Disclaimer: I still don't speak Scots Gaelic nor Irish Gaeilge aside from a few words ( I do know slightly more Gaeilge though), so if my translations are wrong then blame Google Translate, not me. I also don't own any character that is not my own creation, obviously. Wish I did though. Could use the kind of money Star Wars rakes in. At this point I'm just too lazy to get rid of this disclaimer so it's staying despite getting my point across by now.

Caibideil 16

"What could you possibly want?" Sidious replied to the pathetic green imp, his voice dripping with hatred. Being suspended in an anti-gravity chamber with hundreds of tons of explosives and military heavy weaponry pointed at his face with the occasional bottle of water meant for hamsters lowered to his mouth, made him more irritated at the Jedi than normal. The once mighty Sith Lord reduced to an intelligence farm, a pet, of the Order he had so despised for his entire life. He had half a mind to feed them false information, but they would hardly trust his word to begin with, and he would be able to scheme his way out of a life sentence, even in the Maw. Execution was much trickier considering Plagueis had neglected to teach him the art of Essence Transferal. "Not very Jedi-like to gloat."

"Your apprentice: planning, what is he?" Yoda asked bluntly.

"You expect me to know? In his eyes I am already dead by your hand. What he does next is of his own doing, not mine." The obnoxious hamster bottle lowered to his face, causing Palpatine to scowl in humiliation as he took a swig from it. Embarrassment was better than dying of thirst.

"Your trial, in two days it will be."

"I am aware, it took them long enough."

"Caused much bureaucratic chaos, you did."

"Eh, not really. The system was already screwed when I got there."

"Fair enough, your point is," Yoda conceded, "But worse it has gotten."

"Well I wouldn't exactly know what all is happening on the outside, would I?" Sidious snarled, "Out of curiosity, who became Chancellor after Amedda?"

"Lost track, I have, " Yoda admitted, "Believe it to be Skywalker, I do."

"WHAT?!"

"Not him," the Jedi Grand Master quickly corrected, "the Senator formerly called Amidala. Skywalker in question, she is. Rejected the office twice, she did. A choice, this time, she was not given."

"Oh. Yeah, I forgot about that."

"Knew, you did?" Yoda replied in surprise.

"Master Yoda, you truly are blind. Dark Side or no."

Padmé sat staring at the empty whiskey bottles on her shelf, she wasn't sure if she had even blinked in the past half-hour. She had wanted to keep them as trophies to show how far she had come as her journey to beating addiction went on. Right now they taunted her. She was just forced into becoming acting-Chancellor, and the desire to drink her stress away was practically screaming her name. She had made sure Dormé had gotten every drop of alcohol out of the apartment, even her preferred cleaning supplies, since she had read about chlorine bleach causing nerve damage over time. Made sense, it was originally made to be a chemical weapon after all, but she had to go back to keep herself from trying to drink her bathroom cleaner. She hadn't gotten drunk in two weeks. She was going strong. She wouldn't slip back. She couldn't slip back She refused to slip back. Damn, if it wasn't tempting to drive to a liquor store and buy half the stock to just drink it in the parking lot. Padmé had purposefully thrown her keys randomly behind her and ordered 3PO to hide them in order to prevent her from acting on that urge.

