X. Dreams Continued
Channeling every bit of energy he had, Anakin pummeled the laughing Sith furiously, giving Palpatine everything he had."Yesss...spectacular...your rage is magnificent! Everything I hoped for shall soon be complete."
"We'll see if you last that long you bastard!"
Parrying, thrusting, Anakin fought wildly, his eyes boring into that of his opponent's. As soon as Anakin began to ask the Chancellor rapid fire questions about why Darth Plagueis the Wise was no longer alive despite knowing the secret of cheating death, Palpatine began to backpeddle. For a split second Anakin found himself wanting to believe him, but remembered the Jedi whose destiny was cut short-would Sidious dispatch him the same way once he had outlived a purpose, like he did Dooku and Maul? Would he split his wife in half like he did to Saesee Tiin, if Anakin refused to kill her?! Using the Force, Anakin squeezed Palpatine's larynx, and ignited his saber. "Enough lies, you son-of--a-bitch. In the name of the Republic, you are under arrest!" Anakin's blue eyes were hard and frigid as ice, and Palpatine knew that look well: Anakin Skywalker always had the same expression on his face when he was stalking prey, most recently Darth Tyrannus.
Now they were toe-to-toe, striking and dancing around each other like lions in an arena. As Sidious's rage grew, Anakin caught glimpses of the Sith's true plans for him and for the galaxy: slaves being made of nonhumans. Environmental rape of entire systems at the profit of Sidious's coffers and at the peril of entire species, some already endangered. The suspension of free speech and free will. Jedi slaughtered-even children. Worst of all, his wife and baby dead at his hands- Force choked to death. Kreth, the Sith knew Anakin well enough to know this was the Dark Side power that Anakin was tempted by most when his temper shorted out, and it was frightening.
Anakin's mind was wildly grasping at his memories of his nightmare: his wife's call to save her echoed in his brain and wouldn't stop. He could hear the sound of his wife's screams and a baby crying growing louder and louder, his hate for this freak in front of him growing. He took the high ground on top of the desk, and with a rallying cry he shut his eyes and jumped with all his strength his blade flashing as he came down.
But when his eyes reopened Sidious was gone, and he was alone, hurtling through an abyss. He landed with a thud, and as he rose, he noticed he was in a woodland clearing on a hill on some faraway planet. The stars twinkled above. His sense told him to walk forward-there was something important here. The shadows of the branches above passed over his large frame, but when he passed over the peak of the hill before him he saw a magnificent sight that took his breath away. Here before him in a stone circle were double plumes of green and blue fire, burning bright and seemingly twisting around each other in a helix. Their warmth was incredibly hot, warm enough to be all consuming but impossibly they harmed nothing around them, most especially the Jedi looking upon them.
The presence of these conflagrations did not seem to be some sort of magic as they appeared to be sentient, even against all logic to Anakin. As he circled the flames, they filled him with an indescribable wonder he hadn't felt since boyhood, and a joy that made his heart so full it felt fit to burst. Somehow, some way, this was all SO familiar, and at the same time, distant, as if he had known of the existence of this space and most especially this presence before but never stopped to look closer. He approached. He reached his hand forward-the fires seemed to beckon his touch. As he extended his arm, he noticed that here, he was whole; there was no prosthetic arm. He opened and closed his fingers. He could almost not believe it-even an old birthmark on his wrist was back.
He reached in, and the sensation was heavenly. All old wounds, all doubts and all fears he ever had throughout his life flashed before him in a hair's breadth of a second, and melted away. The flames sparked and cracked, and as he looked above him they began to glow brighter than both suns of Tatooine combined, but it did not hurt Anakin to look at them. "Stand back," they both whispered, "there is much to be revealed." Walking back ten paces, he saw it. Inside the fire, he noticed two pairs of eyes looking back at him: one set brown, one set blue. "Padmé?" he found himself wondering, staring at the second pair's: they were nearly identical to his wife's. The brown eyes looked sideways to the other pair, then back at Anakin. They seemed very amused, and very alive, as if they were revelling in some untold knowledge.
But before the set of brown eyes in the blue fire could whisper again, their pupils contracted. Something was very, very wrong. The wind in the trees picked up, and Anakin's cape blew up behind him. The two sets of eyes disappeared, and as the sky above suddenly turned stormy and black., Anakin's ears began to ring. It grew louder and louder, until it was the deafening sound of children's screaming wails of pain, bringing Anakin to his knees and crying out himself in pain; his ears popping. The flames seemed to quiver in fear, for snakelike a cloud of red smoke encircled them, howling and cackling wickedly all around now...over the din his wife was still calling his name...his TERROR was mounting as the earth quaked beneath him and cracked open, shoving him on one side of a divide and the flames on another. His lightsaber was knocked from his hand and rolled down, down, down, into the pit, which Anakin noticed was teaming with bodies leering, clamboring for him and climobing up to reach him...one reached the top, and grabbed him by his arms, pinning him down. Another grabbed his feet...it was wearing a mask...
"Anakin! Anakin, please, wake up!"
Anakin looked up, his whole body wet with fear. He coughed a little and rolled over barely in time to vomit profusely into the waste receptacle. He had sweat so much the whole cover of the cot was wet, soaked clear through his clothes. Above him was Obi Wan, looking deeply worried, his arms bracing his friends shoulders as if he had been shaking him. "Old friend, are you alright?"
