Chapter 12 -" Saviour, conqueror, hero, villain. You are all of these things... and yet you are nothing" – Darth Malak
This world was very beautiful.
There was so much more to see than the dusty outback he had grown up in. This enormous world that had opened up to him after he walked up the ramp of the millennium falcon, had endless possibilities.
It had hundreds of planets and star-systems. Planets made of an eternity of snow, forest or water with so many different cultures and people. It was an infinity of wonders just waiting to be discovered
In the time that followed he had only found one constant rule in the many worlds that were littered between the sea of stars. Just one.
This world was beautiful…and very cruel
"So if we do this, I can fix everything?" He asked not truly believing the words himself, he had in time learned not to. He could not afford any more mistakes. "The galaxy will go back to how it was before? To what it would have become?" It was everything he ever wanted, had begged for during these long days and nights, and yet he was hesitating in taking this offered hand.
There had to be a catch. Nothing in this world was ever given for free.
Or given at all.
'You were not listening were you?' The creature said from under the hood, the teeth that framed the sentence were bared in a smile. It shifted the knife in its hands in a slow hypnotizing way, but the yellow eyes never left Luke. 'Life is not something you can simply undo, and time is not something that can be manipulated on a whim. Once something is written, it cannot be unwritten.'
To Luke's senses it did not feel like a lie.
For once.
"Then what exactly are you offering me?" If he could not change anything, then what was the point of this? "I have made it very clear to you why I am here and what I want."
The Sith hesitated, its long fingers drummed on the knife making the oddest little melody that sounded kind somehow. 'Time is a linear thing that is intertwined in everything.' The Sith finally said, he sounded for a moment more like a scholar than a Sith. 'Time is a cruel mistress and she rarely changes her mind, but there is a way to do this'
"So what must I do then, when I go back?" Luke said, following the explanation and envisioning a calm stream in his mind like he once saw on a planet they visited briefly. "Do I create an alternative way for time to flow?"
'Time does not flow, it is not a stream. It is a web with thousands upon thousands of threads.' The Sith interrupted with more patience than Luke would ever had given it credit for. 'Threads that are all woven together for a singular purpose.' The knife in the Sith's hand suddenly stroked forward and Luke's breath caught until he realized it was not an attack.
The knife had separated a line in the air that had not been there before. Luke could feel the illusion now as much as he could see it dangling in the air. It shone, in a way, like faded moonlight but the light felt eerie, unnatural and the light side of the force withdrew from it.
It looked like a spider web, if spiders were the size of TIE fighters.
'And strings can be cut.' It said like the thought was somehow amusing. Luke found himself hypnotized by the illusion. It looked so real. He resisted reaching his hand out to touch it because of the slight fear that it would be solid.
The string the knife had cut in half fell down to the sides and hung dangling over the floor cut high enough not to reach it. The way the stings hung limp in air looked so very real, just like the rest of the gigantic web that was so tall that the top of it disappeared up in the darkness above them.
If Luke had not known it was an illusion, he would not have believed it to be anything other than real.
'Time can be changed but only by cutting the right strings.' The Sith continued, and either did not notice Luke's silent wonder, or simply did not care. The Sith walked closer to its own design and made two sharp movements.
The core of the web was ruined, and the strings fell around the carved openings like wilted flowers. 'Cut these ones in the middle and sure, you have damaged the natural design.' The Sith said and pointed at the damage it had created. 'But you have to be a lot more surgical to make the entire thing collapse.'
The knife moved pointing upwards to the strings that clung to the walls.
There was no way the knife could have reached that far, but obediently the spider web caved in on itself. 'Not real' he reminded himself and watched with a strange detachment as the web crumbled, only held up by a single remaining thread attached to the celling.
"This is… we were going to change things, mend it…. not." Luke paused grasping for words that a Sith would understand. "This would be… breaking it."
The Sith turned to face Luke again with the strangest look in its eyes. If that look had been borne by any other, it would have looked like wonder.
'… you have a very romantic way of looking at this.' The Sith answered after a long pause. 'Changing time is not something gentle.' The knife disappeared back into its robe, and the illusion behind the Sith flickered out leaving the room darker than before.
