AN: What would happen if, when forced to the crisis point, Anakin Skywalker had had the wisdom to truly understand Padme's heart? What if he had been willing to let her go, rather than commit atrocity in her name? What if he had rejected the ideology of Jedi and Sith alike, and brought the Force back into balance? If only...
AN2: Italicized text at the beginning is from the Del Rey paperback novelization of Revenge of the Sith, pp 364-365.
Sidious offered an appalling smile. "There is a place within you, my boy, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air as you regard your guilt and shame. Do not deny them; observe them. Take your horror in your hands and look at it. Examine it as a phenomenon. Smell it. Taste it. Come to know it as only you can, for it is yours, and it is precious."
As the shadow beside him spoke, its words became true. From a remote, frozen distance that was at the same time more extravantly, hotly inimate than he could ever have dreamed, Anakin handled his emotions. He dissected them. He reassembled them, and pulled them apart again. He still felt them – if anything they burned hotter than before – but they no longer had the power to cloud his mind.
"You have found it, my boy: I can feel you there. That cold distance – that mountaintop within yourself – that is the first key to the power of the Sith."
Anakin opened his eyes and turned his gaze fully upon the grotesque features of Darth Sidious.
He didn't even blink. As he looked upon that mask of corruption, the revulsion he felt was real, and it was powerful, and it was –
Interesting.
From that infinite distance, that mountaintop within himself, the future opened up and Anakin seemed to see two paths spread out before him.
In the one, he knelt at the feet of Darth Sidious, accepted his mantle. At the end of that path, he saw a vision of himself and Padme, standing at the right and the left hands of an Emperor Palpatine. In that vision, he was the Emperor's sword, leader of a new Sith Order and queller of rebellions. And Padme was the Emperor's hand, the mistress of the Imperial Senate, who spoke for the Emperor and quelled with words rather than brute force. She was beautiful, but her eyes were dark and cold and hard.
In the other vision, Anakin saw himself rise up, striking down the Sith Lord. At the end of that path was Padme lying on a medical bed. He saw a shadowy figure place twin babies in her arms, saw her look down at them for a moment with love in her eyes before she slumped back down on her pillow, the light leaving her eyes forever.
And from the depths of his mind, a memory drifted up. Padme and him back on Naboo, in one of their conversations at the lake. Her quoting two lines from a Naboo poet and musing on the wisdom in them.
Some prices are too high to pay, no matter how valuable the prize. The one thing you cannot trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
There was no hesitation, no doubt. There was not even a conscious choice. How could there be? To fully understand the choice was to realize that you had already made it.
Is this what Master Yoda meant, when he spoke of being one with the Force? Anakin wondered as he rose to his feet, a blazing shaft of blue plasma fountaining from the lightsaber in his hand as he turned, stabbing upwards to penetrate the Chancellor's skull and incinerate his brain.
Anakin knew, in that moment of perfect understanding, that the Chancellor had never even seen it coming. He was, in his own way, as blind as the Jedi had been. The Jedi could not understand love, so they could never have grasped that Anakin was willing to sacrifice anything else for Padme's good. But Palpatine could not understand sacrifice, and so he could not grasp that Padme would rather die as herself than live as what Anakin had seen in that vision, nor foreseen that Anakin would sacrifice even his own happiness with her in service of her happiness.
With the chancellor's death, the dark energies that he had held erupted outwards in an explosion of ravening blue lightnings, but even as Anakin's one hand had driven the lightsaber through the Chancellor's skull, his other had come up, fingers splaying as his will gathered the Force into a shield around him. The blast of dark energies knocked him back off his feet, but it never touched his skin.
