It is Your Destiny…

The Eclipse, somewhere in deep space

"Once again, this is The Millennium Falcon requesting permission to land. I'm transmitting my credentials," Han said crisply, unable to mask the frustration from his tone. He had been sitting idle for over an hour while the Eclipse decided whether or not to let him board. He and Chewie had urgent and incredible news to report following their trip to Endor and Han was not in the mood for bureaucratic delays. It was bad enough requesting permission to land on a vessel that he used to command, but being made to wait was ever further degrading. He wondered if the new general was trying to make a point and that thought infuriated him all the more.

"Clearance to approach, Millennium Falcon. Proceed to the designated docking bay and prepare to be boarded."

"Boarded?" Han exclaimed, looking at Chewie. "What in the blazes is going on over there?"

The Wookiee shrugged and barked his opinion.

"I'm not the one being difficult," Han responded before depressing the speaker and responding to the Eclipse, "Affirmative, Millennium Falcon proceeding to Docking Bay one-zero-eight-four-alpha and preparing to be boarded."

"So you haven't heard from Jedi Skywalker at all?" General Mawrz repeated.

"For the last time, no," Han replied, watching the door slide shut behind a flurry of people. He was left alone with the General after volleying a barrage of questions from his welcoming committee regarding Leia, her whereabouts and his knowledge of them. He turned to the young man, running a hand over his face in frustration. "Where in the nine hells is Luke and why are you questioning me like I'm the damn Emperor or something? Doesn't anybody care why I'm actually here?"

"Your report is on its way to Coruscant, rest assured, but we have another situation on our hands right now."

"And what situation is that?"

"The Jedi Luke Skywalker is in custody aboard this vessel for aiding the release of a known fugitive, and that fugitive, the Jedi Leia Skywalker has escaped and is being pursued. Considering your close relation with the two siblings, your arrival seemed none too fortuitous at this moment."

"Wait a minute, back up. Leia's a fugitive? Since when?"

"Maybe if you can tell us the last time you saw her, we can tell you whether or not she was a fugitive at the time. That seems only fair to me."

The general's snide and condescending attitude irritated Han to the point of rage. His nerves were too raw from both his recent discovery and his worry for Leia. "This isn't up for discussion. I told you I can't remember the last time I saw Luke or Leia. I've been holed up undercover for as long as I care to remember."

"You file reports. You account for every second of your time to the SIS, surely you can retrieve the records of your last furlough that might've involved either of the Jedi twins."

Han's mind was reeling, remembering what Leia had looked like the last time he had seen her. Should he reveal that meeting? Something told him that he shouldn't and he hurriedly tried to recall when he had seen her before then. It was on Coruscant, before his assignment to Nar Shaddaa. "The last I saw either one of them, they were living at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant."

"I'll give her one thing: your lover is a much better liar than you."

Han' vision blurred with fury. He had no patience for this baiting and he was loath to admit that the cheap trick was working on him so easily. "What has she supposedly done?"

"We'll get to that," the general said, walking toward Han and gesturing toward the conference room chairs. "Please, have a seat."

"No, thank you," Han stood his ground. "Where's Luke?"

The general slowly brought his outstretched hand back to his side, collapsing his fingers into a fist. He stood studying Han for a moment as if sizing him up and then laughed easily and replied, "I'll be the one asking the questions here, Captain Solo."

"I'm still a General."

"Oh, my apologies," the general replied, not looking at all apologetic. "I had forgotten the title had not gone along with the office."

"Is there a point to this conversation?"

"I had the pleasure of interviewing your – the Jedi Leia Skywalker," he said with a sneer. "I have a holorecording of her altercation and escape."

Han pressed his lips together, trying not to bite on the morsels of information that this adversary was feeding him. Leia had been here and interviewed, seemingly in the same manner as he had been and then fought her way out with Luke's aid. Was this all over what had happened on Naboo? And how could her fighting Sith land her in trouble with the Republic? Or was it Sith that she had fought?

"Ah, yes. I should've known, you see, that the rumors of your relationship with her…" he broke off, watching for a reaction from Han that the Corellian worked desperately not to give. "Well, let's just say that I stand no longer so severely in judgment of you, my friend."

"I'm not your friend."

