Vir had been, as Londo would have put it, ‘Emperor of the Great and Powerful Centauri Republic’, for exactly seven days before the news broke; dominating the ISN news cycle for almost a full day before a scandal involving an Earth senator took over.
Personally, he blamed Commander Ivanova. No, she was a General now. But either way this had her sneaky fingerprints all over it.
Londo’s obstinate defiance of the Interstellar Alliance would probably go down in galactic history, and it wasn’t hard to imagine Ivanova leaking this in order to establish his credentials as a very different Emperor.
The headline was simple and to the point.
EMPEROR OR EMANCIPATOR?
Vir had always known that his activities during the second Occupation would eventually come to light, that Abrahamo Lincolni couldn’t stay buried forever. He wasn’t ashamed of what he had done, far from it, but it was certainly making things…. interesting.
The news might no longer dominate the galactic news cycle, but it had far from died down on Centauri Prime.
The Royal Court had been abuzz ever since the news had broken, and Vir had been quietly informed that there were movements afoot to have him removed from the throne as unfit to rule.
They’d been happy to have Cartagia sit the throne, but he was unsuitable? He would never understand his fellow Centauri.
The Centaurum had all but demanded he attend them, which would have been unthinkable until recently, and he summoned the Royal Guard before leaving his suite. He wasn’t Londo, but he could still demonstrate that he was no pushover.
They were walking down a deserted corridor when the two guards suddenly collapsed. Vir didn’t even have time to check on them before a hooded figure lunged out of the shadows, coutari in hand.
Vir fell back, almost stumbling over the prone body of one of the guards, and the assassin was upon him. The first lunge missed and Vir was suddenly close enough to wrestle for control of the weapon.
For a long second, they struggled together, but Vir dug into reserves he had all but forgotten about. He had faced down beings that would make this fool soil himself. Mr. Morden. G’Kar. Timov. What was an assassin in the face of that.
Slowly, Vir gained the upper hand, until the point of the coutari was aimed at the assassin’s own chest. As the blade slid home, for a second he was back on Narn, plunging the needle into Cartagia, then he was wrenched back to the present and he fought not to vomit as the assassin collapsed.
Stooping, he took the comm from the belt of one of the fallen guards, calling for reinforcements. Once they arrived he was going to have a talk with the Centaurum.
………………………………………………..
Five days after the attempted assassination of the Centauri Emperor once again propelled Vir into the news cycle, an unusual vessel arrived at Centauri Prime and requested permission to land.
No Narn vessel had been to the Homeworld since the Narn/Drazi fleets had devastated the planet, and it was sheer dumb luck that a trigger-happy pilot hadn’t shot them down on reflex.
Vir himself had to overrule the military and grant the vessel permission to land once he heard why, and he travelled out to the (distant) landing platform they had been assigned with a retinue of sycophants and guards.
The vessel’s hatch opened with a soft hiss as Vir walked out onto the platform, and a dozen Narn slowly filed down the ramp.
None of them could have been much older than Vir himself had been when he had first been assigned to Londo on Babylon 5, but their eyes were far older than his had been.
Vir wished he didn’t know why.
The oldest looking of the Narn approached him slowly, and to his eternal surprise raised both closed fists to his chest in the Narn gesture of respect, bowing his head slightly.
Slowly, Vir mirrored the gesture, and heard the susurration behind him as all the courtiers started to whisper at once.
The Narn raised his head again, and spoke softly.
“My name is G’Von. During the Occupation you saved the lives of me and my family.”
He paused and swept his hand back towards the other Narn,
“You have touched all our lives. Either you saved us, or you saved members of our families. We swore an oath that if we had the opportunity, if we ever knew, truly knew, who had saved us, we would repay them.”
His eyes held a conviction that Vir recognised. It was a mirror of that which had always filled G’Kar’s. After a second he also recognised a faint hint of humour, and decided to play along.
“I once overheard G’Kar say that anyone with a Narn bodyguard would live to be one hundred and fifty years old.”
G’Von’s eyebrow tilted upwards, a sardonic gesture that was one of the few to truly translate across the boundaries of race throughout the galaxy.
“A challenge from the Prophet himself? We accept.”
The courtiers whispering suddenly silenced as the Narn moved as one unit, supplanting the Royal Guard to surround Vir in a defensive cordon.