A rift opened in the shroud of darkness that had clouded the Force for so long, and for one single moment, Anakin seemed to see everything. Every path that could spiral out from that moment was spread out before him, and he knew what steps to take to select each possible choice. Almost instantly, the vision began to fade, Anakin's mind unable to hold onto such complexity and insight, but with an exertion of will Anakin grabbed on to one tiny segment of one path, keeping that line of choices in his mind. Which steps to take, who to speak to and how to combine lies and truth to get the result he wanted while leaving no way for anyone to prove him false. It wouldn't solve everything, but it would get him through this night.
"Chancellor Palpatine was secretly also Darth Sidious."
With seven words, Anakin Skywalker knocked the footing out from under the Senate. Padme stared in horror as she watched her husband standing in one of the Senate platforms, heedless of the explosion of voices and chaos that greeted his words. Nobody, not even she, had known what Anakin was about to say when the Senate was called to this special session. All that had been known was that something had happened to the Chancellor, something that had necessitated that Senator Organa assume the role of Acting Speaker to impose order on this special session.
"The Chancellor was and always has been the mastermind behind the Separatist movement," Anakin continued, "and they were nothing more than pawns in his schemes. He has orchestrated this entire war, from the crises that led the Separatists to pursue secession in the first place right up through the battles that have been waged for the past three years, as a weapon to weaken the Jedi Order and as a tool to condition the Senate to accept his control. Had his plan continued unhalted, he would have framed the Jedi for rebelling against him, then destroyed the Order with a series of co-ordinated attacks before they could react or an investigation could be launched. Having served their purpose, the Separatists would then have been wiped out, and Sidious would have used the momentum and shock to make his emergency powers permanent and seize control of the Republic. But with Count Dooku dead, he required a new Sith Lord to spearhead his final masterstroke. And so, he approached me."
Anakin paused for a moment and closed his eyes, then opened them and continued. "He knew that I feared for the life of Senator Naberrie, that I had seen visions of her death. He confessed everything I have just told you and offered me the power to save my wife's life."
Padme froze, staring in mixed awe and horror as Anakin so casually dropped the secret that she had feared to reveal. The politician in her had to admire the timing in this. Drop this secret now, and the scandal of her and Anakin's secret wedding, of the offense against the Jedi Code, would be swallowed up in the greater scandal of his revelations about the Chancellor. It might not wholly shield them, but it was arguably the best of their very limited options. At the very least it should buy them time.
Anakin was still speaking. "I returned to the Temple and shared my revelations with Master Windu. He gathered the remaining members of the Council and set out to arrest Sidious. I was ordered to stay behind, given my known close relationship with Sidious and the potential for conflict. However, I saw visions of disaster through the Force, and followed after a short time. By the time I arrived, Sidious had defeated three members of the Council but had been defeated by Master Windu. As I arrived, Sidious surrendered. Master Windu accepted this surrender, but the instant he dropped his guard Sidious attacked again, killing him. I engaged Sidious at this point, and he made no further attempts to surrender. I was able to overcome him, but not to take him alive."
Anakin raised his face slightly and fell silent, inviting questions. The Senate exploded with babbling voices, Acting Speaker Organa unable to impose order on the chaos.
The Republic will survive this, Padme thought to herself. It has been weakened, stressed to the breaking point, but Sidious was stopped in time, and without his rot we can survive even this shock and finally begin to heal.
I have to believe that.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, newly promoted to the Council upon his return from the Utapau system, considered Anakin Skywalker as he stood in the center of the Council chambers. He and Master Yoda were the only Council members present in person, though half-a-dozen more were present as the blue ghosts of holograms. But as holograms, they could not feel what he and Yoda felt. Anakin's presence in the Force had always been slightly different from that of any other Jedi, but now the difference was unmistakable. Obi-Wan had no idea whether this was because Anakin had changed that night, or whether with the shroud of the dark side withdrawn he was seeing Anakin as he truly was for the first time in years.
In either case, the difference was undeniable. Anakin's presence in the Force was not the choking blackness of a Sith Lord, but neither was it the cool luminance of a true Jedi. No, Anakin burned in the Force, his presence hot and bright as a tiny sun.