'You forget this is the dark side. You cannot create something new without breaking something of equal value.' The words left faint echoes that had faded completely before the Sith's words again rang out in the dark. 'Do you understand now?'
"It won't come to that" Luke denied the image and even took a step back to distance himself. The words sounded false even to his own ears.
'We shall see.'
:::
"Don't land." Luke ordered, silencing the demons in his mind with louder noise. The roar of the engine was a blessing. He could feel the long knives of his regrets clawing at his mind, but the deadening noise drowned them out.
The head of the hood muted the noise slightly and he ripped it off his head. To his relief the deadening noise around him reached another higher level of discord impossible to block out.
He revelled in it.
He learned to like noise, to crave it even. The louder the better. It was silence that was cruel, it always made him overthink everything. It made him doubt, not only the thing he was doing, but also the things he had done in the past.
There was only endless silence on Tatooine. Always.
Until that day
"But sir." The commander said with disbelief, Luke noted that the man almost had to shout to be heard over the roaring engine. That could not be practical in combat. A smile crawled up on his lips and made them crooked.
It was nice to stumble upon such a glaring flaw.
"That is the only way in." The soldier protested mildly and pointed for good measure at the door far below them. Despite the Clonetrooper's misgivings about the order, the dropship instantly stopped its descent.
"Going that way would take too long." Luke said and stepped closer to the edge of the dropship the wind howled around him and mercifully drowned out everything, even the name hiding in the darkest corners of his mind. "Bring us up." He gestured upwards and the ship started to rise in the same moment.
The sky was blue above them. It was a clear blue that he only ever saw in one other place and his stomach clenched painfully.
"Where to, Sir?"
"Do you know where the chancellor's office is?" He asked, but his eyes were still held captive by that endless blue. Enthralled and imprisoned equally.
"You see." He said and leaned over the side and his eyes pulled down to look at the ground far below. The edge he was standing on was truthful in that it was painfully obvious that a fall from this height could have only one merciless outcome. The ground was very far away, so far that the people moving beneath were little more than black spots against the pavement. "I prefer a more direct approach."
He had an inexplicable urge to test if the jump was fatal. In theory, he should be able to slow his descent with the force. Or so he had read in a text once. He was not sure if one could survive if they were dropped from here, force or not.
He leaned closer over the edge, drawn in by the sight, teasing the demon hiding behind his eyes with the threat of death.
"Why knock on the door if you have a key?" He said fixated on the long drop and the pulling sensation that urged him come closer. To jump. For a moment an old memory stole his eyes and instead of the street in broad daylight below him, there was a bottomless pit surrounded by black walls.
"Sir?" Came the hesitant question, finally.
"Commander, how precise is your aim with the cannons on this thing?" He asked, and used the sound of his own voice to drag himself out of the memory he had dug himself into.
"It is what I do for a living, sir." The soldier said with professional pride like he was talking to a superior and not an enemy that had enslaved his mind. "I never miss."
"Good." Luke said reassured, the cold handle of the lightsabre found its way into his hands. "Aim the guns at the windows."
:::
This had to work. It had to.
The chancellor would listen to him.
The soldier looked down the slight sting in his arm had faded long ago, but the threat of what it had been lingered. What had she given him? And why?
He felt a tingling at his fingertips but he did not know if it was due to the drug or the nervousness that made his heart beat faster and faster in his chest.
The two people flanking him were silent, but he could feel the animosity thick in the air from one of them and frim determination from the other. He chose to focus on the latter, it calmed his mind a fraction.
Then the door slid smoothly open with a soft hissing sound and the one he had come this far to meet turned to face him.
:::::
The brown eyes looking back at Obi-Wan were wide and terrified. The man pressed closer against the wall as if it could swallow him up and he could escape from this scene.
He looked at Obi-wan like he was a Rancor about to eat him.
"It is no use, Vader is gone." Obi-Wan said and leaned back to appear less intimidating to the unnamed man, but he did not let go. The man looked just about ready to bolt… or faint. Obi-wan threw a look at Windu for conformation who nodded in agreement.
