My New Ideal Prequels Fix-it Goes Like This

my new ideal prequels fix-it goes like this

depa billaba, woman of many talents but most especially the ability to find and locate Baby, is canonically put into a coma because of her injuries sustained in a separatist attack that killed almost all of her troops. mace windu, man of many talents but most especially the ability to still be swindled by his former padawan who he DEFINITELY cherishes i will not back down from that point, waits intently by her side while she recovers. refuses to leave her for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. yoda is almost about to tell him to leave it be, all things pass in time, but he can’t bring himself to say it to his own former padawan that he’s worked with so closely all these years, and instead just kind of turns a blind eye to it. meanwhile, depa is having a Force Vision, and learning three things. 1) baby kanan is extremely, exquisitely baby, and 2) caleb is destined to be HER baby, and 3) maybe instead of fearing the passion of love the jedi should accept the passion of true, powerful love. mace is reckoning with his clear attachment to his padawan and his guilt for what she’s going through.

obi-wan has managed to get himself injured, like a dunce, and is stuck in the medbay while he heals, and is conveniently stuck close to depa’s bacta tank, and therefore close to a brooding mace. obi-wan is watching this display like he’s never seen mace before, because while mace is and has always been compassionate, the kind of gentleness and quiet dedication - the love that would compel someone to set aside everything and wait - is something obi-wan’s only ever experienced as a deeply private and internal thing. this was the way he’d loved qui-gon, this is the way he loves anakin. mace and obi-wan have intense conversations where they talk about love while dancing around the word; the pain that loving a master that always seemed to have higher priorities than you, the pain of loving a padawan so much and still feeling like you do nothing but fail them, the expectations mace is under at the second highest rank in all the order and yoda’s own former padawan, and the expectations obi-wan was under as a freshly knighted padawan grieving a major loss and then being the only person in the order personally responsible for The Chosen One. rational thoughts are had, which is punctuated by anakin stalking into the medbay periodically like a human hurricane to be strange at obi-wan.

this sets the stage for depa to come out of her coma and immediately be like THE FORCE TOLD ME TO GO FIND MY NEW SON HIS NAME’S CALEB I LOVE HIM ALREADY and her conviction, because the force has quite literally told her this, in something mace and obi-wan had only been willing to poke at startles them both. depa’s a little bit, uh, not in the quite most normal mindset considering she just launched full-speed out of a coma, so please imagine she puts on her jedi drama cloak and then takes off through the temple to the initiates’ levels and barges around until she can find caleb. mace and obi-wan (not his problem, but he’s invested in this now) chase after her, and this is where sha koon enters the picture, because since she lost her own padawan she’s been funneling her grief into working with the initiates because she refuses to return to the front. sha, for everyone not as deep in some bullshit lore as i am, is plo koon’s niece, and her padawan did actually die, for the most part i’m not actually making any of this up. just, elastic-ing canon. but sha helps depa track down caleb, and then obi-wan and mace catch up just in time for all of them to be subject to depa’s declaration that caleb will be her new padawan and she CHERISHES him, actually. caleb (baby) is elated. they’re also there for depa declaring loudly that the force has revealed to her that the power of a master-padawan bond is inviolable and it should be loving, even passionate love, because love is a sacrosanct power, actually.

depa is the only person who can do heresy literally directly in front of mace and mace will just be like okay……. okay………….. okay…………… this is fine………… and because depa has practically always had mace wrapped around her finger, mace is roped into depa’s new inclination to heresy. sha koon, who is currently wading through the grief she’s feeling because she loved her padawan, and currently leaning way more on her bond with her uncle plo in a way that smacks of love and all the passion that comes with it, is like hell yeah, i don’t talk to literally any of you, but heresy rules. she also has a telepathic bond with plo that means our favorite squid uncle can just come running down the corridor like HELLO SHA I KNOW THAT YOU ARE FEELING STRONGLY because he’s been hovering over his grieving niece out of worry. obi-wan is just kind of there.

hence, a gaggle of jedi masters and one (1) knight in sha koon and one (1) padawan in sweet baby caleb end up at space dunkin donuts at 1am aggressively trying to reconcile the doctrine that passion is of the sith with the idea that love - an emotion of passion - can and should be utilized by the jedi, even for close interpersonal bonds. caleb falls asleep on depa’s shoulder and everyone has to argue philosophy in a whisper, because depa’s had this kid for, like, six hours, but she won’t let anyone disturb his baby slumber. obi-wan lets slip that mace hardly left depa’s side for her entire recovery, and depa hugs her jedi dad. this is a requirement, a demand, and also a necessity.

