The notoriety of Darth Vader only grew over the next few weeks. Anakin won match after match—not all of them with as severe injuries as Karbin, though he certainly sent Trandoshan to an early grave as well. He did his utmost to stamp down on the guilt he felt—it wouldn't help him here.

And every day, Palpatine came down to his quarters personally to congratulate him. Every day, Anakin demanded he get to see the twins again.

Every day, Palpatine refused.

It had been three weeks.

Anakin was particularly tense one morning. He knew Palpatine's precious Empire Day was coming up in only a few days—the festivities were everywhere. They'd just exited the lecture Cylo gave them about the grand performance of strength they'd be demonstrating at the planned exhibition, so it was no wonder Anakin was so. . . on edge.

Cylo had said that Palpatine would be dredging gifted magicians from every corner of the Empire to fight and die in this showdown. He was reportedly emptying his cells of them and sending them to their deaths this way. It was an execution, but worse than that: it was sport.

And, even worse than all that: Palpatine still refused to let Anakin see the twins.

It was. . . suspicious. Especially given that with distance, Anakin was growing more and more skeptical over whether or not he'd been telling the truth about them.

He was. He had to be. Because otherwise all this hope Anakin had suddenly gained. . .

. . . it would all be for nothing.

So, if they were alive, an almost-as-equally terrible suspicion had kindled in his mind.

Palpatine needed magicians for his showdown. He needed all the magicians he could get.

Luke and Leia were young, powerful magicians. What was more: they were directly in his reach, and the man had said himself that he had no use for them anymore.

What if. . .

Did that mean. . .

Anakin did not, by any stretch of the imagination, put it past Palpatine to pit his children against them in the showdown itself. To pit them against him in particular.

It was exactly the sort of twisted machination he so revelled in.

The thoughts dogged him, everywhere.

The next day he stormed out of the training room, ignoring the some of the gladiators' mocking shouts as they chased him down the hall. He stopped at one window overlooking the arena—the sand was still bloody from that morning's fight, between Voidgazer and Aiolin—and clenched his hands around the windowsill so hard he felt it start to smoke under his hands.

"Brooding again, Vader?"

Anakin whirled on him, on that insufferable boy, with ideas and arrogance that far outstripped reality. "What," he ground out, glaring down into the eyeholes of Morit's mask, "do you want?"

He smirked his usual smirk—one that seemed to double in arrogance if only to ensure any doubt was covered. Never show weakness: that was one lesson Morit had clearly learned well.

"Only to inform you that I'm the one who'll have the pleasure of fighting you this afternoon," he said, "since you stormed out before Cylo could explain that. I look forward to wiping the floor with you."

Anakin's fists tightened further. There was a pop, then suddenly his fingers were wreathed in flame.

Morit tossed him one more mocking smile, then turned around to join Aiolin, watching from a little way along the hall with amusement.

Morit did not beat Anakin later that day.

Anakin wiped the floor with him. Once the burns healed, he sported a permanent scar that stretched from the left corner of his lip to halfway up his nose.

It didn't stop him from smiling. And it didn't make the smiles any more benign when he did.

The satisfaction of raking his fire across Morit's face like some sort of vengeful, bloodthirsty angel haunted him—what was he becoming?—but it was irrelevant to everything else.

Hope and sheer desperation could only power someone for so long. That evening, doubt set in.

Were Luke and Leia even alive, or was Palpatine just stringing him along?

How did he know that anything said to him was true?

"Hey," he said out loud. The guards who stood at his door day and night paused in their conversation briefly, but then the murmurs persisted and they ignored him. "Hey!"

One of them rammed the door with the butt of his short sword. The voice was muffled by the door. "What?"

"I just have a question."

A brief murmuring, the guard no doubt exchanging a look with his companion out of sheer disbelief, then, cautiously, "Ask away."

"Have you ever seen a pair of twins around here?" Anakin asked before he could stop himself, before he could regret it.

"The Astartes?" one guard said dubiously—Anakin didn't think it was the first guard who'd spoken.

"No." He was offended by the mere idea. "Not any of the gladiators. They don't look like twins, but they're siblings—one boy, one girl. Dark-haired girl, light-haired boy. They'd be about nineteen at the moment."

There was a moment of silence, a faint humming, then— "Short for their age?"

Hope mounted. "Yes."

"Oh, yeah, I was on duty in—" A harsh whisper from the accompanying guard. "Well, in some other cells or bedrooms—all of them had bunk beds for sharing, y'know. Few years ago, at least. One of the rooms was occupied by two siblings. Dunno if they were twins, though. They didn't look it."

"No," Anakin said breathlessly, hope mounting and mounting and mounting— "They don't." Accurate.

"They creeped me out. Seemed to spend more time in each other's heads or speaking some silent language only they knew than interacting with any other lowly mortals."

. . .also accurate.