The answer was practically shouted back at him though the force. There was no lie in those eyes, only fear.
"I'm sorry. I don't-" The man stuttered, his fear spiked and the panic flared. "I didn't-." He looked away again, and he shifted the weight of his feet. Obi-Wan wanted to use force persuasion to make the man tell them where in the world Vader disappeared to, but the man's mind was already damaged, forcing his will on the man could leave lasting wounds.
In the end it is Anakin that acted first.
Somehow it was always him.
"Relax." He said in a way that sounded both comforting and firm as he gently gripped the man's right arm and guided him to a nearby bench. "Sit down, I need you to keep your weight off that ankle." He pulled the man down to the bench quickly enough to make the man emit a startled sound.
"Hand up over your heart. It will slow the bleeding" Anakin says and visibly tried not to look at the blood still dripping from it. "What is your name?" Obi-wan's old Padawan asked without missing a beat as he pulls a med kit out
At first it did not look like the man would answer. He sat completely frozen at the bench staring wide-eyed at Anakin.
"I-" He began finally and the word choked halfway up his throat. "Adrian Walker." Was the name he whispered creating a small puff of white smoke when his warm breath collided with the frosty air.
Obi-wan felt that cold to, but not just in the air. It was like it had settled in his very bones. The Dark side was powerful now, even in the absence of a master. The imprint of the dark side had been cut off from its creator but it had grown on its own, feasting on the pain and fear. The presence was practically a leviathan now, and it was still growing.
To clear the dark from this area would be an enormous task.
"Adrian." Anakin repeated finally and the soft sound of the bandage stopped and Obi-Wan turn back just in time to see Anakin finish the bandage on the hand. "What is the last thing you remember?"
"I-." he shook his head and the unwounded hand came up to cradle his face. "Sorry."
"Breathe in." Anakin said to the young man while keeping his voice very even. Doing what he had been taught to appear calming and less intimidating. "And out." He paused until the order was followed. "Again."
And finally Obi-wan was able to shake himself out of the stupor that had descended on him.
"I am sorry." He said and joined his old apprentice down on eye-level with the young Adrian. "But we need to stop the man that did this to you. Every moment counts."
Anakin sent him a displeased look that made his normally frowned eyebrows draw even closer together. His hand made a motion warding off Obi-wan. He was not surprise about this reaction, he had seen it before when Anakin was extraction information from someone. He had never really mastered force persuasion it had never really seemed like it interested him at all. He preferred to do it his own way.
Obi-wan dispelled the faint traces of that old disappointment into the force.
"I was going – I was going home, but then there suddenly was all this commotion." Adrian said, looking nervously from one Jedi to the other. "I figured it was a riot, so I... I tried to avoid it." He stuttered, but he looked much calmer now that the panic had dimmed into worry. "I had almost gotten around it when I ran right into this man. He had yellow eyes." Adrian paused and looked down with a worried expression.
"Go on."
"He just- walked up to me and raised his hand." Adrian's eyes narrow slightly and called the attention of the premature lines already folding out from the corners of his eyes. The signs of a hard life in one so young. "That is the last thing I remember."
"He…" Adrian stumbled again over his words. "I can't be sure" he bites his lip and looks away. "But it looked like he was leaving with a group of clone troopers when I-"
"Vader left with Clonetrooper's!" Anakin said a little too sharply in surprise and the man flinched back. The hand in his lap curled up as he too curled in on himself, to make himself look smaller. Anakin grimaced and his anger died in the force as though it was swallowed by a flood.
"He was with a lot of soldiers." Adrian said quickly, breathlessly. The fear was back in the man's eyes and Anakin must have seen it too because he visibly restrained himself and motioned for the man to continue with an exaggerated slow gesture. "...It looked like they were following his orders."
"How many are missing?" Windu asked the trooper at his side, who had the familiar light of a holo bathing his white armour in the soft colours. "Everyone is accounted for, except-" the clone trooper halts and listen intently to the message coming over the comm. "except..." He repeats and hesitates with a quick look at Anakin.
Anakin is on his feet in a second. Anakin ripped the holocom out of the Clonetropper's hand, and demand the answer from the other side of the line. In the next second his whole body froze on the spot.
