Saga Saga - ST Saga - Legends On the Creation of Monsters [UDC X Response]

Week 17 - The Black Queen (40ABY)

NO ONE READ THIS, it is absolutely terrible.


81. Amber

Luke doesn't remember what reasoning he babbled to Leia to explain why he needed genetic samples - there was no good explanation and he knew it; he felt Mara's absence along their bond like a jagged, gaping wound - but whatever he said, his sister accepted it and no doubt chalked it up to the madness of grief.

But the true madness was madder yet.

Because he can't hear Mara's voice along the bond anymore, but in its absence another voice - an amber eyed Master he hadn't thought about in decades - whispers a damning truth.

You still have the maps to Byss.


82. Verdant

He imagines he hears yet other voices along his journey - ominous warnings and sharp admonishments and blaring alarms. He imagines he hears his father. He imagines he hears his nephew.

He does not hear her. He continues.

The very small part of him not overwhelmed by the madness of grief wonders how the cloning chambers can be so like he left them. He explores, lighting the way with only the verdant gleam of his lightsaber, and concludes that there is a dormant power generator. He finds the switch, and the chamber sings again to life exactly as in his memory.


83. Cerulean

His own notes lay on the table, opened to precisely the right page as if by magic. As if fated. And in the eerie azure light, the words he’s looking for - the next steps he’s looking for - seem to fly off the page of their own accord. Essence transfer.

The Emperor’s research on essence transfer alone wouldn’t be enough to pull her from the ever-beyond; that art had been for preservation, not resurrection.

But - if combined with Vader’s research. Vader’s desperate quest to craft a portal to the afterlife upon a dark side nexus.

Byss had such a nexus, too.


84. Scarlet

The first lesson in Sith alchemy is this: that the primary ingredients are the blood and spit of the alchemist. Water of the flesh was the translation; perhaps more accurately, tears of the flesh, but the words for water and tears were the same, separated only by context.

Luke had shed no tears for her upon finding her body - and maybe he had been subconsciously saving them for this moment.

The knife cuts too deeply. He cares just enough to staunch the bleeding before he passes out, because the next phase cannot be completed if he dies from blood loss.


85. Obsidian

His mind cries, wrong. His heart cries, wrong. Their bond sings with wrongness.

Her face is right, her features are right, her smile is right. But when her eyes open, they are not emerald but blood black.

It might simply be an unintended aftereffect of the resurrection, he tells himself.

Her mouth quirks into a familiar half-smile, and her expression lights up with recognition. And falls again, when she sees his horror.

“Farmboy?” she asks - who is she who is she whose spirit did he wrench from the ever-beyond? “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Luke laughs.

---

Spoiler: Quick Note

Artoo blew up Byss in DE II, this is not a thing that could have happened in the Legends timeline.

 

Week 18 - Luke and Vader RotJ

This continues right from Drabble #25.


86. Imperil

"Perhaps she will," you say, and I can sense your self-satisfied smile even through the mask and the shadows.

The world stops as if frozen, the time between heartbeats stretching into an almost fathomless eternity, and in the sudden silence I imagine I hear the call of the Dark.

But that’s only for an instant, before my ears are instead filled with the roaring rush of blood, and I can only think: no, not Leia. Never Leia.

The world speeds up once more, and I don’t know or care to interrogate the source of the sudden power at my fingertips.


87. Might

The lightsaber jumps off your belt, igniting in midair as I call it to my hand, and in the seconds before it hits my palm, I have the time to think with an oddly detached bemusement, I’m cold.

My hand closes around the hilt and I’m already charging, fueled by a frenzy I’ve never known, a fury that burns bright enough to set the world aflame: igniting my blood, licking at my bones, ripping through my body like a sheet of flame.

It is like nothing I’ve ever felt before - and surprises even you, because you retreat, and I pursue.


