And now, a little number I like to call "Palpatine's Last Stand."
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Chapter 37
For Padmé, the world had stopped spinning ages ago. The passage of time had likewise crawled to a halt. Air and gravity were all she knew. When through her blurry vision she saw what looked like Anakin and Obi-Wan battling Palpatine with superhuman ferocity, she blinked. It could merely be an illusion, a hallucination caused by pain and dehydration.
It mattered little either way. It didn't change the fact that with trembling fingertips, she felt the first baby's head crowning. With its father engaged in mortal combat yards away, it was proceeding boldly forward.
Instinct hijacked her senses. She could do this. She was made to do this. The setting may be jarringly wrong, but her body had a job to perform, whether she was ready or not. Whether her husband was ready or not.
Anakin had been seeking power, he said. Did it compare with the raw, unbridled power that surged through her now?
Power that met unspeakable tenderness when she felt the warm, slippery body of her firstborn pass between her hands.
A boy, whimpering at the sudden change in temperature. He was beautiful. Perfect. Squinting his clear blue eyes at a world more foreign and frightening than he realized.
And still attached to the umbilical cord, she realized through her fog of sweet, intoxicated enchantment. She upturned the deceased doctor's medical bag and a long, slender pair of scissors fell out. What Varul would have used before awaiting her slow death.
Gritting her teeth, she snipped the cord, almost laughing when she felt no pain. Of course it didn't hurt. And now he – her son – was free. Snuggling him against her as best she could, instinct continued to steer her, wild and breathtaking, as she braced to deliver the next twin. The pressure was different this time, less excruciating. A few muted grunts later and the boy's sister followed him with ease.
A swirl of fine, dark brown hair clung to the girl's head, which was turning an angry shade of pink as she cried much more loudly than her brother. Her eyes were pinched shut in protest, but Padmé guessed their color was the same mahogany brown she always saw in the mirror.
Two miniature replicas of their parents, the two were. Apparently, Kaminoans weren't the only ones who'd mastered cloning.
Amid the heap of medical supplies were two receiving blankets. Swaddling her children in them, Padmé shifted her sore body to shield them from the caustic battle still raging between Jedi and Sith. Five seconds of watching and all she wanted was to bury her face in the pillows. As if seeing no evil would protect her… or Anakin.
Anakin, who now placed himself directly between Palpatine and his new family, fighting with the strength and ferocity of ten men.
"So healthy and strong, your offspring," Sidious said greedily. "Vibrant and powerful, I can tell already!"
"Take a mental picture, you won't be seeing them much longer!"
"Mistaken as usual. They've been mine since before they were conceived."
"What insanity is that?"
"Do you know how long I have foreseen this?" Sidious gloated, halting both Anakin and Obi-Wan's blades at once. "Since the day you first stepped foot on Coruscant! Your unsurpassed power, your marriage, your children – I saw it all in a flash, crystal clear and absolute."
"Not so absolute as you think!" Anakin gritted his teeth.
"We shall see. Your focus is already slipping, distracted by the newborns. Yes, you want to see them, hold them in your arms… the wait is eating at you!" Palpatine pronounced the T's with excessive crispness.
Anakin let out a frustrated cry, arcing his lightsaber with ungainly force. The move almost cost him his left arm. Obi-Wan intercepted Palpatine's vicious move just in time, grimacing at the Sith with renewed rancor.
"Cheap shot, Chancellor!" Obi-Wan cried. "Only a coward would use that against a foe! Your soul really is a bottomless black hole!"
Mad cackling was all he received in reply. Sidious led the dance, angling his position so that Anakin would be forced to face him with Padmé and the twins huddled as a backdrop.
"They're so cold and helpless, Anakin," he hissed exactly like a snake. "Run to them. Embrace them as a father should. Will you deny them comfort at such a time as this? Mere minutes after they've been born?"
"Shut up!" Obi-Wan demanded. "Anakin, don't listen to him! Padmé and the twins will be fine, as long as you and I take him down!"
