Chapter Sixty-Three: Meant for You

"So, ahh . . . what do you think?"

Anakin had felt sheepish asking Obi-Wan to wear gloves—fingerprints were going to be the least of this thing's worries once it hit the battlefield—but to his immense gratitude, his master had immediately pulled a pair from his belt and slid them on. Now the general ran his fingers along the metal cylinder—gently, as if handling something newly born.

"The balance is a bit lopsided," he said, swishing the inert handle from side to side. "The grips at the base add to its weight."

For a moment, embarrassment washed over Anakin—all that work, and he'd come back with something that wasn't even properly constructed—but then he looked from the weapon in Obi-Wan's hands up to his face. The general had paused, and was gazing at Anakin expectantly.

It's a question, the young man thought, not a criticism. You just have to explain it right.

He raised his mechanical hand and waggled it back and forth. "Even with a glove, I'd be worried about this thing scraping the hilt all to hell if it were just the bare metal. Figured rubber would take the punishment better."

Nodding, Obi-Wan hefted the hilt in his right hand. "It's what Master Drallig would call a hand-and-a-half model, then."

"The term is bastard sword, Kenobi," a voice shouted from above, followed by a series of descending clunks. A moment later, Padmé emerged from the cockpit ladder, rolling her eyes. "You're so prissy."

The general gave a longsuffering sigh, but his mustache twitched with a hidden smile. "As I was saying, a hand-and-a-half model. Light for a two-hander, but heavy for a single hand."

Anakin shrugged. "Hey, versatility, right?"

He expected Obi-Wan to deliver one of his favorite little critiques from their sparring sessions—"The master of a single style is more fearsome than the student of many"—but instead, the general nodded his assent. "The goal of building one's own lightsaber is to make it an expression of oneself, and you've certainly done that. It's very well crafted, Anakin."

As a grin rose to his lips, Anakin found himself looking at the Spice Dancer's deck. "I, ahh . . . thanks."

Smiling back, Obi-Wan tilted the saber's hilt downward. "Though this D-ring you're using to secure it to your belt really isn't safe—"

Before he could finish, he yelped in surprise as the hilt flew from his hands. "Hey!"

With a satisfying smack, it landed in Anakin's mechanical grip. "You really oughta be more careful," he said, and pressed his thumb against the ignition lever.

Cyan burst from his hands—the color a few shades lighter than Obi-Wan's, the white core gleaming hotter. Staring into the icy glow of the lightsaber—his lightsaber—he could feel the handle's vibrations extending up his arm, but it wasn't a jarring sensation. It felt like part of him, as though the blade were imbued with his will, quivering as it waited for his command.

Joy surged within him—and he wasn't the only one. When he looked over at Obi-Wan, Anakin could sense fierce happiness and pride—both for his apprentice and, though he was doing his best to suppress it, for himself.

"If you two carve up the galley, I swear to the gods," Padmé said, rolling her eyes—she was, Anakin noticed, keeping to the ladder, a good ten feet away. "Just keep it quiet til we get to the planet, huh?"

Grinning, Anakin twirled the saber in his hand, the blade's resonance ramping up with the spin. "Why, Padmé Amidala, don't tell me you're scared."

She cheerfully made an obscene gesture. "Bringing those things on a starship should be illegal. At least when the person waving them around is an overgrown ten-year-old."

"Excuse me!" said Obi-Wan, sounding wounded. "I'm fairly certain that the wall of blasters you have set up in the next room is illegal."

"Don't you start, general." She stepped close enough to punch him in the arm. "Before we met you, we were garden-variety outlaws, none of this fancy stuff."

"Oh, you want fancy?" Anakin asked, waggling his eyebrows. "Obi-Wan, show her that move you taught me the other day—"

Then, from the wall, the intercom system buzzed. "Would you three quit endangering yourselves and get up here? We're going to be coming out of lightspeed soon, and it would be just terrible if the jolt made someone put out their own eye."

