Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And as Anakin fully took in the situation, he began to sob.

Will you take a look at that?  Pathetic, huh? Well, you'll never believe this, but that tauntaun was once a human being.  And not just any human being. That guy was an emperor. A rich, powerful ball of charisma. Oh, yeah!

This is his story.  Well, actually, my story.  That's right. I'm a tauntaun.

The name is Anakin Skywalker...Emperor Skywalker.

I was the galaxy's nicest guy, and they ruined my life for no reason. Oh, is that hard to believe?  Look, I tell you what.  You go back a ways, you know, before I was a tauntaun, and this will all make sense.

Ahem. All right, let's move ahead.

Once upon a time, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

There was an emperor. Not a proper emperor, with responsibility and duty, but a rather shallow one, whose vanity ruled over his Dionysian lifestyle.  He lived in a palace on Coruscant, with droids and clones at his beck and call.  He didn't care very much for his job, but Anakin cared very much for his hair and his shiny ship.

"Your highness, it is time for you to choose your bride."

And as Anakin looked over his potential brides, he outwardly and blatantly cringed.

"Hate your hair." (To a Nubian queen)
"Not likely." (To a Corellian princess)
"Yikes, yikes, yikes." (To a trio of Mandalorian duchesses.)
"And let me guess.  You have a great personality." (To a Dathomirian priestess who bursts into tears)

Anyway, still wondering about how I became a tauntaun? Well, let me show you the people responsible for ruining my life.

First, there’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Uh, and don’t be fooled by the cozy professor look.

Obi-Wan Kenobi did, in fact, look like a cozy professor, which is what he used to be on Coruscant.  But when a tragic plague wiped out the royal family of Alderaan, it was discovered in Queen Breha’s will that she wished for her dear friend to lead her planet.  And oh, what a planet!  But more on that later.

Right now, Obi-Wan was warily climbing the endless stairs to the palace.  He was a handsome man, about thirty-five years old and hale with the double privilege of being both a leader of a planet and one who worked with his bare hands.  He’d heard so much about this young emperor, who’d been raised from infancy by the previous emperor, Sheev Palpatine.  It was said that Emperor Skywalker had been trained in languages, weaponry, diplomacy, philosophy, religion, and more -- pretty much everything that made the perfect leader.  But Obi-Wan was holding out on praise of the man until he actually met him.  Alderaan’s king was the last person to mindlessly believe the Empire’s party line.

But as bad as he is, he is nothing compared to what’s coming up next.  Check out this piece of work.  This is Palpatine, former emperor and my current grand vizier, living proof that blood-suckers once roamed the galaxy.

While Anakin lounged away in the Hall of Fountains or sped off in his ship, Grand Vizier Palpatine took care of the...little people of the galaxy.  And that’s what Palpatine did best: doing away with those of minimal power, the former slaves who begged for help re-settling, the clones who fled the system.  They all went through Palpatine, not that Anakin cared, as long as he didn’t have to do the work himself.  For the Grand Vizier, it was eighteen years of planning and attempting to remain neutral that had finally come to fruition.  He could effectively rule the galaxy with little concern for consequence.

And let’s not forget Palpatine’s right-hand man.  Every decade or so, he gets a new one.  This model is called Jar Jar Binks.

Now lately, Palpatine’s gotten into this bad habit of trying to run the galaxy behind my back and I’m thinking that’s got to stop.

“It is of no concern of mine whether your family has--what was it again?”  Palpatine could feel a headache coming on.

“Um, food.”

“Ha!  You really should have thought of that before you became slaves!  Take him away”  Fed to rathtars?  Tossed into the swamps of Dagobah which Palpatine and Jar Jar bet on how long he’d live?  Hmm, Palpatine had to think about where this next one would go.

See?  Doing it again.  I don’t mind when he helps out here or there, but it’s my job!

“Um, excuse me, Your Excellency.  The Alderaanian leader is here to see you.”

“Oh great. Send him in.”  Anakin was positively bouncing with glee at the conversation he was about to have.  Time for some real advice!

“Afternoon, Your Excellency.” The auburn-haired man’s crisp voice rolled across the throne room, smooth in the Coruscanti accent that Anakin had never managed to nail.  “I’m here because I received a summons…”

“Here he is! My main Alderaan man!”

“Your Excellency, my name is King Obi-Wan Kenobi and I represent--”  

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Anakin cut him off, not caring a whit what was coming out of the lesser leader’s mouth.  “You’re just the man I wanted to see!  Word in the Undercity is that you can fix my problem.”

Obi-Wan crossed his arms and stroked his beard, contemplating the emperor in front of him.  Skywalker was rather...energetic, but of course, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t every inch of the royal he had been made out to be, perhaps just a little less dignified.  Obi-Wan could work with that.