"Rex!"
:::
This was not going as it should. He had been in enough negotiations to know when a deal was going south. But he did not understand why.
"Chancellor, I must object" She walked closer to the chancellor, her face was carefully blank, but there was something beneath it. He had known the Jedi master for long enough to know when something was bothering her. She would walk even straighter than she usually did and her face would become as expressive as a clay mask.
Just seeing that made his shoulder tense.
"Master Jedi, trust me, I will not be alone." Palatine answered. Unlike the Jedi, the chancellor was the very picture of calm.
The soldier could not put his finger on it, but there was something that just wasn't right about it.
"I have my security here." Palatine continued gesturing to commander Fox lingering behind him in the shadows. The presence of another clone should be a relief. It wasn't. "I want this soldier to feel he is having a fair say in this matter."
The soldier watched her leave the room with a feeling of dread growing in the pit of his stomach. The sight of her back leaving the room took all the remaining warmth he had in him.
:::
The glass cracked under his boot and shards scratched against the white stones of the floor as they were dragged behind the heavy cloak.
"You are right." Luke commented and stepped around what was left of what must have been a glass table. "You are an excellent shot." He tried with a careful smile at the soldier. He knew he used to be charming. Leia had always said that he had a very endearing smile.
The man did not answer as the rest of the mind-controlled soldiers fanned out around them. But then, why would he? It had not been an order. He had been forced to be here by an enemy that was pulling the strings on every move he made. If Luke let go of his concentration for just one moment, he was sure he would find a pair of hands around his neck or a blaster at his back.
Still there was a twinge of disappointment when the smile wasn't returned, and in a weak moment he stretched his senses towards the soldier, to force the reaction. He dropped the attempt immediately after a breath and continued out the door.
'Stop tormenting yourself.' He thought, berating himself for almost indulging such to such base desires.
"The chancellor is clearly not here." He said shaking himself out of the moment of melancholy and addressed the commander directly as he fell in line behind Luke. "Where would they take him?"
"To the safe room most likely, but it does not make sense," The trooper answered in a professional manner. "They had no idea we would be here. They should not have moved him." The helmet tilted slightly, Luke's only clue to the man's thoughts.
"We just blasted a hole in the wall." Luke comments with a raised eyebrow before he could stop himself and resisted biting his cheek. He held no love for these sarcastic outbursts. They were a throwback to a person he used to be. Such things did not fit him now.
The soldier huffed. "Now they know, but we flew below the radar." He tilted his head towards Luke, but with the helmet on Luke could only guess at his expression. His voice though was professional and firm. "It is very unlikely they would have seen us coming in time to evacuate."
"Then where is he?" Luke asked forgoing questioning the commander on how he knew this. Under Luke's influence he knew the soldier could not work against him. Luke kept the leash tight.
"I don't know..." The soldier answered with slight hesitation. "But not the safe room yet, I think." He sounded as certain as Luke had felt these past days. Which wasn't saying much. "You attacked the temple not the senate, there was no need to move him yet."
"Then what do you know that can help?" He asked, trying to bleed the sarcasm from his words all the while rechecking the bonds he had on the man through the force.
"We need to find him before he reaches the safe room." The soldier followed Luke through the door into the hall and in a gesture commanded his troops in front of them. "If he gets in there, then we can't touch him. It was designed to with stand almost anything."
"Almost anything?" Luke repeated and savoured that last word with its many possibilities. It was a truth he already knew.
Everything could be broken.
"That does not sound like-"
"Stand down, or I shoot." The cold end of a blaster pressed firmly against Luke's temple and the sudden hand around his neck was unyielding. Through the corner of his eyes he could only see a blurry impression of the attacker.
The soldiers, that had moved at once when the voice shouted through the empty hall, halted almost in the same moment, looking to Luke for orders, which was a slow gesture. He dared not do anything else.
"Move an inch." The man dared and a hand shot out to pull Luke back into the alcove with him. The cold hit him before the dark, and the door that slammed close behind them. "You are the Sith that tried to kill the chancellor!"
