Fine, I GUESS I'll settle for being dragged along on tying to change history with Grumpy Not!Yet!Sith Grampa. But let it be known that I protest the lack of age-appropriate attractive males aside from Tarkin. Which I'd bet money isn't happening, ergo, disappoint.

Okay that's really overstating it: I'll let him try to change history while I attempt galactic tourism. I like three things: books, cats, and naps. I am not the kind of person who believes in this idealistic saving the galaxy crap, I'm not great at subtlety, and I do not do "adventure," at least not without a camper, a decent fifth of whiskey in a travel koozie, and sun screen. So much sun screen.

Self-insert (but I'm a fun asshole).

FAIR FUCKING WARNING: I am writing this because I am fucking bored and this is how I keep my free time occupied while stymied on other stuff, writing original fiction, and (trying to get away with not) studying for more classes.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." ~ Agent Kay, MIB

Maybe it would have helped if I were sober.

I am not.

So, we're moving the fuck on because if wishes were fishes I'd be up to my fucking ears in sushi.

Which just adds one more to the top of my head, because I love sushi and now I wish I had some. Mmm.

"Who?" I ask, watching this Christopher Lee-lookalike with a skepticism that doesn't even attempt to mask itself and isn't going to, ever. Isn't he dead? Wait. Yes. Shit, now I'm sad.

"This is my estate," he says firmly. "You have no business here."

I sigh through my nose and raise my hands in surrender. "Hey, no argument here. I'm not looking for trouble. I'll leave as soon as you point me to a fucking exit." It's not my habit to stick around in strange places arguing with less-than-friendly grown men, and so far, this policy has worked in my favor through three decades and three continents. He's got nearly a foot on me, he looks fit despite being white-haired, and I'm acutely aware that we stand in arboraceous isolation, at night, and I without anything to defend myself with (where are my keys? I know I had them with me). I would not assume I could take him in a fight out of hand. I'd try—but, hey, do or do not and all that shit.

I'll bite a chunk out of him, at least.

He stares at me for several seconds, that forbidding gaze leveled straight at me. At least he's not staring down his nose.

"Why are you here?"

"I guess I just wandered off the beaten path. I didn't mean to end up here. Wherever the…" I glance around. "Fuck here is. I don't fucking…know where that is." I'm rambling, that barely slurred growl that tends to associate itself with laser-precision brutal honesty and words I probably shouldn't even remember at this point, but I read a lot and the words mean just as much to me as cat. "Shit, where the fuck am I? I mean—aside from your estate. I couldn't have walked far. If I blacked out I'd at least remember not remembering something."

These are strange trees. I've seen a lot of fucking trees; a lot of different leaves. These are nothing like anything I've ever seen in life or in pictures.

Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.

But I've also had the experience of far too many new things in my life to be put off by a few more, and I'm not from where I'm living right now, so just because I don't recognize them it doesn't mean shit.

That being said, I can't shake the odd sense that there's something that really ought to be occurring to me, which is just fucking annoying. Kind of like staring at a question on a test, only I read the fucking paragraph above it and the one below it. And I can remember them, so it's really pissing me off.

"The exit," I request, lifting my eyes and my chin back to tall, elderly, and intimidating. Key to most situations is keeping yourself calm and demonstrating that you're not some blithering easy target idiot. Most will steer clear of someone like that—'course if they don't, that's when you know you're fucked.

He strides forward. I do not flinch back; I clench my jaw, nervously tense, and at once think of three different ways to either bite or claw his face off, destroy his testicles, or otherwise get the fuck out of a headlock if I have to. Keep your distance, know where his hands are. Under the damn cape, for starters, but…watch the cape.

He looks at me cannily and I begin to wonder if it really was that obvious what I was thinking, but he keeps more than an arm's length of distance between us.

"Come with me. I will bring you out of here."

Can't argue with that.

Unless he leads me to his creepy cabin hideout where he's really just super genteel Jason-slash-Hannibal Lecter (lol Galen Erso and HH Holmes the Death Star no stop focus). Eh, at this point, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it, because I don't have much of a choice. Head up, walk on, keep an eye on your surroundings. Eat or drink nothing that he doesn't eat or drink. I will not be the stupid-white-chick-in-a-horror-movie-making-stupid-white-chick-decisions, even if walking off with strange men in the darkness probably qualifies me there. Oh god my Achilles tendons aren't protected in these shoes; oh god don't think about that; oh god that's totally irrational right now just fucking chill. But it is a phobia. (I have a lot of those, I discover new ones regularly. Comes with the anxiety I'm completely unmedicated for, which is probably why I like alcohol so much.)

Probably best not to think too much about that right now.

I let him walk ahead of me, keeping a fair distance between us. He lets that happen, doesn't even glance behind himself to see that I'm still there.

The walk is long, and I realize that that's more than a little strange. Is he just taking it on faith that I'm following, and how the hell could I be this far from town? I'd wandered in the general direction of Sheetz at midnight (I wanted one of those delicious lavender white hot chocolate things, if they still had it), not gone on a nature hike, so what gives?

