Temple District, Coruscant

19 BBY

The smoke column was visible before the starliner even entered atmosphere; a long dark trail smeared sideways over the lights of the city like a filthy flag. All the passengers surged for the windows, audible gasps filling the passenger compartment as they pushed for a spot to see.

"What is it?!" someone cried.

"It's the Jedi Temple," someone else answered.

There were more sounds of disbelief as the crowd absorbed the information. How was it be possible that the Temple could burn? For millennia it had towered through wars and civil unrest, haughty and stalwart beside its more modernized neighboring structures. To locals it was as constant and steadfast a feature as the moon and stars above. If it burned it meant nothing was stable, nothing was sound. But as the starliner eased out of the stratosphere and circled over the Temple district, the flames licking through huge linear windows were undeniable. At least two of the towers had collapsed.

Sabe reached back with numb hands, easing herself into her seat to avoid falling. I'm too late.

Seldom in her life had she felt the clutch of panic. She was all too familiar with gnawing fear, but not panic. She tended to react, and keep reacting, pushing past that particular feeling with action. But she could feel panic now, perilously close to overtaking her and freezing her solid. She had no idea what action to take next. Where could she go? Who could she tell? Should she run to the center of the Senate Rotunda? Should she shout it in the middle of the Entertainment District? Crackpots did that kind of thing all the time. No one would be phased. She thought briefly of Senator Organa, but hadn't the least idea how to find him even if he was alive.

Her frantic mind lit on the one person who had been her center since she was six years old, and her thoughts slowed marginally. Padme would know what to do. If there was any kind of political answer to this, she would know what it was. If not, she would need protection now more than ever.

The streets around the spaceport were busy, but became more quiet the further away she got. She saw some restaurants and storefronts crowded with people watching the Holonews, and almost every person walking by was navigating with difficulty because they were all glued to their comms. Several of them walked directly into Sabe, apologizing distractedly as she fought her way past them.

They had all thought the war was drawing to a close. It had only just begun.

The lobby of 500 Republica was empty. Even the doorman had abandoned his post. Were they all in the shelter or just clustered around Holovids? Sabe hurried to the lift and hit her floor frantically. As the doors closed she tried to compose herself. She couldn't run into the flat in a panic. Padme needed her calm and focused.

She exited the lift and entered Padme's darkened flat. Before she could call out, soft voices drifted to her from the balcony. Something slowed her steps, and she kept to the shadows, listening.

Anakin.

"What's happening?" Padme asked.

"The Jedi have tried to overthrow the Republic."

"I can't believe that!"

"I saw Master Windu attempt to assassinate the Chancellor myself," Anakin said.

So the Jedi had known. They had realized what the Chancellor was and attempted to thwart him themselves, and they had been defeated. She felt the panic rising again. She leaned back against the wall, her head spinning. Where was Obi-Wan? Did Anakin know? Did anyone? She straightened, preparing to reveal herself and tell all that she knew, but then she realized what words he'd used and his strange tone.

Realization hit her like a kick to the chest. She clutched at her heart, fighting the rising nausea.

"What are you going to do?" Padme asked.

"I will not betray the Republic. My loyalties lie with the Chancellor, and with the Senate...and with you," Anakin said.

"What about Obi-Wan?" Padme asked.

"I don't know...many Jedi have been killed. We can only hope he's remained loyal to the Chancellor."

"Oh Anakin, I'm afraid."

"Have faith, my love," Sabe sensed the predatory smile. "Everything will soon be set right. The Chancellor has given me a very important mission. The Separatists have gathered in the Mustafar system. I'm going there to end this war. When I return, things will be different, I promise."

It rolled around him, filling the apartment like a black tide, wave upon wave of malignancy. He was dripping with it. She could smell it. It filled the back of her throat, a stench so pungent and loathsome that she would swear she could still smell hints of it coming from her clothes hours later. It was smoke, blood, death. And with that dark miasma she could hear echoes, the faint scream of a child.

She felt his eyes turn towards her and knew she could hide no longer.

"I know you are there," He said. "Show yourself."

Stepping out of the dark, she faced him. Padme and Anakin stood together on the balcony, the wind whipping his black cloak around them and intermingling their hair. Padme stared at her with wide eyes. Sabe had never broken protocol this way, intruded on Padme's private affairs. She'd always known her place in Padme's employ despite their closeness. Anakin's gaze turned dark with an inexplicable sickly flash of yellow.

