-1.3-

Perceptions and Betrayals

Coruscant

Senatorial Housing

500 Republica Block

1019th Day of the Clone Wars

Anakin Skywalker stared at his wife's sleeping form, wishing (not for the first time) that he could simply lie here with her, and forget everything - the war, the galaxy, the Jedi… all of it.

Not that Padmé would ever allow such a thing. Much as she would never admit her shared desire to simply disappear so that they could live a normal life to anyone but him, her greatest virtue was her sense of duty, of patriotism. So long as she could make the galaxy better, she would not - could not - simply walk away.

Nor could he, for that matter, no matter how much he yearned to. Anakin was a Jedi to the core as much as he was a husband; he had - in his opinion, anyways - even less of a tolerance for injustice than his wife. Living on Tatooine had instilled in him an awareness of the amount of darkness and depravity the galaxy as whole could stoop to, as well as an understanding that things could get much, much worse.

This war, if nothing else, only served to prove him right. Jabiim was one such extreme. He had raged at the Council for their decision to abandon the planet in its darkest hour. They, in their collective need to appear in control, had censured him for his outburst.

There were times, Anakin thought sourly, that the Chancellor was right about the consequences of power. And yet, Anakin could see that the old man was not above to exploiting that power when it came into his reach. That Palpatine was still Chancellor into a fourth term, despite the constitution, showed both an astounding amount of faith on the part of the Senate majority, and a frightening trend towards giving him all the Senate's power in his office. Anakin, despite having no patience for bureaucracy, had learned enough over the years since he had left Tatooine, and especially since he married Padmé, to understand why the Republic had worked for so long. It was not perfect, obviously, but a dictatorship was worse. That said, a corrupt government was nearly as bad, and the Republic was perilously close to that precipice.

Padmé stirred, rolling into him. He smiled at her beautiful face in the light of the morning sun, and leaned in to kiss her neck.

"Wake up, love."

Her eyes opened slowly, and she smiled at him, love coloring those brandy-colored irises as much as the receding fog of sleep. She stretched slightly, and reached up a hand to his face.

"Morning, Ani."

He turned his face into her palm, pressing his lips to the soft skin. It would be so easy to stay like this forever…

His eyes filled with unbidden tears, as he stared lovingly at his wife. "Come away with me, Angel. Let's leave this dead world, and disappear."

She returned the gaze, smiling sadly at him. The secrecy of their marriage hurt her just as much, but duty killed any hope of their escape, and he knew it.

He nodded at the smile, knowing what it meant. He kissed her, and held her close.

"One day, my Ani," she whispered in his ear, pulling away so she could reassure him.

A bitter, sad smile of his own said what he couldn't, lest he break.

But not today…

~AoA~

Reception Hall

Office of the Supreme Chancellor

Senate Tower

They were to be deployed, Anakin learned that morning at the briefing, to the Yavin system. The Outer Rim sieges had deteriorated in favor of the Separatists, and it looked very likely that if Yavin fell, then a major supply lane for Republic forces in that quadrant would be cut. Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka were to leave within the hour, but Anakin felt an urge to touch base with the Chancellor, to sound him out about the possibility of securing his help to find a candidate with Padmé's conviction and sense of honor to take her place at war's end. It would take time, but he honestly believed that if the three of them worked on it, and a replacement that satisfied Padmé could be found, they could at last leave the galaxy-saving to others.

He was not entirely surprised to see the receptionist gone from her post. The young Zeltron was often running errands for her employer that went beyond the original scope of her actual post. So, as usual, Anakin walked into the entry room of the Chancellor's office, and looked for any sign that the older man was available.

:{…must surely see that if we do not alter the plans, my Master…}:

Anakin recognized Dooku's base rumble, and stopped short. Disbelief ran through him, than horrified outrage. Palpatine was the Sith Lord?

"My plans, Lord Tyrannus, will not change at this late stage. Soon enough, we will have young Skywalker amongst our ranks, and then we will strike."