plo koon banging on the table, because he’s the only one here who really has always been a fan of sappy soap operas: A BEAUTIFUL DISPLAY, MACE 

mace windu, man who is about to start a fight in the dunkin that plo koon will lose because not many people can challenge mace: avert your eyes, menace

and so the most unlikely people to commit heresy start meeting regularly to discuss the specifics of heresy, and how to implement this revolutionary new way to interact with the force. because the jedi forbade attachment for a reason, and it’s because the emotions of a jedi are amplified and condensed and turned into an energy that can physically affect the world around them in dangerous ways - the sith utilize the power of emotion, and in order to avoid causing danger and sliding into a fall, the jedi carved out all passion, including love. because being caught up in the throes of emotion can do damage, when your feelings can and do affect the world around you immensely. but living a loveless life also does catastrophic damage, so the question remains how to implement such a major change and how it has affected their relationship to the force and what it might change if they kept going. so, our intrepid heroes discuss heresy and philosophy at the space dunkin. but anakin gets suspicious of all of obi-wan’s disappearances and tracks them to a space dunkin.

obi-wan’s like oh, i’ve been meaning to discuss this with you, anakin, i just wanted our discussions to be further along before i told you that some of us were reconsidering the attachment clause. he knows that anakin is weird about attachment, what he does not know is that anakin is insane about attachment. anakin proceeds to fucking lose it, spectacularly, at 4am in the space dunkin, in front of five other jedi (caleb is at the temple, snoozing his baby snoozes) because anakin tried so hard to Not Do attachment his mom died because of it, and the idea that after he’s tried and failed for over a decade to live with this one thing and now people are seemingly arbitrarily deciding to remove it sends him spiraling. he shouts some very hinged things and storms out to go be very definitely hinged elsewhere, i don’t have the capacity to type out a full rant but please imagine anakin shouting I WATCHED MY MOTHER DIE A HUNDRED TIMES AND I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO CARE, I DIDN’T FREE MY MOTHER BECAUSE I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO CARE AND SOMEONE ELSE HAD TO DO IT, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER - IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT I’VE ALREADY BURNED or something. then the five of them are sitting there in completely shocked silence attempting to process the loud display of maladjustment they all just witnessed. plo koon tentatively suggests that they’ve been so focused on what will happen if they do change the way they live, that they haven’t really thought about what the way they already live has done to them, which causes another shocked silence in which everyone considers they may have emotional damage.

anakin joins the heresy party, obviously, but on his first meeting it’s quite clear that he’s created entire, complex arguments on this very subject, and then obi-wan’s like “i didn’t know you thought about this so much.” anakin looks like a deer caught in a pair of headlights before he blurts out IT’S BECAUSE I’M MARRIED

now everyone gets to argue MORE, because the familial bond of master and padawan is WAY different from the romantic love of husband and wife, and that’s a whole new set of logistics to debate. but, on the plus side, they get to debate this in padme’s apartment now instead of the space dunkin, and padme has really great taste in wine. also, she stocks space excedrin, which mace cannot get enough of. cue the hilarious moment where bail organa drops by unexpectedly and padme shoves six jedi in the pantry in her kitchen, where they’re all stuck together, invading personal space awkwardly.

sha heals vicariously through watching depa and caleb be the cutest, and also heals because she can just show up at padme’s apartment and drink padme’s excellent wine (assuming kel dor can have wine, lol) and be upset. padme’s apartment has accidentally become the halfway house of Emotionally Damaged Jedi Heretics, padme has alternating moments with literally everyone where she reassures them using normal human emotions. even mace has a moment where he’s struggling beneath his guilt for what depa went through, and padme’s like [sympathetic hand on shoulder] it wasn’t your fault, master jedi.

how has this become padme’s life

when everyone goes back to war they all have to do this shit on fucking space zoom

anakin announces that they really have to tell yoda about this heresy thing very very soon because his secret wife is secret pregnant at the Emotionally Damaged Jedi Heretics meeting following the whole invisible hand thing. obi-wan screeches like a horrified demon, immediately accuses padme of corrupting his padawan, plo is saying something loudly about the force in family lineages and how lovely it is and how exciting this all is, depa’s completely unsure how she had one (1) force vision and now she’s attending padme amidala’s kind of baby shower, caleb’s actually here this time and he’s like WOW senator amidala congratulations!!! like a sweet baby angel. sha is planning how she’ll have to outmaneuver her uncle plo to secure babysitting rights. mace has invited himself to the liquor cabinet because the prospect of more skywalkers makes him want to fall over. but don’t worry, mace’s grumpy exterior conceals a mushy inside that, while still wrestling the instinct to screech ATTACHMENT!!!! is kind of elated at the prospect of….. jedi families, that can be families. fight me he always thought of depa, deep deep inside where he could never tell anyone, as his daughter. when the skywalker baby turns out to be twins, one of which being leia, mace sits anakin down for Raising A Daughter advice, which amounts to “you’re probably never going to tell her no”

mace is very right

unfortunately mace also can’t tell leia no

unfortunately no one can tell leia no