"Anakin, what have you done?" Sabe whispered.

He took a step toward her, and there was nothing left of the boy she'd known. She knew then that he would kill her where she stood without a second's thought. She would not be able to stop him, but she could not allow him to do it without a fight. Her hand within her cloak curved around the blade of her knife, slipping it from its hilt.

"Anakin," Padme said, her hand on his arm.

He'd been coiled to pounce, but Padme's touch unwound his muscles readying for the spring. Even in this state he seemed to realize that slaughtering her best friend before her eyes would push his wife's loyalty to the breaking point. He relaxed, covering Padme's hand with his own.

"I must go," He said.

He kissed Padme, and walked to his ship without another backward glance at Sabe.

Sabe exhaled as his ship lifted into the air and zoomed into the lines of traffic. Then she moved to Padme's side and took her arm. "It's time to go."

"What are you talking about?" Padme said, dragging her eyes away from where Anakin's ship had disappeared. They were glassy and heavy-lidded.

"I'm taking you to Naboo. Tonight. Now."

Padme jerked her arm away. "I'm not going anywhere until Anakin returns."

"Be serious, Padme. Did you hear him? He has turned to the dark side!"

The slap rang across the living room. Sabe staggered back, her hand to her throbbing cheek where Padme's hand had connected. She tasted blood and panted, looking at Padme with wide eyes. Her Padme, the avowed pacifist who would only fire blasters at droids during the war, stood with her hands fisted and ready to strike again. In Padme's dark eyes Sabe thought she could see a reflection of the baleful yellow light in Anakin's.

"How dare you?" Padme hissed.

"It's the truth, Padme. He's as likely to hurt you as anyone else now."

"I will not leave him," Padme said, only the barest hint of a tremor in her voice.

"Think of your child, Padme. I will take care of you," Sabe pleaded.

Rage and fear warred for domination in Padme's face. "Anakin will take care of me. He is my family. My only family."

Simultaneously, Sabe heard the words behind her words. She couldn't convince Padme that Anakin had fallen, because Padme already knew. She was brutally aware that he was beyond any persuasion that even her love could make. Yet she loved him still, even the dark savage thing he had become. She was no different from the wild-eyed Glitterstem addict turning the needle to his arm. Her hand rested on her abdomen where the child rested just days from being born. I don't know what I am doing. I don't know if I can do it. I can't do it. Please don't make me do this alone.

"He's gone," Sabe whispered. "Please come with me. I'll never leave you alone."

Padme's face changed again. The rage had won, and her beautiful features contorted into something monstrous. "You don't want to protect me. You just want what you've always wanted; to hide yourself away in my shadow."

It isn't really her talking, Sabe told herself. It's that thing inside of him influencing her. She's powerless against it. But Padme knew just where to stick the knife to draw the most blood. It may not have been Padme talking anymore, but Padme had given it her full consent.

"Get out," Padme said.

"Please," Sabe said softly, tears spilling from her eyes and sliding over her cheeks.

"Get out or I will call security."

Sabe struggled to her feet. She searched her friend's face for any sign of hope. Her tears were hot and fast as she turned to the door.

"I won't be far," she said as she left through it.

Sabe ran blindly through the streets seeing nothing; not the faces of the passers-by, not the clones with their strange matching faces looking colder and stranger than ever, not the Holovids with footage of the Senate now in session for the the Chancellor to announce the formation of the new Galactic Empire. She had no plan and no destination in mind, but it wasn't so surprising when she came back to herself standing in the memorial garden before Qui-Gon's statue. It was too close to the Temple, and smoke-filled. On occasion a shower of embers would light the sky above her. The flowers and gravel walkways were trampled, the statue blackened by soot. It was no safe place, but at least it was quiet.

She could go no further. She sank onto the stone bench, feeling too weary to even sit up straight. She wasn't sure how long she sat there staring at her own hands. It might have been hours. But suddenly, wonder of wonders, a shiver went down her spine. She turned and there he was, enveloped in his cloak. His face was so shadowed by his hood that at first she could not see his eyes at all. He looked like a wraith, something out of a horror story.