Snorting, Anakin gave another tap to the ignition lever and let the blade fade away. "She is never, ever touching this, agreed?"

"Better start keeping it under your pillow when we go to bed," Padmé replied, looking as though she were only half joking. "There's a safety on those things, right?"

When he and Obi-Wan simply gazed at the ceiling, she gave a snort and started for the ladder. "Gods-damned Jedi."

As the three of them clambered into the cockpit, Liz turned to display crimson eyes. "For the record, Skywalker, the intercom was still on. I'm insulted." Before anyone could protest, red faded to blue. "But then again, I am rather clumsy. I'll be careful to keep my distance from your weapon, I promise."

Sliding into the pilot's chair, Anakin looked down at the navicomputer—the droid hadn't been lying. "Okay, twenty seconds out, everyone strap in."

"Scram, you," said Padmé, shoving Liz's shoulder.

For once, the blue eyes didn't snap red at the provocation—making a wordless hum of cheery assent, the droid slid to the back. "Hello, General Kenobi. Have you read anything interesting lately?"

As she strapped herself into the copilot's chair, Padmé leaned over, her head falling onto Anakin's shoulder. "Hey," she murmured, the warmth of her breath tickling his ear. "You did good, Skywalker."

He let the sensation linger for a moment—her hair brushing against his cheek, her familiar steady weight resting against him. Softly, he ran his flesh hand along hers.

Then the navicomputer trilled, and they were slamming back into realspace.

Anakin whistled. Before them lay an orb of nothing but green—rich, verdant forests striped with turquoise and emerald. Looking down at it, one could almost smell the wetness of morning dew beading on the grass, rolling down tree trunks. "Lotta room to go camping."

"Just don't expect me to chop any firewood," said Padmé, sitting up to take in the view. "Not when there are two laser swords in our kit."

"Oh," said Obi-Wan, leaning forward himself to get a better look, "by the time we've finished sparring practice to break in Anakin's new saber, I imagine we'll have inadvertently carved up more than enough tree branches to make a campfire."

"You organics," groused Liz from behind them, voice carrying a distinctly red tone. "What's the point of a vacation if you're going to spend it trying to kill each other?"

"Oh, I don't know," Padmé said, looking from Anakin to Obi-Wan with a smirk. "I think watching these two make fools out of themselves is gonna be the most fun I've had in a long, long time."

As his hands automatically moved to begin the landing cycle, Anakin closed his eyes. All at once he could sense the billions and billions of threads rising upward from the planet below, each and every living thing a network that he too was part of.

Up here, glowing tendrils of light twined around the Spice Dancer's three living inhabitants. For a brief moment, one that the Force stretched until it seemed to freeze in time, there was no Anakin, no Obi-Wan, no Padmé—all that could be sensed was a single Us.

Then thunder rumbled, and he opened his eyes.


What do I want.

Across the desk, Palpatine waited. Hands folded, face expectant and open.

Anakin found he could not meet the chancellor's eyes—instead he looked outward, at storm-lashed Coruscant. The rainfall had blurred the city, smeared it with a liquid brush; the lights shining from the windows of countless skyscrapers had become flickering candles, while clouds of exhaust were like fountains of dark water rising through the sky. It didn't seem reachable—there was no longer a window to separate him from the world beyond this office, and yet that world was shifting, substanceless.

The only solid things were in here. Him. The desk. Palpatine. Four Jedi corpses.

Nothing else was real.

Leaning forward, the chancellor stretched out his hand. Like his face, it had . . . changed, somehow. Nothing one would be able to put a finger on, if they hadn't seen it happen—the skin stretched thinner, the bones beneath more prominent, the color just slightly off. Looking at it, Anakin hesitated.

Then, wordlessly, he let Palpatine take his flesh hand.

"Ever since I have known you, my boy," said the chancellor—his voice a whisper so low it seemed almost to flow into the rainfall beyond them—"you have wanted a life of significance. Of conscience. It has not been enough for you to quietly live well—you've looked at the state of the galaxy, and you've wanted to act. You've wanted to mold it into something new; something better.