Anakin let out a sigh. "I— thank you," he said.

"Why'd you wanna know?"

He didn't answer. The other guard hissed something at him, but Anakin stopped listening.

The twins could be anyone. The guard could be mistaken. The guard could be lying. Palpatine could put him up to this. Palpatine could have specially imprisoned children who looked like Luke and Leia to confuse him and manipulate him into doing this—

The sad thing was, he wouldn't even put it past Palpatine to do that.

But. . . well. This was evidence. Flimsy evidence, albeit, but. . .

It was enough to keep his hopes up for just a few more days.

Anakin kept fighting, and he kept seeing the foundations of this coup start to be laid down around him. Gladiators who'd once sparred as an excuse to hurt each other now sparred as an excuse to talk—subtly, but it was there.

Anakin fought Voidgazer, Aiolin, several more gladiators who seemed as inhuman as Karbin had, and it was easy to see the difference, now.

Before, they'd been all about winning. Winning, whatever the cost may be. Now, they were more focused on surviving.

If they were dead, they wouldn't be there to see Palpatine fall, after all.

Cylo smiled what seemed like the whole time. It was unnerving.

Anakin fought the Astartes again five days later. Because Morit still has not fully recovered, Cylo had said delicately, Anakin rolling his eyes at the fact that he had been sparring with his sister for over two days now, Vader will go up against both of them at once.

Anakin didn't know whether he was dreading or anticipating it.

He couldn't deny that after everything, he wanted to beat them both to a pulp again.

The actual fight, as usual, was prefaced by the Astartes'. . . caginess. Every time Anakin turned around that morning, one or both of them seemed to be talking to one of the other contestants in that unnatural web of alliances they were spinning over the whole coliseum. Both still wore that cocky, intimidating-before-they-could-be-intimidated-first smile, but Anakin noticed something different about them this time. They seemed. . . tense.

Something was coming.

He heard, more than once, them mention Empire Day, and that brought his suspicions to a new level.

Palpatine had put so much emphasis on his precious celebrations—and the gladiators would be at the centre of them.

Was Cylo. . . were they all planning. . .?

Anakin narrowed his eyes at the doctor across the training room. He stood with his hands folded behind his back watching two gladiators spar.

Of course they were.

"This is all very. . . sudden," Anakin heard behind him. He turned to see Voidgazer murmuring something to a gladiator Anakin hadn't had the displeasure of facing off against yet. He edged closer—

"Cylo sanctioned this?" the other gladiator continued, narrowing her eyes slightly behind her mask.

"He did," Voidgazer confirmed, "I heard it from him myself. We can—"

She was cut off by Aiolin's shout of, "Eavesdropping again, Vader?"

Again? She knew about the first time?

He scowled under his mask, and just stalked off without dignifying her with an answer.

Which was how he found himself in a corridor he'd never seen before, in one of the upper levels of the coliseum. This floor had guards at every entrance, but they waved Anakin past with hardly a flinch—he supposed this mask and damned suit were pretty recognisable.

The people milling about, were. . . odd. They seemed to vibrate with some inner—but different—energies. Some seemed spoiling for a fight; others. . .

Other seemed utterly terrified.

They were all wearing the same simple outfit. Pale robes. Easy to move in, but they looked cold.

Even with that, it wasn't until Anakin saw the man—boy, really—standing by the window that overlooked the arena, watching some of the gladiators spar, that he put it all together.

His blue-black hair was longer, shaggier than he remembered—Mira and Ephraim had mastered the art of cutting it short enough to be neat, but long enough to suit him—but it was him.

"Ezra Bridger."

He'd been of one of the more powerful bloodlines. Had the ability to shake the earth—literally. And something to do with wolves, on his mother's side, but Anakin had never quite understood that.

He'd been friends with Luke and Leia. Older than them by a bare two days.

Ezra flinched when he heard his voice. Right; Anakin had forgotten how strange this mask made it sound. He was starting to get used to it, almost, which scared him.

Ezra tilted his head back and glared. "What?"

These were all the magicians Palpatine had gathered for his precious Empire Day celebrations.

He might be fighting Ezra Bridger out in that arena, soon, he thought.

But it was only a fleeting thought. A more pertinent one—and a far, far more important one—was that Luke and Leia might be in this room.

He immediately whipped his head around, searching, heart leaping every time he spotted a head of blond or brown hair—

But no. There was a number of people that age and younger in this room, but none of them were his children.

Ezra's glare had grown confused, but it was still a glare. "What?"

Anakin hesitated, but he might as well ask—

He took a step forward. "Ezra—"

"Vader?"

He cursed under his breath.

Aiolin strolled in, and smirked. Funny, though—he could clearly see the flash of panic that it had covered.

"Aren't you supposed to be looming down there like some overgrown bat?" She glanced at Ezra. "He's the one who gave my brother that nasty new scar, you know."