"That door is made of wood." Luke said in a light tone, completely ignoring the words. "You think it will keep combat soldiers out?"
The man turned around and pushed Luke back against the door.
"Tell them to shoot then." The blaster moved from his temple to rest right between the eyes. "I dare you." The man said with a calm like he was a soldier himself, even it was clear by just one look that he was not.
He looked like a senator in his soft pristine clothes and neatly trimmed goatee. Luke instantly hated him, and it was not because of the blaster resting point-blank between his eyes.
He laughed. He could not help it. It was too ridiculous. Luke had faced more than one destroyer of worlds. The fact that this soft politician was actually threatening him was hilarious.
"What the hell are you laughing at?!"
"You will not fire at me." Luke said, and leaned casually back against the door. "In fact, I think you want to drop the blaster now."
The man froze and hissed in a breath. The hand holding the blaster was shaking violently, but he held on to it, if only barely. Reluctantly impressed, Luke let his mirth die.
"Drop it." He repeated, and he felt the mind war against his will. "Now."
The blaster was only halfway to the ground before it whipped into Luke's hand by a sharp command through the force. The man looked horrified, his hand immediately reached down for his belt and-
"Stop." Luke ordered, and watched the man do just that. Stopped everything. Luke briefly considers ordering him to stop breathing. He suppressed it violently and pushed the dark side at a distance as he breathes in heavily. "Open the door for me."
'Pull yourself together!' He thought and stepped back into the hall and the soldiers waiting for him.
"Where is the Chancellor?" Luke asked the new puppet with the empty eyes
"He went in the direction of the docking halls." He says in a detached voice. "Hall A I think, he said there was someone he needed to meet and that it could not wait."
"Why do you know this?"
"I am a senator." The eyes of the man were blank now, any sign of independent will was gone. "We were supposed to have a meeting and the chancellor cancelled at the last minute."
"I think the two of us are going to be great friends." Luke said pleasantly ignoring the futile resistance he met in the force. The man was strong willed. "Senator." He repeated. "Name?" It was a habit that made him ask, but the answer makes his heart miss a beat.
"Senator Bail Organa."
"…Organa?" He missed a breath, and his chest clenched painfully. In the dark corner of his heart he was starting to understand why the Sith in his own time had laughed. In a macabre way this was hilarious.
'It was not your fault.' A gentle voice told him from the memory he avoided like the plague. Luke did not believe it.
He had long since learned the consequences of telling lies to himself.
"What were you thinking?" Luke said rounding on the man with a sudden spark of hate. People were so eager to throw their lives away in this time. "One soft senator against how many professionally trained soldier." He didn't understand why he was suddenly this angry, the words flooded from him like they had taken a life of their own "Are you truly that arrogant, that irresponsible?"
That is as far as he got before a loud beeping rose from the commander's belt. Luke started and stared down at it with eyes narrowed, like the interruption was entirely the devices fault. The possibilities of who might be calling from the other side flashed briefly in his mind. None of the scenarios he stumbled upon dispelled the nervousness curling in his gut.
He held up his hand, warning the soldier not to obey the trained reaction to answer the call immediately. "Leave it-" He said. After a small eternity the insistent beeping finally stops and he breathed around the frustration as it faded with the noise
"What is the fastest way?" He asked banishing his anger even if the frustration lingered on. He knew the basic layout of the place, but the building was a monstrosity in itself and he could not for the life of him remember the location of docking halls.
There had been so many things that he needed to learn before coming back here to this time. The mappings of the battleship he knew he would end up on, the combatants he could risk running into and first and foremost the power and skill of the Sith he would risk encountering… and the Jedi of course, even if the latter had been difficult reading.
Luke had never enjoyed tragedies.
"You stick to this level at first" Organa said. "And then-"
Then the incessant beeping started again, and Luke's brows grew closer in a frown. He gritted his teeth and blocks the irritation of the noise out.
"Sir?" The leader of the troopers tries to call Luke's attention but Luke waved it off.
"Go on." He says with hard won patience but barely had he spoken, before the beeping started again.
