Chapter 9 - There is no doubt that the mysterious warrior was a Sith (Mace Windu)


"How did he turn?"

"You were not told?" The being smiled widely like Luke had just told a joke that was so bad it was funny, in a pathetic way. "…Now that is just something else." The Sith looked pleased about this, about having another advantage over him.

Luke was just tired. It was a long time since he had been anything else.

He looked up at the Sith's yellow eyes with a sternness and a willpower that was only a part of his facade. "The only teachers I ever had were Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda." Luke said like it was explanation enough in itself.

"Ah!" The Sith muttered in understanding, even if its smile was just as welcoming as a rancor's. "Yes… those two have a very special way of treating the truth." It paused for moment and the smile lengthened a fraction when it added. "Sorry, I meant had."

Luke nodded softly like the apology had actually been genuine but his own smile was a resigned bitter thing. He pondered for a moment how anything like this creature in front of him could have been created. What had happened to make it so twisted? Was it the same thing that had happen to his father?

"Are you going to tell me?" He asked instead. It was unlikely that the Sith even remembered at this point who it had been in the beginning and even if it did he doubted it would tell him. Besides, Vader hadn't remembered in the end and neither had she. Maybe the dark side wiped someone's mind when they turned from the light.

Maybe it truly was death in way.

He hoped it was

"Of course not." the Sith answered Luke's question mildly with that sinister crooked smile painted on its face. "I will not spoil the experience for you."


Sirens howled above him and went speeding towards the crash site. The light blinking both blue and red blasted the building above in the coloured lights for a moment before the vehicle was out of sight. Looking up at it, it had looked more than a shooting star than an ambulance, and just as far away for the people living down in the slums.

The hood was damp and heavy and clung to him tightly like a second skin. It was uncomfortable, sticky and itched like nothing else, but taking it off didn't even cross Luke's mind as he pushed through the crowd. He doubted the Jedi were looking for him yet, but he didn't want to risk it.

Someone would come asking sooner or later.

It was what he would have done himself.

'I will not spoil it for you.' That whisper replayed inside his mind as he ducked his head further beneath the hood. But spoil what exactly? Luke already knew how it ended and who had done it. What more could there be?

"And spoil what?" Luke mumbled to himself. "How it happened does no change anythin-."

A shoulder pushed hard against his and interrupted his thoughts. The familiar stench of Sansanna spice left little to the imagination to why the stranger stumbled into him. Luke stopped for a moment and watched the guy as he disappeared down into an alley.

At the side of the road he saw a small group of three quickly follow the man down the alley. One of them had a blaster hidden in his belt. Luke only saw a glimpse of it underneath the jacket, but he knew it instantly. He had already taken two steps after them before he noticed what he was doing and stopped. His eyes fixed on the alley and his senses stretched further with aid of the force.

The thugs had almost caught up.

He shook his head, turned around and walked away with a grimace as he cut the connection to the force. The little light the man had been in Luke´s inner sight flickered out as did the three cold ones that were following him when Luke cut the connection and kept walking. He didn't look back.

Luke kept the cloak tight around him, but also kept his strides long and his back straight. In these sorts of places, looking vulnerable was an invitation for trouble.

A thought hit him unwillingly as he kept walking thought the streets. This place was eerie familiar of his home and that fact startled him more than he would care to admit. Of course the landscape of Tatooine was nowhere comparable to this urban setting, but the misery that soaked through everything in this place was.

That was familiar

That was just like home.

Just as uncomfortably familiar were the despair and the helplessness that radiated through the force from every person he passed. This did not look like that 'civilized age' Obi-Wan had spoken so fondly of.

It was not a comforting thought as he walked by a pair of beggars sitting up against the wall. But he was nothing like these people with defeat shining out of their eyes.

"You really lied about everything." He whispered to himself between his clenched teeth and felt an uncomfortable weight on his chest. "Didn't you?"

He ducked into an alley when suddenly the way ahead was blocked by a fence, and he turned and continued down a narrower pathway. He came to a stop when he reached the end of it. The street was surprisingly crowded for a city that had just been under siege.