But fucking seriously, what gives?

I'd never be drunk enough to wander out of a city at night, or even a tiny little town like the one I lived in (cheap rent), mostly because I'm kind of like a fly and am attracted to lights which mean bars and more alcohol; in any case, when I do get blackout drunk I go to sleep, not raise hell. I get it from my dad—I can fall asleep clutching a wine glass upright on my stomach. There's pictures of it somewhere. That's the kind of talent I have, the utterly unimpeachably socially unacceptable kind.

Suddenly, somewhere else, distantly, there's a shriek-growl and I freeze, my head snapping around in shock. Christopher Lee-in-a-cape pauses and turns.

The trees rustle. Rustle more.

Hyperawareness mixes badly with alcohol, and I'm suddenly nauseous, and my first thought is gee, at least it numbs the pain but—

I stagger back when something bursts out of the bushes.

It's all silent (I'm not a screamer, he's not that startled) except for the animal's snarl and then a hiss like dousing hot metal in cold water, and blue light.

Blue.

Okay, I'm literally thirty, and I don't remember not knowing what that is.

Lightsaber.

Blue lightsaber. My thoughts roll and pitch like a ship in a storm, which is super not fun because now I'm even more fucking nauseous.

That doesn't make sense, Count Dooku's lightsaber is red, because he's a Sith.

And then suddenly my semi-inebriated brain shifts and quivers into place.

Well shit.

Christopher Lee, Count Dooku, Darth Tyranus, Sith, Separatists—prequels.

What? What insane fucking bullshit have I hallucinated? What the fuck was in that whiskey? I thought that was the whole goddamn point of not buying bathtub gin, so I didn't go blind or see shit that isn't there. And I wasn't drinking absinthe, they don't even put wormwood in that stuff anymore, so…How far am I going to get demanding my money back…

The animal dies shrieking, rolling over with a last, rattling gasp. I can smell the ugly tang of burned flesh and hair, and just before he de-ignites his lightsaber I can see his face reflected in the blue glow; he turns to me with surprise faintly illuminated in the still lines of his face. What the fuck was that? What the fuck is that? What the fuck like in general?

"Who are you?"

"Um, leaving," I say, an incredulous little laugh welling up in my stomach before I press it down, sliding back a step.

"Stay where you are," he commands firmly.

"Uh…no." And yet I can't make myself move. It's not because of—well, I think I could move, but I'm frozen stiff to the spot out of sheer fear. "On second thought, fuck no."

"Who is Darth Tyranus," he asks, cautious—but that doesn't make a wealth of sense, why should he be cautious? And…uh, wait hold up, is he reading my mind? I sure as fuck didn't say that out loud. Jedi and Sith can do that, can't they? Oh fuck the hell no. Like…literally another one of my fears, dude (I have a lot of irrational phobias, okay; I also hate cockroaches and lettuce and uneven numbers except for 17 and…you know what, I probably should be in therapy—it's probably something to do with managing the world around me or something, when it was never in my hands for most of my life. Never start to read about psychology, it will fuck you up).

"Um. Count Dooku?"

"I am Count Dooku, and I am no Sith."

"Uh. Wellll…" My voice goes slightly shrill and trailing off. About that…

Images flit through my head, too rapid for anything but impression and nonverbal communication, but between the drunken sureness that I've finally experienced a break with reality and this is the punishment I get for marathoning slash in all its glorious forms while drinking and why did I discover Tarkrennic (Ice King + Drama Queen wait no Empress gotta be better than Tarkin = ffffgimme), let's be honest Tarkin x anybody including the fucking bicycle I'm not picky (shhhh I have a domination kink) when I should probably have been doing more useful shit, is the basic narrative of the Clone Wars tumbling haphazardly down around our ears. And everything afterwards. This man bearing Dooku's face blinks, and even in the moonlight I can see the surprise, which he is too phlegmatic to express more obviously.

The first real question I come to is why the fuck does Count Dooku have a blue lightsaber?

The second question is far more material: Count Dooku isn't real and neither are lightsabers, so...what the actual fuck?

He doesn't bother to answer either very salient question, so I'm left without answers. In fact, he just kind of stares at me.

So...this is happening. I'm shitfaced and I've clearly not had near enough, yet.

Yeah…not sticking around for this one.

Just as soon as I get it together enough to move.

In the meantime, the nausea reaches a head. I'm not really a vomit-prone drunk, although I have embarrassed myself at noon on Sundays before while everybody else is off being pious and shit, and strange things are afoot. We're not even anywhere near a Circle K, this isn't fair.

At least we're outside and in the relative privacy of nighttime.

Sheetz is a gas station chain in some northeastern states of the US. It is in fact pretty fucking awesome, and those lavender white hot chocolate things are legal crack. They're even better if you add coconut rum.

Update: I went to get one this morning and they're not on the menu anymore. *sobbing* Fine I guess I'll just make my own and add rum to it in the pan so the rum doesn't cool the hot chocolate. This is a good plan.