“Are you aware of just how important your planet is to the empire?  You’ve got a pretty sweet little setup there, don’t you?

Blinking, Obi-Wan cautiously agreed.  He didn’t know what was happening, but he had a bad feeling about this.

“So tell me, where on your green and blue planet do you find you get the most sun?”

“Well, Your Excellency, I’d say just on the southern side of the Great Caldera that surrounds Aldera.  When the sun hits that ridge just right, the forest just sings.”

“Well, that settles it.  Problem solved.  Thanks for coming.”  Anakin made to shoo out Kenobi.

“That’s it?”  Obi-Wan was deeply suspicious.

“I just needed an insider’s opinion before I okayed this spot for my resort.”

“Your resort?! ” Hackles rising, Obi-Wan clenched his jaw.

“Yipee!  Welcome to Skytopia, my ultimate getaway, complete with water slide and no other sentient beings for fifty light years!”

“No.  This is not happening.  You will not drive my people off the planet that they’ve inhabited for over twenty-seven THOUSAND YEARS!” By the time he was finished, Obi-Wan’s voice had grown to a roar but he could hardly care.  This was an outrage.

“Well, whether you like it or not, at my birthday celebration tomorrow, I give the word and the entire planet will be gassed to make way for this.”

“But, but, those are over two billion living sentients!  You can’t just kill them all!”

“Why not?  Don’t care!  Oh, and Palpatine?  You’re fired.”

Everything was going my way.  Or so I thought.

Chapter Text

Palpatine was like ice.

“Who,” he hissed to Jar Jar, “does that little worm think he is? Does he have any idea who he’s dealing with?  Why, I practically raised him!”

“Ooh! Meesa think it lucky youssa cannot kill Ani!”

“Oh? And why not?  That’s it!  I’ll get rid of Skywalker.  With him out of the way, I can put another infant on the throne and rule through regency! And if anything goes wrong, I can blame the infant!”

Jar Jar gulped nervously as his master swept away to his lab to concoct a horrendous brew.

-

“Is it ready?” Arching his fingertips together, the Grand Vizier spread his lips in a gruesome facsimile of a smile.

“The poison? The poison for Ani, the poison chosen specifically to kill Ani, Ani’s poison...meesa got you covered!”  And Jar Jar did have Palpatine covered, as far enough that he had prepared the dinner, but much to their surprise, when Emperor Skywalker took a big gulp of his drink, he sprouted horns and fur before turning into an adolescent tauntaun and passing out!

“A TAUNTAUN?! HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!”

“Meesa can get rid of him, master!”  Jar Jar, faithful as ever to Palpatine, scooped up Anakin’s tauntaun body and tossed it into a bag and over his shoulder.  Haillu a-flapping, the gungan ran off into the night, about to drop the unconscious body off the side of the temple when he slipped and stumbled, arms flailing.  The bag was thrown out of his amphibious hands into a minor aquaduct, where it floated along until ending up in a small fountain.  Seeing the sack right behind his landspeeder, a departing Obi-Wan assumed it was his and tossed it onto the back of his vehicle.  It was with a heavy heart that he transferred to his personal ship and made the short trip back to Alderaan.

-

“Papa, papa! I think I’m still growing! Measure me again!”  Han jumped up and down against the door frame as Qui-Gon smiled fondly down at his three-year-old son.  As eight-year-old Ahsoka squawked in indignation, their papa attempted to placate them both and get his little prince and princess ready for bed.  Han was too young, but Ahsoka remembered their life before her dad was appointed leader of Alderaan and Qui-Gon liked to remind her of that normalcy whenever her could.  While Obi-Wan turned from pedagogy to politics, Qui-Gon remained at the University of Aldera, during the day at least.  But at night…

“Dad, dad! I ate a bug today!”

“I ate three !”

Obi-Wan chuckled along with his children’s squeals as he scooped them up in each arm.

“Alright, I’m home now.  Time for bed, you two.”  He ignored their whined protest to lean forward and capture his husband’s lips and suddenly the kids’ mantras changed.  They jumped down and off to their rooms as their dads snickered into their kiss.  Obi-Wan then sighed, filling his husband in on the horrible truth of his summons.  True to form, Qui-Gon sat down and began to make plans for evacuation two billion ( two billion! ) sentients while Obi-Wan quickly nipped back-

Hi.  Excuse me.  Two seconds here.  Um, I’m the one in the sack on the ship, remember? This story’s about me, not him, okay?  You got it? All right.