He watched all manner of people walk past for a few seconds before he caught himself and moved out into the crowd. A group of thugs that had already been eyeing him turned back to their conversation as Luke disappeared from view

It was not a good idea to stand around in the open.

That was just like home too.

The first bar that came up on his walk was the one he slipped into. 'Home sweet home.´ a sarcastic voice commented in the back of his mind as the room came into view, and Luke could not disagree.

He had never been on Imperial Centre before, but this bar might as well have been on Tatooine. 'Even in the past I cannot escape that dust ball.' He thought, shook his head to himself and made his way to the bar.

'Force, I hate these places!' He thought to himself and was careful to keep his expression blank. Even if he still felt dislike curl in his stomach at the sight of the room he was stepping into he was still comforted by it in a twisted way. Disgusting places like this had in time grown to become familiar, and he liked it when things were familiar.

He always was a little conflicted on the matter.

A few heads had turned his way, but he must have appeared unimportant as they all returned to what they were doing before. He made his way to the bar and ordered a random drink. He locked his eyes on the screen behind that bar, where pictures from the battle in space were broadcasted on the news.

"Some fireworks, huh?" Someone in the crowd muttered beside him when a ship that looked similar to a Star Destroyer took a direct hit.

'I've seen them bigger', Luke thought to himself as the image changed.

'Breaking news' appeared on the screen and an image of a ship landing down on a platform appeared. Luke narrowed his eyes and read the small text sliding in under the image. 'Chancellor Palpatine rescued, and returned to the senate by the hero without fear'.

Luke suppressed the stab of fear that went through him when the imagery changed again and the senate building appeared next. The place looked extremely heavily guarded and fortified. He was not sure he could get in there and that had never been part the plan to begin with.

It was supposed to have ended by now.

He shook his head banishing the hopeless turn his thoughts had taken. 'I have not lost yet.' He told himself with his eyes locked on the screen where a smiling Sidious was speaking to an interviewer. 'I can still do this'

It was not impossible. The chancellor was on this planet and within reach. Sidious would be heavily guarded by an elite force and maybe even by Jedi too. But not every Jedi was like Yoda, Anakin or Obi-Wan. If they had been, there would have been a lot more Jedi around in his own time.

He curled his fingers tighter around his left arm. The sting of the scars was intense. He breathed in heavily, once, twice, and swallowed the pain without allowing any discomfort to show on his face. The force came to him and wrapped around the pain with a quiet warm touch. The pain did not disappear, but it was blissfully muted.

"And there we have him, our very own Hero-Without-Fear!"

Luke snapped his eyes back to the screen above. On the screen was his father waving up at the camera that must be on some airborne craft. Just beside him was Obi-wan. Sidious was nowhere to be seen now but a big group was walking into the senate behind the two Jedi. It left Luke with a good indication of Sidious' whereabouts.

Luke's anger betrayed him before he could hide it.

"Yeah, I know." A voice spoke beside him. "I hate them too."

Luke wiped the anger from his face, but the man at his side seemed not to notice Luke's suddenly guarded expression and just kept on talking.

"Why should they have everything and us nothing?" He said with bitterness carved into his face. The man did not look old though. He would have appeared somewhere in his mid-thirties if not for his weathered skin, premature wrinkles and the dead look in his eyes. "I have slaved away every single day of my life without making any progress and they get everything handed to them on a silver platter."

Luke kept his silence but offered a cautious nod. The anger he felt from the stranger through the force was not a bright and fiery flame. It was old and felt like frost when he reached out to touch it.

No one spoke, but every single one of the people within earshot agreed with the speaker. Luke could sense the truth of it through the force. He reached wider, and followed the echoes of the resentment to the edge. A thought occurred to him there.

'No' He thought, pulled back and detached himself from the emotion. The scars burned ominously as he did so, as if voicing their own opinion. 'I cannot. That is going too far.'

