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Part 1 of Star Wars Rare Pairs Collection (NC-17 standalones)
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Star Wars: Undiscovered Countries Story Collection
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2016-07-27
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A Seduction

Summary:

Anakin visits Chancellor Palpatine at home to consult his private library.

Somebody gets seduced.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Anakin looked up from his reading with a jolt. He had completely lost track of the time.

The view from the private library of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic had gone dark, the vast Coruscant cityscape twinkling with ten-thousand bright but distant lights amid a sea of gloom. If evening had already fallen, it meant that he had been here, engrossed in his studies, for over seven hours.

Anakin Skywalker was not, to put it mildly, the Temple’s most academically-motivated Padawan learner, and the contemporary politics and diplomacy course that Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had insisted he enroll on made him grit his teeth with impatience. He’d rather be practicing his lightsaber forms. He’d rather be playing catchup with his bed. Sith hells, he’d rather be on a maintenance detail unblocking drains in the communal bathing facilities. Anything but a folio-length report to be placed in the Jedi Archives on the political topic of his choice…due tomorrow afternoon.

He had declared his intention to write on the historical and socio-legal case for converting an elected office into a lifetime monarchy. It was a polarizing, controversial subject with rafts of well-publicized, conflicting views—easy to write lots about and perfect for a Jedi-in-training whose only real talent for negotiation was of the “aggressive” variety. Anakin himself had no particularly strong views on any of it, though he saw no reason why a strong and able ruler should be compelled to leave office after a predetermined, arbitrary number of years. Mostly, he had chosen the topic because it gave him an excuse to think about Padmé.

Queen Padmé Amidala, Anakin’s angel and current elected monarch of the Mid-Rim planet Naboo, had risen to intergalactic prominence early in her reign for having spearheaded an offensive against the Trade Federation. That victory had cemented her enduring popularity at home, and now towards the end of her second—and final—term there were insistent calls for changes to the Nubian Constitution which would allow her to serve for life. Such an amendment would not be a radical new change so much as a return to the past: A brutal war between the human Naboo and the native Gungans a couple of hundred years ago had resulted in the dethroning of the royal family and the abolishment of lifetime monarchy.

And so, Anakin had been invited into Chancellor Palpatine’s home to peruse his private collection of material relating to the Naboo-Gungan War. Much of it was available nowhere else on-planet. Palpatine was from Naboo and had been Amidala’s Senator during the blockade crisis. After his elevation to the Chancellorship, he had taken a particular interest in the boy who had played such a pivotal role in Naboo’s triumph. Anakin had not seen Padmé for the better part of a decade, nor had he ever returned to the beautiful planet she ruled, but Palpatine had become a regular and much-beloved fixture in his young life. Palpatine’s elegance, intelligence, and gentle manner were constant, indelible reminder and next best thing to being back with Padmé on Naboo. Anakin savored being in his soothing presence and had come to crave it with near-physiological obsession.

He hadn’t counted on a bunch of musty old wartime documents being so engrossing, though. Most were inscribed by hand in Early Modern Nubian, and he’d needed a translator droid to make any sense of them. But he’d nonetheless been particularly taken with General Isvar Augustín’s battlefield diaries. They were compulsively readable. And naturally, the unvarnished account of the frontlines bore little in the way of relevance to the topic of Anakin’s report.

“Chancellor, would I have your permission to return to the Augustín papers?” Anakin asked distractedly as he returned the diaries to their place in a document drawer.

“At some later date, I mean,” he clarified. Palpatine was still at his desk and had been there all day, in fact; Anakin figured he was probably waiting for Anakin to finish before turning in for the night. “I’m profoundly grateful for this opportunity, sir, and didn’t mean to impose upon your hospitality for so long…”

Palpatine made no reply. Head pillowed on the palm of one hand, he seemed to be fast asleep.

“Sir…?”

There seemed to be no reaction. Anakin crept forward, crouching down so that his face was level with Palpatine’s own. What an opportunity! He would never dare to scrutinize the Chancellor this closely were he awake. The Jedi habit of deference meant he rarely looked directly at the man at all. Thus, Palpatine had always impressed Anakin as larger than life, a remote figure amplified by fame and charismatic authority. It was all too easy to forget that he was just another being of mortal flesh. But in this moment, he looked small. Fragile, almost. This was to see him anew. Now the smallest line and detail of Palpatine’s face, the arch of his patrician nose, the subtle imperfections of his skin, the indentations at the corners of a mouth made slack with sleep—each became a priceless new discovery to be housed in the temple of his mind. Precious. To be cherished. Something began to stir deep inside.