Vir thought somewhat uncharitably that they were suddenly re-thinking any attempts on his life. G’Kar had firmly impressed on the Royal Court exactly how seriously Narn took their duties as bodyguards.
A vicious smile played at the corners of his mouth. Well wasn’t this going to be interesting.
Another ficlet prompted by the Babylon 5 podcast I’ve been listening to. If you haven’t already give them a listen.
Watching Leverage can be a trip and a half. Especially because, like, how do all these people even find them? I mean, it’s kind of handwaved as Hardison’s computer algorithms and stuff finding them, but even so. And then! several people don’t want money, they want things like a horse, or even immaterial things like getting someone their self-esteem back. That’s some next-level shit right there.
Like, making deals with with the Fair Folk or demons type stuff.
Which means that the Leverage crew would be the demons/Fair Folk/supernatural entities having desperate people summon them, probably as a last-ditch desperation move they didn’t think would work.
Sophie is some sort of UnSeelie. She follows her rules and values manners and dispenses her kindnesses as she sees fit. Do not test her. You will not win.
Parker is a changeling, maybe. Or Seelie. Or maybe she’s just Parker, the only one of her kind. She hasn’t decided yet.
Nate is Human. An almost priest who hates himself and all his flaws and weaknesses while at the same time completely convinced of his own superiority. In the beginning anyway.
Eliot would have died years ago buy some unkind spirit liked his anger and blessed him and now he’s this sort of proto-god of soldiers who’s countries used them up and betrayed their ideals. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Hardison is something new. There is no word for him. He’s making a new world in which he will rule and he has no need at this time for a name or title.
When you cross the Threshold, you become something Other.
Fair Folk? Demigods? Archetypes? Perhaps.
The Threshold is always different. But when you return from it … you never really return. You are always Other. You are always Outside.
For those five, the Threshold was the warehouse explosion in the first episode.
And on the other side … no more petty cons and grifts. No more squalid thuggery. They have crystallized, become Archetypes: Grifter. Hacker. Hitter. Thief. Mastermind. Small gods? Perhaps, but most certainly Powers, dancing with ease on “alternative revenue streams” and even weirder magics.
Listen to their catch phrases. These are conjure words.
Strange promises, barely comprehensible to their beneficiaries, whispering of justice in an unjust world, payment deferred or refused, because the true coin of their trade is payback.
“Let’s go steal fire from the gods.”
Oh my stars and garters, how much do I love the idea of the Leverage crew as small gods??? It is perfect and glorious! 😀
After separating from Ahsoka in the aftermath of Order 66, Rex goes looking for a way to save his brothers from the hell of being nothing more than meat clankers. He comes across a scientist who is on the run from being conscripted into the Imperial bureaucracy, and saves the scientist from being run down because the whole process gives Rex flashbacks to what Fives went through.
It turns out the scientist, a Twi’lek named Doctor Faesta Snamis, has been experimenting with how sound waves influence technology and the Empire wants to utilize her research by turning it toward military applications. Since Faesta, whom Rex takes to calling “Doc”, refuses to see even more destruction wreaked upon the galaxy (and Ryloth in particular, given that it was devastated by the battles fought over it by the Republic and the Confederacy), she’s been running from not just the Empire, but others too who wish to use her work for destructive means. Rex thinks she’s too idealistic, but feels obliged to help her out (it sticks it to the Empire in some small way, practically the only way he’s managed since he and Ahsoka fled Mandalore).
So lots of crazy shit happens and Faesta finds a way to use her research to neutralize the chips in the clones’ minds. They do this on a small scale at first, but then Rex starts getting ideas (boy does he get ideas). He, Faesta, and a crack team of clones who are really fucking pissed off at the Empire for turning them into flesh droids, at the Republic for making them slaves in the first place, and the Sith who have taken over, find a way to hack the Holonet and deliver the knockout punch that deactivates the chips and also manages to deliver a message to the various clone units on what’s happened – the Sith have taken over, etc. They are then encouraged to either get out, or, if they want to do something about it, start tearing the Empire down. A few end up taking the first option, completely traumatized and just can’t take it anymore, but the majority are pissed off enough to want to finish what they started.
Essentially, there is a massive military coup. Palpatine and Vader may be powerful, but even the strongest lions can be brought down by the coordinated attack of a hyena pack (or just insert an appropriate GFFA analogy here). Tarkin is found and shot, field execution style, along with a lot of other leading Imperial figures and leaders.