-to the ship for his gifts from the capital for his family.  And there, sitting in the hold, was a bag that was...moving?  And out fumbled a young furry beast, about a head taller than Obi-Wan and with horns the size of his forearm.  How on earth did a tauntaun get to Alderaan?  He reached forward with a gentle hand to rub at the befuddled creature’s chin.

“Where’d you come from, little guy?”  It was kinda cute, once you got past the stench of the animal.

“Nooo touchy.”  Obi-Wan yanked his arm back, falling on his rear.

“Demon tauntaun!”

“Demon tauntaun? Where?”  Anakin panicked, skittering back as well.  Life on Coruscant did not prepare him for demons.  “Wait a minute.  You’re that whiny...something.  Kenobi!”  Obi-Wan’s eyebrows shot up.

“Emperor Skywalker?”  What the kriff was going on here?!  “You look...different.”

“Oh come on, Kenobi.  What do you mean?”  Anakin tried not to laugh.  It was so fun to see the stuffy man look so undone.

“Do this,” replied the suddenly smirking Kenobi, twiddling his fingers.  After attempting to copy the man, Anakin gasped.

“No!  It can’t be!  My beautiful, beautiful face!  My hair ,” he moaned.  “I’m an ugly stinking tauntaun!  You did this!”  Obi-Wan rubbed a hand over his face, groaning.  This was not how he expected his night to go.

“Your Excellency…”

“No, that’s giving you too much credit.  Let’s go.  I need to get back to Palpatine so that I can order him to change me back in that secret lab of his.”

“No.”  Obi-Wan crossed his arms and shrugged.  He was not going to turn away from the opportunity presenting itself in front of him.  “I can’t take you back if you’re just going to come back to destroy my people.”  Anakin bristled as much as a tauntaun could.

“I do not make deals with people like you.”

“Then I guess I can’t take you back.  Good luck entering hyperspace with those hooves.”

“Fine.  I don’t need you.  I can find my own way back.”  Inwardly, Anakin grinned.  Flying was his greatest skill.  He was sure that he could figure it out with in his current body.

“I’m not kidding.  You have a tauntaun brain.  You could miscalculate and end up inside a star; your hooves can’t steer properly; other species may board your ship and mistake you for food; you likely won’t even be able to get a ship off the ground.”

“I’m not listening,” Anakin sang as he wandered away from Tantive IV .  This was going to be a piece of cake.  Scampering down the pad and off into the night, he missed Obi-Wan comming space control to inhibit any craft from leaving Alderaan.  Skywalker was going nowhere.

Chapter Text

Anakin had figured that Kenobi would be keeping an eye on Aldera’s spaceport, so he decided to make off for the next closest city.  He didn’t realize that outside of the caldera lay thick rainforest.  Ah well, it couldn’t be that bad, right?  Anakin snickered as he passed a crop of leaves.

“Ooh, a leaf. Ooh, it might attack me.” Anakin kept stumbling through the forest, barging his way through the underbrush; a tauntaun’s body was not quite made for this type of space.  Anakin was so busy mocking Kenobi that he didn’t notice himself backing into a great thranta nest.  Let’s just say that the normally gentle beasts did not take kindly to him stepping on the toes of their young and took chase.  

Anakin screamed and ran.

He ran and he ran, until he crashed into...Kenobi?  Why would that man not leave him alone?! Wait, was this a rescue? Yes! The auburn-haired man grabbed a massive tuft of Anakin’s fur and yanked him in another direction.  They darted back and forth through the trees. The sky was so dark around them that when Kenobi abruptly drew himself to a stop, Anakin didn’t realize in time and careened into him, sending them both into a rapidly moving river.  Gasping for breath and struggling to swim in the icy water, the duo didn’t notice just how quickly they were moving.  By the time they managed to swim to shore, they were far from any recognizable landmarks, and sopping wet to boot.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no ,” Obi-Wan moaned.  The tauntaun beside him wasn’t breathing.  Just because he didn’t like the emperor didn’t mean that he wanted him dead.  Thinking quickly, he tilted the tauntaun’s head back to prepare to breathe air back into--ugh--that fur-surrounded mouth.  He leaned over and-

“Aaahhh!"

Ughh, Anakin could not believe that a common little planetary leader had been about to kiss him.

“For the last time, Excellency, it was not a kiss.” Obi-Wan could feel a headache coming on.  “I was saving your life and perhaps, just perhaps you might express your thanks by not destroying my home.”

“And why would I do that? Now take me back.”

