Title: Descent Into Darkness
Author: jacen200015
Timeframe: AOTC
Genre: AU
Characters: Obi-Wan, Zane (OC), Anakin, Padme, Xanatos and others.
Summary: The Senate is terribly divided and the Separatists threaten war. As the Republic descends into chaos, Padawans Anakin and Zane find themselves making choices that could affect the future of the Republic and the Jedi Order. Sequel of Family Bonds.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, I'm just borrowing it for a while. Also any mention of dialogue or descriptions from the Attack Of The Clones novel are not of my creation, I just borrowed them for emphasis and story telling purposes. I make no profit from this, (A big thanks to bek for helping me out with making this part clearer). I also don't own any of the Dune quotes and any other things of Dune that creep in.

Note: As of 11/18/2013 I have made revisions/corrections to all 15 chapters.

Prologue

Zane lay on the soft grass of the garden and enjoyed the humid warmth and the singing birds. It was his favorite place to come to early in the morning, before everyone else woke up. He felt at peace here in the garden. Here he let his worries and frustrations drain away. But it only lasted for a short time, for when he left the garden to begin his daily routine, all the worries and frustrations would come rushing back to him.

He had spoken to Anakin about this and he agreed, for he felt the same way. A brief period of peace and then it felt like the darkness was trying to drag them into its current. It was worrying, and didn't help all the other concerns in a Jedi's life. Privately Anakin had told him how, ever since he left Tatooine, a coldness gripped him. Anger still came easily to him, and Zane confessed silently that anger came easily to him as well. Oh, but he wasn't about to let his master or his father find out.

His father did know about Anakin's anger issues and attempted to have Zane go on most of their missions with them in hopes that his presence would help Anakin to think before he reacted. Alas, it has not solved the problem, only dampened it. Of course, having two boys with anger issues each trying to keep the other from doing something stupid didn't really work. A few bad events were avoided, but it wasn't the best way of dealing with the issue.

The darkness was ever pulling at them, ever grabbing at them with its sharp claws of power. The darkness tempted Anakin to strike down the slave trader Krayn, but Zane asked Anakin if the slave trader deserved a quick death and so Anakin backed off. The slave trader was brought to trial, but on his way out of the courtroom he was shot and killed by a relative of one of his former slaves.

There were other incidents on other missions that were close ones, but there were the missions where Zane would be the one getting into trouble before Anakin. They got yelled at more than once, but Obi-Wan always had a valid reason to being angry and frustrated at them. No matter how hard they tried, something would set them off and they would go headlong into something without informing Obi-Wan.

There was a time when Anakin tried to humiliate Ferus, who had improperly fixed Tru's lightsaber by not saying anything, but Zane had seen the mistake and fixed it. Later on, Anakin realized how stupid he was after a vicious battle. Ferus was using Tru's lightsaber – and if it had gone out, someone would have gone to defend him and probably would have been shot to death in the process due to the viciousness of the fight. It was a secret kept between him and Anakin after that.

Then, there was Qui-Gon, Zane's master. He just knew something was wrong with him, but he would act as if nothing was wrong, and Obi-Wan would not reveal anything. It was annoying – at seventeen years old he wasn't a child anymore. He could take it. Why did they refuse to say anything to him? He saw through the excuse that the Council wanted Qui-Gon to stay in the Temple and teach classes. He was not dumb. Qui-Gon never went on missions anymore, not since Naboo ten years ago. Even when Zane went to get his lightsaber crystal, he went with Obi-Wan and Anakin under the excuse that Obi-Wan wanted to be the one to do it since Zane was his son.

The list could go on and on. Over the years he had finally come to the conclusion that the Jedi were a bunch of hypocrites. He had told Anakin this and he agreed. Anakin had come across an interesting statistic that actually showed that there had been a decline in the amount of Jedi in the Order over the years. Together they concluded that the Order was dying.