The general laughed again and Han wondered where the Republic had found such a person, and a person that was supposed to replace him at that. "Relax," General Mawrz said in a conspiratorial tone. "I understand, if I still can not condone, your creative way of finding a means to keep that Jedi in line. Whew," he gestured with a back-handed swipe across his forehead and a far off look as if he were mentally conjuring up an image that Han didn't appreciate in the slightest. "Creative and I'll bet...beneficial-"

The general's words were silenced by Han's fist connecting with his mouth. It was only one punch, but it was enough to silence the cad and send him flying across the room to land with his back on the floor and his head cradled against the wall. "Maybe you should spend your time watching that altercation on the holovid tonight," Han said, seething as he flexed his fingers from the stinging pain.

Han hadn't fought them when they placed him in stun-cuffs and he hadn't said a word to anyone while he was loaded onto a transport shuttle headed for a court hearing on Coruscant. And although he hadn't spoken to Chewbacca, he knew instinctively, as he looked at his similarly silenced and stun-cuffed partner across the holding cell, that if they hadn't intended to send the Wookiee to Coruscant with him, Chewie had simply and dutifully given them every reason to. And with that, Han rested his head back against the thrumming wall of the speeding shuttle and smiled.

Coruscant, Three days later

"Come and see me, I knew you would," whispered Yoda, as he lay in his small bed within the Jedi Temple.

His room was dark and in spite of the light, airy feeling of the cavernous Temple beyond his door, inside the Jedi Master had re-created the dank, musty habitat of his native world. The ceilings were lowered to fit his diminutive height and the walls were plastered with thick, rocky texture. Water features trickled in every corner and a humid mist coated everything with a moist sheen.

Anakin Skywalker crinkled his nose at the spicy and sharp foreign smells and furrowed his eyebrows as he looked down upon the shriveled up being that had once been a great Jedi Master.

"Look so old to your eyes, do I?" Yoda rasped.

"No, of course not."

"I do, yes, I do! Sick, have I become. Old and weak." He then laughed which caused a fit of coughing. "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not. Hmmm?"

"No, of course not," Anakin conceded with a smile.

The smile went from Yoda's face. "Soon I will rest. Yes, forever sleep. Earned it, I have," he whispered gravely.

"No, Master Yoda," Anakin pleaded. "I've just come to you. I want to confess."

"Confess. What confess? Confess that you will forever change the Force? Always known that, I have."

"You have? But what does that mean? Do you even know what I've done?"

"Done what your destiny required of you, you have. Aware of more than you know."

"Do you know my destiny?" He asked urgently. "Do you know if I walk down the right path?"

"The right path, it is. But your destiny, it is not."

"I don't understand."

"Rewritten, your life was," Yoda intoned gravely. "Played out in different ways. To be expected, this was. But unexpected, still it is."

"How was my life rewritten?"

"Returned to the past, your children did," Yoda said, poking his small cane into Anakin's chest. "Saved from the Dark Side, you were."

"Was I? Master Yoda. You must know what I'm thinking, what I've done. Was I really saved from the Dark Side?"

Yoda closed his eyes, exhausted from the exchange perhaps, or saddened by what was left to be said. "Saved from the Dark Side, you were. Taken your place, someone else has done."

"Who? Who is falling to the Dark Side if not me?"

Yoda opened his eyes, clarity resting where clouds had just been. "Leia. Falling to your fate, your daughter is."

Anakin sat back on his heels, the words of the Jedi Master hitting him across his chest like a physical blow. "Leia," he whispered in disbelief.

"Wrong, Obi-Wan and I were. Resigned to your fate, you must be. To the Sith, you must join. And to the Dark Side, you must appear to fall," Yoda replied. "Only then…successful Obi-Wan and I will be…only then.

"Obi-Wan? What did you and Obi-Wan do?"

Another voice answered him, "We acted together on information brought to us by your children."

Anakin looked at the Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi and listened to his tale. How, in an alternate past, he had fallen to the Dark Side and brought imbalance to the Force. He had been a stranger and an enemy to his children, harming Luke and terrorizing Leia. Luke, his son, had played a part in killing him and had lived with that guilt forever thereafter.

"We thought that it would be enough to get you to the nexus, the tear in time where your twins left their alternate past and came back to us, without falling to the Dark Side."

Anakin shook his head, feeling a bit overwhelmed by this conversation. "And now you think differently?" He asked.

Obi-Wan nodded.

"Strong, the memory of the past is. Hard, it tries to remain as it was," Yoda replied.

"Bail's death, your mother's, Padme's," Obi-Wan continued. "Some things in the past just cannot be changed."

Anakin looked away for a long while and then whispered, "So, I must die."

"Die, while still in the light, you must. But to the Dark Side, a Skywalker must fall."

"And you must fall by one of your children's hands," Obi-Wan added.

"Demands it, the past does."

"Leia," Anakin said grimly.