She had tried to refuse the office a third time, citing private medical reasons, which technically wasn't a lie since Padmé had spoken with her doctor about fighting her alcohol dependency and could easily get her to quietly confirm her statements without revealing the nature of said medical reasons. She was not allowed to refuse now that they were at pretty much the bottom of the list when it came to the line of succession, especially after skipping her twice. She probably should have seen it coming when they got finally to the superintendent of the local Board of Education and he had a stroke at the announcement. She didn't even know that a Quarren could have a stroke. She was on the verge of another breakdown; how could she manage to hold half galaxy together when she could barely hold herself together? She looked at the little AA group photo they had taken at her first visit, it was something that particular group did to welcome new members and show them how far they had come as the years went on. She chuckled miserably. Well, if she was somehow "anonymous" to them before she definitely wouldn't be now that her face had been plastered across the Holonet. Funnily enough they were still making casual mentions of Gràinne, the "Savior of the Republic," and how she had apparently been kidnapped. Had Anakin told her that? He might have said something the night of their argument before he threatened to leave her. Honestly, she had been drinking again that night and could barely remember anything except him saying, "If you won't get help, then I'm getting divorce papers." But everything had been so stressful at the Senate with Palpatine being ousted, anywhere from a third to half of the Senate being arrested, shot, or MIA, and- "No," she said to herself quietly, shaking her head. No excuses. That was what led her down that road in the first place. She couldn't go back. She wouldn't go back. No matter how hard it would be, she would not go back.

The nurse had told Barriss to come back in the morning when Séamus O'Neill had been brought out of his medically induced coma. "Also," the nurse, a short red Twi'lek, added, "You probably know this already but just to reiterate you should monitor any discharge, just remember that some blood is normal for the first few weeks but to let us know if anything solid comes out or there seems to be excessive bleeding and, obviously, no sexual activity for a good nine to twelve weeks. Remember to drink 2.5 liters of water per day and to reduce your salt intake by half for the time being."

"Of course," Barriss acknowledged, nodding in understanding, stifling a yawn from her exhaustion. Apparently rebuilding a circulatory system from scratch was pretty labor intensive, and she could not wait to get into a bed that she was actually comfortable in, with warm blankets that didn't smell like disinfectant, pillows that didn't remind her of the ones in coffins, and cuddling up to her wife-to-be who was apparently one of those weirdos who slept with her socks on. Riyo was cute enough to let it slide though, but she was on thin ice.

"And although you can walk, we don't want you risking tearing your stitches out, so try to remain in a seated or reclined position as much as possible, and obviously no running."

"Yep."

"You are ignoring every word I'm saying, aren't you?"

"No," Barriss replied honestly, "I'm just tired."

The nurse giggled a little, "I know the feeling."

"Is there any paperwork or prescriptions I need to take with me?"

"Yeah, hold on and let me print them out."

Barriss thought it was a little odd that she didn't just send them via holo but some people preferred hard copies, especially older Jedi, so she didn't think much on it.

The nurse looked up from the computer and handed her the printout, "Here you go! See you in the morning!"

"Oh I hope not, if you get stuck here for night-shift and morning-shift I feel really bad for you."

"It sucks, but it gives me an excuse to see favorite patients," the nurse replied with a wink.

Barriss smiled and sat in the wheelchair, ready to be rolled out to the speeder by Riyo. Out of the corner of her eye Barriss thought she saw a look of realization and then either embarrassment or horror on the little nurse's face. Odd that, maybe she noticed something wrong with a patient. Getting into the speeder's passenger side, Riyo motioned for her to come to the back with her. This time she had opted for having a droid drive them around. Getting in, she looked at the printout. They had all of her information, the Jedi Order's health insurance plan, her various charts, her prescriptions, and a bit of scrap paper? Taking out the torn piece of paper from the clip she unfolded it and started to read,

Call me, cutie! ;-)

xoxoxo

along with what was probably the nurse's comms frequency. Barriss was blushing madly while Riyo just giggled. Kind of surprising since Riyo was normally the jealous type when it came to anyone flirting with her girlfriend. "You're not annoyed?"

"I was very annoyed, until I saw the look on your face," the Pantoran Senator laughed. "Do you want to go and pick up your meds?"

"My pharmacy closed three hours ago."

"Well that sucks. Hopefully you won't be hurting too much tonight."

"Oh I'm wanting to scream every time the droid makes a turn."

Riyo threatened the droid in response, "I'll have you scrapped if you don't slow down!"