"If I don't answer this. They will know for sure." The soldier said with little room for negotiation. Luke felt the rising frustration he could not keep from showing in his eyes, shifting his weight on his feet and strengthened the bonds on the soldier to the point where it should be physically painful, but he could not afford a slip-up now.
"Tell them everything is fine, that you tried to pursue me, but lost me in the streets." He said and backed out of range of the blue light of the holocom that flashed on with its soft artificial light. The shape that appeared was all too painfully familiar.
He resisted the temptation to glare when the shape of Anakin Skywalker emerged as a figure in the blue light, but he barely fought off the sudden helpless urge to laugh. He ground his teeth together, the force pulled at him as if to get him to move and he wanted nothing more than to obey.
His frustration did not spike as he expected it to as he witnessed the conversation unfold before him. Perhaps he simple could not feel more frustrated than he already was.
Maybe there was simply no more room for it in his head.
:::
The door slid closed and blocked the light from the room.
"Now" Palpatine said, his voice turned into a low rumble as he circled the soldier. "Where were we?"
:::
"Why is he not answering?!" Anakin mumbled to himself and pressed the button to repeat the call. A second time the tone started and stopped, and left him in unbearable silence once again.
"Rex, I swear by the force! If you do not-"
The blue light that rushed to fill the holocom silenced Anakin immediately by its mere presence, but the figure had barely been formed by the light by the time Anakin's questions were in the air.
"Where are you?" Anakin demanded. He knew he was letting his frustration and worry show, but the tension he felt in the force only grew and grew. It was like the very air was splitting apart.
"Everything is fine, Anakin." The image of Rex answered calmly, uncaringly, saying his first name like it was nothing.
Except Rex never used his first name.
The holocom groaned under the pressure when his metal hand close firmly around it. 'What have you done now, Vader?' He thought and stared at the outliers of the projection, there was no sign of Vader, but that did not mean that he was not there, hiding in the dark like a coward! There was nothing he could see in the holocom that supported the growing feeling of wrongness in the force.
But he trusted his instincts. Vader was there on the other side, listening in.
"…Anakin?" He hears Obi-wan repeat behind him, but his eyes cannot detach from the projection of Rex looking back up at him.
"We tried to pursue the Sith into the streets, but we lost him." The reply was unflinching, but the sense of wrongness was so thick he felt like he should be choking on it.
"Where are you now?" He asked hopelessly. He knew it was a stupid, but he had to ask.
"We are coming back right away, Anakin." Rex said sounding as certain and reassuring as he always did. Only he repeated Anakin's first name again, the name that Rex refuses to use even in private. He even put a little extra pressure on it.
The holocom went out and Anakin was left with a cold sinking feeling.
"Does Commander Rex usually call you by your first name?" Windu asked when Anakin handed the holocom back to the clone trooper, but with the tone of his voice it did not sound like a question.
"No." Anakin and pressed his hand into a fist. "Damn it." The answer had been staring him right in the face and still he had allowed his anger to cloud his mind and had run like a fool towards the distraction that was dangled so temptingly right in front of him. "… a distraction." Anakin said in a whisper, as the horror of that realisation really sunk in. "I know where they are."
"What?" Obi-wan was beside him again, but the question was nothing more than background noise. Anakin was already moving before Obi-wan's hand locked around his upper arm. "Anakin-"
"What is the only thing Vader has been trying to do since we met him?"
::::
"He tried to kill me." The soldier could hear Palpatine's damning words behind him, his mind was reeling with the implications of what the chancellor had just told him on his own volition. Their leader was a traitor. "It was so sudden."
This was a massive deception. The nightmare scenarios his mind had conjured up on the way here did not even hold a candle to the truth. This was genocide waiting to happen. It could mean the end of the Jedi. He had to find somebody that would believe him.
Anyone.
:::
Something was wrong.
Luke could feel it. It was a nagging in the back of his mind, the feeling of doubt.
There was a stab of something that felt like a warning through the force the minute the blue light of the holocom flickered off. He told Organa to stay in the broken office, he could not bear to look at him, and they left the hall behind at a brisk pace.
The suspicion persisted, and became even more stifling as they travelled the abandoned halls.
