Work Text:
One unknowingly fateful day early into the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion adopted a stray loth-cat.
No one was quite sure how the loth-cat ended up on the Resolute. All that anyone could remember was a shiny finding it snoozing on an engine after a long, hard-fought battle on a nameless war-torn planet mere weeks into the war. But the troopers quickly grew a soft spot for the snoozing cat, sneaking it rations whenever they had the chance, and by the time their General finally took note of what had distracted his troops so badly, not even he could resist the pitiful eyes of the little beast.
All of them agreed to never inform the Jedi Council of their newfound companion.
The loth-cat followed the 501st across planets and moons and venators, with soldiers petting it for good luck before every battle, a final farewell should they never return. Throughout Ahsoka's padawanhood and the Outer Rim Sieges, between battles and missions across the galaxy, the loth-cat remained a constant for the legion over the course of the war.
Then the loth-cat hid itself in Anakin Skywalker's robes as he boarded the Invisible Hand. Chancellor Palpatine could only seethe in silence as the loth-cat accompanied its "human"-in-chief on the aerial battlefield — if he could not engineer the loth-cat's death to look like an accident, it would surely cause his chosen victim to lose all faith in him, but alas, loth-cats are infamously sturdier than one would imagine.
Days later, in the Jedi Temple, the loth-cat leapt into its "human"-in-chief's lap to demand scritches. Indeed, the days and nights blurred together as the screams of his beloved haunted Anakin's every dream, but with a fluffy cat rumbling away like the soothing whirs of an engine on his lap and batting at his leg every time he tried to stand and leave, he eventually gave up on trying as the sun set over the Coruscanti skyline.
In another timeline, Anakin Skywalker did not leave the Jedi Council chamber as night fell on the Galactic Republic. The next time he was able to stand up from his seat, the Force was screaming in his ears as thousands of Jedi were gunned down by their own troops, and he had to rush to evacuate the Temple as he sensed the not-501st approaching in the Force. Luckily, the Jedi younglings he was able to save could take comfort in the loth-cat snoozing next to them — as did Padmé when he picked her up from their apartment while the Jedi Temple was left in flames behind them, and the twins after they were born without issue in a distant medcenter in the Outer Rim.
The galaxy may be too rotten and hollowed from within for one loth-cat to fix entirely, but purr-haps in a brighter galaxy, not all hope was lost as the Empire rose from the crumbling Republic.