88. Aspire

I realize that it's not just my fury that thrums through my chest - but yours, too. But it's not just your fury that empowers you but your pain and your ghosts as well -

- my son, my grown up son -

- there are too many of them -

- you're breaking my heart -

- you were my brother -

I take them, I inhale them, I allow them to fuel me as they fueled you: and I understand with crystalline clarity the despairing depths in which you've lived these decades under the Emperor's tutelage - and the depths to which you and he would have me descend.


89. Paralyze

Your hand tumbles uselessly over the edge, your lightsaber clamoring alongside it, and instead of raining down a final blow and securing a final victory - I find myself frozen, as if dangling once more upon the precipice at Bespin.

More machine than man, the memory of Ben's voice reminds me, and I slowly look down in horror at my own gloved prosthetic.

"- fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!"

His words are distant.

Your mask is closer.

And once again I imagine I can see your expression through it, the horror and fear - and the recognition.


90. Thwart

In some ways, it's the easiest decision I've ever made. In others, it's the hardest. But in any case, there can only be one answer.

I stare at you for another instant, and think back to the cave on Dagobah.

It is not you, my father, that I must defeat. Nor even your Master.

It's the Darkness.

The Darkness in you and him - and in myself. And the only way to defeat that Darkness is to reject it.

It's with that flash of insight that I cast away my weapon.

"No. I am a Jedi. Like my father before me."

 

TOO LATE

 

I should make a poll about which if these drabble sets is the worst. I mean, maybe-zombie-Mara, but also what about all the canon typical child murder?

Two more sets; we'll see what other horrors arise.

Listen, I've never fully read LotF but I just have a headcanon that my boys handle bereavement very poorly and have no conception of what's actually impossible

 

You call this terrible? I love zombie!Mara!

It's got a very Mary Shelley vibe to it.

 

I told myself last year that I wasn't going to fridge the Skywalker women in service of angst for the Skywalker men anymore. That I'd grown beyond that as a writer. And now in the course of the last two weeks, I've written a maybe ghost Padmé and a maybe zombie Mara.

I justify it to myself by saying that I'm just taking off from after they've already died in the canon.

I'm glad you liked it, though! I was thinking of Steven King's Pet Semetary as I was writing.

 

Week 19 - L/M Fluff

Congrats! We’ve made it this far; have a fluff chaser.


91. Island

“I had no idea Coruscant had any places like this,” Luke admitted.

“Well, originally it didn’t,” Mara corrected absently. “These islands off the Western Sea are all artificial. But they make for good vacation destinations for government functionaries who don’t want to go off-planet.” She peered over at him. “You can take off your boots, Farmboy. Sand between your toes is part of the beach experience.”

“I -”

“I promise there’s no parasites. There’s all sorts of regulations and safety precautions.”

He hesitated, and Mara fought back a smirk, knowing that there was no reason for his hesitancy save for his uncle’s voice in his mind warning him not to go barefoot in the sand.


92. Rivulet

They got his boots off in the end, and after only a little convincing, Mara even got him to put his feet in the water.

He was endearingly fascinated, tunneling his toes ever deeper into the wet sand, enthusiastically marveling at the texture, the tiny rivulets running over his feet.

"I had no idea. I mean, there's sand everywhere on Tatooine, of course - but we only get this much moisture after a storm. I've never seen so much wet sand, clumping together like this."

Against her better judgment, Mara proposed, "So - does that mean you've never built a sandcastle, Farmboy?"


93. Cove

They had to improvise; she hadn’t thought to bring a bucket, but some careful inspection of the cove revealed a few empty cups they were able to use to shape the sand into the towers they wanted - until a sudden gust of wind sent it flying into the sea.

Mara instinctively plunged into the water to get it back, pulling ever closer to the floating object with short and powerful strokes - and she almost had it in hand when it suddenly lifted and jerked out of the water, telekinetically summoned back to the shore and into Luke’s hand.

“No fair!"


94. Torrent

Luke laughed, delighted. “We never said anything about the Force being off limits. And besides - I’m just evening out the odds. You know how to swim.”