Anakin watched Ezra's face tighten a little, though he couldn't have said what with.

"I see," he said. "And is your brother alright?"

Why would he care? He had no reason to care.

Unless—

Anakin resisted the urge to glance around.

Unless the Astartes were recruiting everyone to their little coup. Unless their web was something far more widespread than Anakin had even begun to fathom.

Which meant—

Well. It meant Anakin's Rebel cells needed to get a hold on their information, if that large a coup could be organised without them knowing.

Aiolin waved her hand. "Fit as a fiddle. We're actually facing off against this guy"—she jabbed a thumb at Anakin—"in less than an hour. You'll see us out the window here.

"Which reminds me," she added to Anakin, "that's why I'm here. You have to go downstairs and get ready."

"And why didn't you just say so?"

"I heard you bothering Ezra here."

"Now who's eavesdropping?"

Aiolin just smiled. Ezra looked on.

And Anakin scowled at his own ignorance—and the increasing feeling that he had absolutely no idea what was going on.

But he still had to fight the Astartes.

And he still wanted to win.

Both because Palpatine had said that the more he won, the more likely it was that he got to see Luke and Leia again. . . and also because the idea of losing to the Astartes offended him on every single level.

The motions of starting a fight were intimately familiar to him by now. The moment he'd descended the stairs, Cylo and his minions had been on him like flies on a corpse, and he'd been shoved down further to one of the waiting and entrance chambers gladiators would emerge from. He waited in the dark for what seemed like hours, perched on the hard stone bench no matter how uncomfortable it was in his armour, before the door opened again.

He'd never admit it, but when he did that every day, it made him excited to get out onto the sands of the arena. If only to escape the boredom of the darkness.

So he was on his feet, raring to go, when the door opened. But it wasn't Cylo or one of the many directors of these games who stepped in.

Once again, Anakin loathed the secrecy of the helmet. Palpatine could only guess at the strength of the glower he directed him—though, if he was reading his mind, he supposed he could sense the hatred just as well.

"I want to see Luke and Leia," he said immediately. Palpatine hadn't even shut the door behind him yet.

But he just laughed. "Patience, my boy. You'll see them soon, I can promise you. Very soon."

"This evening?" Anakin pushed. "After I've won this match?"

"Perhaps even sooner," Palpatine said, smiling faintly. "I heard you stumbled upon the cache of magicians I've put together for the showdowns in a few days. Who was it you were talking to—that Bridger boy? I was thinking that it might be entertaining if during or immediately after your fight, I throw some of them in. Test their mettle."

Anakin went cold. "No—you don't have—" Palpatine just smiled. "Not Luke and Leia, no—"

"Or perhaps not," he conceded. "I'm sure there'll be quite enough fireworks between you and the Astartes as it is. Three fire magicians." He said the words with relish.

Anakin tore his helmet off and threw it at Palpatine's feet, as much so he could glare freely as in act of rebellion. "Let me see my children."

"Put that on." There was no joking around in Palpatine's voice, now. Anakin got the sense that had he been anyone else, his head would have shifted, glanced around, checked that no one was here to see it. But he wasn't anyone else, and there was, of course, no one. "You are not to take it off outside of your quarters. You know that."

"Or what?"

"You know that too, dear boy." Palpatine's voice regained some of its slick self-assuredness, and Anakin regained his fear. "I've told you before what the consequences of defiance will be."

Anakin swallowed. He had.

"Put that back on."

He put it back on.

Palpatine smiled. "There now," he said, "isn't that better? You will see your twins in good time," he added, before Anakin could say anything. "All in good time."

He left the room.

At least this time the wait was less. He was only in the darkness for a brief time before the doors opened, as well as the large gates that opened onto the arena. Anakin didn't bother looking at the troopers who came to prod him forward, and didn't give them a reason to do so—he strode out into the sun of his own accord. As impractical as it was, he took a petty, insignificant satisfaction in the way his cape snapped around his heels.

The roar of the crowd was a minor thing to him now; a nuisance. He idly wondered how much larger it would be on Empire Day, when the masses Palpatine had promised turned up to watch.

The Astartes entered at the same time as well. They were as impassive to the cheering as he was: they just strode out, masks glinting in the light, not quite perfectly in sync with each other but naturally in sync, their footsteps measured and even. It was simultaneously impressive and intimidating to watch.

Or, it would have been intimidating to lesser men than Anakin Skywalker.

That wasn't what caught his interest, though.

The crowds were at the wrong angle. They couldn't see it. But Anakin could.

The moment before they stepped into the light, they pressed their foreheads together in something like an embrace, hands clasped in front of them. It was an oddly intimate moment, one he almost felt guilty for intruding on—one that reminded him, suddenly, that this was a set of twins nearly the same age as his children, who'd no doubt had their lives torn apart just as young.

