Chapter 33

One chapter left. An epilogue. And this journey is over. To everyone that's still reading, cheering on Anakin as this plot very slowly unfolds, I hope you enjoy. If this has mattered to you, I'd love to hear it. Every one of you have mattered to me.

Garrett says hey, and that Anakin's adapted ship is inspired by his insanely suped-up car that can be controlled with his hands alone. It was the start of his emotional healing process; figured it would do the same for Anakin.

Anakin felt like he was floating as he placed the headset on, unconsciously going through the prep steps to flight. His body hadn't forgotten, his hands still swift and precise over the ship's dashboard. The Eta-class wasn't his favorite—he'd rather fly in his own Jedi Starfighter, but that name didn't belong to him anymore.

There was a snap as Ahsoka sat down beside him, her own headset on.

"Ready Skyguy?" she asked, eyes red but a smirk playing on her lips. "It's a little different, what with the adjustments."

Anakin looked down at his feet, where rigged wires and panels rerouted power back up to where his hands could reach. He experimentally tugged at the steering wheel, and the ship's engine purred.

"I think this'll do just fine. And I'm not rusty, if that's what you're asking."

Obi-Wan murmured something from behind him. Something about how much he hated space travel when Anakin was driving. All Anakin could think of was this is the last of the good times.

"All right," Anakin said, rubbing his hands together. "Squad leaders, report."

"This is Blue Leader."

"Good to hear from you, Hawk."

"You, too, General."

Anakin gave a salute to the air.

"This is Umilio Leader. Glad to have you back, General Skywalker."

"I was thinking the same thing, General. This is Yellow Leader."

"Appo, here. Lead the way, General."

The four ships behind Anakin's own roared to life. Anakin cleared his throat, fingers wrapping tight around the wheel.

"Say your goodbyes men. The second you steer out of this hangar you won't have a place to call home anymore. This is each of your decisions to make. No one…" Anakin cleared his throat again, something was lodged there and it hurt. "I am grateful for every one of you that stays, but I don't wish this life on anyone."

Appo's voice came over the line again. "We got you, General. Understand? We're behind you."

"Yeah, I know," Anakin said softly. Then into the headset. "Set your coordinates. Leave as little trace as possible. I'll see you planet-side, everyone."

There was a chorus of "yes, sirs."

Ahsoka gave him a punch on the shoulder. "You're getting soft."

Anakin let out a wet laugh. "I'm an old man now."

And Force, did he feel it: the responsibility of all these men, the risk of his adventure, the ache deep in his back and pelvis. He felt the authority under his hands, the power still strapped to his side only because of Master Yoda's faith in him. Those weights on top of proving himself—even moreso now, to Obi-Wan, to Qui Gon Jinn, to Yoda, to the Council, to Padmé, to Ahsoka, to his men—that he was Anakin Skywalker.

He had lost so many titles… Jedi Knight, Chosen One, General in the Grand Army of the Republic, Warrior of the Infinite… and…

And the Hero With No Fear.

Because Force, he was terrified. And he hadn't stopped being scared since the moment he realized what the Separatist tank had done.

"Let's see if I'm still the best star pilot in the galaxy, yeah?" Anakin said, pulling up on the steering and feeling the weightlessness of the ship in flight, the pull of the wheel against his direction, just enough to remind him of his humanness. "Tell me when we're set for hyperspace."

Ahsoka looked back to Obi-Wan. "Doing okay, Master?"

Obi-Wan had his eyes on the sky as the Resolute disappeared from view. No one came after them; no ships or messages or threats from command. They were in the clear. It looked as though Obi-Wan wasn't thinking of that, though. Something else.

Obi-Wan was silent. He took his lightsaber in his hands. "I will be."

There was a blip, announcing hyperspace coordinates were locked.

"We can turn around, Obi-Wan. We're only banished from the Temple; the Resolute is fair ground."

"I have one last battle in me, Anakin." Obi-Wan ran a thumb over the lip of the saber. "I can feel it. I want that last battle to matter: win or lose, it would only matter if I'm fighting at your side."