He tried to ignore it. 'You are getting paranoid, Luke.' His mind supplied unhelpfully and he followed the soldiers down another hall. The short exchange between his father and the soldier whose name he now knew to be Rex replayed over and over again in his mind.
Rex had said exactly what he had ordered him to. Still, the doubt persisted, like a high pitched scratching at the back of his mind.
He increased his pace down the abandoned hall. His senses went to all sides to catch a glimpse of the elusive sith. The more times the response that came back to him a blank nothing, the harder his heart pounded. His eyes strayed to a silent clock hanging on the wall as he passed it, he had barely looked before he regretted it.
Why had he even done that?
The way to the lift was as short as it was worrying. The absence of people became increasingly louder in his mind. There should be people around but this entire floor was cleaned out. He turned his hand towards a camera as they bolted past and crushed it into oblivion without breaking his run.
He wondered what eyes were looking at them from the other side of those cameras or if anyone was looking at them at all. 'What is going on?' He just blasted the chancellor's office to pieces and no one batted an eye?
Then finally, he sensed a presence in front of them. The very one he almost snuffed out twice now, but it was far away. He rechecked the bonds he has on his escorts, and wished he hadn't a second later. His control was already fraying at the edges, and all he had done thus far was running around.
Then there are steps, and the sound of blaster fire in the distance. Luke forced himself not to count his puppets again.
"Cover." He said to them instead of doing what he really wants to do, run ahead and finish it.
'Patience' he commands himself and the force gathers around him. Barely a minute later a man bolted past them. It was a clone trooper with no helmet, and his eyes are wide and unseeing. Luke lets him run. He waits for the second one in line that must come running.
But no one followed.
The hall was empty.
The holocom beeped again, and Rex moved to answer it before Luke could command him not to. For some explicable reason, he took his helmet off.
"There has been an attempt on the Chancellors life." Rex said with a straight face, like that is not exactly what they were about to do.
"We haven't even gotten there yet." He protested. As if Rex has not heard him, he continued.
"They say it is a clone trooper." There is a look of disgust in Rex's eyes.
Luke whipped around after the trooper that disappeared down the hall. 'They say it is a clone trooper.' Echoed once again in his mind once again.
The force screamed back at him suddenly, the sense of wrongness coming from the force was so thick he felt he might just be able to cut through it with his lightsabre.
"Put down your weapon!" Rex yelled his hands was almost faster that his words as his gun was up at the level of his eyes in a movement so quick that Luke did not see it happen. The other hand shoved Luke behind him, out of reach of the enemy that had just entered the hall.
She was a silhouette against the light coming from the bright lamps in the ceiling on the other side of the hall, lamps that for some reason were more brightly lit than the rest. 'Jedi' his senses told him, and one with considerable power.
What was more worrying, she was an unknown, one of the hundreds of Jedi forgotten to history after the clone wars. He knew nothing of her, but he had fought the others, Jedi or not, that had.
She should be no problem.
"Sith" She breathed as he pushed Rex aside.
"Shall we shoot, sir?"
"Can you from here?" Luke asked without moving his eyes a fraction from the Jedi. He somehow doubted the effectiveness of a blaster against a Jedi because even with as little training as he had had, blasters were a nuisance more than a threat.
"If she is distracted, sir."
Luke nodded in understanding and stepped out of the half circle formed by the soldiers. He tried to ignore the feeling of comfort that rose from having someone to stand at his back, even if it was someone who was forced.
'Kriff!' He swore at himself. By the force he had become pathetic! He kept the frustration clear in mind as he walked up to the Jedi. He stopped when there was still space between them.
She appeared calm in the force, this unfamiliar Jedi, but it was like it was painted on rather than soaked through her entire being.
"I don't know who you are stranger, but there can be no doubt about your allegiance." Her saber rose in a guard. Luke had mimicked it before he registered his hands doing it. It was the same thing (the same move) that Obi-Wan had made when he met Vader.
He registered a sound, the click of something metallic snapping off and then there was only pain. A numbed spike in his shoulder as his world tilts and the ground rushed up to meet him. The pain flared and he choked on air trying to just breathe as his fingers clawed and twisted against the ground and his back to where the pain was blinding
'My back!' He breathed around the pain but the very air in his lungs was liquid fire 'They shot me in the back!'