Anakin's head felt like it was splitting in two. He heard Obi-Wan's words as if through a helmet, processing the syllables apart from their real meaning. His sense of sight was operating far more dependably at the moment, and what he saw beyond Palpatine's shoulder had him wheezing from the effort to resist. Padmé, curled in a blood-stained gown, head tucked into her chest where two tiny heads rested. The control needed to keep from running to them, just as Palpatine invited… he didn't know if he possessed it. The Sith was right. His resolve was rapidly weakening.
In that moment, it mattered little how many midichlorians coursed through his veins. No man alive could have borne that emotional weight.
In what would be Palpatine's final temptation to the young Jedi, Anakin made his move.
A move that cost him a hand and several inches off his right arm.
The shock of impact wasn't what paralyzed him. It was the unexpected pain that tore through the synthetic limb. Doctor Tran wasn't joking when he said the finished product would look and feel virtually real.
And what a way to test that selling point.
With a spiteful flick of his boot, Palpatine extinguished Anakin's lightsaber where it lay next to his severed forearm. The gleam in the Sith lord's yellow eyes had never been brighter, never more lasciviously sadistic and at the pinnacle of pure, unspoiled evil.
"A fool and his appendages are soon parted," he quipped. "Often more than once."
Hunched over, Anakin clutched the cauterized end of his arm, cursing his folly. He'd let the Sith manipulate his thoughts yet again. Had he no defense against such ploys? Was he destined to yield to them to the bitter end, surmounting one only to fall prey to the next?
"Look at you, crippled and pathetic," Palpatine sauntered around him. Obi-Wan was crouched in stiff uncertainty, wondering if and when to strike. "The story of your life, really. Raised a slave on a dismal planet. Stolen from your mother, the only family you ever had – and then you failed to save her. Put in your place by Dooku, who was the first to claim your arm as a prize. Made a spectacle by the Jedi when you failed to keep their code."
Neither Anakin nor Obi-Wan sensed an imminent strike from the Sith. He seemed perfectly content to milk his verbal assault.
"And now, the crowning glory of all those failures: losing your arm again, much to the shame and horror of your wife, whose life and those of your children you can no longer protect. Such chronic failure! So pathetic and unbecoming of the Chosen One!"
"What do you want from me?" Anakin barked. "If you're going to kill me, then do it! Quit toying with me!"
"I'd hate to kill you before offering you once last chance to join me. My point in revisiting your failures is to show you really have nothing to lose."
"Nothing except Padmé!"
"The Anakin I knew – the one I always envisioned living up to his power – would not be swayed by sentimental attachment. You're stronger than that. If only you could see how your potential extends far beyond mere domesticity and its trappings."
"Don't you dare speak of her in such base terms!"
The Sith lord's smirk reached a new level of slithering patronization. "She's already given you what you need. She has performed her maternal duty. Her usefulness is at an end."
Anakin was flushed and seething at this point. "Don't EVER speak of her like that! You wretched monster!"
"Shall I take that as a no? Is that your final answer then?"
"As sure as I'm a Jedi!" Anakin swore, throwing Obi-Wan a proud glance. It may be the last the two would share – and he hoped it conveyed everything he felt. His guilt and regret for letting himself believe Palpatine's endless lies. His shame over letting those lies lead to this most unfortunate end. And above all, his completely restored faith and pride in being a Jedi alongside his brother. The brother who might die this day along with him, but who would do so with full reconciliation.
Maybe somehow, through the mystical healing strands of the Force, that reconciliation would be Padmé's salvation as well. Maybe it would cloak her and the twins, transporting them far, far away from this pit of evil.
He could only hope. And pray. With eyes shut, he braced for martyrdom.
"Pity. In the end, you were weaker than any of us imagined." Turning down his red blade, Palpatine raised a hand to choke Obi-Wan, pointing the other at Anakin with dramatic grace as his knuckles locked. "I so hate disappointments."
"And we hate Sith lords!"
All three turned toward the voice in unguarded shock. Not that they needed to see Mace Windu to verify he'd spoken. The bald Jedi's booming voice was as distinctive as his purple lightsaber, which hummed alongside Yoda, Plo Koon, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Aayla Secura.
Mace stepped forward. "Consider us fashionably late to this party."
Obi-Wan couldn't believe his eyes. The temple lockdown… the far-flung summons to Jedi masters on assignment… all had been synchronized by the Force with stunning precision. And not a moment too soon.