"I have seen you wrestle with these feelings. Seen you struggle to accept that they were manipulated—abused—by those you entrusted your friendship to. It is only natural. You're the best man I know—the most trusting—and you wish to believe the best of everyone around you. But by now, you must realize that time and again, you were taken advantage of."

That's not true, he voicelessly insisted as the chancellor's clammy skin pressed against his. Even as it came, the thought was listless. Hollow. Obi-Wan didn't take advantage of you—

And where is he now? the dark voice asked. Where are any of them?

He remembered his last conversation with Obi-Wan, all those months ago. The Temple was made aware, his old master had said, that the Office of Special Investigations is conducting an inquiry into Maul and Valis's attack. And then, not daring to look him in the eye: In fact, I've been asked to make a statement.

He knew what was coming, the dark voice whispered. He could have done the right thing. Warned the Republic of what the Order was planning. But he ran.

And he didn't tell you anything.

If Palpatine could sense this second conversation happening before him—and if his senses were as crystal clear as Anakin's had been in the aftermath of reconnection, that was a certainty—he gave no sign. After he'd waited several more moments, answered only by silence, he squeezed his aide's hand. "When I first met you, I had my suspicions as to your nature. After Serenno, I was all but certain. There had been too many stories whispered here and there for me to think otherwise—Anakin Skywalker, supernaturally talented pilot. Warrior without equal, who somehow, by himself, turned entire battlefields. One who was willing to do the impossible to save his friends. Had I known for sure when I first met you that you were a Jedi, I would have kept my distance. Instead, in the time it took for my suspicions to become more than suspicions, you'd become my friend. And when you came to me in the aftermath of what happened at Serenno . . . well, my boy, I hoped more than I had dared to hope for years."

Anakin felt Palpatine's pulse through the hand that clasped his own. In spite of everything, it was even, steady, calm. His own heart beat arrythmically, a stuttering thud that quickened every time the ache in his head spiked.

You know what he's asking, the dark voice murmured. You've known since you sat down at that desk.

Aloud, he simply mumbled, "I . . . I don't understand."

In response, a wistful near-smile surfaced on the chancellor's face. In that moment, he looked so much like the Palpatine of old that Anakin wondered how he ever could have thought there was a difference. Then the look passed, and Palpatine was once again tired, haggard, ill—but perhaps a bit less so than before.

"I knew I had failed in Maul. But much as I'd given up on the thought of teaching in the years since his betrayal—tempted as I was by the idea of remaining forever sealed off from the Force—I also knew that my reason for training him had not been wrong. I am old, Anakin—old and tired, and unable to do things that must be done. My task was to unify the Republic—a task I may yet succeed in. But to do that, I must be a leader, not a warrior.

"Even after I became chancellor—after I was able to begin the necessary steps to make us one Republic—I could not fully protect us from the wolves at our door. I needed someone to be my strong right hand—the instrument of my justice."

Before Anakin could stop it, the dark voice spoke through his mouth. "Someone you could trust."

Palpatine nodded, his pulse quickening by perhaps a beat. "And I knew I could trust you. But I also knew that it had to be your decision.

"When you came to me, after Maul and Valis nearly brought down this Senate, and asked how you could help, I knew beyond doubt. Even without a connection to the dark side—I couldn't risk it, not yet, not when I was so close—I was certain. The Force had brought us together.

"And so I made you Executor Vader, and gave you the tools you needed. I didn't realize the danger you would be in at first—I had no way of knowing, of course, that when you'd left the Jedi behind, you'd also left the Force behind.

"But it seems that the Force was not done with you—with either of us. My decision was made for me. The Jedi came for me, and I had no choice but to defend myself. But you . . . somewhere in your work as Vader, when the Force called to you, you chose to let it in."

