He's Not Heavy, He's My...?

"It's not the Jedi way!"

"Don't presume to tell me what the Jedi way is or is not, you sniveling punk!" Mace scowled. "He's too dangerous to be kept alive."

Taking a deep breath and releasing the anger and resentment that welled up inside him, Anakin reasoned, "You came here to arrest him, but he just killed your friends. Are you sure you aren't submitting to the allure of the dark side?"

Silence hung in the air as Mace glared down at the apparently defenseless Darth Sidious with the point of his lightsaber nearly touching the Sith lord's neck. "Get up," he growled.

"Your fear of the dark side will be the Jedi's undoing." Sidious hissed contemptuously.

"Shut up," Mace ordered. "You are under arrest, Chancellor Palpatine. Anything you say can and most assuredly will be used against you…" The master rattled off the official legalese babble that was required in a bored, almost disappointed tone.

The two Jedi escorted Darth Sidious toward the exit. As they passed the statues on either side of the door, the sculptures suddenly took flight. Anakin managed to sidestep the one that came towards him, but the other statue slammed into Mace, and the Korunnai Master stumbled into the path of the one the younger knight had dodged.

"Oh crap," the big jedi exclaimed before he collapsed to the floor with a loud thud. The huge statue landed on top of him.

Anakin barely had time to see what happened to Master Windu when Sidious jumped him and they fell. Grabbing the young knight by the shoulders, the withered Sith lord let loose his force lightening directly into the one he had hoped to turn into his newest and most powerful apprentice to date. "You should have joined me when you had the chance, you whiny jedi brat! Now will you not only not be able to save Padme, but I shall kill you then torture her before taking her life!"

"NOOOOOOOO!"

Suddenly, something very strange happened. Sidious not only was unable to pull his hands away from Anakin's shoulders, he was being drawn like a magnet towards his opponent. "What… what are you doing?"

"I was going to ask the same thing of you! Get off me you old geezer!"

Anakin tried to force push the would be emperor off, but they both kind of just skidded across the floor. The jedi received a nasty rub burn on his back as a result. As painful as that can be, however, the electrical current of the force lightening and something else he could not understand made the rub burn feel as good as making love to Padme in comparison. Both he and Sidious screamed in agony. The Sith lord's lightening stopped just before both he and Anakin passed out.

Minutes later, Mace Windu woke up in a rather foul mood. He shoved the statue off himself and slowly stood with a moan and a long string un-jedi-like expletives rolling off his tongue as easily as a boulder down a steep cliff.

There was a foul stench in the air. It smelled as if something was burning. He looked around to see Anakin and Darth Sidious lying in a heap several feet away. "Anakin?" He rushed over to them and saw that the robes of both the young knight and the Sith lord had burned to ashes. He reached down to get Sidious off Anakin and frowned as he beheld a horrendous sight. "Ugh, now that is just… wrong!"

The next morning, Anakin woke with an excruciating headache. Rubbing his temple, he turned his head with his eyes still closed. "Padme, I just had the worst dream… Ahhh!" He had opened his eyes to see Darth Sidious' hideously wrinkled face too close for comfort. Realizing suddenly that it was not a dream, but not realizing it had been hours since they both past out Anakin tried once more to push the Sith lord off him. "Get off of me!"

"I can't, OUCH!"

"Ouch, hey, what the…" Anakin paused in his struggling and looked under the covers. "Oh, crap!"

Sidious started cackling loud and hard. "It looks like you joined me even though you didn't want to!" He continued his insane laughter as Anakin rose from the bed and wrapped the blanket around them like a cloak.

Anakin staggered over to the door, finding it difficult to walk straight because of the difference in how his weight was dispersed. He dearly wished his unwanted companion would stop laughing, as the continual expression of dark mirth was making his headache worse. When the door did not automatically open when he approached it, he slammed his fist into the control panel with no result save the fact his knuckles were scraped and bruised, which made Darth Sidious laugh even harder.

"Oh, shut up!" Anakin scowled.

The Sith lord wiped tears of laughter from his own cheeks by rubbing his face against the blanket. "You will be the death of me if you keep making me crack up like that, you know."

"I can only hope." The young knight replied dryly as he pried open the control panel and worked with the wiring to try to get the door open that way. He was hindered by having the Sith lord attached to him. His left, upper arm was fused to Sidious' right armpit.