One loose sleeve had fallen back to expose the white underside of a wrist. Even in the privacy of his own home, Palpatine wore voluminous robes befitting his office. The only parts of his body Anakin had seen exposed before were his hands and his head, and when his hood was pulled up, not even his head was fully visible. That vulnerable wrist with its thin skin and fine tracery of veins felt illicit; Anakin wanted to touch it, to press the soft pad of a finger against a fluttering pulse…

That thing inside Anakin stretched and unfurled.

There was an ache blooming in Anakin’s chest suddenly, so fiery and painful that for a few terrifying moments he forgot how to breathe.

He wanted to—

Anakin leaned forward, brushing his lips lightly, ever so lightly, against the corner of Palpatine’s mouth. The softest, sweetest, gentlest kiss he could imagine. Yet this barest contact shot through his body like a bolt of electricity, and he rocked back onto his heels in shock at the visceral intensity of his own desire, his fingers curling and uncurling reflexively.

And froze.

Palpatine’s lake-blue eyes were open.

“Oh dear, I must have nodded off,” he muttered, rubbing the heel of the hand that had so recently been supporting his head against his eyes. “Getting old, my boy. May it never happen to you—” His avuncular chuckle cut off abruptly as he took in Anakin’s stricken expression. “What is it? Is something wrong?” he asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

“No, sir, I—” Anakin stuttered. His knees had locked into place, and he was unable to move. His gaze fell helplessly to the floor.

As if just now realizing how close Anakin was to him, Palpatine placed warm fingers under his chin and forced him to look up. “Tell me.”

Jolted suddenly into action, Anakin threw his arms around Palpatine’s waist and leaned in to kiss him again. This time, he captured the Chancellor’s lower lip between his own and suckled, allowing his mouth to part slightly and his tongue to taste. Anxiety drove him to deepen the kiss further, but fear of overstepping the bounds of ordinary propriety—but wait, hadn’t he already done that?!—grappled with ravenous hunger in the pit of his stomach. And the Chancellor’s own lips were still.

Anakin pulled back with a low moan. “Please, sir. Can I…? I want—”

Palpatine’s face was totally unreadable. Anakin was about to be rejected; he just knew it. He deserved chastisement. Swirling amid a storm of inner despair, Anakin stumbled to his feet and made to step away to regain his composure.

But Palpatine had also stood up and stepped toward him. Now his countenance was one of unfathomable intensity. The distance between them closed, and the hems of their robes brushed together. Reaching up to grasp a head that was already slightly higher than his own, his fingers buried themselves in the short hairs at the nape of Anakin’s neck. Then he pulled him down into a ravishing kiss that seared his very soul.

That kiss seemed to go on forever, but when it finally broke, Palpatine traced the sensitive curve of his ear and replied only:

“Anything you want.”

***

The antechamber was large and well-appointed with plenty of storage built into the walls and a stunning range of toiletries on display. To Anakin, it looked like a cross between a closet and a staging area, and for the first time he could fully appreciate in the ordered yet complex space how much logistical effort it took each day just to become a person known on sight by trillions of beings. A Jedi serves the greater good of the galaxy, and his body is a tool that is never truly his own; it seemed that the same could be said of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. Anakin realized how privileged he was to be admitted into Palpatine’s private world in such a manner. His heart filled with so much affection that he could barely breathe again.

If Palpatine was aware of Anakin’s feelings, he gave no indication. Silently, Palpatine began to undress. He moved with unhurried, calm precision, and with a subtle gesture, he invited Anakin to do the same. Before long, they were standing unclothed before each other. Two sets of eyes roved with frank appreciation over each others’ bodies. Lifting one hand, Palpatine’s fingertips brushed lightly over Anakin’s lips, traced down his throat, and came to rest just below his sternum. Anakin quivered; he was already half hard.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Palpatine asked.