Six against one were odds Obi-Wan would bet on any day.
"Better late than never, I always say!" he winked at Anakin, for whom the comment held its own meaning.
"Late and foolish!" Sidious snarled, flaring his lightsaber back to life. "Today has seen the undoing of Skywalker, and it will soon see the end of the Jedi altogether!"
"Only in your psychotic dreams, Sith!" Windu assumed attack stance. The four masters flanking him followed suit.
And then a small-scale war erupted in the good Chancellor's office. Carpets ripped and singed as seven blades whirled in eye-popping choreography. Fixtures and furniture flew at random intervals, torn from walls and stripped from bolts as the melee escalated. Holes and gashes appeared in furnishings that cost more than a senator's yearly salary. And still the epic battle raged, with Padmé seeking shelter behind a decorative partition with paper-thin sections. It wasn't much, but it was the only object capable of blocking her and the twins from view. Her best survival strategy was to stay out of sight, out of mind.
Through a slivered gap in the partition, she watched the impressive interplay of Jedi and Sith. She saw Anakin doing the same, his back facing her in a position that partially blocked her view. When an ear-splitting cry pierced the air seconds later, she strained to see past him. Someone had been severely injured. But who? It couldn't possibly be…
"Anakin, come here," Obi-Wan said breathlessly. "See what has become of your would-be master."
The Jedi stepped away to reveal a sorry sight. There was Palpatine, collapsed on his knees with robes torn, hair askew, and most astonishing of all, without either of his hands. His face was warped by the most despicable mix of hatred, loathing and vice. It contorted beyond recognition as Anakin stood before him.
"A fool and his appendages are soon parted," the Jedi said flatly.
"Clever, very clever," Sidious spat. "Brave words for someone who had to be rescued. Perhaps if you'd managed to bring me to my knees yourself, you'd deserve to boast."
"That's always been your folly, you rotten sack of flesh. You had me thinking the only route to pride and glory is through conquest. Finally I see that isn't the true source of honor. Selflessness is."
"How noble. Be sure to get that engraved on a Jedi temple cornerstone."
"Maybe I will, but there's one order of business I have to carry out first."
Not a word passed between him and Obi-Wan as the latter handed him his lightsaber. It was a somber passing of the baton. When Anakin had it firmly in his left hand, he searched his master's face one last time. Obi-Wan nodded, and in the taut moments preceding Palpatine's demise, he handed Anakin the final nail for the Sith's coffin.
"Your mother's death was no accident," Obi-Wan proclaimed. "This snake arranged it, no doubt hoping to use your angst and frayed emotions to his advantage."
Anakin's eyes turned to stone. He didn't need to ask how his mentor came to know this. He could see the truth burning in his eyes, hot like the Tatooine suns that first bore witness to this evil. All the turmoil and anguish of the past three years suddenly lay at Palpatine's knees. Sneering at his pathetic form, Anakin took one final step forward to perform the duty no one else could - or deserved - to do.
"This," Anakin sheared Palpatine's right shoulder away, "is for turning me against the only true brother I've ever known!"
The Sith writhed in brief agony but not a sound escaped his open mouth.
"This," Anakin severed the left shoulder, "is for coveting my children and plotting to kill my wife!"
A constricted hiss slipped between the Sith's clenched teeth this time.
"And this is for my mother!"
Padmé flinched at the sickening thud of Palpatine's head meeting the floor. The twins resumed their crying in tandem.
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Whoa! Crazy action-packed chapter to wind things up! Babies delivering themselves, dismembered hands flying everywhere, Windu's purple lightsaber - it's madness, madness I say!
Forgive the cheesy re-rendering of "This party's over" and "It has seen the end of Kenobi, it will soon see the end of the rebellion." I couldn't resist.
On a side note, in the movie I always wondered why Palpatine never expressed interest in abducting the twins. (Maybe he was thinking it? Until Padmé bit the dust, that is?) They'd be powerful allies he could influence from a very impressionable age. Then again, maybe he didn't want the hassle of diaper duty. Understandable.
Up next: Epilogue - which will be posted Saturday morning. Try to breathe calmly until then! :)