:{I say simply kill the whelp, and be done with it.}:

Grievous. That clinched it. Anakin unclipped his lightsaber, and stepped into the room, making no effort to hide his anger. "I'm sorry," he said, saccharine innocence edging his voice like a honed blade, "Am I interrupting something important?"

Dooku's eyes widened. Grievous glared balefully at him.

It was Palpatine who surprised him. Palpatine had the gall to look regretful!

"Hello, Anakin," he said. "I truly wish you had not come here today."

"I can bet," Anakin bit out. "To be honest, I wish that I didn't know that one of the few people outside the Jedi I trusted was the Sith Lord I have been hunting these past three years."

Palpatine sighed, then turned to Grievous and Dooku. "Gentlemen, you have your orders. I must deal with this development." Having spoken to them thus, the Chancellor terminated the call, then turned back to Anakin.

"So," Palpatine said, his face still showing genuine regret, "Now that you know the truth, what will you do, Anakin? What is the plan, now that you realize what the game truly is?"

Anakin ignited his lightsaber, the tip dangerously close to the other man's face. "You were my friend! I TRUSTED YOU!"

Elias stared at the younger man sorrowfully. "I still am your friend, Anakin. More so than those fools on the High Council. You know they fear you because you could become like me. But, if that could let you live openly with your beloved wife, would that be so truly horrible?"

Anakin's eyes turned to ice at the mention of Padme; glacial and forbidding as the storms of Hoth. "You orchestrated the hits on her, and you have the gall to try to use her as leverage to gain my allegiance? I have lost friends - CLOSE FRIENDS - to your treachery, you lying bastard!"

Palpatine stared at him calmly, open, unruffled curiosity the only emotion on his face. "Are you going to kill me, Anakin?"

Anakin felt the dragon tighten around his heart; knew in his heart that he would be justified in ending this… monster… right here and now.

"I would very much like to," he growled.

"Yes," Palpatine hissed, like a serpent savoring the scent of prey on the wind, his voice darkening, becoming eldritch. "I can feel your anger… It makes you powerful; gives you strength." His eyes glowed a dark, sulfurous yellow. "Take your vengeance, my friend. I am defenseless." He stretched out his arms, exposing himself. "Strike me down with all of your hatred and sorrow, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete!"

Once upon a time, Anakin would have done just that. The Father's voice condemning him for not succeeding him in the Mortis Monolith, however, along with the memory of how close he came to killing Obi-Wan, stayed his hand. Despite everything, Elias Palpatine had been a dear friend in times when it seemed he had none. But to learn that same friend-and-sometimes-mentor was the devil responsible for all this destruction… for the deaths of countless souls… of the Pack…

No true friend would offer a kind word, then conspire to destroy the known galaxy in a grab for power.

"The Council will decide your fate, Excellency," Anakin said, forcing the dragon to return to its slumber.

Palpatine's eyes flashed with disappointment and contempt.

"A pity you have decided yours…" the Sith Lord said.

Anakin felt the danger a second too late to counter it. The blow to his head sent him spinning to the ground. Dazed, he gazed at his attacker from the floor, and gasped.

His own face stared back at him, the clone's eyes rolled up in his head.

Anakin felt the despair clench his heart as the clone drove a fist into his temple, and the lights went out.

~AoA~

The popular conception about carbon-freezing is that any organic that endures it is rendered comatose by the procedure. The intense cold slows down all of the body's autonomic functions to a crawl, and for all intents and purposes, time comes to a stop for that being.

It is an ugly, visceral lie.

Carbonite as an imprisonment method is on the shady side of the same experience derived from being buried alive. Your mind is active for the duration of the entombment, and you have no way to escape the effective feeling of… isolation.

In the case of Anakin Skywalker, the sum total of his inner demons and darkest nightmares tormented him for nearly seven years, while out in the galaxy, a monster that bore his face - albeit now behind a death's head mask - made his name synonymous with the darkest forms of evil, at the commands of a madman.