“Yes,” Anakin said, throat tight and voice croaking with emotion.

Holding his gaze with seemingly telekinetic Force, Palpatine gestured behind Anakin and applied the merest of pressures to his belly to push him backwards through a small, half-concealed doorway.

Palpatine’s bedroom was remarkably unremarkable. Its only furnishings were a bed, sized generously enough for one but barely acceptable for more than that, and a narrow bedside table with nothing on it. There were no windows, no personal touches—indeed, no decoration anywhere—and, in the dim illumination cast by lighting recessed into the ceiling, no discernible color. Everything in the room, even the very floor and walls, was some lighter or darker shade of gray. This was a place that was never meant to be seen by another being. Anakin wondered, with the tiniest prickle of jealousy, who else ever had. Or was he the first?

The simplest answer seemed the most likely, and as Palpatine lay back on the bed, almost primly, and opened his arms in invitation, Anakin couldn’t hold himself back any longer. He fell on Palpatine’s slim, soft body like a starving man at a feast, desperate to kiss and caress, to knead and fondle and claim.

Anakin tried brushing his lips over that vulnerable throat while allowing his hands to roam wherever he could reach, but he had no experience as a lover and no natural inclination to delay gratification or allow pleasure to build gradually. Tugging himself free of Palpatine’s fond, loose embrace, he brought himself down level to his groin, where a quiescent penis rested heavily in a spongy nest of colorless curls. He was not aroused yet. That, Anakin decided, needed to change right now.

Pleasuring another ought to be a straightforward thing, so Anakin took it like any other physical challenge and attacked head on. He lifted the penis with one hand and pressed his lips to the shaft. The velvety flesh was beguiling, the scent…intoxicating. Anakin was reminded of a recent visit to Bandomeer, of lifting handfuls of its famous black earth to his nostrils and breathing in the fragrant cocktail of richness and decay that grew the sweetest shuura fruit in the galaxy. This was just like that. The same heady, dark promise. Helpless and hungry, Anakin took the penis in his mouth and began to suck avidly. He could hear Palpatine’s sharp indrawn breath when he tried nibbling on the foreskin, and was immediately rewarded by an abrupt hardening which exposed the glans to brush almost flirtatiously against his lips.

Was it possible for any man’s penis to be called beautiful? For surely this one was. The shaft was thick and straight, the skin so pale it seemed almost translucent. The glans, when unhooded, was a dusky rose color and elegantly tapered. Anakin forced himself down on the erection as far he could, moaning when he felt the tip slide past his palate and down his throat. Palpatine’s gorgeous scent seemed to fill him even more profoundly. Anakin’s own erect penis, ignored and aching, wept sympathetic droplets of clear fluid onto the bedsheets. He could feel the scrotum he cupped in one hand begin to tighten. They were both close. This couldn’t last much longer—

Abruptly, Palpatine pushed him off of his erection. “Good Goddess, Anakin, slow down—!” he gasped. “I’m not a young man anymore—”

Anakin whimpered with dismay. He couldn’t think. He could only feel. And all he felt was this need. “No, no, oh please, please, sir, let me let me let me…” he begged.

Palpatine shushed him. “While I am…flattered by the, ah, urgency of your desire, surely a boy’s first time ought to be a mutually pleasurable experience?”

“I’m not— This isn’t—”

“You are, and it is.” Palpatine fingers found Anakin’s erection, shuttling back and forth over its length with calm assurance. The incipient heat of Anakin’s embarrassment dissolved back down into heat of a far more pleasant variety. “There’s no shame in that. Relax now. Let me give you what you want.”

All thought and emotion and sensation from that moment forward, for Anakin, seemed to slow and thicken, stretched and spun into a skein of sweet, syrupy threads. It was writhing, wallowing ecstasy. He was pressed back into the bed as Palpatine hovered over him, touching him everywhere. They were belly to belly when he came the first time in a fountain of viscous fluid, but like oil thrown onto fire his desire only seemed to burn hotter. Legs splayed open, hips undulating spasmodically—he barely understood his own frantic invitation.

Palpatine was there to answer his need. Gentle, relentless hands moved to the small of Anakin back, pulling him closer before descending between his buttocks and probing his anus with infinite patience until the sphincter had relaxed and opened. Anakin had never before been the object of such cherished exploration, and when he felt the warm, wet tip of Palpatine’s shapely penis slide into him, there was only annihilating pleasure.