There are some serious tensions in the aftermath, because the clones are very distrusting of politicians, even the ones with good reputations like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma. As far as many of the clones are concerned, they colluded in keeping the brothers as slaves in a desperate attempt to preserve the Republic, along with the Jedi.
It’s Faesta who steps up and does her best to talk everyone down. She’s always believed in peace, hoped for better times once the war ended, but found herself in even worse straits as time passed. She may not have the deep understanding of being used as fodder like the clones do, but she knows oppression. She and Rex were the ones who found a way to free the clones from their chains. Now she asks them what they really want to do now that their chains are off and the primary culprits are themselves either dead or fettered in chains of their own? Continue the cycle and thus see more blood spilled, blood of their brothers, blood of innocents?
Faesta freely admits that there are no real good answers to the shitty situation they’re in. She just asks that the clones, that everyone, look for answers that don’t involve doing their level best to kill one another.
The story gets left a little open-ended, letting readers decide for themselves how things go. The clones have control at the end, but it’s control by the barrel of a blaster, and hardly sustainable, but they’re just so angry at everyone. Will Faesta’s words be enough to bring peace, when the words of so many others failed?
…is it crazy I kinda want to see post-Vader Anakin being set up for a blind date?
The whole thing is Han’s idea.
When he first suggests it to Leia, he says he wants to do something nice for the old man, which as cover stories go is frankly terrible. Leia only raises an unimpressed eyebrow. It’s such a bad excuse it doesn’t even deserve a response.
Finally Han gives it up and admits that, okay, fine, he just can’t stand watching Rustbucket get flirted at every time they’re all dragged to some gala or top brass event. Anakin’s clueless act is just embarrassing, and worse, Chewie thinks it’s funny, that traitor.
Leia just goes on looking at him. Luke, though, says, “Uh, Han, I don’t think it’s an act.”
Han stares at him. “Oh come on, kid. No one is that clueless.” Then he stops to consider this, and who he’s talking to. Luke is a very friendly person, and very bad at recognizing the line between friendly and flirting. Half the Rebellion wants to date him and as near as Han can tell, he genuinely has no idea. But still… “Okay, fine, maybe some people are. But your old man was married. He managed to produce the two of you somehow. So he can’t be completely unaware of how these things go.”
Leia snickers at him. Han has the sinking feeling she knows something he doesn’t, but he knows better than to ask when she gets that look in her eye.
So he decides he’s gonna set Anakin up on a date, and Leia can laugh all she wants. He’ll be the one laughing when it works.
His first attempt is a guy named Rav who used to work maintenance in one of the hangars on Home One. These days he’s planetside on Coruscant. Nice guy, a few years older than Anakin, green eyes, a great ass. Han arranges the date at a bar so chill he frankly hates the place himself, but it seems like the kind of scene an older couple might enjoy. (Anakin’s only thirteen years older than you, a little voice in the back of his head says, but he ignores that. It’s too weird to let himself think about.) He tells Anakin that Rav wants to meet up and talk shuttle maintenance, which is such a damn obvious innuendo that he barely manages to restrain a cringe as he says it.
But hey, it works, and Anakin’s off to meet with Rav and Han congratulates himself on a job well done. Leia’s still smirking, but that’s just because she hasn’t yet learned what a great matchmaker he is.
Anakin swings back by Leia’s apartment about three hours later, early enough that Luke’s still there and Han is just a little worried. But it was only a first date, so…that doesn’t have to be bad, does it?
“How’d it go, Rustbucket?” he says.
Anakin shrugs easily and heads for the kitchen to start a pot of tzai. “Not bad. Rav’s got some great ideas for B- and Y-wing class fighters, but his views on TIEs are woefully misinformed.” He grumbles something under his breath. “I understand that there’s a need to bad mouth the enemy fighters in front of the troops, but you don’t need to buy into your own propaganda.”
Han blinks a little. Luke and Leia are snickering behind their hands, and for once, it’s real damn easy to see that they’re twins. He glares at them both.
“Well, all right, but…what about the, uh, social aspect?”
“Huh?” Anakin comes into the living room and sits in the chair across from Han and Leia’s couch. Han can never get over how the guy just…sprawls when he sits. It’s about the least Vader-like mannerism he can think of.
“Did you hit it off?” Han asks.