"Yes," Obi-Wan replied.

"But I-" Anakin's words were halted by the shrill sound of the Temple alarm.

Corsucant, Commander Madine's Office

"I did it once before and I'm not above doing it again," Han said. "Take my stripes if you have to but know this: I ain't apologizing for what I've done."

"For goddess' sake, Solo. Is it your life's ambition to torture me?"

Madine's face looked tired and the lines of age were deeper than they had any right to be. Han felt guilty for just one brief moment, but he didn't let the feeling linger long. There was no guilt or regret in what he had done and he would quit with a clear conscience if he had to. There was a certain amount of comfort in knowing that someone needed you more than you needed them and he knew the Republic needed him now. Something about that rang familiar to him, yet he didn't give his brain time to think upon it any further.

"The man was asking for it," Han continued, "practically daring me to take a swing at him. Have you watched the recording?"

Madine sighed. "The recording of your interview was somehow lost."

Han made a sound and a gesture that indicated that was all the evidence he needed of his innocence.

"It's not that easy, Han," Madine retorted, frustration painting his features. "After that report you brought in from Endor? How can you even think we can let you go? But then this... How can I possibly ignore it?"

"Then do what you-"

Han's sentence was cut off by the blare of an alarm sounding.

"Alarm protocols are in effect," the mechanical voice blared over the intercom. "This is not a drill. Alarm protocols are in effect. This is not a drill."

"What now?" Madine asked rhetorically as he picked up the holocomm receiver and punched in a code. "Yes," he said tersely into the receiver and Han watched his face as the person on the other end spoke rapidly into Madine's ear. "Holy hells, how did that happen?" The commander said as he stood, raking his eyes over his desk looking for something that Han could not guess at. "I'll be right there," Madine blurted as he disconnected the call and gathered up a few holodiscs from his desk. He looked at Han as if he had forgotten that he was there, as if their entire conversation had been erased by whatever it was that that holocomm call had said. "Solo," he breathed, almost as if in relief from Han's presence. "The Jedi Temple is under attack. Come with me."

There were Sith in the Jedi Temple. Anakin Skywalker, along with a few novice Jedi Knights were fighting a pack of the enemies back and away from the sleeping quarters where he had been visiting with Master Yoda. Yoda, winded by the activity but seemingly nevertheless invigorated by the battle, swung his lightsaber with practiced ease as they drove the line of Sith back. They rounded a corner to press a much needed advantage as they cornered their opponents in a small doorway. Then, with a collective gasp, the team of Jedi caught sight of a large contingent of Sith reinforcements.

The first few Jedi fell and Anakin pressed forward resolutely. "Go." He heard a familiar voice say as a small figure cut in front of him to take his place.

"What?" Anakin replied, incredulous.

"What we talked about, you must remember. To die here, you must not do," Yoda answered, fighting forward as he spoke.

"No," Anakin replied, his sense of duty flaring within him until it burned.

"Leia," Yoda whispered through gritted teeth. "You must think of your daughter."

"But," Anakin started but the thought trailed off into the din. He couldn't let his daughter fall to the Dark Side, not with the enemy striking at the heart of the Republic as they were.

"Yes, speak the truth you know I do. Go, now," Yoda ordered as the tide of Jedi pressed forward leaving Anakin standing dumbly on his own.

"May the Force be with you, Master," he recited, watching a red lightsaber slash into another Jedi as the young man crumpled to the floor. Anakin shut his eyes, warring at his instinct to protect and to fight as he powered down his lightsaber, turned around and fled.

"Get that shield up and that tractor beam functioning, Sergeant or find your way back to that mudball you call your home planet," Madine snapped. The Sith had caught them wholly off guard and Han watched in disbelief as the Republic rallied to find their footing on their own home world. "They had to have someone from within disable those systems," Madine cursed as he spun around and shouted several orders to whoever was within earshot.

Han turned around to face the monitors. There was a wall of screens that could bring up every dark alley of Coruscant on command and each one was focused on the Jedi Temple and its surrounding property. There was no visible movement on the screens although reports of fighting and fallen Jedi continued to stream in.

"There," Han exclaimed as his eye caught movement from the back of the Temple. "Someone's exiting the Temple."

All eyes moved toward where Han's finger was now pointed and he drew it back slowly as the picture became clear.

"Is that?" Madine's voice came from behind his shoulder.

Han did not answer as a feeling of dread washed over him. There on the screen, in front of the entire command structure of the Republic, Anakin Skywalker slinked out of the falling Jedi Temple and disappeared.