Anakin found himself desperate to look somewhere, anywhere else, but the view through the shattered window was no refuge—Palpatine's eyes seemed to follow him no matter how much he slid them into the periphery of his vision. Instead, he looked downward, at the gleaming stone surface of the desk.

At himself.

Blood still ran from his forehead, drying now into a blackened crust. The scar across his face looked distorted, sinuous, as though it had been smeared; his skin was pale with illness, and his eyes . . .

Why had he thought they looked almost yellow?

"I remember," he said, watching his lips form the words. "When you showed me the Arbiter for the first time. You told me it was always meant for me."

Palpatine's voice, bodiless: "Yes it was. But it was not the only thing meant for you."

There was a muted swoosh from the chancellor's side of the desk, and all at once he was no longer holding Anakin's flesh hand. When Anakin looked up, he saw his friend reaching down below the surface of the desk, into some compartment far behind the drawers.

When Palpatine's hands emerged, they were holding something. Reaching forward, he carefully placed it on the desk. Withdrew his hands. Waited.

It was a metal cylinder, perhaps seven inches long. Circlets of steel rose across its length, forming ridges to grip; the pommel was an unadorned orb slightly darker than the hilt's matte sheen. Sitting in a recessed notch just beneath the top—almost invisible, in this near darkness—was a black switch.

The boy looked at it. Then looked at Palpatine.

When he spoke, it was not his voice. Nor was it the dark voice. The person whose words emerged from his mouth was both, and yet neither. Someone new.

"What would you have me do?"

The eagerness in the old man's eyes seemed almost like hunger; emotions rested uneasily on this changed-yet-not-changed face.

And yet, Anakin found, he was getting used to it.

"You've seen, my boy, the lengths the Jedi will go to," said Sidious. "What happened to us tonight may have been thwarted, but it was surely not their only move."

He nodded, and then remembered—the thing he'd been so desperate to tell the man before him not a quarter of an hour ago, the thing that he'd forgotten about completely. "There was an attack at the detention center. A group of them tried to grab Qui-Gon." As Sidious' aura pulsed with surprise, Anakin quickly added, "They were killed. Director Tarkin didn't want you to know about what had happened until he had time to make himself look good—he tried to keep me from coming to you."

The shadow's eyes narrowed. "Did he." For a moment, silence; then, "I'm glad you told me, my boy. For all we know, they were trying to kill her too. Make sure one of their own couldn't turn against them."

Dimly, in a voice he was suddenly disgusted by, Anakin heard his thoughts begin to protest that this couldn't have been what they were there for, the Jedi would never—

The Jedi would never do many things, said the new voice, each word a heavy footfall stalking implacably toward the dissenting murmur. And yet tonight, those things have happened all the same.

His old voice cowered.

Sidious spoke again. "The Jedi are desperate. They know that their time is drawing near—that their manipulations will not be tolerated by a unified Republic. And in that desperation, they have turned to madness. That madness, if it is not checked, may inflict untold damage.

"Nor is theirs the only madness. Maul and his whelp are still out there—and while the Jedi have us on the defensive, the two of them have an advantage. If we do not move quickly, the Republic may be caught between the dark and the light."

Maul.

When Anakin looked back down at his reflection, it had changed. He saw the same eagerness that had risen on the chancellor's face a few minutes ago—a hunger that went beyond the flesh.

Obi-Wan's words flashed through his head. I think you are the person I know who stands the best chance.

He looked at Sidious. Exhaled. "I couldn't do it last time."

But that's not quite true, is it, whispered the dark voice, still lurking in the shadows. You never got the chance to find out.

Another memory: her, on San Sestina. Valis is dead. You saw me shoot her.

Sidious shook his head. "You will not fail again. Not when you've embraced who you were meant to be."

And who, Anakin thought, is that?

"One who has rejected the error of the Jedi Order's ways. One who has mastered the Force in all its facets. One who has proven himself worthy of being my right hand.

"My apprentice."

