Oh What Can It Mean?

3/1/25: Posting this because I'm still trying to figure out what the next big short story is going to be. It's either going to be a rewrite and expansion of Cin and Ara's first time (NSFW), or the week that follows Cin Asks Ara. I intend to do both, but lately my daydream has been bouncing around multiple timelines and it's not often easy to concentrate on a particular scene, especially when I'm at work.

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Possible confrontation between Anakin and Jitters about Ara and her response to the jump scares. It can take place before this, or it can take place in a 'verse where Anakin winds up in the Engineering Corps or other Service Corps.

(And if the latter is the case, it isn't just Ara documenting her conversations with Anakin's and Andken's docents/crechemasters and logging each completed jump scare [i.e., one of them speaks to Ara; if they were headed off by someone like Siri did at the beginning of TOWOIT, she wouldn't bother], it'd also be other examples of lack of care for others, such as the items of Obi-Wan's that Jinn found destroyed when he cleaned out his padawan room. It'd also be when he hung back from classes because he thought something was beneath him, like the time Jinn discussed lightsaber construction and stones and then brought him back to the class. Skeevy Sheev is being a manipulative groomer, but Anakin has so many adults on his side who want him to succeed as a Jedi [even Ara when she's not actively re-traumatized]--his docents, his therapist, his instructors, Jinn, Kenobi--but he favors the words of Palpatine, who's telling him what he wants to hear for his own nefarious reasons. Anakin chooses the path of selfishness.)

[Star Wars meta writers go into this much better than I can here, and I'll post links eventually.]

Old note:
2024.11.27 conversation imagined at work that, once again, I can't get onto the page.

Sometime while Anakin is still 12, Obi-Wan takes him to an engineer party/Engineering Club event. (obvs not one of the meetups where Jitters is designing a ship where he and Ara could live comfortably and Ara could have her grav-time needs met)

At the end of the event (something hands-on and mechanical), a Knight says to Anakin, "That was a really out-of-the-box solution you came up with, Anakin. If you can get your discipline issues under control, I think you could be a fine Knight and a valuable addition to the Engineering Corps."

>> Anakin: "Discipline issues?"

>> Knight: "I was considering approaching you myself, but a friend recommended that I take a look at your file first. Do you know what I found there?"

>> Anakin, rolling his eyes: "A bunch of hysterical whining from Knight Melnau?"

( snip! )

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The Vigil takes place during chapters nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen (CW for remembered attempted rape in Ch.13) of All The Little Lights. My stories in that universe are an AU of an AU, and I guess I have to keep reminding myself of that, because I kept going back to try to keep to the 'canon' of the 'source material' fic, but towards the end of writing all this out, I decided fuck it and decided to just write out whatever I daydreamed and could actually make into a semi-coherent conversation. (There are also two scenes where I try to give my self-insert OC an in-universe-realistic reason to cuddle Yoda, and both wind up ridiculous, but dammit, I want to cuddle Yoda.)

This first part contains several direct or slightly altered quotes from Chapter 9. But not as many as when I dropped Ara into Chapter 12. On the bright side, I'm starting to burn out on keeping to the story itself and instead being more interested in the world and the characters, and also bringing in worldbuilding and characters from other fics. Though that last part won't be in this (very long) entry.

P.S. This takes place in the new timeline (still working out the details), where Ara is two years older than Obi-Wan. (She and Quinlan might be the same age to the day, but I haven't decided yet.)

( a bit of Chapter 9, then new stuff )

Here are some bits that were going to be part of the above, but they didn't fit: they were Ara oversharing about Obi-Wan or just stuff that wasn't relevant.

( outtakes )

Day 2 of the Vigil

(I daydreamed this all the way to Sarasota and back as Master Gi-Ho showing up while Bail and Rouge were there, but he was there on day 2, not day 3. This doesn't happen, but I'm going to write it out in case any of the dialogue is useful later.)

[This contains dialogue from the end of Chapter 11, and the beginning of the relevant section says that this part takes place after dinner hour, but Bail and Rouge's visit was morning and afternoon, so I'm putting this at early afternoon.]

( Master Gi-Ho has magic hands )

2/5/24:Dammit, that's the bedtime alarm. I'll post the rest tomorrow.