Research was done on several Jedi who lived hundreds of years ago. Jedi Master Simikarty, they found, had written papers about the Jedi code that became highly popular and influenced the future Jedi of his time. Part of his texts included things like how masters should have limits in their number of apprentices and that there needed to be an age limit where padawans could and couldn't be taken to be trained. Eventually his writings were fully accepted as canon.

Then there was Jedi Master Kagoro, who insisted that Jedi should not have personal belongings. Jedi Master Odan-Urr, however, was more heavily scrutinized, for it was he who revised the code almost four thousand years ago in an attempt to make it easier for Jedi to understand. Unfortunately it was not at all clearer, but for some reason, Jedi had accepted the new version for almost four thousand years now. The original code before that, however, had existed for more than four thousand years!

In the old days, Jedi got married and had kids. In the old days, there were dark Jedi like there were now. In the old days there were Sith roaming about as was the case now. The change in the code, the attempt to make it clearer, had not done an ounce of good, and yet the Jedi still followed it.

The original code read: Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force. It had a different meaning than the current code: There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

The original code accepted that there is emotion, but one can be at peace, whereas the current code seemed to reject the idea of emotion and said that there was only peace. The contrasts could go on. Master Odan-Urr did write some helpful teachings but his view of the code and what it means was flawed. Anakin thought he could correctly explain the original code in a way that was understandable, but he felt that he was not the right person to do it. Even if he was, he said, it was not the right time.

As he pondered these things, Zane found himself engulfed in a vision.

Water dripped slowly down a rock wall, falling and bursting as it hit the water below, causing ripples to form and spread outward. His vision flashed with a bright light as the image shifted and changed. People he knew and didn't know and places he knew and didn't know flashed before him. He saw an explosion of a ship, saw Shmi Skywalker take her last breath, a desert planet with two moons, the current chancellor in his office sitting at his desk, Xanatos staring out his window in his office, the death of many Jedi, hundreds and hundreds of battle droids.

As quickly as the vision came, it left, leaving Zane sweaty and breathing heavily like he had just run a marathon. He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his cloak and then simply remained still as he evened out his breathing. He closed his eyes again and drew on the Force to help calm him and to help him relax despite the disturbing vision that he just had.

"What are you doing?"

Zane slowly opened one eye and then the other and saw a familiar face with dark brown eyes, black hair and light brown skin looking down at him. "Aren't you up early?" he asked the four year old.

Mari giggled and shook her head. "It's after 0800."

Oh frell. I'm late! Zane quickly got up and straightened his tunic and robe, brushing off bits of dirt and grass that clung to his clothing.

A small hand tugged at his cloak. "Will you eat lunch with us later?"

Zane glanced down and saw a mop of auburn hair and a pair of gray eyes peeking through the bangs of the four-year-old. "Maybe tomorrow. Now I really got to get to class."

"You said that yesterday," Mari said, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, I heard you say it," stated Chian, a light brown Nikto with green eyes.

Zane sensed the other members of the bear clan start to approach him and quietly groaned. Twenty against one, better make a run for it. He pried Thaddeus' hand off of his cloak and then ran for the garden's exit.

The bear clan younglings watched Zane run off before going back to finding a meditation spot. Thaddeus', nicknamed Tad, walked over to Mari, who had a datapad in her hand. "Where did you get that?"

"It was in Zane's pocket," Mari responded as she examined the simple, black, rectangular pad.

"He's gonna miss that," Chian stated, his face serious.

Mari smiled. "I know."

Tad frowned, looked back over his shoulder, and then back to Mari. "I don't think it's a good idea."

Mari shrugged and handed Tad the datapad. "Keep an eye on it for us."

Taking the datapad, Tad retreated deep into the garden where his favorite meditation spot was. He glumly sat on a smooth rock that was just his size, next to a small rippling brook. He turned the pad over and over in his hands. It was Zane's class pad that contained homework assignments, papers, reading material, and even a private journal. Zane was not going to be happy at all. Worst off, Tad would automatically be blamed for swiping the datapad since he had it in his possession.