When Anakin closed his eyes, faces swam before him, wordlessly pleading. Obi-Wan—

who abandoned you—

Padmé—

who betrayed you—

—and then . . .

"I want Qui-Gon Jinn safe," he said. "Somewhere else, not with Tarkin. Somewhere she'll be able to come around to the truth."

"Done," said Sidious, without hesitation.

Anakin exhaled slowly. Then, before the dark voice could stop it, his old voice added, "And we leave Obi-Wan Kenobi alone."

Him, and her.

Silence. And, through the Force . . . disapproval?

When he opened his eyes, Sidious shook his head. "I am afraid that, if Kenobi were to surface again, the extent of his crimes could not be forgiven. If he should stay hidden, let him keep to his own prison. But if he returns, my boy, you will have to do what must be done."

You told him not to come back. He'll listen to you.

And Padmé? the timid voice asked.

Rather than answer it, Anakin let his eyes wander around the office. In this low light, the statues of ebony and bronze were like nocturnal guardians looming over the room. He'd never realized before just how lifelike they could seem, under the right conditions. Almost as if they were watching him. Waiting.

"Anakin," the shadow said softly.

When Anakin looked back, its face wore the old smile—the look of fatherly regard, eyes warm and friendly.

And it was not asking.

He nodded. "All right."

Sidious' smile widened; his eyes shone with relief. "I knew you would not fail me, my boy."

Then: "Kneel."


The Sith, the shadow says, its voice in Anakin's head and yet whispering through his ears, believe that we must choose our own destinies. As a symbol of this, we must also choose our own names.

My master before me became Darth Plagueis. I became Darth Sidious.

Who will you become?

The boy stares down to the sea of scarlet in which he kneels, and asks the Force for an answer.

You already know, the dark side murmurs back. You have all along.

It whispers his name in a voice that he's quite sure Sidious can't hear. This moment is for him, and him alone.

My name, he says to himself.

Then he turns to Sidious.

My name—is Darth Vader.

Heat surges through his bloodstream. All at once, the fevered pain in his head has vanished; though his eyes are closed, he knows that, when he opens them, he will see as clearly as he ever has.

I am Darth Vader, he repeats.

The darkness roars its approval.


When he rose to his feet, the storm had ceased its flow. The air was rank with moisture, but the view outside the window was limpid as it had ever been, skyscrapers towering and solid and close enough to touch.

"I had best alert the Coruscant Guard to what's happened here," said Palpatine, his voice weary. He reached to touch his shoulder and winced; all at once Anakin remembered what had happened, what Mace Windu had managed to do before he met his end.

"Sir," he said, "we should get you to a hospital—"

"I'll be all right, my boy," the chancellor replied, raising the hand on his uninjured side. "I've stopped the bleeding. Though the wound itself must remain, as evidence." The tiredness faded as he looked Anakin over. "And besides, you have business elsewhere."

Anticipation and dread flared in equal measure. Business with light, or dark?

Aloud, he asked again, "What would you have me do?"

Sidious' eyes shone with pride, an emotion Anakin hadn't seen there for a long time. "You, Lord Vader, are my apprentice. There can be no doubt about that—and so, your first task is to prove yourself once and for all.

"Wipe out the False Sith."

Fire flared within Anakin's chest.

"You will, of course, need to find them," Sidious—his master—continued. "But now that I am restored, Maul cannot hope to hide from me. Before you've made orbit, I will know where he is. I will tell you where to go."

The thing he described was an impossible feat. Something no Jedi Anakin knew would have even considered attempting. And yet, listening to his master, he knew that it would happen.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

Leaning over the desk, he gazed down at the lightsaber Sidious had placed there. It was always meant for you, his master's voice whispered. Only fitting that its first act will be to wipe out the pretenders to your rightful place.

Do what must be done, Lord Vader. And when you have returned, we shall make safe the Republic.

Darth Vader took up his sword.

As he walked out the door, he nearly managed not to see the bodies at all.