102 BBY: Yan Dooku born ("Yan" as Dooku's first name is fanon, but I like it so I'm keeping it.)
92 BBY: Qui-Gon Jinn born in universe
59 BBY: Quinlan Vos born in universe
57 BBY: Obi-Wan Kenobi born in canon and in universe
55 BBY: Arala Melnau born in this fic-verse
44 BBY: Jedi Apprentice series starts in canon and in universe
32 BBY: TPM in canon and in ubuverse, Obi-Wan is 25, Anakin is 9, Qui-Gon is 60
32-30 BBY: events of ATLL
28 BBY: events of Faithful Friends. Obi-Wan is 29, Ara is 27, Anakin is 12, Qui-Gon is 64

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Birth-age 1: A baby girl is born to Sphinxian peasant farmers in 55 BBY. At 5 months old or so, she's noticed as Force-sensitive by Adept Ben Lars (Obi-Wan's father in the ATLL 'verse) from the AgriCorps. The parents let him take her to the Jedi Temple. Sphinx has negative superstitions about Force-sensitive people, and while it's technically illegal to kill a Force-sensitive child, it still happens. When Adept Lars takes the baby girl away, the family bury the girl's True Name along with fiction of a dead infant. Adept Lars is forbidden from sharing the girl's true name, and he is told that her name is now Arala Melnau, which means "Witch in Exile."

To age 10: Arala Melnau is raised in the Jedi creche. They know that she has to spend at least a third of her time "in grav," meaning the 1.75 gravities that Sphinx has. The Jedi know that the Sphinxian humans are genetically engineered, but they don't know the extent of it, which includes denser muscles and bones and a faster metabolism. As a result, especially since Arala is rather small anyway, she's fed the proper amount for a standard-grav human girl, which isn't enough. She learns how to sit still in a meditative position so she's not accused of laziness. She learns to stop asking for more food at the commissary and in the creche so that she's not accused of gluttony. She meditates for real and asks the Force for strength. She saves her bread roll from mid-meal for the "afternoon dizzies." She eats as much as she can get away with at parties like First Lighting and Night Lights.

When she's 10 years old, she gets the afternoon dizzies when looking for a reference in the archive with Master Nu. (Master Nu had decided when Ara was 8 that she'd take one more padawan when she saw Ara meditating in the stacks and, when asked, said that she could feel the wisdom of the past in the Force and that the archives were her favorite place.) After stuff that's described in more or less detail in a future post, Nu learns that Ara is chronically malnourished. After a dinner at her place that goes badly (she eats too much because she doesn't know what enough is, but she makes it to the 'fresher in time), she takes Ara to the Halls of Healing and they figure out what nutrition Ara actually needs. Nu had intended to wait until Ara was 12 to choose her so she'd have more time with her crechemates, but she adopts her at age 10 and Ara still takes classes with her classmates.

Age 11 and after: Quinlan Vos, a lineage relative, wants to set some of his funny poems to music, so he approaches Ara, who at this point plays not just the flute but the violin and the guitar, and can come up with new melodies. The first song is "Inconsiderate Jerk," which is based on Quin's experience sharing a wall with Master Jinn, who has very loud sex into the wee hours of the morning. The song was originally called "Jizz Wailer," but Quin refuses to explain why it's such a clever pun in context, and Ara refuses to sing a chorus she doesn't understand, so they make some changes. They're music buddies from then on.

Shortly before age 12, Ara begins puberty. She starts to have fantasies and explore her body, but it's pretty innocent. Even the media she finds as a padawan archivist are rather vanilla.

(Ara at age 12 is about the time that Melida/Daan is taking place for Obi-Wan.)

( content warning for SA and child abuse )

Age 26: Yoda and Obi-Wan have been quietly together for two years at this point. Also by this point, the embryo from TLK has been carried to term, found to be Force-sensitive, and sent to the Jedi Creche, and from the age of 6 (Ara is 24), he's old enough to use the archives, and he's seen Ara's name on his medical records in the Halls of Healing because he's a good reader. The child, who Ara calls Little Nightmare Fuel, is friends with Initiate Skywalker (aka the Baby Darksider), who is friends with Chancellor Palpatine (aka Darth Creep Van, all nicknames per Ara). The Chancellor tells Anakin who tells LNF who believes it that he "deserves" a "relationship" with his "mother" and Ara is re-traumatized every time. Master Nu suggests that Eller (Yoda and Windu's assistant) could use an assistant of her own, and that Ara could also do most of the Yoda transportation duties. While assisting Eller, Ara learns that Yoda and Obi-Wan are lovers, and says something like "right on, get it!" and Yoda says, "get it who can?" and Ara says, "both of you! Obi-Wan is quite a catch, and if you don't mind me saying so, so are you," and after much writing that still needs to be done, Ara gets into a sexual and D/s relationship with Yoda.

Most daydream scenes take place during the time when Ara is in service to Master Yoda, wants Obi-Wan but takes no for an answer, and enjoys herself with other partners (including but not limited to: Qinlan Vos, Kressa Carlin, Jitters, Master Drallig, Master Feemor).

I skipped the ATLL story about Dooku doing dark side stuff because I want Dooku to just be disillusioned with the Order, not a darksider.

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This feels like too much exposition already, but I think that's enough background to start posting the snippets.