"I want you to know," Admiral Calavicci repeated for the umpteenth time, "I don't like this one little bit." He snapped the words off, face stern, an accusing look in his eye, trying to intimidate. On anyone else, it might have worked, Anakin thought. Anyone who'd never had to stare down Master Windu, at least. But strangely, although the admiral had been hostile to him from the start, Anakin didn't resent it at all. In fact, he thought he understood why he acted the way he did - he cared about his friends, about the people who worked on the project with him. Especially Dr. Beckett. Anakin respected that. In fact, he did a bit more than respect it - he saw a bit of himself in the admiral's actions - the part of him that cared about his friend Obiwan; the part that would suffer no fools who might endanger lives. So he said nothing, and simply followed the admiral down the corridor from where he was tuned to whatever frequency (he couldn't think of a better way to put it) was needed so Dr. Beckett could see and talk to him.

It had been done to Dr. Beckett once before, someone they'd called Gooshie had told him, only they thought it might be best to re-do it since someone else was now in control of the doctor's body. So now it was done - again - and he was ready to talk to his counterpart first hand. That was the part the admiral didn't like. Anakin wondered if the man thought he'd start raving when he saw someone else operating his body. Maybe he does think so, he decided, remembering what they'd said he'd been like when he'd first arrived. He didn't really think he would, but acknowledged that it would be a bit strange to see himself from the outside.

"Okay," the admiral said, pulling up in front of a door locked with a security touchpad. "This is it. But before you go in there, some ground rules." He paused to make sure Anakin was listening. "Rule one: I'm going to be watching you every second, so don't try anything funny. The minute I get the slightest hint that something's not kosher, I hit the kill switch. Connection broken. Got that?"

Anakin nodded. He'd expected as much, though he wasn't sure exactly what he'd be able to do as just a hologram that no one could see or hear but Dr. Beckett.

"Good," Admiral Calavicci continued. "Rule two: Because the transfer process is what it is, Doctor Beckett doesn't have complete recall of the project, which is what makes it so difficult to troubleshoot, for one thing. He's aware of this part of the problem. What he's not aware of most of the time is Doctor Alessa. He doesn't always know she's here; he doesn't always know he's married. And it's not YOUR job to tell him or give him any clues about it, either accidentally or on purpose. You are here to answer his questions ONLY. Is that clear?"

Anakin blinked. "He doesn't remember ..."

The admiral's forefinger thrust before his nose.

"No questions," he barked. "You heard what I said the first time. Now you just do what I told you - do not bring her up - and everything will be peachy freakin' keen."

Anakin clamped his mouth shut and nodded, but his mind whirled with incredulity. How could he not know he was married? Or, wait, the admiral said he only forgot sometimes. Did that mean Anakin was doomed to forget Padme if he stayed here too long? No, he didn't think he could ever forget her - in fact he knew he couldn't. Didn't Dr. Beckett love Dr. Alessa, then? She certainly loved him - Anakin remembered the way she'd talked about him, and though she'd never said so, it was obvious that she missed him terribly and wished he'd come back. He knew she felt terrible for being a part of the reason her husband was lost in time - he'd thought she must be frantic to find the mistake in the way the project was built; certainly, if Padme were lost the way Dr. Beckett was, Anakin would move the galaxy to get her back.

But he had no more time to consider Dr. Alessa's problem. Admiral Calavicci had keyed in the code, the door opened, and he was thrust into the imaging chamber. It was time to help solve his own.

------

The soft glow of greyish light suffused the otherwise pitch-dark chamber. He recognized the light/dark striping of light falling through slatted blinds and realized Dr. Beckett was waiting for him in one of the temple's meditation chambers. The light grew stronger and the image came fully into focus; he saw the pattern of light falling on his Jedi robes, worn on his own body, now under the control of someone else. Anakin had come to help, but now that he was here, he wondered why. Helplessness overcame him; it was worse, even, than being forever held up to the standard of Obiwan and found wanting. The project would not have selected him if he had not been about to make some mistake from which he'd never recover. One he'd never be able to hide. He'd been judged in advance by the Force itself as unfit to make his own decisions. How much more of a failure could he be?