So big and sweet and deep inside. Such slow, considerate thrusts. Pressing hard again and again and again against a spot that made him keen wordlessly. How many times? Uncompromising delight. They were both shuddering now. Coherency fled. Mouths met in a lingering kiss, and Anakin wrapped his limbs tightly around his lover’s body as he attempted to match the instinctive rhythm.

Anakin orgasmed first, crying out and bucking and tossing his head side to side as wave after wave of pleasure crashed over him in an overwhelming flood that seemed to go on forever. Tears trickled out of the corners of his eyes. Palpatine came in silence a few moments later. There was hardly any change in his expression except a near-imperceptible softening around his mouth. Yet his eyes never left Anakin’s for a second as he filled him with an abundant wash of warm semen, and before Anakin blacked out from the intensity of it all, he had never felt so thoroughly beheld.

***

Some time later, sated and boneless, Anakin returned to himself. Fingers tangled and toyed tenderly with his Padawan braid. He was enfolded tightly in Palpatine’s arms, face pressed up to his neck. He could hear him crooning a languid string of liquid syllables in what almost certainly had to be Palpatine’s mother tongue of Naboo, unintelligible to Anakin’s ears but the cadence recognizable from his short stay in Theed. Nose against the pulse of arterial blood, the pain in his heart from earlier in the library returned. Hot tears fell. To have shared as intimately as they had—it was an overwhelming realization, nigh unbearable.

“I love you,” Anakin whispered.

Those soothing sounds of aristocratic Nubian paused. Anakin began to tremble. The silence seemed to go on forever. Had he just lost what he’d barely even gained? He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Had confessing his deepest feelings been the ultimate, unforgivable thing of all the unforgivable things he had done today?

Suddenly, his eyes still closed, he felt Palpatine pull away from him. He had no time to wonder why before he heard a grunt and felt the tug of blankets being pulled up and around him, cocooning their two bodies in the bed together. A slender hand caressed his back. Their limbs twined in the dark beneath plush, luxurious folds.

“My beautiful boy,” Palpatine said.

Anakin waited, but for several moments Palpatine said nothing further. In a way, he was thankful; at least his hasty declaration had not been rejected. They simply lay together for a time, swaddled in warmth, their breath mingling.

“I wish I could understand what you were saying earlier,” Anakin admitted at last.

“Hmm? Oh, well…” Palpatine actually looked slightly embarrassed. “You should pay no attention to my quaint, old-fashioned mutterings. I’m just being silly.”

“No, please. I would like to know.”

“Very well,” Palpatine conceded. “Hmm. There are several translations, but the earliest remains without question the most masterful in its metrical composition and fidelity to— Ah, never mind.” He paused for a deliberate breath and recited in the resonant voice of the gifted Senatorial orator:

“Thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Literature was not, needless to say, one of Anakin’s strong suits. “That’s…beautiful,” Anakin murmured finally, unsure of what else to say.

Palpatine chuckled and nuzzled Anakin’s cheek affectionately. “Poetry is one of my secret vices. Amongst many, I must confess.”

“So, umm…”  Anakin ventured when it seemed that Palpatine would volunteer noting further, “who is ‘Thou’…?”

“It’s you. Not literally, of course,” he clarified when Anakin blinked. “The poet is reassuring a young man that his beauty will not fade with time. ‘Thou’ is an ancient form of address, once used between friends, family…and lovers. Usage has fallen out of favor in many human societies; the Naboo are amongst the few to preserve it as a grammatical distinction. Some might say that it’s because we place inordinate value upon tradition, but I prefer to think it’s because we are not afraid to speak of our attachments. There is something exquisite, is there not, in a language for intimacy?”

“I suppose…” Anakin hesitated. “I’m not sure my Master would agree.”

“Of course not. The Jedi say that strong attachments, which include everything from personal possessions to close bonds between individuals, lead to the dark side. With all due respect to the Order, I think such stoic philosophies are ridiculous. Love empowers to heights we would never achieve alone.”

“But what you say isn’t true about the Jedi. About us, I mean. The Code mandates compassion—universal love—so we are encouraged to love all beings.”

