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Infinite Possibilities
Chapter 2: Family Business, Part 2
"And so the creature devoured the unwary child, because he had failed to heed the teachings of his master," Sidious finished the story with a toothy grin, intending to scare Anakin straight. This… mishap… certainly did not need to happen again.
The tiny toddler stared at him. In the other bed, Maul peeked out from under his covers.
Then Anakin laughed, a delighted rolling sound.
"Again!" he squealed.
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"Where is Father?"
Maul's horned head shot up in alarm. "What?" The seven year old was studying fiercely for his next exam, a comprehensive study of Mandalorian arms and armor. He didn't want the punishment that would result from failure, but Anakin's nonchalant question caught him off guard.
"Where's Father?" Anakin repeated, moving into the room and glancing around, still clumsy and unbalanced.
"Don't call him that!" Maul protested, setting aside the datapad and standing up. "Don't ever call him that. He won't like it."
"'Net people say it," Anakin pouted. "I see it on the 'net. He's our father. We're family."
"Don't say that," Maul snapped, but felt a strike of guilt when Anakin's lower lip trembled. He gathered the five year old in his arms, hugged him tight, and whispered, "But you can think it if you want to."
When he was completely alone, when Master was not close by, he dared it.
Father.
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He worried – no, he never worried – at times how close the two had become, how they complimented each other. Maul was a spitfire, powerful and fast. Anakin was a talker, confident and cocky even at such a young age, but his own raw power levels rivaled the finest Sidious had ever encountered including his own. The two small boys were always together, and he should have separated them more.
Should have taken opportunities to sow discontent, suspicion, mistrust. It was what he did best.
He knew what Plagueis wanted of them. He knew letting them bond would only make it more painful for everyone involved. He told himself he let them stay together because he did not care how much it would hurt when they were parted.
He told himself they made such an impressively cohesive team that he would miss the efficiency.
He lied.
It was what he did best, after all.
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They grew up much too quickly. He trained them brutally, as he needed them sharp and brilliant in everything they did. But they didn't resent him for it, which he never understood. In his solitary moments, he loathed Plagueis. But Maul looked at him with shining eyes, and Anakin took every opportunity to please him.
As preteens, they were already forces to be reckoned with. Judging by Anakin's driving, anyway. He suppressed a rather un-teacherly snicker when he caught sight of Maul's pale face and bared teeth as Anakin took the speeder into a steep dive. Maul had learned to fly several years ago, but the Zabrak did not relish it, just as Anakin did not relish the way the Zabrak lived to fight.
He personally loved the sensation, but he had always loved flying and racing, something he found in common between Anakin and himself. He tapped Anakin's shoulder reluctantly. "Pull us out, Anakin. We needn't draw more attention to ourselves than necessary. Remember what I taught you about dives."
Anakin grinned. "Of course, Master."
Maul looked at him in grateful, strangely green-tinted relief.
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One of Anakin's favorite memories was the time Father took him and Maul to a distant planet to train. He remembered the driving rain as they raced headlong, side by side, into the herd of panicking grazers, living in the sheer raw joy of the Force.
Maul tripped over Anakin's bostaff when Anakin overreached to strike his prey and ended up face first in a deep mud puddle. When the Zabrak lifted his head, black and red and now entirely brown, mud dripping from all his horns, Anakin couldn't help it. He laughed and laughed, and laughed some more, even when Maul tackled him into the same puddle.
When Father arrived and pulled them apart, he made them work twice as hard until their chests heaved for air in the thick musty environment and they felt like collapsing into the dirt. He radiated displeasure. But Anakin hid his own grin, because he had seen Father's.
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Even as teenagers, Maul couldn't bring himself to resent Anakin. After Sidious had revealed the existence of the Sith Order and hinted at their coming importance, he asked Master about the Sith code, if all emotions were truly allowed. Master scoffed and agreed, pointing out with his usual biting wit how some were definitively less useful than others.
Maul disagreed about one of them. He thought sometimes that he would do anything for Master or Anakin. He was devoted to them. He wondered if that meant he loved them. They were the closest thing he had to a family.
Love.
Jedi weren't allowed to love.
So that made it okay for a Sith, right?
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"You still drive like a madman," Maul scowled and stuck out his tongue.
Anakin grinned darkly back at him. "You know you'd like it if you could just relax."
The bi-colored Zabrak twisted to look out the window of the small speeder and clenched the handle of his vibroblade. "You know Master doesn't like us relaxing. We're supposed to be training, making ourselves better all the time."
"Why?" Anakin scoffed, jerking the steering console to the right and sending Maul's stomach to the left. "So we can kill each other even more spectacularly in front of Plagueis when the time comes?" His sarcasm was biting in the Dark Side.
Maul stiffened, feeling the anger of his younger dark brother in the Force. "We don't know - "
"Sithspit!" Anakin interrupted him. "Search your feelings, Brother, you know it's true. It's what Plagueis wants. The best. And there can only be one 'best.'"
Maul turned away from him and slunk lower in his seat, determined to focus on the mission ahead of them and remove these doubts from his thoughts. But does Master want it?
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Senator Palpatine sat in his pod and watched the proceedings; although to others he looked attentive and grave as the Trade Federation squawked about the general unfairness of life, inside his thoughts were far away.
His boys – no, his students – were both young men now, teenagers each, strong in the Dark Side and vying for his attention though neither had turned on the other yet.
But that would change when Plagueis decided.
You've done it again, he fumed inwardly at himself. You've gotten attached to them. You should have learned with Vidar Kim. He didn't necessarily feel the savage joy he should have, when thinking of the struggle to come. He didn't relish the thought of Anakin or Maul dead on the floor, their life force leaking into the grates of the LiMerge complex while Plagueis chuckled overhead and the other boy's eyes gleamed like firelight.