Then there was nothing.
The celling was suddenly staring back at him when he opened his eyes, it moved above him until it came to a harsh stop. There was blaster fire, but it sounded like it was worlds away and he was hearing the noise through water.
What had just happened?
His eyes closed slowly, and he felt weightless.
"They are locking down the building." He heard Rex above him and thanked the force that he had held on to the connection so tight. His strengthening focus wrapped around that thought and the weakness that was already showing in his control of the soldiers became as it had been before "If we don't go now, we won't get out."
Luke knew it was a lie. The force told him so even before he managed to get his shaking limbs under him. The hailstorm of blaster fire fell hard. He knew no one was getting out. He had been in enough lost battles to know this.
His hand reached back, the pain was numbed for now and there was no wetness found by his searching fingers. It was a stun they hit him with. Luckily. It was a clean shot. If it had been live ammo he doubted he would have survived it.
"For what it is worth. I am sorry." He said to Rex as he painfully got his breathing under control. "You will not surrender, not for anything." He ordered and felt a part of himself detach and bleed away from his very self. It sounded like cracking glass, but softer. "You will cover my escape until you are no longer capable of doing so…or until I am out. Set your blasters to stun"
'Do you understand now?.' The memory of voice whispered loud and demanding. Luke let the voice drown in the sea of voices he barely contained.
'It will not come to that!' He insisted in his mind at the gleeful voice.
It would not
:::
The wind had died down when he slipped outside. The breeze that was flowing into the darker streets of the city cooled the final rays of the sun that was nothing like the suns of Tatooine.
The shadow cast from the tall walls of the alley he stumbled into were uncomfortably cold. He did not close the cloak around himself. This kind of cold was insignificant.
It was with a muted observation that he witnessed the chaos surrounding the building.
He felt in the back of his mind that most of his little strings were still intact, that meant some of his stolen soldiers were still fighting. He hesitated for a moment, the he let his leash unravel. He tried not to enjoy the pain of it, and banished the dark side that kept whispering sweet things into his ear.
'This has been a disaster' he thought to himself. This attempt had been a worthy gamble, but he could not afford to make another. Sidious was heavily guarded. Too heavily, and after this he doubted that the man would ever be without an impressive bodyguard again.
Assassination was off the table… for now. But there was more than one way to skin a snake. There had to be. He breathed out in a hard push and leaned more heavily against the wall.
'What do I do now?' He needed a new plan.
A speeder rushed past him, the engine loud as it passes and the wind it had created tugged at his cloak. The noise faded as the speeder settles into a quick landing in front of the senate. The person that jumped off the speeder was wearing a distinctive brown robe.
Jedi.
It was with a strange detachment that he noticed this and he followed the figure with his eyes as it rushed into the building. The cold from the wall seeped through the fabric and lay like cold fingers against his back. The scars on his arm stung lightly as if in response to the Jedi disappearing into the building.
Soon others followed.
It was disheartening to witness the massive size of the reinforcements that hurried to the site. It made his heart sink with guilt. All of these ignorant people with an axe hanging over their heads might still die, because he failed to do one simple task.
One single kill
'Pain is only surface' he reminded himself when the familiar guilt blossomed in his heart. He looked away, and it was in that weakness that he spotted something moving away from the building. Someone he caught a glimpse at just before.
The clone trooper that rushed by their position.
'They say it is a clone trooper.'
The force had a very vocal reaction. It shoved against him so hard in his mind that he actually stumbled.
Follow
The word was loud and imposing in his mind. It does not sound human or humanoid for that matter. It sounded… other, and it echoed in the force all around him. It was more an image carved into him, than sound itself. The force had never spoken to him like this before.
In his hesitation, he could see the clone trooper hardwire a speeder and move to get up on it. His eyes never strayed from the entrance to the senate. His moves were erratic and the hands that reached for the controls were shaking.
The word remains as an echo that instead of fading became louder and louder, knife-sharp and undeniable, and Luke obeyed
:;;;;
To be continued
As always, a special thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta :)
