Chapter 11
Fear of Loss
The sky-blue prismatic colors of the hyperspace lane churned and twisted in a fantastic kaleidoscope of light around the shining silver skiff as it burrowed through spacetime with cool efficiency. Few who traveled these lanes bothered to stop and watch the roiling cloud-like beauty that was afforded them like a gift from the Force. So anxious were they to arrive at their destination, they never bothered to appreciate the splendor of the journey. So wrapped up in the past or the future, they never learned to take pleasure in the now.
The occupants of the skiff were no exception. A small astromech droid and a much taller protocol droid observed the displayed HoloNet news coverage somewhat impassively, unsure of what to make of it.
The petite human female, however, watched with tears in her eyes. The droids remained as quiet as they could. The ship was so still that the droids' servomotors could be heard working continuously as they executed the hundreds of autonomic functions they were designed to.
C-3PO had tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to try and get the Senator to rest or to have something to eat or drink. He fussed about her continuously. Artoo watched his droid friend make a nuisance of himself with growing frustration. No matter how often Artoo told the gleaming protocol droid that the Senator wanted to be left alone, C-3PO would respond with a string of reports on his superior capabilities with respect to interpreting human behavior.
As such, it was not without some personal satisfaction that Artoo whistled contentedly when the Senator threatened to deactivate the bothersome servant—permanently—if he did not leave her alone.
That exchange had occurred several minutes into the beginnings of the voice vote. Since then, Padmé watched in horror as Jedi Master Mace Windu, a man who did not like Anakin and for whom Anakin had no warm feelings himself, took control of the Galactic Senate, the Republic, and therefore the entire Galaxy.
Where were the Two Thousand Senators? Why did they not speak up? What were they afraid of?
The tears streamed down her cheeks but did little assuage the pain that she felt in gripping her heart. She wept more and more but the anguish just continued to build. It was a pain born from a life dedicated to an ideal. An ideal that was being ripped to shreds.
It was pain of loss.
It was pain of fear.
It was a pain of betraying her husband's wishes.
Padmé Amidala was a powerful woman in the Galactic Senate. She had obtained that power, in part, because of her drive and initiative. But the quality that made her most beloved in the Senate had always been her idealism. She held firmly to her beliefs even in the face of her own destruction. Everyone knew how she fought for her planet when the Trade Federation occupied her home world. Everyone knew how she had battled on Geonosis, side by side with the Jedi in the name of freedom.
I am not just Anakin Skywalker's wife and mother to his child, she reminded herself. I am the Senator from Naboo. And I will die before I stand by and do nothing while democracy crumbles!
It was decided.
Padmé stood and walked to the main controls. She changed the hyperspace coordinates with practiced ease and allowed the navigation computer to calculate the new vector. When the computer was ready, she ordered the ship to alter course in the hyperspace lane to the new destination. The flowing sky-blue beauty of the hyperspace lane altered subtly and the ship vectored on a new approach to its new target--its port of departure—
Coruscant.
Anakin, I'm sorry, she called out to him with her heart. Please forgive me.
Plo Koon never liked Anakin Skywalker.
He found the young Jedi Knight to be arrogant, abrasive, impulsive, and entirely too driven by emotions.
He also found him to be an incomparable pilot and a phenomenal warrior. Anakin Skywalker was the perfect Jedi Knight for the moment. In a time of war, the light side of the Force needed warriors and Anakin Skywalker was the ideal warrior. This, Plo Koon respected.
This, the Jedi Master feared.
What does one do with a warrior when the war is over? How does one tame the beast that is necessary in a time of war? How does one take all that raw destructive power that makes Anakin Skywalker The Hero With No Fear and turn it into the power of a mediator? Could Anakin Skywalker settle a dispute without a lightsaber?
Hidden behind the breathing apparatus that covered his nose and face to give him breathable air in the oxygen rich environment he spent the majority of his life in, the Kel Dor Jedi warrior frowned. Perhaps he never liked Skywalker because he saw too much of himself in the young Jedi Knight. No, he decided. That was simplistic and inaccurate. The Jedi Master understood his own flaws and accepted them in himself and in others. No. He disliked Anakin Skywalker because the man was an unknown. He disliked the Jedi Knight because Anakin was never sure what the Jedi stood for.
The Kel Dor worldview was very binary. Master Plo Koon, in particular, saw things in terms of winning and losing; black and white; light and dark. Anakin Skywalker, for the Jedi Master, represented something of a conundrum. He was capable of undeniable compassion. He would risk his life willingly to save anyone. In fact, he risked his life constantly in a vain attempt to save everyone. And this is was the conundrum. Why did this Jedi act this way? Why could he not learn to let go and accept the will of the Force? His actions were of greed and selfishness. They seemed like compassion. But those feelings were taking him to the dark side.
The Jedi Master had sensed this all long ago and had issued a warning to his fellow Council Member, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan seemed to be too attached to the young warrior to correct this egregious flaw. So Master Plo Koon accepted the Jedi for what he was—an unknown.
And Plo Koon did not like unknowns.
Now, as he found himself hurtling through space aboard the confiscated CIS starfighter that had the remarkable advantage of having its own hyperspace drive, the Jedi Master pondered his fate.
How was the young Jedi Knight able to call him through the Force from as far away as Coruscant? How was that even possible? Why was he called at all? The Jedi Master had never made his feelings for Skywalker a secret. Certainly a call to Master Kenobi or Yoda would have been far more appropriate.
Never one much for meditation, Master Koon considered his other mystery instead. This one required no use of the Force, but rather deductive reasoning and deep thinking—something he wasn't much for either.
At least it will make the next hour go by quickly, he mused.