Mara’s brain promptly short-circuited. “You don’t know how to swim?”

He looked incredulous, and faintly offended. “When would I ever have learned how to swim?”

“It’s - it’s an essential survival skill, Farmboy. I get that you grew up on a desert planet, but never in the years since - ”

“You can teach me now,” he offered.

And Mara would have immediately taken him up on that - had Coruscant’s artificial weather system not chosen precisely that moment to bless their island with a torrential downpour.


95. Quagmire

Wading back to the ship in the quagmire of mud and muck was reminiscent of the jungles of Myrkr in all the worst ways.

Except for the voxyn. And the ysalamiri. And Thrawn breathing ominously down their necks.

Actually, Mara was forced to admit, it wasn’t all that bad.

When they got back to the ship, still dripping wet and greeted by Artoo’s shrill and worried warble, Luke grinned winningly at her - as if he wasn’t completely soaked and covered in muck. “So. About those swimming lessons. I’ll take a rain check?”

She groaned, but she couldn’t help but laugh.

 

Loved the teasing and relaxing in Week 19. Very much in character.

 

teasing and banter. Love it. Mara and Luke together

 

ELLI I never finished proper feedback for a bunch of these I AM HERE TO RECTIFY THIS OVERSIGHT

You know what? I haven't read all of the EU, much less the new canon books, and I read far fewer of the PT-era stuff than the NR-era stuff, and maybe the pro stories covered this somewhere and I missed it, but I honestly don't think I've seen much, if anything, about the emotional impact on Yoda of having his padawan turn to the dark side. Maybe I missed it? Maybe in Dark Rendezvous? Regardless, I think this was an excellent idea on your part, to spotlight this bond between them and how Yoda was affected by Dooku's Poor Life Choices.

I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING

My heart, Elli

I love this, not simply for the acknowledgment that this was very poor advice on Yoda's part, but for the humanizing (there really isn't another good word here to properly convey this concept across the spectrum of sentient species) effect it has on Yoda, to show that he really wasn't stoic and emotionless, but rather trying to convince himself as much as Anakin

Another parallel I never properly realized!

OH MY GOD ELLI

aaaaahhhhhhhh but forever

Look at the dark depths of your angst

lol just kidding these are still the shallows hahahaha help me

OH MY GOD ELLI

Honestly, you deserve much better eloquence than this, but the reality is that your angst tends to short-circuit my brain

WELP

*lies on floor and stares at ceiling*

*but not for long because there's crack and more angst and fluff to comment on still*

Perfect, no notes

Phenomenal; exactly the way this would go

One of the new canon things I accept into my headcanon is from the Obi-Wan show, that Leia's Force-sensitivity tends to show itself as piercing insights into the psyches of others. It feels perfectly in character.

ARTURITO AND THEODORE

Yet again, perfect, no notes

Yet again, phenomenal; exactly the way this would go

I LOVE THIS

This would be heartwarming if he didn't want to get him to, y'know, turn him to the dark side and enlist him to help murder Palpatine and rule the galaxy

OH MY GOD ELLI

OH MY GOD ELLI

ELLI OH MY GOD OH MY GOD ELLI

(honestly, this seriously freaks me out; this is bonafide SW horror and it gives me the absolute creeps but so artistically done)

That's another new canon thing I like, the idea of Sith and the dark side being cold

That's our boy

That was honestly such an adorable touch in the NJO, one of the few times that someone remembered to have Luke remember his adoptive parents in some way (why not more thoughts about Owen and Beru, EU, why *shakes fist*)

I love everything about this, just so you know, and if you wanted to write more about Luke and Mara being adorable and snarky building sandcastles I would not object

I feel like Coruscant is this absolute nightmare of potential infrastructure maintenance failures and how would you ever create and build and maintain a planetwide artificial weather system; it all sounds pretty but the second you stop to think about it you realize it's probably fundamentally unsustainable. Despite that, Luke and Mara are utterly adorable here and this was a wonderful fluff chaser; good job, Elli