The consul blipped again. Ahsoka said quietly that they were ready to jump.

"Say the word master, and we go back." Anakin heard the line open up in the headset.

"We're ready for the jump to hyperspace, sir."

"Make the jump, Anakin." And Anakin knew he must feel the weight too.

Padmé pulled a headscarf on, wrapping it around her neck twice and securing it behind her head. The goggles felt wrong on her nose, and with them on they made Rex look less sickly and pale. His hands were folded, unfolded, folded.

"I don't like you going alone," he mumbled.

"I'll be fine, Rex."

"I just don't like it."

Their shelves were dangerously empty, the dark corners visible and just as hungry as they were. Just that morning Rex had retched until the scab along his spine had split open, making Padmé's argument even stronger than her uneasiness. Neither had the Force's intuition…and yet…

"I'm going. I'll make the journey quick. If something happens, I'm more than capable of handling it." She made a show of sticking a blaster in the holster at her side. "You are in no shape to travel."

Rex slunk into one of the six chairs. "Something's going to happen."

He was prone to nightmares; no training or programming in him stopped them from creeping in when he least expected them. He scrubbed at his fuzzy head, hair he normally had shaved to nothing, starting to grow in. Something would happen, and it would be bloody, and he would be here underground. He would have let the Senator go alone into it all.

"Rex," Padmé was there then, grasping his shoulder the way she did so perfectly, right between the bruises and the scars. "Look at me."

He did. "I'm a soldier, ma'am. Half my life I've been beaten to hell. I've always gotten back up—"

"I know, Rex, and I—"

"Ma'am, you're not giving me a chance." Rex had barely raised his voice, but in the small space it sounded like a shout.

Padmé took a step back. Her hand was off his shoulder.

"If something happens," Padmé started.

Rex motioned to his healing body. "I know something's going to happen. But nothing, ma'am, could be worse than what I've been through."

And she couldn't argue.

They both shouldered packs, Rex visibly wincing as the straps roughed his stitches. Padmé took what little food they had left; Rex took a bundle of extra fabric and a minimal first aid kit. There clothing felt inadequate for the elements the moment they stepped outside their hut, the harsh sun stinging and everywhere, the wind yanking at what little they had.

"There should be a speeder parked out back," she said over top the noise. "We'll have to give it back after we buy our own."

"Back to who?"

"Our neighbors."

Rex closed his eyes as he imaged two scenarios: Padmé stealing a speeder from possible enemies or going into the hut of possible enemies and asking to borrow their ride. Neither of them sat well in his stomach.

The speeder was small, the color of the sand originally or covered in sand Rex couldn't tell. It seemed to shake under the heat, rolls of it streaming upward in shaking mirage. Padmé went to drive, Rex slid carefully beside her. The seats seared his legs right through the fabric of his pants.

"I cannot believe people live here," Rex said. Padmé's eyes became far away.

Anakin lived here, Rex knew she was thinking. He was thinking it too.

The Kaminoans were long gone, their longwinded tactics and treatment plans gone with them. Potently, they still sat in her mind. If she had given Anakin the choice to use one, would he have stayed? If she had allowed his Padawan to encroach on his healing process, would she have left? If she hadn't made such rash decisions, or done too careful of research, then… then…

Her halls were mostly empty again. No clone troopers left to perform surgery on, all recovering went back into the desperately empty squadrons they had been taken from. Jedi she had treated before now went to the Resolute or other close by Republic units to receive help in order to get back faster to the field.

She had empty bacta tanks, empty beds, empty therapy room.

And it scared her worse than a full ward.

Just the death counts she saw for yesterday's battles alone…

Now Vokara Che sat in a low chair, a part of the Council circle. Yoda was the only one who didn't look completely grim. And, as of late, even that seemed to be more crazed than truly an emotion. She was a substitute; a testament for how many Jedi Masters were out leading men.

Or banished.

"There has been a great disturbance in the Force," started Master Mundi. "Masters, I am sure you are all most aware of it."

