outofshadows | Test Drive Meme

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Test Drive Meme

Throne of Shadows
TEST DRIVE MEME!!!

New to Throne of Shadows? Long time player thinking of apping a new character? Welcome to our test drive meme! Experiment with active and potential muses! Here is a place where you can test out characters for the setting and accrue samples for your applications! Roll on the scenarios provided below, or come up with your own!

Scenario Builder

You are...

1. Lost in the temple
2. Trapped in a cloak room
3. Stargazing on a balcony
4. In the bathroom
5. In a bedroom
6. Swimming in a courtyard pool

You’re feeling...

1. Inexplicably happy
2. Like you could fall asleep at any moment
3. Angry enough to punch someone
4. Nostalgic or sentimental
5. Like someone stabbed you—oh, hey, they did, fancy that
6. Seriously horny. Must be something in the water.

Somewhat unusually...

1. You can only speak in rhyme
2. You are naked
3. You suddenly cannot verbally communicate
4. There’s a lot of alcohol/drugs here!
5. You are gender swapped
6. You have amnesia

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[I should note... I play him from the movies, because that's what I'm familiar with. If this is unacceptable, I actually totally understand that.]

The stars were all wrong. Anakin stared up from his spot on the balcony and felt betrayed by those flickering crystalline pinpoints. Shiftless, inconsistent liars that whispered nothing of the reassurances he’d come to rely on from stars. Stars were meant to be immortal, immutable stalwart guardians of the sky; but here, those prevaricating dots of light seemed to only mock him in their mischievous, unpredictable dance across the night.

If he couldn’t count on them, that what could he trust?

He missed home. Home was such a funny word to him. The Temple wasn’t home, and the Order wasn’t his family. Padmé’s apartment was warm and always welcoming to him, and if he had to say where ‘home’ was, it was that infinitesimally small spot in the vastness of the universe and time. But he was there so infrequently it felt like his feelings about her arms didn’t matter when he tried to quantify what ‘home’ meant.

He missed her – but right now, looking up at those stars, he missed the familiar constellations he could recognize from countless terra plains. Hell, he’d even take the firmaments blanketing Tatooine over this false sky above him now.

He ignored the sensation of living beings moving about the temple behind and below him. There were still some individuals up this late. His thoughts focused on home and remembering what that felt like.

It was a false sky. But Luke didn't have the same feelings about it as Anakin. For one thing, Luke had far less knowledge about where he was. For another, he'd wanted to get away from Tatooine for so long, yearned for the unfamiliarity of other skies, that the fact he did not recognize the configuration was somehow comforting. He wasn't stuck. He wasn't in one place forever.

Then again, sometimes, in his weaker moments, he wondered what would have happened if he hadn't gone out into the night after the droid. If he'd stayed home, where he belonged but had never fit in. But that wasn't his destiny. Vader hadn't been right, but he hadn't been... wrong, either. Not entirely. Luke's destiny lay with him, just not in the way Vader had seemed to want.

Tonight, though, the unfamiliar stars did not represent freedom or adventure. Too much had happened. And Han was out there somewhere. His friends still needed him, and he was here instead, and if remaining on Dagobah hadn't been acceptable, this was even less so. He flexed his new hand unconsciously as he wandered out onto the balcony, impatient and unable to sleep. Thinking about Owen and Beru. Thinking about Leia. Thinking about those he'd already let down, and those he would die before letting down again.

"Oh, sorry," he said, noticing the other man for the first time as he gaze fell from the sky. "I didn't see you there." He made as if to leave, a little sheepish.

The moment Luke stepped onto the balcony Anakin’s attention was thrown from the stars and onto the other young man, forgotten were the stars above. The other man’s resonance in the Force was symphonic with Anakin’s own. One would think two individuals of such powerful Force potential – Anakin had never met anyone whose presence in the Force rivaled his own – would feel like a cacophony of nature. He’d been told by other Jedi that being near him felt like being next to a furnace or being slammed into a wall. But, instead, there was a kind of harmony to the way their presences shared space.

This was new and yet felt familiar in a way Anakin couldn’t begin to fathom.

Then there was the matter of the other man’s face. Not an exact reflection of his own but the similarities were startling and beyond coincidental.

“Who are you?” He couldn’t let the other man leave without learning his name.

Luke's eyes widened as he took in the other man. Not just with his vision, of course, but really saw him. His training was not nearly so formal as Anakin's, and his perceptions were far more instinctive than could be desired. What he felt was an overpowering familiarity, despite the fact he knew he'd never seen the man before in his life. The power was almost palpable, and it was oddly pleasant except for a niggling feeling like something caught in his throat that something was wrong. He knew this man, but didn't. He'd felt this before, but hadn't. It was like a signature scrawled with the other hand; something was off, but it was hard to tell what.

"Luke," he said, wondering if the other man was from the same world as he. Universe, rather. Did he know? He had to know--no one felt that powerful without training. A Jedi, then. But there were no Jedi. Wasn't he the last, aside from Yoda? "Luke Skywalker."