He would much rather watch Plagueis's blood seep into the grating. The thought stuck in his craw like a poisonous whisper and didn't leave, not even when Sate Pestage gripped his shoulder and told him the session had long ended.
But an apprentice was loyal.
Up until the moment he wasn't.
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The older they got, the harder he trained them. Anakin found himself breathless more often than not when they sparred in the lower levels of the LiMerge complex. He knew Maul was pushed even harder than him, being a couple years older. His brother never complained though, so he didn't either.
Father was breathtaking too, the way he could fight with one saber, two sabers, no sabers at all. Anakin wanted to be like him someday, like him and Maul. He was getting better each day, he knew that much at least.
Not good enough. He lost his balance when Father swept the training saber under his knees and held the humming blade to his throat.
"Again," was all Father said and pulled him to his feet with the Force.
But Anakin felt his brow twisting with worry.
Father sounded… urgent. Urgent and concerned, like something was coming and there wasn't enough time.
Like time was running out.
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He once read an old Jedi prophecy when his master instructed that he should understand his enemy. The prophecy spoke of a Chosen One who was meant to bring balance to the Force. Most of the time, Sidious laughed at the idea of prophecy.
He wasn't laughing now, when Plagueis's lightsaber was sliding into his shoulder with agonizing clarity.
He had stood up to him. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He had not been prepared.
He should have turned on the youths and struck them down for their defiance to the Lord of the Sith, but the arrogant boys stood there side by side, refusing to give Plagueis what he wanted to see, and Sidious found himself turning against Plagueis instead.
He was still shocked he had done it. And viciously triumphant. Plagueis was his teacher, but never his master, and the old Muun now understood.
The lightsaber fight was brutal, his attention diverted half the time in seeking to keep his students alive. After all, what use would dead students be to him? He let the hatred loose against Plagueis, let all his anger and wrath and resentment of decades bubble up and explode through his fingers in chained lightning. Plagueis barely held him off, even in the Sith Master's prime.
But Plagueis had understood his weakness, as he had always understood, and the older Sith went after his charges. A feint, for when Sidious moved to cut him down before the towering humanoid could strike Anakin where he had fallen, he found Plagueis waiting and the lightsaber sliding into his muscles and bones. His nerve endings turned to liquid fire.
His soft cry when Plagueis tugged the blade free brought the Dark Side alive in Anakin and Maul both, and the Force trembled under their combined rage.
As he lay in agony on the grating, his own blood smoking out of him – ironically, for he had foreseen all but his own – Anakin and Maul joined forces against the Sith Master. They would not last, he knew they would not, so he marshalled the midichlorians in his cells, tasking them to take away the pain so that he could struggle silently to his feet.
Masking his presence in the Force, for he was just that – insidious, as Plagueis had always mockingly complimented him – he padded forward with his lightsaber off, his hand pressed tightly to the jagged, charred wound in his shoulder. Ahead, Plagueis batted Maul into the wall of the chamber with enough force to shatter bones – mine, not yours! – and he clenched his teeth when Anakin went up against the Muun alone.
The boy's screams as the Force Lightning tore through his flesh drove Sidious faster, closer, until he was at Plagueis's impossibly tall back. Sidious shoved the handle of his lightsaber into the small of that back and ignited it, the red blade blossoming through the Muun's thin body with a raging hum of satisfied bloodlust, jerking it up through the three hearts. It felt… so good.
He let his victory ring through the Dark Side.
Plagueis spasmed and roared and turned, clutching Sidious by the throat and lifting him high, twisting the blade out of his hand and breaking the fragile wrist under his fingers. Sidious hissed, knowing he would die then, wanting to look his teacher in the face and spit in his eye defiantly. He could feel the Muun fading, kept alive only through his desperate desire to see Sidious die with him. Plagueis would never have the satisfaction of seeing his grand design. Never.
Neither would he, which was unfortunate in hindsight. If not power, then nothing. He watched the Muun lift his blade high, winced as it began to lower, and then the blade was dropping harmlessly to the floor, biting into unfeeling durasteel. Plagueis looked at him, confused and snarling until his elongated head dropped forward and hit the floor with a dull thud. Sidious tumbled after him as the massive hand lost its grip. The Force howled with fiery purpose and left him nearly breathless, anointed to the position of Master at last.
Behind the Muun's fallen corpse, Anakin stood panting, the resilient boy he had always been, his vibroblade clutched tightly in his bloody hands. Sidious grinned. "You – you might have timed that better," he coughed and groaned at the fire in his shoulder.
Anakin threw the vibroblade to the floor, knelt at his side, and smiled darkly back. "You've always called me an overly dramatic teenager, Master. I'm only living up to your expectations." Impudent boy…
Maul crawled over. "Master! We are all alive." The Zabrak was panting, covered in lightsaber burns from the near misses, but his eyes were lit with fanatic devotion still.
Sidious let Anakin examine his shoulder. From the veiled horror on the boy's face, the arm might well be useless now. "So… so it would seem."
Anakin looked at him, solemn again. "This changes everything, Master."
Yes. Yes it did.
He should have berated them for such foolishness. He should have punished them. But he did not, because he could not find the energy, because they were all in this together.
He knew his eyes were glowing.
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A happy ending, I guess? It was originally meant to be pretty much pure fluff, but fluff and I have the strangest relationship sometimes. I enjoyed writing this unique AU. Once again, make sure you check out Brievel's version, called Dynasty. I think it's probably fluffier than mine by a good bit.
Leave a review and let me know what you think! Hope you enjoyed it! :)