The horrible joke was, neither Anakin nor his clone understood the game that was at play…

~AoA~

The woman who once answered to Padmé Naberrie Amidala stared out on the skyline of Nar Shaddaa, her eyes - once filled with light and a love of life - now as dead and dark as the soul of this place.

It takes so little to fall… she mused silently.

Following his (saying the name of that man had long since served only to cause her revulsion and black rage) betrayal at Mustafar, Padme had, indeed, died. For all of two minutes. Upon resuscitation, however, she had lapsed into a coma, never knowing that the men gathered at her side had decided to act in what they believed was her newborn children's best interests. Leia had gone to Alderaan, to live in the house of Bail Organa as his daughter; Luke, in a move that would have only further infuriated him, was placed in the care of the newly-married couple of Owen and Beru Lars, with Obi-Wan watching over the boy from a distance.

And Padme? She was laid to rest in the royal vault in Theed; another attempt not to invoke the attention of the newly-installed Emperor Palpatine. Had the monster truly known of what had occurred, he would have killed Kaylantha then, instead of letting him do it a year ago.

A shudder still ran through her body when she thought of the sight; Kaylantha, dragged out of the palace by a handful of her hair, then publicly stripped, violated, dismembered…

Decapitated…

Then he had held her severed head by that same handful of hair, as a symbol of the Empire's terrible power.

He had never seen her, had obviously never sensed her presence. So much for our love, she had sneered inwardly at the time. Then, to see what he had done, had allowed to happen….

Well, she had never truly been allowed into his trust, had she? That was reserved for that bastard on Coruscant (even under torture, she would never refer to it as 'Imperial Center'; nor would she tolerate the affectation in her presence).

Five months after her 'internment', Organa and Kenobi told her family the truth. As she had heard it, her father had tried to throttle Obi-Wan, blaming him for his traitorous Padawan. While not even remotely true, she wouldn't have tried to stop it if she had been conscious; they stole her children from her - only right that they pay for it in all the small ways.

Upon her awakening, she had been inconsolable with grief; for him, for her children, for everything. She would accept no company, barely ate, and could not sleep. That went on for half a year.

Then the grief turned to resentment… to rage… to hate. On the day that her heart could no longer endure the hate, Padme exploded in the Force. There was no other way to describe it; the latent abilities his presence had fostered and nurtured erupted from the dark pit that had taken residence where her love for that man had once resided, and literally tore the walls of her childhood room apart as she screamed.

After that, all light and life in her eyes vanished. She would exercise herself into exhaustion, building back up her physical strength. As for her new-found gifts, well… that she did by trial and error. She held her rage in check (barely) and concentrated on the few snippets of the lessons Obi-Wan had given him what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Her family had grown afraid of her long before her eventual departure. Her nieces, who had once adored her, cowered behind their parents. Sola and Darred rarely came over, and when they did, she was always training. Her parents watched her as though they considered her a live thermal detonator, ready to go off at any moment. Eventually, she understood that she could not stay, and left in the early dawn.

She hitchhiked on transports and freighters for two years, a forbidding presence to anyone who approached her. She traveled to the Smuggler's Moon, penniless and ruthless, escaping a permanent future in a Hutt's harem only through sheer brutality. The slaves on board were freed, and scattered to the winds in the lower levels.

She, however, went up. She offered her skills as a bounty hunter and a mercenary, hunting slavers and lowlifes. It was during this period that a rescued slave child called her by the name she now bore. When she asked what it meant, the Togrutan child answered in broken Basic, "too bitter."

She had to agree; Ro Mara summed her up these days.

On the six-month anniversary of her time on Nar Shaddaa, she encountered another Togrutan; this one carrying a pair of lightsabers in a homemade quick-draw rig at her back under a black bantha-hide longcoat.