"Well, at least you have the use of your hands!" The ex-chancellor said in response to Anakin's grumblings. His hands were completely merged to the young knight's shoulders. "And you can go wherever you please! My feet don't even touch the floor!"

"Oh, stop whining." Anakin blinked. That was the first time he ever had the opportunity to use that phrase. Usually it was someone else telling him to stop whining. He decided it felt good to turn the tables for once. "Ah hah!" The knight's cry of triumph was replaced by a sigh of disappointment when at the open door stood two jedi masters and a healer.

Grand Master Yoda was dwarfed in stature if not power by Mace Windu and Ji'im Te' Kurk, an Umbran healer that never failed to give Anakin the creeps. "Going somewhere are you?" The diminutive master walked in with the familiar shuffle clunk, shuffle clunk that always accompanied his gait.

"I was hoping to find out what's going on, Master." Anakin looked at Mace Windu and bowed. "I'm glad to see you alive."

"I am grateful to be able to return the sentiment." The Korunnai master acknowledged the young knight then looked pointedly at the back of Sidious' head… it seemed the merging of Anakin and the dark lord made it so they looked like a Troig, only with the Sith facing the opposite way of the jedi and his legs dangling uselessly since Anakin was the taller of the two.

Anakin realized the blanket he had wrapped around them was gaping open and he self-consciously closed it.

"Yes, it was getting rather drafty, Anakin, thank you."

"Shut up." Anakin would have liked the Sith lord to be seen and not heard… actually he would rather not see the Sith at all.

Master Windu guided Anakin back to the bed as Yoda spoke. "Until a way we find to separate you, stay in the isolation ward you must."

"In other words, I'm being imprisoned with him!" Anakin indicated Sidious with disgust. "How did this happen? I don't want to spend the rest of my life like this!"

"Oh, I'm not that bad, Anakin. You'll find I'm an excellent conversationalist."

"Shut up!"

Ignoring the brief conversation between the joined, Healer Te' Kurk spoke. "We never saw any instances where someone was touching their victim while using force lightening before. We believe that the lightening magnetized your bodies so that you came together and melded… your combined force sensitivities and midichlorians allowed the two of you not only survive, but to integrate into a viable whole. We're not sure if we can separate you without killing you both."

"I'd rather die than be trapped with him!"

"Do stop whining, Anakin, it's unbecoming a Jedi or a Sith. It's too bad, really that we can't leave here to be with our darling Padme."

"Shut up!"

"I wonder if she would still want to be with us? Perhaps we could raise our baby as a gray jedi."

"SHUT UP!"

Thus the secret of the marriage between Anakin and Padme… as well as her pregnancy… was revealed to the Jedi Council who promptly decided they had enough and kicked Anakin out of the order. He was still confined to the isolation ward however.

That night, Anakin tried to sleep, but his constant companion would not stop talking.

"It is too bad our little Senator could not stomach to see us together. It might have been pleasant sharing this bed with her, don't you think?"

"Shut up!"

"Now now, I know you are capable of saying something other than, 'Shut up!' If we are to make a life together we must accept these circumstances and try to get along."

"I hate you."

"I know you do." The dark lord cooed then continued speaking.

Not paying attention to what Sidious was babbling on about, Anakin rose and removed his socks, wadded them up then shoved them into the dark lord's mouth. He then removed the cotton case from the pillow and tied it around the Sith's mouth. "There, now maybe I can get some sleep!" Grinning in triumph the young knight lay back down.

'That is rather rude. The least you can do is use clean socks.' Sidious continued communicating to Anakin telepathically.

"Oh, crap!"

Sidious started laughing hysterically, then his eyes bulged as he accidentally inhaled the smelly footwear. After a minute of two of struggling to breath, he was suddenly still.

"Palpatine… Sidious?" Anakin poked the Sith's forehead. When there was no response, Anakin leaped up as he gleefully sang, "Ding dong the Sith is dead, the wicked Sith is dead!"

He laughed as he pushed a button on the wall to try to get room service.

Healer Te' Kurk finally came in and saw Anakin standing with his back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and a wide grin on his face. He noticed the Sith's head lolled to the side in a strange manner.

"He's dead, Ji'im."