He attempted to meditate, or at least stay still and quiet, but he was filled with too much nervous energy. Making a decision, Tad hopped off of the rock and dashed for the garden's exit, but didn't have to go far before he saw Zett walking past the garden's exit. "Zett!" He called.

Zett stopped and looked at Tad. "Yeah, aren't you supposed to be with your group?" the seven-year-old asked.

Tad nodded. "Yes, but Zane dropped this after he left the garden." He handed Zett the datapad.

Zett hesitated before taking the datapad. "I'll get this to Zane for you." Noticing Tad's worried expression he added, "I won't tell him it was you who gave it to me."

"Thank you," Tad said with a smile and then dashed back into the garden.

...

Anakin paced the cockpit with a restless energy before sitting back down in the cockpit chair and resetting the hyperspace coordinates for the final jump. There was a nagging feeling in the Force, a sense of foreboding. Almost like the feeling he was getting in his dreams about his mother, but this one was different, not at all related to the dream.

Patience, he reminded himself, but it did little to settle him. Leaning back into the chair, Anakin mentally examined the different possibilities for the nagging sensation.

He had been having some disturbing dreams about his mother. In his dreams, his mother would become as fragile as glass and then would shatter. Over and over again, this dream kept playing in his head – every night for the past two weeks, give or take a couple of days. But as he noted earlier, the nagging feeling was not related to his mother, although he did feel a great amount of worry and concern for her.

Maybe it had something to do with Padme being on her way to Coruscant to address the Senate based on a rumor he had heard over the comms.? No, somehow he knew that she was safe – the nagging feeling felt more like someone was in danger, someone very close was dying.

"You reset the coordinates!" Obi-Wan Kenobi said after entering the cockpit and checking the console.

"Just to lengthen our time in hyperspace a bit," Anakin explained. "We'll come out closer to the planet."

Obi-Wan sat down heavily in the co pilot's seat, massaged his forehead from the oncoming headache, and then gave Anakin a hard glare. "Anakin, I know you far outrank all the pilots I know of in piloting skills, but what do you think would happen if everyone decided to do what you just did to shave time off travel time? Especially in a place as congested as Coruscant's travel lanes?"

Anakin's face pinched as he thought the scenario through his head and then he gave Obi-Wan a chastised look. "I'm sorry Master."

Obi-Wan's face softened as he accepted the apology. "I know that you're anxious to get home. Three long missions back to back without a rest is tiresome, I agree. I'm hoping the Council will give us some downtime."

"That would be great, Master." Anakin's lips curled up a bit in a smile. "And I can tell Zane that I got away with jumping the ship real close to the travel lanes."

"You didn't get away with it. You can't change the coordinates in the middle of a jump!" Obi-Wan retorted, glaring at Anakin again. "Never do this again," Obi-Wan warned, and he turned around to leave the shuttle's bridge.

"Even if someone we know is dying?"

Obi-Wan halted midstride and spun around, his shoulder length hair flying.

Anakin looked out of the viewport and his gaze took on a distant look. "It was a small nagging sensation before, but as we get closer to Coruscant it almost feels like a sucking void in the Force." Anakin sighed and shook his head. "I'm not sure how to describe it. The sensation is different when a non-Force-sensitive dies."

Obi-Wan made his way back to the co-pilot's seat and slowly sat down, noticing the expression one has when they fall into a trance-like state.

With an extremely loud, sharp intake of breath, Anakin came out of his trance, his eyes wide and his heart pounding furiously.

That was when Obi-Wan felt it, an irregular pulse of his bond with Qui-Gon.

Together they voiced Qui-Gon's name in horrified realization.

Obi-Wan looked back at the coordinates again, forgetting the scolding he had just given Anakin. "How much longer before we reach Coruscant? Can we get there any faster?"

"About five minutes," Anakin said as the ship shuddered as it neared the hyperspace exit coordinates.

And so it begins. Read and Review please :)