"I wish I could be." Rolling over, he swung his legs over the bed. With the one hand he had, he massaged his temples. "How long have I been out?"
"A few hours, but you've been thrashing about for the last one. It was like you were posessed-are you sure all your dreams are like this?!"
"This one is a new one."
Curiously, Anakin noticed Obi Wan's talking to be a bit muffled. "Did you meditate before you slept like I asked?"
"Yes."
"Did you attempt to ignore thoughts of the future and concentrate about what is going on in this room only?"
"Yes, Obi Wan, I am not a youngling and I remember Yoda hitting me over the head with that gimer stick as much as he did this: always in motion, the future is."
Obi Wan reached for a pillowcase on the bed opposite Anakin, handing it to him to wipe his face off. "Do you still hear Padmé screaming?"
"Yes."
Obi Wan ran his fingers through his hair. "It is worse than I thought."
"What do you mean?"
"Anakin, I don't mean to cause you any pain, but I fear that these dreams are much more than they seem."
"How could that be?"
Obi Wan looked at his former apprentice. Now more than ever it was difficult to be a Jedi Master talking to a Knight. "We both know that dreams can be premonition, even prophecy, to a Jedi. However, Anakin, what isn't well known at the Temple is that these types of dreams can manifest a Jedi's worst demons within himself-temptation to the Dark Side when a Jedi has very few defenses. They are rare enough that I wouldn't be surprised if even Yoda doesn't know how to combat them."
Anakin nodded. "He even tells the younglings in the Bear Clan they mustn't contemplate what their dreams mean until they are older, and by then most of them are so focused on being paired up with a master that they forget all else."
"Yes, and most don't get a midichlorian count above a few thousand. When I listen to you speak, Anakin, sometimes you talk as if the Force were a living being."
" We've been through this. It is. Your point?"
"Anakin, whether you are the Chosen One or not, you have a very high midichlorian count-the highest known. As much as Sidious wants you for your abilities the Dark Side of the Force will want you even more; I think that the Masters may have overlooked that you may be more prone to its temptations and attacks in this respect. It has already started trying to eat away at you in the daytime and now it hunts you at night, ever more intense now than with your mother and with childbirth fears because it can see what you know, and where you are weak. It need only a man to plant them in your heart. When the Chancellor allowed you to pour out your feelings to him, it also allowed the Dark Side a clearer view of your ambitions, and handicaps. If the Force is indeed alive as you claim, then its Dark Side is more than just a deadly enemy to you-it is deadly to us all. Master Qui Gonn once mentioned to me a legend of an ancient Jedi having similar experiences in meditations, but I thought it was just that-a legend."
"How do you figure this?"
"I realized it meditating myself. Anakin, I was never terribly good at concentrating on the Living Force, the moment. While I was concentrating I thought that maybe the key to gaining a leg up was to ask you to concentrate on what was around you, to clear your head so that the dreams wouldn't get a hold of you."
"Yes, old man, but that would only work if the same nightmare repeated."
"Which means that the Force is attempting to reveal something to you that cannot be combatted by meditation alone. It has chosen you and you alone to bear this burden, and it means that, although the nature of the future is changing, Padmé's future isn't. I'm sorry old friend. I wish there was a better answer."
Anakin was unsettled, but he remembered Sidious and the quaking ground: Padmé only started screaming whenever there was something to be afraid of in his dream-and it wasn't childbirth.
"What is it, Anakin?"
Sitting back, Anakin began to explain the details about his dream, as many as he could remember: how it began with his memories of the duel with Sidious, the double flames, and the eyes-especially the brown ones. Obi Wan scratched at his beard, amazed.
"I think that you may be right, Anakin, but that doesn't mean she is out of danger. The Dark Side without a doubt is stalking you both, from within and without. Palpatine shall stop at nothing until we are all dead or enslaved. He is the main avatar of the Dark Side and has been for decades: twisted pure evil in the flesh.It uses him as much as he uses it by now, and I fear that this dream means it wants to change tactics."
"It is going to try another way to destroy me?"
"From a certain point of view. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the double flames or the mask and smoke mean. It could be a whole host of things but whatever it is your destiny is likely entwined with theirs."
Anakin weakly crossed over to the other bed. Normally he would be lashing out at whomever passed by over this-his wife usually bore the brunt up beautifully. But there was nobody to rail at over a dream that made no sense, that was both beautiful and horrible, and that was almost certain to repeat. His head began to spin. The Force was telling him that his wife and child would not die in childbirth anymore...but they could die now with a more brutal ending..Darth Plagueis the Wise couldn't stop death..the Jedi holed themselves up in temples admonishing rejoicing in the death and loss of a loved one... and the expression in those eyes from his dream haunted him. They were so like how he remembered his mother's... it was almost too much to bear.
"Anakin."
"What?"
"Take a shower, and then send the second half of your instructions to your wife. She ought to have left planet a while ago and if you feel for it you may sense she did not leave alone."
"Tell me something I don't know."
Obi Wan had meant Jettster, but it dawned on him to ask. "What was the baby's name to be?" he sent through the Force.
Anakin looked over his shoulder. " I already call her Leia ."