This was how he felt on Tatooine, back when we first met him, Obi-Wan remembered. His fire is better contained now, channeled and made all the hotter for it. But this is the same fire he burnt with as a slave child, when he still lived with his mother.
"Broken the Jedi Code, you have," Yoda said. "Lied, to this Council you did."
"I have," Anakin said, "and for the lies I apologize. But I will not apologize for marrying the woman I love. I believe this was the path of the Force."
"To the dark side, attachment leads," Yoda said. "A path that should be walked, this is not."
"I disagree," Anakin said. "I believe that this very moment is what the prophecies meant, when they spoke of my restoring balance to the Force. For millennia, the Force has been divided between light and dark, between wisdom and passion, when the two should be united. Passion controlled by wisdom, and wisdom empowered by passion. And when I knelt before Sidious and chose Padme's happiness, I finally understood how the light and the dark could... not merely be brought into balance, but fused, united into something greater than either alone."
He shook his head slightly. "I'm rambling." He raised his chin. "If the Council chooses to expel me from the Order for my actions, so be it. But there are two matters that must be spoken of."
"Your child," Obi-Wan said, speaking for the first time in that conversation.
"Children," Anakin corrected. "Padme is carrying twins."
"Strong in the Force, these twins shall grow," Yoda said. "To the Jedi, they must come."
"No," Anakin said, and his presence in the Force flared with such power that Obi-Wan felt himself flinch. "These are my children, mine and Padme's. I will not permit them to be taken from us. Nor shall I refuse any who would come to me for teaching. I have seen the truth of the Force, a truth that Jedi and Sith alike have been blind to. I cannot and will not deny others my aid in seeking out that same truth."
"Defy us, you cannot," said Yoda. "Strong in the Force are you, but not that strong."
"Perhaps," Anakin said. "But if Chancellor Organa and the Senate stand behind my and Padme's right to retain custody of our children, the Jedi Order would go to war with the Republic. Is that a fight the Order can win? And even if you could, are you prepared for where that path will take you?"
There was a long pause.
"By your own actions, expelled from the Order you are," Master Yoda said eventually. "The disposition of your twins, this Council shall consider."
Anakin nodded. "So be it," he said, then he turned on his heel and left the Council chambers.
As Padme's body pushed and spasmed, her muscles straining to bring their twins into the world, her hand in his fleshy one squeezing with enough strength to bruise, Anakin narrowed his focus until all that he knew was him and her and their babies. The Force flowed between them like a network of veins around their joined hands. He drew off as much of Padme's pain as he could and poured his strength into her, driving back the ravenous darkness that sought to claim her with white fire. And to their children, subjected to pressures and forces they could not comprehend, he projected his and Padme's love, wrapping it around them like an incorporeal embrace.
An eternity later, it was over. Anakin carefully disengaged his spirit from Padme's, pulling himself back into his own body. As the meddroid laid Luke and Leia in Padme's arms, he gazed down at the three of them with a kind of bewildered elation.
I've done it, he thought. I beat the vision.
Even with all the wonders of modern medicine at Padme's disposal, even with his new strength in the Force and his determination to keep Padme alive, he had never quite been able to believe that he would succeed in this. The cold dragon of his fears had whispered to him that his choice was made, that choosing to strike down Sidious would inevitably take from him the woman he loved. But somehow… somehow he had proved that vision false.
Knowledge blossomed in his mind, as if the Force itself were whispering to him, and he suddenly knew that the vision he had been given in Sidious's office had been a test, false promises given him in order that he might be forced to choose between his love for Padme and his possessiveness of her.
I was willing to give her up, to choose what she would desire even though I believed in that moment it would take her from me and the other path would let me keep her. And because I was willing to make that choice, my wife and my children live and they will not be taken from me. Not by the Jedi, nor by my own actions.
The last whisper of the dead-star dragon's voice faded from his mind, and Anakin Skywalker was at peace.