"Anakin?" Dr. Beckett asked him tentatively in his voice.

Anakin nodded and swallowed hard, trying to bring his focus back to the present.

"I'm Sam Beckett," the other man said, glancing surreptitiously at something to his left. Anakin imagined someone might have brushed by the door.

Anakin started to speak, failed, then cleared his throat and tried again: "Why did you want to see me?" he asked.

"I thought it would be more efficient to talk to you in person," came the answer. "From what I've heard, it seems you and I are in agreement about most of what's going on. For instance, I think we're both convinced that whatever the reason for the switch, it must be something fairly immediate. Am I right?"

Anakin nodded tentatively.

"Would you be willing to agree then, that whatever the reason is, it must be something on which we do not agree?"

Anakin's heart lurched. No, he thought, the nebulous fear of Padme slipping away from him rising up in his thoughts, overpowering all else. No, he could not agree - suppose Dr. Beckett told him she must be sacrificed. How could he stand that? The darkness of the room closed in around him ...

Dr. Beckett was holding up his hand.

"Hold on a minute," he said. "Believe me, I'm in complete agreement with you about keeping your wife alive."

Anakin put his hands to his head, rubbing his temples, nodding as he tried to catch his breath. Yes, from all that he'd heard, Dr. Beckett tried to improve the lives of the people he helped; of course he would save Padme if he could. Anakin had to hold on to that thought.

"Okay," Dr. Beckett went on, "With that in mind, there are some things I need to ask you about. To begin with, I need to know exactly what happened in your dreams. So tell me."

Bewildered, Anakin frowned at the other man.

"She dies," he said flatly.

"Yes, I understood that," Dr. Beckett told him dismissively. "What I meant was, can you tell me the exact content of the dreams. Detail by detail. How you saw her die, what the circumstances were. Can you do that?"

He could, yes, Anakin thought. But it would require him to re-live what happened in them. It was bad enough just knowing that it had happened ...

"Why?" he asked, his trepidation evident in his voice.

Dr. Beckett nodded understandingly.

"Speaking as a doctor," he began, "It's highly unlikely that your wife would die in childbirth, given the state of the medical facilities available here, even if there were unforeseen complications..."

Anakin nodded, closing his eyes in pain. It was much the same argument Padme had used, yet it didn't change the fact that he'd dreamed of her death. But the doctor was going on ...

"... however, I understand there was once an attempt on your wife's life awhile back. Now, also speaking as a doctor, I can tell you that in the event that a pregnant woman close to term is dying, the baby is usually taken from her to give it a chance to survive on its own."

Was it possible, Anakin thought? He'd never thought of it that way.

"Is she okay?" he asked quickly. "Has anyone tried to kill her?"

"She's fine right now," Dr. Beckett told him. "And, so far as I know, no one has tried to kill her recently. But I need the details from you so I can see if this is a possibility, and if so, how to prevent it."

Anakin nodded, swallowing. The war might be nearly over, but Char Diem was certainly still very much alive. The war had prevented him from continuing his pursuit of vengeance against Padme to such an extent that they'd all but forgotten about it, caught up as they were in the details of battle. And just because they knew Grievous' whereabouts did not mean the separatist leaders were there on Utapau with him. Anakin thought uneasily about how he himself was not present in the dreams.

"I've had two dreams," he began. "I had the first one several times. Then, the night we switched places, it was different."

"Okay, go on."

"In the first one, she's ... she's screaming in pain. Not the pain of birth; it's much worse. That's something I just know in the dream; it's not something I can see or tried to interpret later," he tried to explain. "She screams 'Anakin, please help me!' and then I wake up."

"Can you see anything else in the dream?" Dr. Beckett asked him. "How the baby is being delivered or where?"

Anakin shook his head. "I can't see any of that; just her face, mostly. I know the baby is coming, but, again, it's something I just know," he said. After another moment, he added, "She's wearing a white hospital gown, if that helps."