Not many things could render Anakin speechless, but Luke’s answer did the trick. The puzzle pieces snapped together – the same powerful Force signature, the similar faces. That name could mean only one thing.

“That’s impossible.” That naïve declaration slipped out before he could stop himself and consider just how possible it was. He and Padmé were married and they snuck in as much time together as they could. It was entirely possible in the future, back home, even if he was fairly certain he had no offspring at the point he was taken.

He smiled as his mind adjusted to this new information and warmed to the idea. He’d always wanted a family, even if it contradicted his desire to be a Jedi.

“I mean, it’s not impossible, just unexpected.” And suddenly his mind was filled with so many questions. What was his son like? Was he like him? Did he like flying the way Anakin did? Or was he more like Padmé, did he prefer diplomacy and the art of negotiation? Anakin could tell he’d had training with the Force, if Luke, his son, had been trained did this mean the Order had relaxed its position on attachments? All of these questions gathered inside him, almost bursting to be asked.

But finally his mind settled on the truth hanging in the air between them. There was no feeling of recognition on Luke’s part – the man simply didn’t know who Anakin was. This thought settled uneasily in his stomach, like sour bantha milk.

“You don’t know who I am?”

Why wouldn’t Luke know… age changed physical appearances but it wouldn’t change the way Anakin felt in the Force. There were no possible good reason for this.

The world Anakin knew was so far from the one Luke had grown up in that the unvoiced questions would have made little sense. Even if the older man would be partly responsible for the shape of that future world. But there was no way for him to know that, and no way for Luke to begin to comprehend what he'd been through. Right now, he was contending with the contradictory information he was receiving. There was the evidence of his physical senses, the way the other man's attitude had shifted, the recognition in his eyes, his voice. There was something about that easy shift that reminded Luke of himself, even. Or anyway, the way he'd been, before he'd known.

And then there was the unseen information, the gentle dance of two strong in the Force, something he'd been wholly unaware of until just recently. First with Ben, then Yoda. And now, after Bespin, he'd had trouble turning it off, partly because he wanted so desperately to deny everything. But his senses told him differently. Vader had not lied. It was possible. It was true. And Luke had, even in the extremity of his pain and shock, accepted it. Yoda had been right. He hadn't been ready. He didn't want to know. At least there was Leia, her presence as soothing to him as Vader's was disturbing.

Actually, that was what this man reminded him of more than anything. Leia. There was a presence there, a strength and a fire that was familiar. And something else, too. Something that reminded him forcibly of his father reaching out to him, as he turned his mind away and sought Leia instead. But he didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about how right it seemed now, that feeling, how undeniable the connection was no matter how much Luke wanted it to be a lie.

"I know you're a Jedi," he said slowly, to have something to say, to try to get past his rising unease at the familiarity of it all. "I didn't think there were any, except..." His eyes widened slightly, the suggestion worming its way into his conscious mind. No. It was one thing to draw people from different worlds, another to... to...

No. He would not accept it.

“There aren’t any?” Anakin was completely stunned at this very impossible idea – which was decidedly more impossible to him than the idea he had a son. The Order was his life – the Order was that thing he both fought against and fought for, it was a war within him that he both loved and hated and wanted to let go of and cling to all at the same time. He didn’t know anything better – for so long it had been the only secure home in a galaxy of uncertainty. And his closest friends where there (save Padmé) – Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. He couldn’t fathom leaving either one of them behind to live in exile or join a more heretical group of Jedi. But he had thought about it – he had considered it. How many times had he been so frustrated with the blindness of the Council and their unwillingness to bend to what he knew the Force was telling him he must do, that he had considered setting down his lightsaber and walking away. Walking away to Padmé.

His life had always been conflict.

But for there to be no Jedi? Hearing that, it was like a part of him had been removed and he was breathing with one lung. He knew people from the future could arrive – he was from a time after Obi-Wan. But this was their future? To be wiped out? How could the Jedi fail?

“They’re all gone? How? Why?” The strain in his voice belied the feelings he could not hide keep from leaking out into the Force – to be read and felt and shared by anyone around him. “This is why you don’t know me- Luke, I’m your father.” He said it so earnestly, so full of hope that something in this conversation could counter the devastating truth he was hearing.

Hearing it again, from a different mouth--no, not different, not if it was true, just changed--barely more than a week after hearing it the first time, Luke felt like all the air in the room had suddenly disappeared. It did not help that he'd reached the same conclusion simultaneously. Or that the man--Anakin Skywalker, it had to be, there was no use denying it--said it without a hint of irony or malice. As if he truly expected Luke to greet this news with pleasure. Anakin Skywalker, who Ben had told him had been betrayed and murdered by Vader. But now that he knew, there was no denying that the presence was the same. Less twisted, brighter, but still so, so angry.

"I know," he said tightly. He wanted to throw up. This man. This young, naive-looking person in front of him, was Darth Vader. Scourge of how many planets, how many races? Destroyer of the Jedi. His hand twitched. How was it that this was equally difficult to take from this smiling, whole young man?