"The beginning of the end, it is," Yoda said lowly, and even quieted the power of the words sent chills up Vokara's neck.

Mace Windu, a flickering blue projection, stood. "A drastic term for a disturbance, Master. But yes, I have taken notice of it. Whatever it is, it's powerful enough that my troops are…strained."

For the Master Healer, it was a cold pit in her stomach, tight and unbelievably all consuming. She had felt something close to it before: just once, just as unexplainable as now. The more she looked around the room, the more she noticed the same sleepless colors on Jedi faces.

This was not a small, everyday disturbance.

This would shake the galaxy to its core.

"Do we have any insight as to what this is, what's causing it?" said Master Shaak Ti, another projection. Her long white eye-coloring was arched just slightly. "My troops have been shaken as well, as well as the surrounding tribes and civilians at our current battle site."

There was silence.

Then Yoda spoke again. "Soon, it feels. Between good and evil, the battle will be. The Chosen One emerges, but their face—cloudy, it is—and the outcome of the battle too. In tune, we must be, with the Force."

"Will this battle turn the tide of the war?" Windu said, arms folded. "Cloudy, Master, is when there are options. We are running out of options."

"And soldiers," Vokara said.

A solemn nod from Master Yoda. A hand over the face from Master Windu.

"Its true, is it not?" she continued. "The reports are easily accessible to medical personnel. My halls are empty, and Force knows soldier burials must feel like a pass time now for our men out on the field. The Republic logo has never looked bloodier, more villainous in the galaxy. The Separatists make droids faster than we can train men, Jedi are falling, and we have been spending time banishing valuable—" Many started to protest, but she pushed on, getting louder. "—men who have done nothing to deserve their sentence."

The room was heavy with the looming disturbance, now Vokara's words made it so that it was barely breathable, as if somehow they had sunk under water within her sentences. She thought of the feeling of guilt, and how she should not have sensed it in that room.

"Anakin Skywalker has never followed the Jedi Code once in his life," Vokara said, an awkward laugh bubbling up from her heart before she felt herself return to stone. "But he deserved more than the Jedi gave him."

A notification on the communicator of many of the Council members drew them out of the heaviness. Guilt gave way to something else: a mix of dread and hope. Master Shaak Ti answered.

"This is CT-C68. Count Dooku requests the presence of the Council."

Vokara barely suppressed a shiver. She has treated him and the ash in his lungs the very same as she would have with her other patients. But it was hard.

Because she wasn't even relieved to know Kenobi and Skywalker were alive. The word going around was they refused medical treatment—only giving up their clone companion—one she had had in her ward not a few weeks earlier, and Dooku himself. And, while the Sith refused to speak up until this point, his eyes on her as she worked was enough to stir up something inside her that she had buried along with her lightsaber, deep in her desk.

"Speak with him, I will," Yoda said, standing from his chair. He looked weaker, spent of energy. Older, somehow, than he'd ever seemed to her.

"As will I," said Master Mundi. He stood too. Other Jedi followed, slipping out of the air as projections shut down or out of the room. The blinds drew around her, letting in the bright outside light. Vokara squinted a little, pressing the palms of her hands against her knees.

It hurt that they were hurt, and that they had refused treatment.

It wasn't that it was uncharacteristic of Skywalker. She had seen it first hand, his shaking hands, his heart rate through the roof. He had been so scared, a teenager with shaggy hair and a freshly cut off Padawan braid. Cornered in the training room, his chest heaving. There was blood coming from the incision at the surgery site near his mechanical arm. He wouldn't let her touch him.

"Don't, don'—" he had shouted, fingers pressed against the site as if he could stop the bleeding on his own. "I can—I can do this."

She had called him ridiculous, told him to grow up. But she hadn't meant it, now she realized that. She hadn't meant grow up at all. She was telling him to go back to the boy she could sit down on the bed and order to sit and he would stay… at least for a little while.

He was growing up, even then. Getting wiser than her orders.

"I'm giving you two choices Skywalker. Get up and follow me or we pick you up and drag you along. There is no choice saying you can sit here and bleed out."