"Does her face look injured at all?"

"No, just in terrible pain. Her hair is loose; it isn't usually. But I'd guessed that maybe they did that for the birth."

"Okay," said Dr. Beckett, "Now, this knowledge you had about her pain and the birth occurring: Did you have the same kind of knowledge that the excessive pain was caused by the birth going wrong? Or did you just conclude that's what must have happened after you woke up?"

"I ..." he said, swallowing as a renewed rush of fear swept through him, "I just concluded that myself," he admitted before tears overwhelmed him and he buried his face in his hands. I thought I had almost two more months and I don't, he thought. I would have gone; I would have left her ...

"Anakin." Dr. Beckett's voice cut through his misery. "Tell me what happened in the other dream. Can you do that?"

His hands shook as he wiped the tears from his eyes and nodded.

"I should have figured this out for myself," he said bitterly. "I knew he'd tried to assassinate her before ..."

"The other dream," Beckett prompted again.

"She's lying there on a hospital bed almost unconscious," he began, unable to keep the resentment out of his voice as he added, "Obiwan is there with her."

"Obiwan Kenobi?"

"Yes," Anakin snapped. "He says, 'Don't give up, Padme; hang on,' and she says, 'I can't,' and ... and she dies. I ... I'm not there." He bit his lip to keep from sobbing out loud.

"And she doesn't appear injured in that dream either?"

"No."

"And she was giving birth in this dream, too?"

Anakin looked away. Fifteen minutes ago he would have said yes, she was. But now he wasn't sure. He didn't have the inner knowledge about it he'd had before; in truth, he'd simply assumed she was because she had been in the first dream he'd had. If he were completely honest, he could not even tell if she was still pregnant. He told Dr. Beckett as much.

"Does Obiwan know about your marriage?"

"No."

"Were you under the impression that he knew about it in this dream?"

"Yes, but ..." Anakin stopped, trying to think through the new information, "But it was only a conclusion I made after I woke up. Not absolute knowledge."

"May I tell him?"

"No!"

"Padme is under the impression that the Jedi would interfere if it does turn out to be another assassination attempt," Dr. Beckett told him.

She was right, he had to agree; they would at least assign her a protector as they had before. But how could he tell them without their guessing about the relationship? He had no concrete evidence to go on.

"I told her," the doctor said, "That if it came down to it and you had to choose, you'd pick her over the Jedi. Was I wrong?"

Anakin glanced back up at him in shock.

"No," he said automatically. "Not wrong." He hadn't thought of it that way - was that what he was doing? On the other hand, was it truly necessary to tell the Jedi about his marriage in order to save her? It might not be; he didn't know.

"I would like to tell Obiwan about the dreams," the doctor announced.

"No."

"Why not? It appears he's going to find out about them anyway - isn't it better that he finds out before something happens to her?"

"I just ..." Anakin stammered, frustration at Obiwan's superiority, and at his present helpless situation overwhelming him, "I just don't want him involved."

"So it's more important to you to keep Obiwan out of it than it is for Padme to survive."

"NO!" he shouted. "That's not what I meant!"

"What did you mean, then?"

Anakin sucked in air, struggling to catch his breath, his hands pressed to his temples. The fear of loss filled him; he fought it the only way he knew how, with his anger. It built up, a fire within, burning the fear away, steadying his shaking hands.

The other man continued to stare at him, waiting. Finally, he said, "Maybe I'm here because you are too jealous of Obiwan to see the situation clearly. I'm sure you would otherwise; you do know what's really important in the long run."

"Stop it!!" Anakin hissed. "Just stop it!! Stop acting like him! You think you know everything, how to solve everyone's problems! Why don't you solve your own? You're the one with a wife you can't even remember!"

The words hit Sam like bullets. He stared, uncomprehending, at the other man. But before he could recover from the shock, questions on his lips, the connection was broken. The hologram vanished. He was alone once again with his thoughts in the meditation chamber.