“For the last time, Your Excellency, no.”  Snickering as Anakin let out a frustrated little scream, Obi-Wan settled in for the night in a snug little hollow between two large roots.  His doze lasted no more than a quarter hour before he noticed the tauntaun-emperor shivering as he curled up in his sleep.  Qui-Gon did always say that his big heart would be the death of him.  Pulling off his outer robe, he tucked in Anakin not quite as gently as he would Ahsoka and Han, but hey; he wasn’t perfect.  To his surprise, this seemed to soften the young royal, who, upon awakening, begrudgingly promised to consider switching his plans to an uninhabited planet.

Though Obi-Wan himself was now quite damp, his cheer had returned and his spirits were lightened as he guided Anakin out of the jungle.

But what I didn’t know was that Palpatine had told the entire Empire that I was dead!

“Welllll, meesa maybe lost Ani instead of killing him?” Jar-Jar seemed to be asking Palpatine instead of telling him that he had messed up.

“Arghh! Let’s move!”

Aaaand, back to me.

It truly was fortunate for Anakin that the king of Alderaan had been the one to find him, as it allowed for the pair to easily bypass the usual red tape and leave the Core planet in a timely manner.  Obi-wan was a rather capable pilot, despite being a tad too slow for Anakin’s tastes, taking the initiative to enter the Commenor Run just after leaving Alderaan’s atmosphere.  The conversation topics were light; neither man broached the matter of Skytopia.

Hours passed before Obi-Wan noticed that the fuel gauge was closer to empty than he preferred.  Brentaal IV would need to be a refill point, rather than simply switching to the Perlemiant express hyperspace route that ran directly to Coruscant.  He winced, knowing that the sleeping emperor would be ready to rant about not arriving home in a timely manner.  Surprisingly, once they landed, Anakin waved him off.

“While you scurry off and find those--what were they? Liquid Kyber crystals?-- I will continue to enjoy a nap right here in your faux-royal ship.”

“Of course  Once we leave Brentaal IV, Coruscant is only a day away and you’ll need your wits about you for your role as emperor.”

“Finally.  I need a bath.”  And with that, the tauntaun turned over and began to snore at a suspicious volume.  Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and parted.

An hour later, he sorely regretted leaving the ship alone.

Anakin the tauntaun was not very intimidating, but at least his horns may have provided a distraction for enough time for them to escape.  And escape what?  A pirate named Hondo Ohnaka grinned widely at the tied-up king of Alderaan, who just sat and closed his eyes to stave off the headache he could already feel forming.  Obi-Wan’s only hope was that the band of weequays would be impatient enough to leave at once to demand a ransom, but-

Ahem. Hi.  Whose story is this? Mine.  As in me.  The emperor of the galaxy.  Can we please get back to the protagonist of this whole misadventure?

Kenobi was taking too long and Anakin was sulking.  He had been hoping to time his return to Coruscant with the one-week anniversary of his eighteenth birthday and subsequent coronation, but noooo, Kenobi was taking ages to find some simple kyber crystals.  Anakin never had this much trouble powering his beautiful ships.  And with that, the tauntaun began to headbutt the buttons near the main entrance to the ship; it worked, and soon Anakin was exploring the shipyards of Brentaal IV.  He’d be back to his adoring public in no time.

Fate, however, had other plans.

Twelve hours later, instead of enjoying a bubble bath in his chambers with delicate slices of shuura fruit being fed to him, the still-tauntaun Anakin was stuffed into a cage on a ship going kriff-knows-where.  The only being in worse shape than the emperor was the unfortunate soul sharing the space only a tiny amount larger than the beast.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was livid.  Uncharacteristically so, yet white-hot in his fury with Skywalker, who didn’t even have the courtesy to notice.  Instead, he was blathering on about how it wasn’t his fault.

“-and I was going to help you.  Ha! We’re going our separate ways now, beard-man."

“And here I thought you were a changed man, Anakin.” Obi-Wan jabbed his elbow into the furry gut beside him.  “If you were one of my children, I’d tell you I was disappointed, not angry.  But this is your fault that we’re stuck here.”

“Changed? I just had to tell you something so that you’d take me back to Coruscant.  And my fault? Oh Kenobi, you’re too blind to see that I was rescuing you from a band of vicious pirates.”

“Good job.”  The auburn-haired man wriggled until his back was to Anakin’s furry face.  “Now we’re both stuck. I’m going to try and nap to regain some energy, if you’re quite finished.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

The next time Obi-Wan opened his eyes, an indeterminate amount of time had passed and Ohnaka’s men were hauling the cage out into blinding sunlight.  The awakening tauntaun began to squawk in indignation.

“This is not my beautiful palace!”
“Of course not!”  Ohnaka was beyond gleeful.  “This is the Vizier’s home planet of Naboo; he’ll be the one performing the handover!”

See, here is the exact part that I knew I had to take some initiative and escape, right?