Ahsoka Tano, former Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and Jedi-Knight-in-exile, had come to Nar Shaddaa looking for her, never realizing that the hard-bitten, jagged little pill known as Ro Mara was in fact, her former Master's secret wife. It turned out that they both had rolled the unfortunate dice of working for Hyxis Gaerou, a mid-level enforcer in the employ of one of the older Hutt families on the Smuggler's Moon. What Ahsoka had intended to be a short sound-out of the merc Hyxis had prioritized for the hit on a business competitor in Black Sun ended up being a long talk at a Promenade cantina over juma juice about what had really happened.

They took the hit down together, and split the credits. Ahsoka, or "Solace" as Hyxis knew her, also laid claim to the Botajef SS-54 that had belonged to the target. Hyxis readily agreed, sneering at her interest in what he considered "a piece of junk."

Between the two women, he was proven wrong in a month, when they used the ship to turn his home to molten slag.

That was a year ago.

~AoA~

She heard Ahsoka walk up behind her. The pair of women had been up ever since they had felt a... resonance… in the Force. Neither of them could explain it, but they both felt like the galaxy was a lot brighter just then.

"We need to find the other Jedi," Ahsoka said.

Padme sneered at the thought. "Yes, let's go ask the people who we trusted to save us - who lied to you, and stole my children - for advice. Hey, while we're at it, let's go make nice with the Emperor and your old Master on the way!"

Ahsoka glared at the older woman. "We need help, Ro! If that tremor was the Jedi finally rallying, wouldn't you rather have an opportunity at being in the thick of it?"

The scoff that came from the balcony answered that query better than the voiced opinion.

"We have a better chance of the Force itself taking physical form, and saving the day. Oh, wait; that's what you thought he was!"

"Don't blame me for Anakin - "

Padme had the girl up against the wall by the throat in a nanosecond.

"Never. Say. That. Name." she growled.

Ahsoka raised an eyebrow, half in anger, half in query. "You want to kill me now, Padmé? Will that make it better for you, if you go into the hell he chose?"

With a disgusted grunt, she was released.

Ahsoka eyed her coldly. "I guess when you told Obi-Wan that you thought there was still good in him, you were just naïve, eh?"

A long sigh, and a shake of the head answered her.

"Then what changed your mind? Kaylantha?"

"That just clinched it." Padmé murmured. "I realized that he really didn't care about it, 'Soka. He choked me. While I was near to giving birth to his children, he strangled me with the Force."

She turned back to the skyline. "Obi-Wan and Yoda are right; Anakin's dead. All I care about now, is avenging my husband, and killing the bastards who took him from me."

Before Ahsoka could answer, the door to their apartment chimed. Ro turned to it - one hand on the modified lightsaber hilt at her hip, the other concealing the handle of a particularly long Hapan ae'draekh knife against the underside of her arm. Ahsoka opened the door, and motioned the all-clear behind her back to the other woman.

Illykh Kendros was a wiry young man, roughly twenty-five standard years in age, to judge from his appearance. One of a number of informants for the duo, he kept them abreast of events near to this particular apartment; more often than not, this amounted to anyone asking about them - potential clients, Hutt lackeys, and the like. On this day, however, Illykh looked like he'd run into the physical avatar of Death.

"Imperial patrols are in the sector block; at least a battalion strong. Five Hunter teams are with them."

Ro cursed, then set about packing up what was essential. "Solace, take Illykh, and go prep the Vendetta. I'll set up the surprise party for our incoming guests."

Ahsoka started grabbing ammo bags, handing three of them to the informant. "The hell you say. We leave here together, like we planned."

Before Ro could tear into the Togrutan woman verbally, Kendros spoke up. "Didn't you hear me? The block is in lockdown! Even if you get out of here, it'd be suicide to try to launch!"

The look he received from the short-haired woman would have sapped the will of far stronger men. "Never tell me the odds," she growled, then strapped on her gunslinger's rig, two pairs of hand cannons primed and in easy reach.