He stole a glance at the stranger that had turned his attention back to the half empty glass in front of him. His eyes were red and slightly puffy. He had been crying. Luke shifted his eyes and look forward, but he could still feel the misery from that man that had replaced the cold bitter anger.

'But can you win if you don't?' He thought with his hands curling around each other in his lap. 'You are all alone here, and if you fail…'

Luke looked back to the screen and staring back at him on the screen was a smiling Sidious. It was not a kind smile. It looked greedy and evil, but in this moment Luke was grateful for it, because he would not have been able to do this without that false smile.

'There is no other way.' He told himself like it was an apology. 'I need a distraction.' If he had only known if he had days left or even just hours, he could plan this better out and do something smarter. Unfortunately that would take too much time. Time he was not sure that he had.

This game could end at any moment.

"I'm sorry." He whispered to the man beside him quietly enough so that he knew the man wouldn't hear. Luke's hands fell limp as he lifted them onto the wooden surface of the bar. His left hand never seemed as heavy as it did now, he folded it over the other and opened his connection to the force.

The light came flooding to him but he pushed it away to get to the cold on the other side. Vader had described the dark side of the force like an embrace.

To Luke it felt like a gaping void.

Where the light side was the loyal support of a friend, the dark side of the force was an alliance with a powerful but vengeful enemy. Regrettably there were some things you could not do with the light side alone, and sometimes your enemy knew you better than your best friend.

'Why should the Jedi have everything?' He whispered through the force unwillingly, his heart heavy with regret. He went deeper into the force, and reached towards the suffocating resentment. 'Why should they live in luxury while we suffer in the filth?' The discussion had just been about to die down, but the embers of anger had not burned out yet. 'It is not fair that they have everything.'

He stroked that anger, made it grow and soon it was just as it was before.

'Why should they have everything?' He asked again and placed doubt in people's minds, even those who had not agreed he did not stop there. He needed more. 'Because of their magic?' At every mention of the Jedi, Luke threw a wave of anger through the force and watched as the change started to happen. 'Do they have a right to everything because they are unnatural?'

First it was slow and the anger remained without direction.

'They are oppressors.' He let the persuasion spread and he felt sick when he felt the anger grow. He took a heavy breath and forced himself to continue spitting lies. 'They say they are our protectors but half the city is on fire.' The whispered words seeped into the room and clung to every negative thought like a sickness. 'The Jedi only saved the rich and the politicians before they went back into their palace'

This would not have worked on force-sensitives. A force-sensitive would have heard his voice in their minds and know that it was not their own thoughts speaking to them. But as Luke suspected, he was the only one here with any knowledge of the force.

'The senate does not care either. Has there been any attempt to come here to slums to see if we needed help?' He said through the force. 'No' He continued. He did not have to feign the disappointment. 'They were busier saving themselves.' He said this a voice filled with anger, but his hands shook where they were holding each other tightly on the bar.

Slowly, the flickering flame of anger became an inferno

'The Jedi and the senate… they deserve nothing' He whispered and his throat felt tight as he swallowed. He sensed the change around him. The multitude of voices were becoming one. The room was becoming so much colder and he felt sick knowing he was the one causing it. 'They don't care about us at all' He forced himself to say, and bleed more fear and more anger into the room. 'They need to be removed.'

It was the final nail in the coffin.

All at once everyone stopped moving. All sounds stopped aside from the news channel still humming in the background.

He rose from the chair. No one looked at him as he stood and turned. Everyone sat frozen in their chairs and their eyes looked blindly out at nothing. They were all trapped within their own minds.

'The Jedi and the senate should not have this power.' He said to all of them through the force. 'We must take it back.' There was a slight resistance. He felt an untrained mind fighting against the bonds. He turned his head to the presence. It was an older man and he was looking right at him. Luke looked him right into his eyes as he gave the order.

'We must take it back now'

He felt something break in the force. It sounded like glass and felt like frost when it cracked. The anger in the room changed, he could feel it as it focused and found a target for the rage. When they started moving for the exit, the elderly man moved as well. His mind was now like the others. Luke swallowed and looked away.