For a moment she couldn't move as the panic and anguish found her again. I could have done something sooner. I could have said something to put a stop to all this, and now it's too late and I can't make it better!

Then she heard Qui-Gon's voice as clearly as if he was standing next to her. So, you don't make it better. You just keep him from buckling under it.

She jumped to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around him. When he staggered against her she bore up beneath his weight, sliding an arm around his waist and helping him to the bench where he slumped.

"Anakin." He said in a strangled voice.

"I know."

They huddled together in the flame-tinted dimness. She wished to spirit him away from the conflagration and the husk of the dead Temple. But all she had to offer was the solid contact of her shoulder against him and the firmness of her arm wrapped around him. Then she thought of the Nubian keystones again. Battered and cracked, but holding still, their pits and rough edges and imperfections interlocking them more firmly than if they had been smooth.

"You did try to warn me about this splendid pile of rubble," Obi-Wan said in a low tone. "We exchanged convention for morality, orthodoxy for truth. That is how we killed him."

"He isn't dead yet, Obi-Wan."

He raised his head and looked at her, and she understood. Then he sagged against her. "You asked me not long ago what Qui-Gon would have thought of us. I can feel his shame tonight. It's so heavy, Sabe."

She tightened her arm around him. "It isn't Qui-Gon's shame you feel. It's the dark side. It lies."

"Master Yoda said to use my feelings to find him," Obi-Wan said. "Instead I found you. I doubt this is what he meant."

"Perhaps this is exactly what he meant. I know where Anakin is going."

Obi-Wan stared at her.

"Mustafar," Sabe said. "I heard him tell Padme. She will follow him tomorrow."

"How do you know? Did she tell you that?"

"I've known her for twenty years," Sabe said softly. "I learned to dress like her, talk like her, wear her face. She didn't need to."

Her cheek burned where Padme had hit her. A tear slipped from her eye and over the throbbing bruise, a slight and temporary balm. She pulled his hand into her lap, gently turning it palm up. Then she slipped a writing implement from her pocket and wrote on his palm, closing his fingers over the symbols.

"What is it?" He asked.

"The access code to Padme's ship," Sabe said. "I will show you the hangar. You can hide aboard until she leaves. His guard is always lower when he is with her."

"You know what I have to do," He said. "I thought you had to protect her."

Sabe rubbed her wrist where Anakin had grabbed her not long ago. He'd still been himself then. She could have intervened maybe. "I am protecting her. Don't let her go alone, Obi-Wan."

"You must promise me one thing," He said.

"What?"

"Get yourself to Naboo."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he put his fingers to her lips. "Please. If I succeed, I will bring her there, and she will need you. If I don't, you must leave the Core. The Mid Rim too, if possible. Go and don't look back."

"Obi-Wan," she whispered, another tear tracking over her soot-streaked face.

He thumbed the tear away. His face had cleared. "Promise."

"I promise."

"Now show me this ship of hers."

And so she led Obi-Wan through the streets of Coruscant once more, this time as his guide. She tried not to think of all the other times they had walked or run through them together, sometimes in chase, sometimes as friends. At last they scrambled out of a grate, at the back and base of the Senate hangar. She keyed in the code and they stepped into the echoing darkness. They walked between gleaming chromium luxury vehicles until Sabe found the right one.

"You may be in for a bit of a wait," she said.

"I think I'm going to go to her first," he said.

Sabe shook her head. "It's no use, Obi-Wan. I've never seen her like this. She won't yield."

"All the same, I want to give her the chance. There are so few choices left open to her, I do not want to take any from her," He said.

"Very well," Sabe said.

The silence swelled with things unsaid. He shifted his feet. "Sabe-"

"Don't. Don't tell me things you wouldn't say otherwise just because you think you aren't coming back." She moved toward him, prodding him in the center of his chest with her finger. Her voice cracked. "You just come back, and bring her with you."

He smiled faintly and bent his head, pressing his lips to her forehead. She caught a breath of pine and salt. Then she was backing toward the door, but still looking at him. She realized she was memorizing his face; his sea-change eyes and tousled hair, the worried furrow between his brows. Enraged, she turned her face away and began to run, throwing open the door before he could watch her cry yet again.

"The force be with you, Obi-Wan," she sobbed as the door slammed.

She would spend years regretting the things she had not permitted him to say.