Star Wars Imagines

Let the Bad Times Roll - Anakin x Reader (songfic)

Pain. Pain and cold. That was all you'd felt when you'd regained consciousness on Coruscant all those years ago, waking up covered in your own blood in a room filled with the corpses of your peers.

It was something you'd tried to erase from your memory for a long time, until realizing there would be no way to rid yourself of such a thing. And so you carried the memory with you, and with it a burden of sorts: the last surviving Jedi youngling from Coruscant, the last survivor of a generation destroyed by Anakin Skywalker.

Of course, he didn't go by that name now. Hadn't in years, in fact. Darth Vader had replaced your former instructor and mentor long ago, his eerie helmeted portrait plastered on every piece of Empire propaganda across the galaxy.That was what had made it so hard to forget - no matter where you went, who you tried to be, you could never escape the person who'd taken everything from your childhood from you.

It had been hard to move on from your training, from the rituals and responsibilities of being a Jedi. That was all you'd ever been exposed to, and all you'd ever been prepared for in your life. Master Yoda had found you in a last effort to recover survivors from the temple (you were the only one), and while he and Obi-Wan had offered to continue training you, to help you become a Jedi, you couldn't do it. You'd tried, but it was too hard, too difficult to forget the faces of your friends and mentors, the places of your childhood.

After a few years with Obi-Wan - enough for you to decide you were too wrecked to be a Jedi - you'd convinced him to leave you, to continue all his own missions and duties unhindered. He'd dropped you off on a small planet, somewhere that was (at the time) out of the Empire's reach. The owner of a popular cantina there ended up being one of his old friends, and it was easy to convince them to help you find lodging and earn a wage.

You'd ended up living in one of the small apartments above the cantina, working behind the bar at first to make ends meet. One fateful night the lead singer of the cantina band quit abruptly, and the guitarist had begged for anyone in the staff to step up as a temporary replacement.

Something had drawn you to that microphone like a magnet, and after a few solid performances with the band, they offered you the position permanently.

You still lived above the cantina (easier and quicker to travel from the comfort of your bed to work), though you made a good deal more now. You'd begun to donate that extra money to the Rebel Alliance in secret, hoping that even if you couldn't bear to fight against the Empire, you'd still be able to contribute somehow to their demise.

Which is why you worked every night of the week. It wasn't like you had anything better to do - all your friends worked here with you, anyways.

Plus, your job was kind of fun. Especially on nights like this, weekend nights, when the cantina was packed to its capacity and then some. The energy the crowd radiated was always positive, sometimes crazy and energetic, other times drunken and hazy. You enjoyed watching as the audience members shifted through these moods from your spot up on the stage.

Tonight had been a lively one - the audience interacting with you a bit more than usual. They'd won you over when halfway through the set they'd begun shouting chants against the Empire (and then began throwing out other customers who disagreed). You and the rest of your bandmates had played longer than usual as a result.

"Thank you, thank you so much!" you shouted into the microphone, grinning as the crowd cheered. Your sweat had seeped through your outfit, head ringing a bit at the loud noise and the bright lights; you felt amazing.

"I'm afraid this'll have to be the last song," you said apologetically. "Zelriv very clearly wants to go to bed, and he can't do that very easily if you're all still here." The cantina owner laughed from behind the bar at the mention of his name, and nodded at the truth of your statement with a grin on his face. "See?" you said, pointing at him. "Let's play one more song and let the poor man sleep."