It was too late to regret now.

He made sure to keep the contact to the force strong and stable as he moved with the crowd that was becoming more and more loud. As soon as the cold air on the streets brushed his face under the hood, he pushed another wave of anger through the force.

He closed his eyes and envisioned his net of persuasion spreading like a spider web from him. It filled the room behind him and stretched further out and brought the resentment outside into the streets.

The group began to move. Luke walked like a silent shadow between them and feed them the anger, the frustration and the pain that he needed them to feel. The negative feelings spread through the streets they passed, and the mob grew in size quicker than he had anticipated.

A body moved past. It was the man from the bar. It was the one that had been crying Luke's realized and his stomach made a painful twist.

He steeled himself and pushed the doubt back into the dark place of his mind where it came from. He knew what had to be done. There was no point in this continued self-doubt. It served no purpose, because he already knew how all this was going to en-

A stab of pain went through his arm. His feet stumbled over something that sounded metallic. He stopped against a clammy wall feeling the cold touch on his skin. His breath burned a path into his lungs and his entire left arm felt like it was on fire.

As his own created mob slowly moved past him he leaned heavily against the damp wall and pressed his forehead against the comforting cold wall.

He breathed in, mumbled the familiar words under his breath, and the darkness pulled back. His eyes remained closed. It was a comforting veil between him and the rest of the world for a few moments until his heart started beating at a normal pace and the pain was more manageable.

"No emotion." He told himself and breathed in deeply once more.

He had gone to deep this time. He knew that. The pain in his arm intensified again. He hissed unwillingly in pain and his fingers gripped his arms over the scars, trying to ignore how close that was to hugging himself. Beneath his fingers, for a split second, it felt like something moved under his skin.

His fingers shook when he ripped the tattered sleeve out of the way, and horror tore through him when he saw what it had hidden. He shook his head and the hand snapped back as if it had been burned when he realized what was happening.

The scars

They were spreading.


The Jedi council chamber towering over the rest of the Jedi temple at the top of the tall thin spire was as calm as the city below was chaotic. The black smoke from the crashed destroyer was the only thing that broke the endless blue sky Obi-Wan saw before him.

The beautiful blue sky was an often overlooked natural phenomenon on this planet, and one that Obi-wan had always treasured.

"We do not know this new Sith." He said and looked again at the blackness that ruined the sight of the blue sky for him this day. Then he turned his attention back to the council meeting. "I for one have never encountered him before." This he was certain of in the midst of all the other uncertainties.

He had always had an excellent memory. He would have remembered someone like that.

"Know his identity, we do?" Yoda asked. As usual his face was pensive but he looked worried. More worried than usual. Obi-Wan was loathed to bring the aged Jedi Master more bad news, so he hesitated. In the silence, Anakin answered the question for him

"Vader is his name." Anakin said with a guarded expression. His entire posture was tense. Something was clearly troubling him and Obi-Wan once again regretted not talking to him before they came here.

"…Vader?" Mace Windu repeated with a searching look at Anakin. He exchanged looks with Yoda before he asked. "Is he the Sith lord we have been looking for?"

"I am not sure." Obi-Wan answered the question before his troubled former Padawan got the chance "He seems too young to have been involved in this war since the beginning. I think he is another apprentice."

"I do not think that he is new to the ways of the force." Anakin disagreed with a silent apology to his old master. "But he had a poor teacher." Anakin supplied without looking at anyone. "His fighting style is fluid, but it is a strange mix of moves. There is some form V in it, but the rest of his fighting form is a mess and he seems to make most of it up as he goes."

"Leaving something out, you are Knight Skywalker?"

"I…He did not know what a Padawan was." Anakin answered hesitantly, and Mace Windu scoffed "The surprise was real!" Anakin snapped. "I felt it." He insisted with a barely restrained glare at the council member.

"If ignorant of the Jedi he is, unlikely that the Sith lord he is."

"He is still a danger." Mace Windu pointed out.