“Purest sophistry, Anakin, and you know it.”

Anakin wasn’t sure what “sophistry” meant either and didn’t think he would be casting himself in a particularly impressive light if he were to ask any more questions about the definitions of words. Fumbling for a witticism to change the subject, he said, “Thou dost talk too much. We should get some sleep.”

It was a good suggestion. They embraced each other, and did.

***

The man formerly known as Anakin Skywalker couldn’t be bothered to look up when the door swished open behind him.

He couldn’t, in fact, be bothered to do much of anything. A few weeks had passed since he’d been returned from what by all rights should have been his death—a Jedi plot to overthrow the Republic, conspiracy and betrayal from virtually everyone he’d held most dear, oh, if only those things had been his death!—and the screaming agony of surgical reconstruction had given way to the dull rumble of discomfort. As Anakin Skywalker, he’d never been afraid of pain, and this physical pain, unremarkable and like as not to be lifelong, was easy enough for Darth Vader to ignore. He didn’t even mind the life support suit; it, too, was easy enough to ignore. And if the suit reconfigured his perceptions of the surrounding world and his sense of his own bodily freedom as he moved about in it, well, the world had proven itself a cruel, remorseless place, and he realized maybe he liked feeling insulated from it.

Truth be told, he liked not feeling much of anything. Fury had given way to apathy. What had it all been for, really, in the end? There was nothing left. Now he sat stiffly upright at a workbench in his quarters, unmoving, staring into the middle distance, seeing nothing, hearing nothing apart from his own respirator-assisted breathing. He had been frozen in that same position for over ten hours.

“Lord Vader,” Palpatine said as he joined him on the bench. Neither spoke further. Palpatine’s hood was fully drawn up over his head, and Vader’s mask revealed no more than his own expression would have. Technically, he didn’t even need to wear it here in this specially-designed space, but removing it was just too much effort. How quickly he had become one with his artificial enhancements, indeed. Gently, Palpatine reached up to unlatch and remove Vader’s helmet and mask. After setting them carefully aside, Palpatine sighed and placed one hand on the back of Vader’s now bared neck, drawing him down toward the shadows that obscured his own ruined face.

Vader made no sign of acknowledgement.

Palpatine sighed again and kissed him.

The kiss was slow and sweet—and thoroughly enervating. Vader’s eyes squeezed shut. His hands clenched spasmodically. He felt enveloped by Palpatine’s soft, velvet robes, drowned in a swirl of warm, heady pleasure. When their tongues caressed, he felt like a boy again, youthful and whole, bold and bursting with all the desire in the galaxy...

They had never been intimate again after that one night. Indeed, they had seemed to arrive quickly at some tacit, unspoken agreement to pretend it had never happened, and their relationship, such as it was, had continued uninterrupted. Constantly fearful of the worst, Anakin had just been absurdly grateful that Palpatine treated him with the same fond, fatherly benevolence as always. Once or twice he had even wondered if the entire affair had not merely been a figment of his own overactive adolescent imagination.

He’d awoken alone in Palpatine’s modestly-proportioned bed shortly before the sixth hour. His robes had been laid out for him in the antechamber, freshly laundered. A servant droid had politely offered him breakfast. The Chancellor, the droid had informed him impassively after some pointed inquiry, was already at work preparing for a special Senate hearing on the new Mandalorian insurgency…and Anakin had stopped listening. He’d ordered the droid to provide him with transport back to the Temple and spent the rest of the morning holed up in his room writing his politics report. No one, not even Obi-Wan, had suspected anything.

After what seemed an age, Vader found himself laid out awkwardly on the bench with his head pillowed in Palpatine’s soft lap, Palpatine’s hands running soothingly over every exposed inch of his scarred, damaged flesh, Palpatine’s body curled protectively over his, rocking him like a child and hiding him in the shadowy folds of his robes from harsh, uncompromising light. Their faces were close, still, and Vader could hear him murmur foreign words in a rhythmic cadence.

“Thy eternal summer shall not fade…”

Those words—

He recognized them. Nubian poetry. That poem, specifically.