Ahsoka took a pair of hand-and-a-half lightsaber hilts with modified tonfa grips, and sheathed them emitters first laterally across the small of her back. "How long until they reach us, Kendros?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe less."

Ro slipped on her coat, flipping up the deep-well hood, then started loading power packs and grenades into her pockets. "Solace, forget the ammo bags; we have enough at the ship."

Ahsoka snorted in derision at that comment. "Not the way you go through them, opening up on people until you burn the packs out."

Kendros slung the packs over one shoulder, his eyes wide with fear. "We don't have time for this!"

As if to emphasize his statement, the unmistakable sound of marching came from down the corridor. Ro cursed, and pulled a dead-man's key from her coat. Walking to the door, she sank the key into a recessed panel in the archway, and turned it.

After Hyxis had been dealt with, Ro and Ahsoka had taken to keeping their heads on a swivel when it came to potential reprisals, or worse, Imperials. A large sum of money had gone into turning the apartment they used as a base of operations into both a kill-box, and a fortress. The latter possibility had been suggested by Ahsoka, who pointed out the fact that the Imperials eyed the Smugglers' Moon like a hawk, ever intent on one day bringing the Hutts to their knees, should the opportunity ever arise. The problem was, despite the capricious natures of Palpatine and Vader, they did not idly waste the resources of the Imperial war machine. The Hutt syndicates had been around for over twenty millennia, surviving the destruction of the Pre'dor Wars, the Bumani Exchange, the Sith Empire, and countless other conflicts and organizations. From their seats of power on Nal Hutta, the great slugs maintained as much of a neutral position in the galaxy as the Selkath. For all that the Emperor would love nothing more than to lay waste to the Hutts, doing so would put him in the untenable position of the mother of all power vacuums amongst the echelons of the criminal underworld. Five years post-Clone Wars, that was not on the table.

Yet, despite this stalemate, Imperial power was a heavy boot on the backs of the residents of Nar Shaddaa, guaranteeing that no matter what happened, the Hutts would strive to maintain their neutrality at all costs. So, Imperial troops walked the streets, and Hunter teams came to the Smugglers' Moon every so often, searching for Force sensitives to either recruit for the Emperor's service, or to destroy.

However, the teams had never concentrated on one area with such vehemence before.

Ro said it as they left the apartment via a rear exit to the marketplace.

"We've been sold out, Solace."

Ahsoka nodded. All things considered, it was the only thing that made sense; the Imperials had been suspiciously silent - no, damn near negligent in their patrols near the apartment in recent months. Either they were after a bigger fish, or the Hutts decided that the easiest way to both settle the score with the two women and maintain the tenuous status quo with the Imps was to simply leak their whereabouts.

It was the latter that made them eye Kendros. The Hutts would have known the general area to look, but that still was a portion of the city-planet eight to ten times the size of the Senate Plaza on Coruscant. News of the Imperial searches would have reached them long before the stormtroopers hit their block.

Which meant that someone who knew where they were had tipped off either the Hutts, the Imperials, or both.

Ro pulled Kendros by the collar into an alley, and placed the razor edge of the ae'draekh knife against his throat.

"The truth, Illykh. How did the Imperials know which block to hit?"

Kendros stared at her wide-eyed. "I don't know!"

"Don't lie to us!" Ro hissed, the blade biting into the man's flesh, causing him to yelp. "Who sold us out?"

Kendros turned white as a cloud in a Nubian sky. "They threatened to tell the Imps that the block was home to a Jedi enclave. Varesh knew you two were either Jedi or ex-Jedi, and he needed the magistrate off his back."

Ahsoka swore violently. Varesh No'maari Briaas was the Hutt who had held Hyxis' marker in life; the slug had never forgiven the two women for his lieutenant's death by concussion missile. More than once in the last few years, Varesh had openly tried to disappear the pair of them on one occasion or another. That he had seen fit to lie to the Imperials in order to settle the score only proved that he was an issue that would eventually have to be dealt with, lest they wanted to always have their heads on a swivel. Moreso, that he had forced Illykh into a corner.