"He is." Anakin said, for the first time in his life agreeing with Jedi Windu. "He might be insufficiently trained in the force, but his force presence was so dark it was blinding." He shared a look with Obi-wan. "I have never felt anything like it, not even with Dooku."

"He is also a mind reader, and very skilled in force persuasion." Obi-Wan added. "I was almost too much for me to resist." He said and gestured an arm out to indicate the city behind him. "The damage he could do here…" He left the last unsaid.

The entire planet was populated by people without any training in the force at all, and would be powerless in the face of such evil. The consequences of a Sith let loose in this city could be catastrophic especially one they knew so little about.

For a long moment there was an unbroken silence. Yoda leaned slightly forward which somehow made his age face appear even older.

"Take care of this, will you, Master Windu?"

Windu had barely nodded his consent before Yoda continued.

"Assist in this investigation Knight Skywalker will."

"What!?" Mace Windu could not have looked more offended if he had tried. Anakin blinked in surprise before the realization sank in that he would not be left on the side-lines this time.

It was hard for Anakin not to smile, because the look on Windu's face was absolutely priceless, but he managed to suppress it. Then the discussion turned back to the war effort and what they could expect from the separatists now that they lost their supreme commander.

It was harder for Anakin to concentrate on this. He was usually very engaged when it came to these things, but what Padmé had just told him moments before was still buzzing in his head and dominated any other thought.

He was going to be a father, he realized with an intense and mixed sense of joy, pride and terror that he could not compare to anything else he had ever felt.

But Jedi knights could not be fathers.

He suppressed a sigh and felt even more tension collect at his shoulders. Being a father and a Jedi was no possible in this world he lived in, but he had to find a way to make it work somehow. He had to.

He could keep it a secret that he was the father, and he could visit Padmé and the child whenever he could…but that would mean that he essentially left Padmé as a single mother. She would have to give up on many things if she was the baby's sole caretaker.

She might even have to give up her political position that was very demanding on her time. A position and a job she loved so much and was so very passionate about. The thought of being partly responsible of taking that from her tasted nasty in his mouth.

No.

He could not do that to her.

But what was the alternative? He could not leave the order either. Being a Jedi was all he knew how to do. He bit his lip and looked, really looked, at the Jedi masters sitting around him. Would anyone of them speak his case? Was there even the slightest possibility that they would accept that he was both a father and Jedi?

At the last thought his eyes fell on Obi-Wan, the man that had been more a father to him than anyone. Would he understand?

He sighed inwardly.

A hunt for a Sith was just what he needed as both a distraction and an excuse to vent this frustration on a target that had had it coming. Then he could focus on what his options were regarding the baby.

One thing at a time.

Then suddenly he felt a disturbance in the force. The usual chaotic impression he felt from the city below quieted. Where there had been multiple thoughts and feelings mixing together in a roaring storm came a deadening silence. He felt nothing from the force but that complete silence.

"Can you feel that?" He said and the room became quiet.

No.

It was not a silence he heard. The multitude of voices had not become silent. They had become one. It felt like a void, but it was a void that was sentient. It was a vortex of pain, anger and despair. He had only felt such a pure unfiltered dark side like that once before.

The image of the yellow eyed assassin that killed Dooku stared back at him in his mind. The force called to him, tugged him towards the window like it was pulling him on a string. At first he did not understand. He noticed all eyes on him as he obeyed the pull towards the windows and looked with all his senses.

Then he understood.

"...Obi-Wan." He said, with his eyes fixed on the enormous group of people closing in on the temple.

"What is this? A riot?"

"Force corruption, this is." Yoda said suddenly right beside Anakin who was almost startled since it seemed like the ancient Jedi master had suddenly appeared out of thin air.

Mace Windu was already moving by the time Yoda started speaking. Obi-Wan hurried after him out of the door. Anakin moved to follow, but he was stopped by a small green hand. He looked down to meet Yoda's determined expression. "Controlled they are. Find the puppeteer you must."


To be continued:::::;;;