Vader wrapped his arms tightly around Palpatine’s waist, buried his face deep into his lap, and heaved a huge, choking sob. For the first time, he truly grieved for everything he had lost. His wife. His unborn child. His former Master— No, his best friend. The conspiracy, lies built upon lies— None of that had been his fault, but the world didn’t care about culpability. Vader wept all the harder. It was unseemly behavior for a newly-named Sith Lord, perhaps, but wonderfully cathartic, this desperate embrace, and Palpatine merely continued to hold him and comfort him and whisper tender words into his ear between his harsh, guttural cries.

“When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”—the Nubian verse was so soft and soothing and rhythmic, almost hypnotic—“so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

He’d been a beautiful boy, then, the first time he’d heard that poem. As Anakin Skywalker, he’d been handsome, virile. He knew he was none of those things now, as Vader, and though he’d never been vain and did not mourn that particular loss as such, he did wonder if perhaps he’d only ever been loved for his beauty.

But no. One man still loved him.

“You must not despair, my young friend,” Palpatine said when Vader had finally run out of tears. “Much has been left undone. Our new Empire has been born, true, but this peace is fragile, and order must be maintained. Like any child it needs the discipline and strong hand of a father. You are that father, my Lord, and the Empire needs you. I need you.”

They’d both paid a heavy price for Vader’s failure to anticipate the betrayal of his nearest and dearest. He held no illusions about that; Palpatine, like Vader, had been hideously scarred and deformed by the lies of the Jedi. And yet—this man had still saved his life, had still forgiven him. And he still thought him beautiful, still wanted him. No, needed him. In spite of everything. That was what that poem meant, had always meant. This man had taken him unto himself—and he would never let him go. Vader lifted his head to meet his Master’s piercing gaze at last. Those eyes were no longer blue, but oh, they glowed brighter than the heart of a star. A flash of indulgent heat filled Vader’s belly, and he remembered the wild joy, the prostration, when that gorgeous penis had begun moving deep inside him. Such sweetness, such a gift. Enough for forever.

So, when Palpatine urged him to his feet, Vader allowed it. He had felt the truth in those words. He could still feel the throbbing ache of Anakin’s love. Vader trembled only a little when Palpatine licked and kissed away the tears salting tender scar tissue on his face. He may have quirked a smile when Palpatine fussed a bit with the way Vader’s cloak sat on his shoulders. And when Palpatine replaced his mask and helmet, he allowed that as well.

Yes, this one man still loved him, and he still loved this one man. They were all they had left.

“Come, Lord Vader. It is time to do your duty.”

Vader inclined his head and sank gracefully to one knee.

“What is thy bidding, my Master?”

 

END

Notes:

(1) The poetry is an excerpt of Shakespeare’s sonnet no. 18. It seemed appropriate on a whole slew of different levels.

(2) Darth Vader=Dark Father in some vaguely Germanic language. George Lucas has the subtlety of a brick, and I like thematic expansion.

(3) Vader served the Emperor faithfully for over twenty years. That's longer than a lot of marriages...never mind partnerships between treacherous Sith Lords. What was the basis of this apparent loyalty? Perhaps Vader had no autonomy, a slave in the most literal sense, or perhaps he was being actively coerced under threat of death (respirator, meet Force lightning)? Yet there's nothing to suggest that Sidious had the power to enslave minds like that, and let's face it: Anakin was never particularly afraid of dying himself, and after ROTS he had nothing left of value to hold hostage (that either of them knew of, anyway). If depression were an enduring factor, he would just commit suicide. So perhaps Vader supported and agreed with the politics of the Emperor's fascist dictatorship? Okay, there's some basis for that, but Anakin didn't especially care for politics. To me, therefore, it makes the most sense if the relationship always was, from Vader/Anakin's subjective experience, a positive--even loving--one with Palpatine. Even if he was manipulated unscrupulously into feeling that way, and irrespective of what Palpatine really thought. This conclusion forms the basis for “A Seduction.”

(4) This story is self-contained but may be read alongside “Tests of Loyalty,” “The Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun,” “Qualities of Mercy,” and “That Sleep of Death, What Dreams May Come.” However, your basic understanding and enjoyment (or lack thereof) of any of these stories shouldn’t be affected by not having read any of the others. For convenience, I have created an AO3 collection for all of these loosely interconnected stories here.