And by Palpatine.

Always by Palpatine.

No wonder they were masterminding their coup.

Once he'd seen that, though, others of their small gestures of affection became apparent. As they walked towards the centre of the arena, hidden between their bodies, Aiolin pressed Morit's palm with two fingers and he squeezed it back.

Their unison didn't seem unnatural anymore. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

The blare of the speakers broke him out of his reverie. He planted his feet in the sand and braced for the fight.

The twins exchanged a look, and then there was a spear of fire shooting for him, faster than a comet. He swore—loudly, if Morit's smirk was anything to go by—and ducked out of the way. He wasn't used to feeling his armour heat up like this—usually, he was the one throwing fire.

Another spear came, this time from Aiolin, and he threw himself back again, hating how slow this armour made him. The twins moved until they paced around him in a circle, trapping him inside in a building ring, a whirlwind, hurricane of fire—

Like the one he'd killed Karbin with.

This was insulting.

He flashed his head back and forth. Aiolin punched forward and sent a shot hurtling his way and he dodged, kicking his leg up and seizing that fire—

He sensed the fire Morit summoned behind him and pivoted to unleash Aiolin's blast.

He blasted Morit back. He hit the sand hard, glassing sand wherever he stood, grunting as crimson burns sprung up over his legs—

Anakin stepped forward—

—but Aiolin's scream of rage yanked him round to block another assault, burning and heated and desperate. She charged forward, closer to her brother, so close he could see her muscles rippling until her skin as she whipped her arms round—

—and a fireball hit Anakin in the chest.

He stumbled but didn't fall. His lungs screamed, his eyes watered; he could only see a vaguely gold and white blur and there was more gold and more heat—

And heat from behind him, so much heat. All he could see was gold; then his vision cleared and the Astartes were standing side by side again, glaring down at him, gold and red and blue and bright, bright white in the light of the tornado they'd summoned, Morit's mask crumbling to ashes—

He slashed his hand down and another blast raked across Anakin. A thinner one: a whip of fire, so hot it was nothing but searing white light, and it tore right through the metal of his helmet.

He threw himself back, and that was the only reason it didn't rip his right eye out. His face was aflame.

He could have handled Morit alone. He had handled Morit alone. But the Astartes, together. . .

He needed to get out of here.

His head was nothing but a blur of pain and light. He staggered back—thank the gods they'd stopped pacing around him, like predators around a felled lamb, he was not prey—and just kept backing up, and up—

He needed to end this. He had to end this. He had to survive, his children needed him—

So he threw out his hand and summoned everything he had for one final, desperate shot. The inferno that roared to life before it could have burned the entire kingdom down.

The Astartes saw it coming.

He didn't see which one of them snatched it from his grasp. It didn't matter which one of them snatched it from his grasp. What mattered was that it was roaring right back at him, intensifying and intensifying, and he gasped as it scorched his helmet, his neck, his shoulders, his face—

Forget his helmet getting crushed with his head inside it; what about getting cooked like a boiled egg—

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe—

Palpatine's rules be damned, he wasn't any help to anyone dead. He used his last scrap of focus to shove the rest of his fire away and ripped the helmet from his head, gasping for air.

The Astartes froze.

Had this breach of protocol shaken them so badly? Anakin didn't have the energy to be amused—only reluctantly relieved as the flames vanished, leaving nothing but coarse sand and smooth glass in their wake.

And Morit left footprints in both as he stepped forward. He extinguished the flame in his hand. The glass that had already cooled cracked underfoot.

Aiolin remained behind him, apparently frozen in shock.

So Anakin kept his gaze on Morit as he approached. There wasn't a hint of his smirk to be seen—for once, he looked strangely vulnerable, and only when he noticed that did it hit Anakin that maybe he'd seen him before.

Morit's pale gaze danced over Anakin's face, the cleft in the chin, the shape of the nose, to the nasty burn wound he'd ripped in it moments before.

Palpatine was shouting something. None of the three were listening.

Morit reached up, and removed the tatters of his own mask.

The first thing Anakin noticed was the scar ripped in the side of his face—the tail end of which twisted his lips. The one Anakin had given him days ago. It bisected his right eyebrow, exactly where Morit's retaliating strike had hit Anakin.

Then his gaze moved across the rest of the now-exposed face, and he too forgot how to breathe.

It was sooty. It was pale, from long hours behind a mask. It was red, from where the scar tissue was still healing.

Morit turned to look at Aiolin, who stepped forward to remove her own mask as well. She let her hair down as she did; now, at this angle, Anakin could see the streaks of brown where the dye hadn't taken to it quite so well. He'd thought that their hair colours were too similar to be natural.

None of them blinked. Palpatine was still shouting.

Then the twins exchanged one of their loaded glances, and said in unison the one word Anakin had thought he'd never hear from them again:

"Father?"