He thought back to the decision to go to Coruscant. He remembered questioning whether or not he had truly experienced what he believed he had. Once he had accepted the truth of the call to arms, the decision was made. But he had found himself stymied by clone commanders refusing to return to Coruscant and missing hyperspace rings. He remembered the conflicted emotions running across the clone commander's face when he simply hopped into a nearby CIS starfighter that had been brought down by Plo Koon during the battle.
He remembered telling the clone commander that it would be wise not to try and destroy the hyperspace drive on his current ship or the commander might find himself on the business end of a very bright, very hot, and very deadly Jedi Master's ire.
His words had the desired impact, but Master Koon was concerned as he ripped apart the fabric of space in his commandeered craft toward the city world of Coruscant.
Why were the clones trying to keep me there? he asked himself for perhaps the third time. Where's Adi-Mundi when you need him?
The Jedi Master continued to ponder the situation as a light on his panel came alive, alerting him to his arrival at the prescribed coordinates. With ferocious suddenness, the azure clouds of hyperspace distended and then contracted in a horrid distortion before his craft settled neatly into real space.
The view through his cockpit became a portrait of distant pinpricks of light filled far below with a giant metal ball with billions of its own pinpoints. Plo Koon looked down at Coruscant with a frown forming beneath his mask again.
He hoped somebody down there would have some answers for him.
Yoda sat quietly in the Jedi Council chambers deep in meditation. He had said nothing to anyone after entering the Jedi Temple. He had watched Master Windu's speech live via HoloNet but said nothing. Occasionally, he would nod. His ears would droop a little lower and the creases in his weathered face would grow deeper.
Long after the Korun Master had walked away from the podium, the applause continued. Several minutes after he took his seat with Mas Ameda and Sly Moore on either side of him, the dissonant cheering remained. When the final vote was passed hours later, the head of the Jedi Order gestured casually and shut the HoloNet broadcast down.
Then he began to meditate.
Shaak Ti had watched the proceedings in silence, pushing the limits of her patience but waiting nonetheless. Inside, she found herself fighting to restrain the urge to join the jubilant behavior of the Senate as they gave control of the Republic to the Jedi Order.
No! she had to remind herself. They have given control of the EMPIRE to MASTER WINDU.
She did not know what had happened. She was not sure that she would ever know. She was not sure what they were waiting for. But when Master Yoda closed his eyes and began to meditate, she took his lead and did the same.
Anakin Skywalker was not so lucky.
The Hero With No Fear was afraid of one thing—that they'd run out of time! Already, Mace had gained control of the Senate and the Republic. In one fell swoop he had managed to command more power than Palpatine ever had. But that was not what Anakin feared most.
Mace Windu was growing stronger.
Already the dark cloud that had infected everything for so long and had been lifted with the death of Sidious was growing again. Anakin could see it in the Force as clearly as he saw the two Jedi Masters deep in meditation. He didn't know how to not see it.
Mace Windu was not only consumed by the dark side, but he didn't seem to be in control of it. It was as if the dark side was using the Korun Master as a vessel to pour out its evil on the world.
And the flow was intensifying.
Anakin stared in disbelief at the Jedi Masters who seemed completely unperturbed by the danger that all this represented for the Jedi Order and the Galaxy. He could feel the dragon unfurling in his chest again. Slowly at first, the tail extending and stretching as if it were waking from a long slumber. Anakin decided it best to try and meditate.
Slowly, the Jedi Knight closed his eyes and began to inhale the Force like a breath of fresh air. He reached out and quickly found the Jedi Masters in the multitudinous currents of the Force. He extended his reach and found Master Plo Koon exiting hyperspace high above the Temple. He reached out and found Obi-Wan meditating in his starfighter hours away from Coruscant but getting closer. He felt—
"Padme! No!" Anakin's eyes flew open and he found himself standing with his fists clenched. The dragon was fully awake and the furnace that kept it warm was completely aflame.
Shaak Ti awoke from her meditation with unbelievable grace and stood with her lightsaber ignited, looking about for the unseen danger.
Anakin hardly noticed her; he stood so frozen with fear.
"Anakin..?" she whispered. "What is it?"
"Fear, Master Shaak Ti," Yoda replied calmly, his eyes still closed. "Fear of loss. Drives this young Jedi Knight, it does. On the edge of the dark side, he is."
Yoda's words made Anakin blink. His unclenched his fists and as he opened himself to the light side of the Force it into him again. He used the Force to quench the fire in his heart and sooth the powerful dragon back into its slumber.
Within moments, Anakin was calm, passive, and at peace.
Yoda seemed to sense this as he opened his eyes and looked up at Anakin. So many times Anakin had seen disappointment in those dark green pools of light. So many times he had seen sadness and…sometimes…even fear. But now, in the eyes of the most respected Jedi Master in the Order, Anakin Skywalker saw something new—compassion.
"A fear unnamed," Master Yoda said gently as he pointed his gimer stick to the seat next to him, indicating that Anakin should sit down, "a powerful thing, it is. More powerful than any Jedi. To destroy a fear, alone you must not be. On your fellow Jedi and friends, you must lean, if victorious you wish to be."
Anakin nodded. He had known this instinctively all his life. But he had always been afraid to show his fear to his fellow Jedi. Palpatine had been the perfect solution. He had been the friend that Anakin could lean on. Now that friend was gone. Now that friend never really existed. Anakin felt the tears rush to his face in deluge of pain and terror.
"No pain do you know," Yoda continued softly as he placed his hands upon the weeping Jedi's shoulders, "that experienced we all, have not. Present your pain to the Council, you will. Help you rid yourself of it, the Council can."
Shaak Ti did not understand what was happening. But she knew that Anakin needed something that the Jedi had never given before. Perhaps it was something the Jedi did not have the ability to give. As she sat beside Anakin and placed her hand warmly on his other shoulder, she vowed that if it were possible, she would try.