"It's fine Hun, really," Barriss said reassuringly, trying to spare the innocent droid the wrath of the tiny woman. Just as a precaution the droid did slow down significantly, zipping right past the Jedi Temple. "Uhm, Riyo? I live there," Barriss said, pointing at the gargantuan building in confusion.

"I know."

"And we are going past it, why?"

"Because I want to keep an eye on you for the first week."

"We didn't talk about this."

"Yes we did."

"When?"

"When you were working on Séamus."

"That doesn't count as a conversation."

"Are you saying you don't want to sleep in the same bed as me?"

"I'm saying I don't have my stuff."

"You have your toothbrush and I have soap and shampoo to spare."

"Clothes babe. I need clothes."

"We wear the same size."

"Yes, but blue looks hideous on me."

Feigning offense, Chuchi leaned back and placed a hand on her chest with mock shock on her face.

"Besides you."

Riyo rolled her eyes and kissed her on the cheek, "Just go to sleep, I'll wake you when we get home."

Dooku looked checked on the sleeping Togruta, she was stirring slightly, groaning in what was clearly an unpleasant dream. He turned back to the cockpit and sat back in the pilot's chair, turning in just such a way to pop the vertebrae in his back. Yep, 84 years old and he should not sleep in a chair anymore. He closed his eyes to try and go back to sleep. He could sense the fear and anger radiating off of Gràinne, saturating the Force with it. He wondered what she could possibly be dreaming of… or possibly what visions she was having.

Gràinne was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming; she knew she was dreaming, but it felt so real. She could almost feel the heat of the flames which engulfed her home. Horsemen thundered across the field as if declaring the arrival of the apocalypse. Frasier colors flashing as she heard her father and mother screaming in pain, a warrior stabbing her dog as they stole her family sheep and foodstuffs on their march south to Edinburgh. The flames felt more real than even her vision in the underground of the Jedi Temple. She could almost feel the cold steel going into the warm flesh of Aodh and the sheep as her parents burned alive. Terrified, she awoke in a cold sweat, screaming.

Dooku ran into the room, crimson lightsaber ignited to fight off any potential stowaway assassins, "What happened?"

Gràinne looked around in a mad panic, hyperventilating in fear. Calming down after a few minutes she eventually replied, "Nothin' 'twas just a bad dream."

Dooku extinguished his blade and sat on the bed beside her, placing a comforting shoulder on her shoulder. She was shaking. "Sith don't have nightmares. They have visions." He knew this better than anyone: his had started when he was learning about the various Force Prophecies often buried by the dogmatic Jedi. He had had visions of every seminal tragedy in his life and even major events leading up to him abandoning the Order to find Sidious himself and bring him down from under his own nose. Qui-Gon's death still shook him to his core. The man had been a son to him, and to see him ran through so callously by Maul not once but twice; once in visions and the second when Sidious had revealed himself, and showed him the footage. The look on Qui-Gon's dying visage still haunted him, and it likely would until his death. He was almost glad when it was discovered that Maul had survived so he could kill him himself and finally, finally avenge his fallen apprentice. He looked down into her eyes, now filled with horror at the realization of what he had just said. "It may happen next week, or next year. It may be happening as we speak, helpless to stop it. With any luck, we'll arrive just in time." He did want to help her, a broken and scared teenager who just wanted to go back home. However he also needed an apprentice and watching whatever she had envisioned ensue might just push her totally into the Dark. That was the part he hated and that hatred was why he preferred to outsource that part to the Nightsisters when their cult was still alive. No outsourcing now, just watching her writhe in misery. He sighed; it was the way of the Sith.

A/N: Ok, so next chapter will probably take a couple days to write and may be the longest one yet: It will include Séamus waking up, Sidious's trial, and Dooku finally landing in Scotland. Will Gràinne arrive home in time to prevent a tragedy? Will Palpy McScrotumface's pandering pay off? Is Séamus as much of a d*ck as his girlfriend? Find out next time on Dragonball Z… never watched that show idk why I made that reference.