“You know, when most people impulse shop, they come back with a new datapad, some nice shoes, maybe an antique blaster. Not an eight-year-old junkyard slave.” A smuggler’s Force prompted purchase changes the course of the galaxy.

The Rogues were glad to have their Commander back after Bespin, but it was obvious to his friends that something besides the new prosthetic was wrong. So the fantabulous four dragged him aside to find out what had gone wrong on the city in the clouds, not expecting what they got, but not completely surprised either.

"So either you're not here or you're not living," she says. "I'm definitely here," he replies, and there's amusement in his voice.

“You have to take her to the crèche, Antilles,” Nico says sternly. Jon doesn’t clutch at the little Togruta girl, doesn’t bury her in his robes and hide her away from Nico's judgmental stare, doesn’t pick her up and run with her. Personally, he thinks it’s an admirable show of self-restraint, but given the downturn of Nico's mustache, he doesn’t agree.

“We’re getting a commander?” a loud voice asks, delighted as it carries through the trees.

In one galaxy, the novel was never read. In another, it starts a landslide. Or what happens when the Mandalorians learn that the Jedi are exactly what most of them look for in a partner.

Padme lives. She runs. -- Leia is growing in fits and spurts, eating greedily and crying loudly. She stays in a sling on Padme’s chest when they move, Luke held snug in a sling around Obi Wan’s. Luke gets a whole head of thick brown hair while Leia’s is still patchy and bald, but he never matches his sister’s powerful lungs. When Padme had been sitting in her high senatorial apartment on Corsucant, holding Anakin’s sweaty hand, she had never imagined she’d be murmuring desperately soothing noises to her fussy daughter while she shot around a corner at stormtroopers, while R2D2 meddles with a ship’s blast doors behind her. Luke starts teething on a hot jungle planet where they hunker down for three weeks, sleeping in an abandoned old temple and catching the local wildlife for dinner. Leia takes her first steps in the belly of a Corellian freighter they’ve stowed away on. She wobbles between Padme’s outstretched hands and Obi Wan’s knees and boxes of smuggled luxuries. When she falls down, Obi Wan surges forward, heart in his throat, but Leia laughs.

Commander Ponds whirls around at the sound of Mace’s step and bolts up to his feet. He begs Mace not to take Boba back to Kamino. He says that he’ll look after him. He’ll take responsibility. With hands pressed together, he pleads for mercy for his brother. Mace tells him not to be ridiculous. Of course he isn’t taking Boba back to Kamino. He’s waiting, that’s all. It is only fair to give everyone a second chance. Even Jango Fett. (An AU where Mace Windu acquires and shares custody over a six-year-old Boba with Jango.)

Padme lives. She runs. -- Leia is growing in fits and spurts, eating greedily and crying loudly. She stays in a sling on Padme’s chest when they move, Luke held snug in a sling around Obi Wan’s. Luke gets a whole head of thick brown hair while Leia’s is still patchy and bald, but he never matches his sister’s powerful lungs. When Padme had been sitting in her high senatorial apartment on Corsucant, holding Anakin’s sweaty hand, she had never imagined she’d be murmuring desperately soothing noises to her fussy daughter while she shot around a corner at stormtroopers, while R2D2 meddles with a ship’s blast doors behind her. Luke starts teething on a hot jungle planet where they hunker down for three weeks, sleeping in an abandoned old temple and catching the local wildlife for dinner. Leia takes her first steps in the belly of a Corellian freighter they’ve stowed away on. She wobbles between Padme’s outstretched hands and Obi Wan’s knees and boxes of smuggled luxuries. When she falls down, Obi Wan surges forward, heart in his throat, but Leia laughs.

Later, he will say it was a calculated choice, that he looked at the odds and looked at the clones and decided that better the Jedi he didn't know than the Sith he did. This is, as it happens, a bare faced lie. (or: A Sith Lord realises, abruptly and rather late, that war means casualties, and decides that the great Jedi genocide plan can go fuck itself.)

“Come with me,” Jango says. Blue-grey eyes narrow, head listing towards the side. “Why?” the teen asks wearily. “Because you’ll die here,” Jango states bluntly. You’ll die here, he thinks, and I’ll go off and die somewhere out there. “Ha,” the teen puffs a caustic laugh. “Okay.” “Okay,” he repeats.

As a rule, Commander Fox avoided direct contact with the Guard's shinies. It was better not to know them, to let them see her as the intimidating Marshal Commander and let her reputation as a hard-ass scare them into following the rules and regulations that would keep them safe. But when she stumbled across a shiny in need of some comfort, Fox did her best to provide.

“Is the kid in trouble?” “No, of course not—I was just, uh, wondering, Mr. Djarin, if you could tell me about Grogu’s typical diet—I only have limited experience with his species, and I have reason to be... concerned that he’s not getting the enough nutrients here,” said Master Skywalker carefully, the kid sitting beside him, not looking particularly remorseful. Dank farrik, not again, Din thought.

“How’d you get stuck with babysitting duty anyway?” Boba asked one day during dinner. “Oh, I volunteered for this,” Fox told him. “Why the kark would you do that?” “Language,” Fox admonished. “Well, I was just living my normal boring life and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t get called an ugly piece of banthashit often enough.’ So I decided to adopt you.” Boba snorted. “You’re a psychopath,” he told Fox. “I’ve been called worse,” Fox replied breezily.

Obi-Wan took a deep breath and did his best to press the anxiety he was feeling away. His hands were steady as he adjusted the settings of the communcation set-up of the small vessel he was currently piloting. He purposefully set the comm to audio only on his side. He hadn't been a padawan for long, but if there was one thing he'd learned during his missions with Master Jinn, it was that it was rare for anyone, especially politicians, to take a padawan seriously. He assumed the same held true for the leader of an enemy empire.