Like a wounded animal Anakin stared at Luke. The feelings he was picking up from his son- there was none of the joy he’d expected. Revolution, displeasure, as if the other man felt sick to his stomach to hear it. And fear. Anakin inspired a diverse range of reactions from people. Some people liked him, most wanted little to do with him. The Order at best tolerated him, the Council would be rid of him if they could find a way to justify ignoring the promptings of the Force. For the most part he was used to it. He’d had training since childhood to deal with it. Slavery did that to a person.

But his own son – repulsed by him?

“You don’t want it to be true,” he stated, lowly. Still too stunned to feel anything but loneliness and hurt.

“Why?” he choked out. He had to know. Clearly, somewhere between his time and Luke’s time he had failed his son. Obi-Wan did not wanted to know anything about the two years that spanned between them. But Anakin was different – he had to know things, he had to understand. Maybe he could fix this. He could go back and change this dark future. But he had to know what he was fixing first.

Perhaps in the future, Luke would come to some understanding. Perhaps when he'd been through more himself, been tempted himself. Perhaps when some time had passed, and he'd gained perspective. The future was not yet now, however, and Luke still hated Vader. Hated him for his betrayal of everything he and the Force stood for. Hated him for murdering Ben. And hated him for leaving him all those years ago, for turning away from his son and family to serve the Emperor. Even now, with the kicked Wookie expression Anakin was giving him, Luke half expected an attack. His skin fairly buzzed with the need to be alert, to sharpen all his senses in readiness.

"Because," he snapped, "you ruined my life. You cut off my hand. You killed the greatest man I've ever known. You're the reason my friends and all the decent people of the Republic are in hiding. You're the reason I grew up not knowing who I was or what I could do. You. Changed. Everything."

Angrily, he spun and went to the edge of the balcony, turning in profile to Anakin and leaning his hands on the rail. He didn't like looking away, but he couldn't look any longer. The anger was rising within him, the hatred, and for the first time he knew just what Obi Wan had been afraid of. What Uncle Ben had known. What Yoda feared. The dark side was strong in him, he only had to reach out, he knew, and his father would be no match for him. Not now, before it all happened. Not now, while he was stunned and pathetically hurt by Luke's rejection. As if he could feel anything but!

Even so. He had to control himself. He had to stem the tide of anger. It wouldn't solve anything.

Anakin was indeed hurt even more by what Luke said, but that hardly meant he was vulnerable to attack. Long trained in the Temple and honed in the field. It could also be argued, because he insisted emotions should not to be excised completely from the Jedi way of life (contrary to the Code), and therefore had extensive practice, he was the only Jedi who could enter a duel with his emotions roiling just under the surface and come out victorious.

But dueling was the furthest thing from Anakin’s mind.

Luke’s answer raised so many more questions than it answered. The only truly comprehensible part of that was Luke’s hand, which Anakin could easily verify in the Force. He hadn’t noticed before, but now that his attention had been drawn to it, the young man did have a mechanical hand.

He still didn’t understand why, but he could focus on nothing but one immutable truth – Luke hated him. As bright and searing as Tatooine’s twin suns, there was no ignoring the intensity of that emotion radiating off in waves from Luke. Whatever the reality behind those accusations Anakin was desperate to know, he couldn’t deny just sharing the same space angered Luke beyond belief, which not only emotionally wounding for Luke, but was dangerous as well.

It took Anakin mere seconds to decide to care for someone – this was his son, and Padmé’s son. There was no question what he already felt for him despite only learning of Luke’s existence mere moments before. He didn’t want to cause the young man more undue pain or turmoil than he’d clearly already caused. And he wanted that more than he wanted to know the reasons for Luke’s ire.

“I apologize,” Anakin managed. “I will not bother you further.” He tipped his head in the customary Jedi bow and turned to leave.

Luke's head tipped down, between his bowed shoulders.

"That's right," he said, almost under his breath. "Walk away. Is that how it happened before? It was too much for you, and you chose power and destruction?"

He didn't expect an answer. He didn't expect anything from Anakin Skywalker. Not anymore.

Edited 2013-09-19 06:38 (UTC)

Anakin had made it to the balcony exit when Luke spoke. He heard what his son said, the benefit of Jedi enhanced senses. He paused and looked back over his shoulder.

“I,” he was shaking his head. Power? Destruction? These were not things Anakin sought for, though they often came to him and were left in his wake. The taxes of war, all generals paid their dues. “I don’t know what happened. You don’t exist yet back home in my time. But I can fathom no reason I would willingly leave you unless it was at the behest of your mother or yourself.”

Luke shook his head again, letting out a long breath before speaking again.

"I never met you. She was dead, too, before I... No one asked you to leave, Father. You had a choice. Us, or the dark side. Us, or the Emperor. I can't think of any reason that should have been a difficult one to make."

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Test Drive Meme

Luke Skywalker

Just 3-4 (stargazing, nostaglic)

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