A brief frown crosses Anakin’s face. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind another chance to correct his opinions on TIEs.” Suddenly he brightens, “I did manage to get him the bartender’s number, though, and I’m pretty sure they’re going out this weekend, so I suppose that’s my good deed for the day.” He says this last very dryly. It’s something his therapist suggested, taking notice of his good deeds and letting himself be proud of them or something like that, and Anakin always snarks about it but Han is pretty sure he’s also following his therapist’s advice, so that’s something.
Anyway, that’s clearly not the important thing here. “Wait,” he sputters. “You…set Rav up on a date…with the bartender?”
Leia looks positively gleeful now and Han is pretty sure she didn’t plan this, but if it turned out she did he wouldn’t even be surprised.
Anakin, though, doesn’t seem to understand what’s got Han in such a fuss. “Sure,” he says with another shrug. “They made a cute couple.”
“I don’t believe this,” Han mutters. What kind of guy plays wingman for his own date? He scrapes a hand over his face and resolves to hold on to whatever dignity he can. “Okay, so Rav’s not your type, huh?”
Anakin only looks at him with an expression of such genuine confusion that Han can’t even convince himself the guy’s pretending. “My type of what?” he says.
A loud snort of laughter escapes Leia, and she tries to play it off as a sneeze. Han isn’t impressed.
“Never mind,” he mutters, and eventually the conversation moves on, but he knows Leia isn’t going to forget about this anytime soon.
*
So okay. Maybe he made a bad call with that first try. Maybe Anakin’s only interested in women? It’s a possibility. Fine. So this time Han will have to find the right woman.
He considers his options carefully. Luke and Leia’s mom was a politician and a founder of the Rebel alliance, smart as hell and also pretty damn stunning. (Leia definitely takes after her mother, he thinks, without the slightest hint of a goofy grin, no matter what Chewie says.) She must have had a terrible sense of humor though. Either that or she put up with Anakin’s awful jokes out of some never before heard of reservoir of patience and goodness. Actually, the way Anakin talks about her, that might be true.
So he’s looking for someone smart, driven, principled, but also somehow willing to endure endless terrible puns. That’s a tall order.
The first person he tries is Mon Mothma. It takes him a couple weeks to work up to asking her, because yeah, there’s nothing about this idea that isn’t awkward. But he’s got to admit, she does fit the profile.
So eventually he gets up the guts to suggest the idea of a date, and Mon Mothma laughs in his face.
Well, Han thinks, muttering to himself and wishing he could erase the last fifteen minutes of his life from existence. In hind sight, that was a pretty stupid idea. He’s never even heard of Mon Mothma going on a date.
“You’ve never heard of Dad going on a date either,” Luke says, smirking. Not for the first time, Han wonders what the hell he was thinking, making Luke his confidant in this. But he needed someone with more insight into Anakin, and he’d be damned if he’d ask Leia.
“That’s different, obviously,” Han says. “He spent twenty years inside a tin can.”
Luke rolls his eyes. “I just don’t understand why you won’t let this go,” he says.
“Because people are always flirting with him!” Han says. “And he’s always pretending not to notice. It’s infuriating.”
“It doesn’t happen that often,” Luke says, and okay, Han thinks, that’s actually true, but still. It happens often enough.
Luke sighs. “If you’re so stuck on that, why don’t you just ask one of the people who’s actually flirted with him?”
Huh. That’s not a bad idea, actually. Why didn’t he think of that.
*
It still takes him a while to plan his strategy, but eventually he manages to set Anakin up on a date with a woman named Meera Yasko. She’s Corellian, he’s pretty sure, but she’s also whip smart and pretty attractive. She’s some kind of attorney at a non-profit or something, and Han’s never been especially keen on people of the legal persuasion, but he figures Anakin might like that.
The old man takes a bit of convincing, but Han is a master of smooth talking (don’t laugh, Leia!) and eventually he gets them set up at a nice swank restaurant and even orders a bottle of wine for the table as a surprise.
*
Anakin comes back from this date a lot more excited, and Han experiences a fleeting moment of smug hope, only to have it crushed beneath Anakin’s heel when it turns out the man is excited for all the wrong reasons.