Anakin and winced, pulling on his mechno like he could yank it off. She had realized that it looked different than when she had helped install it. Something in the wiring…or the general design…

"What did you do to your mechanical arm, Skywalker?"

He had given a smile, more of a grimace than anything. "Made a few adjustments. Installed a few extra bits of gear."

Vokara thought if he was willingly distressing his newly surgered arm and well enough to make snooty conversation with her then he was well enough to walk.

"Follow me, Skywalker."

A clearly articulated threat. The boy got up shakily. He swayed, using every inch of the wall until they had to part to follow Vokara's path. Then—

"Skywalker!" Vokara had him by the shoulders, his head pressed into the junction of her shoulder and neck. A long hiss came out after a moment, after his eyes flickered back open again, and his legs scrambled for purchase. "Skywalker," she said again, less of a quip.

Blood dripped onto the toes of her boots.

"I can do this," Anakin repeated, attempting to push off of his healer to stand again before his knees had remembered how to support weight. Half collapsing, trying to stand, half collapsing again. "Just-just let me…"

Looking both ways to make sure she could save a bit of his pride, she hoisted the growing boy onto her shoulder, carefully adjusted his arm so it wouldn't go on and make itself worse, and carried him down the hall.

She thought, if the Force had separated them before she had done her job, then it was for a reason. He was strong, stubbornly so, and brave to a fault. Wherever this disturbance was, whatever it was, she had no doubt he was in the eye of it.

He's got Kenobi, she said to herself. Though that doesn't give me much comfort. Kenobi didn't have a history of increasing Skywalker's self preservation skills.

"Be careful," she said. Out loud. It turned Master Yoda's head.

"Something more to say, you have, Master Healer?"

"Nothing, Master."

His ears perked, then drooped. "With us, you'll come? Hm?"

To Dooku? Not ever again. "No, Master."

Yoda waited.

"Only for a moment, Master."

She followed him as he turned and hobbled down to the containment area.

Vokara stayed for longer than a moment.

Dooku sat with his back to the glass, hands and feet chained. His head barely inclined, his back impossibly straight for the injuries he was recovering from. There was a kind of defiance in it all, and it made Vokara clench her teeth.

"Dooku," she said, being the first to acknowledge their arrival. Dooku certainly wasn't going to.

"Is there a reason you brought your doctor, Yoda?" he sneered.

Yoda simply chuckled. "Reason, there is not. Not in a time as this."

Dooku straightened further. "So you have felt the disturbance."

Who hasn't? Vokara thought grimly.

"Strong, it is. Know of the cause, you do?"

"No."

Vokara choked. "No?"

"No."

"Very well," Yoda said, moving to walk away. "Soon, dinner should be."

"You should be worried, you old fool."

Yoda continued on. "Why? Hm?"

"Because it is bigger than the Republic, bigger than the Jedi. And I know what you did to your Chosen One."

Vokara flinched. Yoda didn't.

"Chosen. One. Hm? Chosen many. Chosen you. Hm? Bigger than the Jedi, yes." And the old master looked pleased with himself, smiling away as Dooku slowly turned around to face them. As if any part of what he said had made sense.

"This will just be the beginning. My master has planned this day for decades, centuries even. And you have the audacity to sit and laugh about it. You will lose everything you hold dear, Yoda. Everything you've worked for, everything you thought was yours forever."

"A short time, forever is, is it not?"

Vokara saw it too: that Dooku was talking about himself more than he was threatening Master Yoda. Palpatine had done something to him, something that felt irreversible, something he had imagined not even the Dark side would stoop low enough to do.

"Anakin Skywalker has been discarded into the lump of other useless ploys to stop this day from coming. He, that simple slave boy, would have been his champion. And he blamed it on me, on my army that I supplied for him… and to think, a slave boy? Taking the place to rule the galaxy at Darth Sidious's side. I did my Master a favor by taking him down from the pedestal he had been put on by half-witted Jedi that see potential in anyone with a midichlorian count of point one."

