launches itself into the air and for a moment Wolffe feels his well honed battle instincts kick in.
He manages to turn a defensive block into a softer hold just in time to catch the creature before it makes contact with his chest.
The Tooka appears unperturbed by its near miss. At least the affectionate headbutt to Wolffe’s chin would suggest as much.
Wonderful.
Now he needs to find where the little beast came from and make sure it ends up back where it belongs.
… eventually.
Its fur is very soft. And the purring is rather soothing.
And it’s not like there’s anywhere else he needs to be.
Because neither of us will ever, ever stop loving Pacific Rim, this crossover was inevitable. There is a shared line: “Great, kid!/Hey, kid! Don’t get cocky.”
So I don’t want to disparage Padme’s upper body strength, but Anakin is kind of a lot of boy, so I thought I’d give her a little advantage and draw them in their underwater gear from the Water War arc in S4. Just being kinda cute and silly for a change…
Alternately, not a bridal-carry, but I could totally imagine Anakin and Padme getting captured by pirates and it going something like that scene with the brigands in Ever After, where the leader (Hondo, clearly) is so impressed by Padme’s fearless queenly demeanor that he agrees to release her and is all like “You can have anything you can carry”
Also Long Post that got way way way longer than I thought.
Threepio would never know it, but the errant suggestion of “Master Ani, might I suggest something more… soothing than this? I doubt you will be able to make any more improvements on myself. Might I offer crocheting or knitting? They are very useful skills and…” after the fifth time of being brought online would cause a ripple that would change the very course of fate.
Anakin’s first attempts at crocheting under Threepio’s surprisingly gentle guidance were unravelled almost as soon as they were completed. Partly because Anakin disliked the level of work he had produced but also to save on wool.
Eventually, Shmi was presented with a simple beige shawl with a couple of small holes and a wonky hem. She adored it.
(Oddly, people would always seem to be kinder, less brutal, less superior towards her when she wore it. Even Watto seemed to be in a milder mood. She always felt safe when she wore it.)
(She wore the shawl one morning to gather mushrooms after Ani had gone and she had been freed. It was old and holey and so very precious. So precious that when she suddenly felt it tug against something, a sensation of peril and dread, she stopped and turned back to her home, hoping it wouldn’t unravel and remembering the bit of yarn that could patch up the possible hole. It was only an hour later when she went back out to collect the mushrooms and found a Tusken-wrecked vaporator that she realised what had almost happened.)
Crocheting was soothing in a different way than working with machines or podracing. There was no adrenaline rush, no Watto hovering over his shoulder. Just him and the wool and the odd way the world seemed to narrow yet expand in his senses. He always felt better after crocheting. Calmer. More balanced.
Hello chaps! I’ve been away for a hot minute, I know.
Here’s a commission that the wonderful @selcier has been paaaaatiently waiting for (for longer than I care to admit!!) that I finally felt able to finish recently. It’s for her amazing fic CT-Skywalker, which I highly recommend, and I got to go full lens flare to make it resemble a classic Drew Struzan-type poster. My respect, thanks and admiration go to her for her ongoing patience and kindness in waiting while I have been Going Through It. ❤
Mental-health wise, I’m not gonna make any big declarations because that way madness lies, so I’m just being grateful for a few good days recently. Hopefully I’ll be back on Tumblr a bit more than I have been, so I want to give a shy little wave to all you guys and say that I hope you’re all doing great, that your skin is clear, you’re sleeping through the night and that a dog notices you on the street today. ❤ Much love.
wrennette 