"They'd have burned the block out, Ro; I had no choice!"

Ro sighed, knowing that Kendros, while something of a sniveling opportunist, had a loyalty streak a mile wide. When they had first met him, the kid had stood his ground - shaking like a leaf, and about to piss himself - but nonetheless telling them that he'd rat them out to the Hutts before anyone in the sector got hurt on account of the two mercs.

Fate, it seemed, had called his bluff; like a truly noble soul, he had kept his word - then, he had warned them as soon as he could.

Ro looked at him with a frustrated look in her eyes. "You know they'll likely kill everyone, regardless. The block's been marked as an enclave; better to torch it, than let us get away."

The look of sorrow on the boy's face told her that he not only knew it, he expected it.

"Solace, give him a gun."

Ahsoka looked at Ro with a stunned expression. "Excuse me?"

The human looked at her with a chagrined smile. "He saved our butts; least we can do is take him with us." She turned her attention to Kendros. "But, make no mistake; if you're setting us up…" she waved the knife under his eyes, "…you die ugly before they take either of us."

Illykh nodded. Ro stepped back, and sheathed the knife.

"Come on. We've got to get off this rock, and the more time we waste is the less of a chance we'll live to see open space."

~AoA~

Obi-Wan Kenobi eyed the bottle in front of him as though it were an old adversary, then grabbed it roughly by the neck, and filled his glass. To call the liquor rotgut would be elevating it; the homemade brew - a product of a still in Anchorhead - tasted like starship coolant, and went down about as easily. But, it also guaranteed to make whoever was brave enough to drink the swill so soused, they'd never get through three glasses without passing out, to say nothing of one helluva hangover when they woke.

Obi-Wan, deep in the grips of grief and self-loathing, was determined to break that record. So far, the score was in favor of the booze.

It was in this state, that Obi-Wan had his first encounter with the Force spirit of his dead Master, Qui-Gon Jinn. To say that the conversation had not gone well would be like saying that the leveling of Taris had been extreme; the drunken Kenobi had, at turns, vacillated between half-giddy derision and open rage at the dead Jedi, both cursing him and lamenting his death.

Then the tremor in the Force hit Obi-Wan like a sledgehammer.

Once he was sober enough to realize that he was not hallucinating, he paled at the thought of what might have been responsible for such a shift in the Force after all this time. Qui-Gon didn't blame his former Padawan for what had come to pass; or, at least, he did not feel that Kenobi deserved the brunt of the credit for the events that had led to the Purge.

{Palpatine played all sides against the middle, Obi-Wan; you were not the first to be fooled, and you will not be the last.} the Force spirit intoned.

"I only wish I could have kept Anakin from him," Kenobi said mournfully. "Perhaps things might have gone differently."

Qui-Gon shook his head, his face sorrowful. {And if I told you that Palpatine had contingencies in place to counter any action Anakin could take against him?}

Obi-Wan snorted. "I will grant that he played us, and we fed right into his hands at every turn, Master, but the man is not omniscient, no matter how well he planned this out."

The dead Master nodded, his expression grave. {Exactly why he would have been prepared, Obi-Wan; he knew, just as the Council did, that if Anakin truly was the Chosen One, then he would have to have a plan in place to guarantee his victory, should Anakin stand against him.}

Obi-Wan looked at his former Master in astonishment. "You're not speaking in hypotheticals, Master. What do you know?"

Qui-Gon stared off into the distance, towards the now-setting suns. {Only that nothing is as it seems, Obi-Wan. Beyond that, I have only speculations, and I dare not hope that much, given what has been done already.} He turned his gaze on his former apprentice. {One thing is for certain; before this is over, I fear that we both will discover just how far that boy is capable of falling, if the Force deems it necessary to isolate him…}