Vokara had to breathe in two long breaths before she stopped seeing red.

"Mysterious ways, the Force works."

Dooku snarled. "Mysterious only to the impolitic."

There was a beat of silence.

"What do you know, Count?" Vokara said through clenched teeth. "You will rot in this cell either way. Tell us what you know."

Dooku raised a controlled eyebrow. "Doesn't sounds like Jedi persuasion. I suppose I have vital information for you, don't I?" He paused looking up at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. "Make it so that I don't rot in this cell, and I will tell you everything."

"Everything you know," Vokara corrected, scoffing. "Which, as a reject from Palpatine's 'grand scheme,' can't be much more than what our feelings tell us."

He gave a dangerous smile. "I know where a final battle will take place. I know the enemy will be unprepared. I know which soldier will fire first. I know who will win."

Yoda seemed lost in thought, mouth drawn into a wrinkly frown and eyes shut just slightly.

"Do this, we will."

"Show me how. I will be set free?"

"It's too dangerous for you, and you know that. With the Jedi, you will be fed, housed, and treated. We are not inhumane with our prisoners, and here you are safe from whatever Palpatine has planned." Vokara folded her arms across her chest. Dooku didn't seem to find value in her words.

"Freedom, you shall taste. If valid information, you give." Yoda promised. "And help, you provide."

"What sort of help?"

"Depends, it does, on the information you give."

Vokara held her breath.

"Nothing to lose, have you."

"Darth Sidious will be en route to Tatooine at this very moment, backed by my entire army—everything I have made over a lifetime, changed in an instant to follow his commands alone."

Vokara thought of the chip implants in Republic clones. The sly Chancellor had a back-up plan after all, something that would destroy his allies in order to destroy his enemies.

"He will raze everything on that planet—women, children, natives, farms. Anything that stands in his way between his rule of the galaxy. Your troops are spread thin—Jedi are low in numbers and energy, they are at war within themselves over conflicts having to do with their fallen heroes. Kamino has been bribed to not only stop advancements, but to stop production. They will blame it on their efforts to help poor Skywalker and his paralysis, but money speaks louder to them than sympathy for another species. Ammunitions are low, morale is nonexistent. The best captains and generals are incapacitated. There are more men piled in burial sites than in barracks. But you know this, don't you, Masters?"

Vokara looked to Yoda, who looked too peaceful for the information they were receiving. "Continue."

"In the sand, a former Senator will draw her weapon and fire at the first touched-down droid. She will quickly be outnumbered, surrounded, and punished. The battle will begin with blood being sucked into the grains. No one will see it."

"Skywalker, the galaxy's Chosen One, will draw his saber. You feel his agony, his pure rage as he engages his foes, one after the other, after the other, until his muscles are shaking and he has no one left to lead. Then, when the emperor has him alone, where he had thought he would show him the way of the Dark Side, he will now show him its wrath. No one will walk off of the battlefield unscarred, if anyone walks off of the field at all. The sand will stop soaking up the blood, and the sun will bake the planet red with Jedi blood."

A chill ran up the back of Vokara's neck. How would he know this? Not even the Jedi have that clear of detail into the future.

As if reading her mind, Dooku finished. "Darth Sidious has foreseen it all."

Yoda called on the Force, the emergency doors to the prisoners started to shut one by one. Dooku's sour scowl disappeared behind the slam of a metal slab. Alarms began to ring throughout.

"What are you doing, Master?" Vokara said, not particularly sorry to see Dooku's continued incarceration, but also surprised at Yoda's word being broken.

"Too late, we must not be."

Yoda tucked his cane under his arm and took off at an almost-run, Vokara Che close behind him. They split off, Yoda running to the council room, and her to her desk. To the wall with the names of death on her hands. To the drawer with a lock. To her lightsaber.

Then, to the battle.

Leo woke with the worst feeling of dread he had ever felt squeezing his lungs until he felt as though he would never breathe again.

Bacta swirled around him, bubbles hitting his skin and splitting in multiples, moving their way up to the surface like he couldn't do. Days, months, years, may have gone by. He couldn't remember what had happened, only that there was a fight, and then there was darkness. Mind-searing agony. A room on fire.