Apparently, Meera is the chief counsel at a non-profit involved in education for underprivileged youth, whatever the hell that means. They’re an interplanetary organization, too, but it’s not the organization itself that really interests Anakin. Meera has the legal background to cover all of the complicated bits about starting a foundation that Anakin doesn’t really understand (and Han understands even less, if he’s honest), and he thinks they might really be able to get this off the ground.
“Wait,” says Han. “This? What’s this?”
He expects a glare or an eyeroll from Leia and maybe Luke, but instead, they look as curious as he feels.
“Oh,” says Anakin, looking oddly shy. “Right. I haven’t told you yet. I’ve been thinking, well, they’re paying me all this money that I don’t need -” (here he raises a hand to forestall Leia’s usual protest) “- so I want to do something with it. And I thought… Tatooine’s free now, but there’s not exactly a uniform system of education, and many of the communities don’t have necessary supplies or access to training for teachers or -”
“Dad,” says Leia, “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
As it turns out, setting up an entire school system takes a lot of work. Who knew, right? It also takes a pretty shocking amount of money, much more than Anakin’s supposedly extravagant yearly salary. That’s not a problem, though, because Meera helps him set up a fundraising program that’s frankly terrifying in its efficiency.
They spend an awful lot of time together, but it’s mostly in her office or over working lunches. Still, Han holds onto hope for a while. After all, she at least was definitely interested. He knows that. But after several months, he finally has to admit defeat. Meera and Anakin have a pretty great working relationship, and Han would even venture to say they’ve become friends, but he still hasn’t seen any evidence that Anakin ever realized she was interested, and it’s pretty clear now that she’s not thinking about him that way any more.
Still. The Padme Naberrie Educational Foundation basically exists because of Han, so he’s counting this one a win.
*
He keeps trying.
There’s a woman named Jasta who likes to dance and, apparently, has terrible taste in art. Not his best choice, but hey, Anakin managed to set her up with a guy they ran into at the art museum, and he seems happy about that, at least.
There’s Varin, who’s an active duty lieutenant in the Republic navy and likes to spend her leave time volunteering with animals. Anakin introduces her to the recently defected Admiral Piett, and damn if the two of them aren’t getting married about five months later. So that worked out, Han thinks, rolling his eyes. But hey, Anakin got a cat out of the deal, which apparently his therapist thinks is great for him, so…there’s that.
There’s Piett himself, which Han still thinks made sense in theory, because Anakin is clearly fond of the guy. But, looking back, he can admit that it’s pretty likely even Piett didn’t know this one was meant to be a date, and Han suspects Anakin may have agreed to the whole thing as an excuse to set Piett up with Varin.
His last attempt is a Twi’lek woman named Dinsa Atray who’s frankly just a little bit terrifying, but then so is Anakin, so Han figures it’s a good match. They actually start meeting up pretty regularly, and Han is starting to feel pretty smug about it, even though Leia still isn’t convinced of his matchmaking skills. But his illusions are cruelly shattered a few weeks later, when dramatic and disturbingly well-documented accusations of sentient trafficking and money laundering bring about the abrupt end of Senator Orn Free Taa’s political career and, eventually, the beginning of his exciting new prison career.
(“Well this was fun,” Han overhears Dinsa tell Anakin. “Let me know if you ever want to destroy a man’s life and reputation again. I’m always game.” Yeah. Maybe more than a little terrifying.)
*
Three years into his self-appointed quest, and Han’s sitting at the dinner table staring at an invitation to the wedding of Mon Mothma and Meera Yasko. He has to admit, he didn’t see that coming. He wonders a bit sourly if Anakin introduced them, too. Honestly at this point he wouldn’t be surprised. The universe is trolling him, clearly.
“Hey, Rustbucket,” he says, because no one’s ever accused him of quitting while he’s ahead. “Who are you bringing as your plus one?”
Leia eyes him with fond derision, and Han gamely ignores her.
It’s three more months before he finally gives up. But he’s not going to admit that.
“You know,” he tells Leia, “I think I can declare this operation a resounding success.”
“Really,” says Leia with a smirk. “Because from where I’m standing it looks like you set my dad up on a dozen blind dates, and he still doesn’t even realize he’s been on one.”
Han waves a careless hand. “Well, from where I’m standing it looks like Operation Get Anakin Skywalker Some Friends was an unqualified success.”
Leia’s face softens and she leans up to give him a lingering kiss. “That’s sweet, Han,” she says, and when he grimaces she laughs. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”
There's a Mirror on the Wall 