Still fighting for air through the intubation that made his throat scream and his tongue itch, Leo tried to claw and pull at the straps that held him in place. Each movement made a different part of his body flare up. There was a distant-sounding alarm, and Leo figured it had been a success then, whatever he had done. The deprivation in his chest had set something off.

But no one came.

He shrieked, and more bubbles floated to the surface. Something bad was happening. Something bad, something bad, something bad—

He banged on the glass with his fist, screamed, felt like retching but couldn't. There wasn't enough air in the tank. Something was happening, and he was stuck suffocating, no one was coming, and if all of those things were somehow connected…

Force, everyone could be dead.

The alarms didn't stop. His knuckles cracked open on his thousandth hit, and the bubbles gathered around the blood.

Anakin wavered, his hands on Obi-Wan's shoulders as they fitted him into the braces he shouldn't have been using with his healing, grating bones. If Hondo could see him here…

"Kriff, this feels awful," he moaned as Obi-Wan helped him take a step. He felt the jolt all the way up his spine as he took another, taking more and more of his weight off of Obi-Wan. Bile was rising in the back of his throat.

"If you wouldn't have been so stubborn and had just agreed to use a standard hoverchair, we wouldn't have to worry about your mobility," Obi-Wan said, and they took another step. "But if you think this is not the right choice, then—"

"I'm doing this. I can...I can do this."

The rumble of warning in his gut made him wince. Obi-Wan "hmmed."

Another step. Grinding coming from his shin. Another. His feet stayed well-balanced, his hips steady. The straps around his abdomen and chest make it hard to breathe, but his legs follow his commands.

"Let go, Obi-Wan."

Ahsoka frowned. "Are you sure, Skyguy? You've barely started and—"

Obi-Wan let go.

After years of never being able to, of fighting his mind and his heart to hold his Padawan, his brother as close to him as he could, he let go. And not in the way the Jedi instructed—with no attachments or desires—but with the strength that comes with facing lasts. It was unexpected, the sudden strength on both men's parts. It felt as though Qui-Gonn Jinn was right there, right there beside him now, a hand on his shoulder, telling him that he was proud of them both for what they've done. That they had come a long way, and it and hurt, and it was coming to an end now. Their journey together would end with both of them

Force, there was so much determination in his eyes, how could he not let him prove to himself he was strong enough?

Anakin stood for a moment, unsure of his first move. The braces made his moves more calculated, heavier, and more permanent. He shifted his hips, hands shaking, and steps into a defensive position.

Defensive, then offensive. Swing through.

Par a blow. Offensive. Swing through. Defensive.

His legs keep up with his head. Protect, attack, protect.

Obi-Wan lets out a quiet sob. "Anakin. This… I thought with all those set backs, you'd never…get here."

Ahsoka lets out a wild whoop. "It's sort of like you have C-3PO a lightsaber, but you look… like yourself, again."

"I'm myself in my chair, too, kriffing sand. This contraption doesn't fix me." And Force, did Anakin feel it. The grinding sounds hadn't disappeared, and already his nerves were feeling frayed. He wanted to have Padmé there to see him, selfishly, where he could look her in the eye and say he loved her one last time; he wanted Rex out there in the crowd, better yet by his side. Force, keep them safe. And let the disturbance have nothing to do with them. "We've got troops."

The other ships landed slowly, stirring up desert storms underneath them. Men hopped out in pairs, their helmets shining against the matte background of dunes. There was a general shuffle, men getting their weapons or forming ranks and tapping backs and heads. The deafening sound of transports, the sting of sand.

Eyes fell on the General, and everything seemed to go silent.

Conscious of the hundreds of eyes on him, Anakin's feet threatened to falter. The uneven ground, the beating-hot sun, the weight of the situation and responsibility, the disturbance in the Force.

"What do we do now," he said into the wind, not sure who would hear.

The answer came in the form of dark marks in the atmosphere.

It begins.