Well, fanfiction is completely broken and now I have no idea how many people are reading my story, but I'll charge onwards and assume you're all there. Our deadline is encroaching!
To Oba Diah we go...
The cell was entirely devoid of sunlight, softly illuminated by the sickly green the Pykes had such a penchant for. Vermin scratched and chittered. Silman sat, wide-eyed, wild-haired and barely verbal. He was completely unrecognisable from the photo Anakin had accessed in the Jedi Archives.
"A visitor!" he squawked.
Anakin had an uneasy feeling that the man was speaking to the rats.
"A visitor! A visitor! Sir, please, some food, if you have it?"
"Of course."
He handed over his ration bar.
Even after all these years, every prisoner in chains, every poor sentient in rags, made Anakin think of home.
Anakin had never been brave enough to beg for food on Tatooine. It was a high-risk, low-reward sort of business as a slave. Sure, some off-worlder might take pity on you, but you were twice as likely to be spat on or kicked by someone declaring you undignified. Really, the word shouldn't have existed in Huttese. The Hutts didn't know what dignity was; they stole it from every sentient they encountered, and yet had none of it of their own.
"Something to serve!" Silman crowed. "I get so anxious when I don't have anything to serve."
The question formed on Anakin's lips but was answered by the dark, seething mass of rats gathering before the food. Ah, kriff. Anakin wanted to be disgusted, wanted to hate him for wasting his ration bar on vermin – but he understood, really. The best part of scoring an extra portion of food had always been giving it to his mother.
"Silman," Anakin murmured, crouching to draw level with the prisoner and his friends. "My name is Anakin. I'm trying to find out about Jedi Master Sifo Dyas."
Silman tested out Anakin's names a few times on his lips, in a strange sing-songing lilt. It was only after a few moments that he seemed to recognise the second name.
"S-s-sifo Dyas?"
"Yes."
"The Jedi?"
"Yes."
Silman hummed pensively.
"Forgot me…" he murmured. "The Jedi forgot me."
"The Jedi didn't know about you," Anakin informed him.
But they should have, he thought quietly. They should have looked a bit harder, shouldn't have accepted the death of Sifo Dyas with so little questioning…
"I'll take you home, after this, if you want," Anakin offered. "I'm sure the Pykes and I can reach an understanding."
Silman rocked anxiously from foot to foot.
"Not to be trusted," he croaked. "The Pykes… they cannot be trusted."
And then, as though as an after-thought.
"But the Pykes didn't do this. No, no, no."
Anakin leaned forward eagerly.
"The Pykes didn't do what, Silman?"
Silman did not look at him; he spoke to the feasting rats.
"The shooting came from Oba Diah, yes. But it was not the Pykes who shot us down. No, no. No indeed."
He adopted a baritone, perhaps meant to be the voice of Master Sifo Dyas.
"The negotiations with the Pykes have gone well," he recited, frowning. "They are untrustworthy, of course, but predictably so."
"If the Pykes didn't shoot you down, Silman, then who did?" Anakin pressed.
"Someone…"
Silman hugged his arms around his knobbly knees.
"Someone who wanted to be Sifo Dyas."
And a coldness crept through the prison. A warning in the Force. Kriff.
"Quickly, Silman. Who?"
There were faint thuds from the corridor. A more tangible warning still.
"Who was it, Silman?"
But the man, blind to all warnings, could not abide by Anakin's urgency. He cackled faintly.
"All this deception… don't you see? Someone seeking powers, Sifo Dyas's power, the power of the man who commissioned-"
And his voice was snatched from him. The prisoner's gaunt body – stars, how like the body of a child it was, how like the body of a slave-child – was lifted into the air. Anakin whirled to face their attacker, hot fury filling his chest and lightsaber extended before him.
"Dooku!"
The Count inclined his head in greeting, tightened his fist, and dropped the prisoner. Airway crushed completely. Dead. He ignited his red 'saber in turn.
"An impressive replacement," the Count offered, in courteous greeting, eyeing Anakin's prosthetic arm.
"I am not the same child you fought on Geonosis," Anakin snarled. "My powers have doubled since we last met, Count."
Dooku's lip curled in amusement.
"Nor do you have your Masters to save you, this time."
Anakin lunged forwards in a furious flurry of strikes.
"You're cleaning up your own mess, aren't you?" Anakin growled, effortfully bracing his lightsaber against Dooku's. "You killed Sifo Dyas. You went to Kamino in his stead and-"
Dooku overcame the locked position and swung his blade around again, striking when Anakin was unbalanced.
"Are you sure you don't want to focus on the task at hand, Anakin?"
Anakin dodged the blow and initiated his own.
"Tyranus," he spat. "That's you, isn't it?"
Dooku gave an elegant shrug as he parried.
"Checks out," Anakin snarled. "I bet that's what the people call you on Serenno."
Back and forth they fought. Red light, blue light, eerie green. Anakin fought Dooku into a corner, but he leapt and flipped right over him.
"Aren't you a little old for those tricks, Count?" Anakin taunted, turning to face him once more.
"Just as you are far too old to have such fear," Dooku countered, smirking. "If only your pathetic Master had taught you how to use it."
Anakin grunted as he landed his next blow. There was anger in his fighting now. Faster and faster they parried, until Anakin edged his blade under Dooku's and severed his hands. The curved lightsaber hilt flew through the air. Anakin caught it easily. He beheld his kneeling enemy, his neck wedged between two humming blades.
"I think you should have focused on the task at hand, Count," Anakin spat. "Instead of insulting my Master."
Dooku breathed heavily and said nothing. Anakin felt the anger building steadily inside of him.
"You are going to tell me everything," he demanded, through gritted jaw. "You are going to tell me how those chips are activated and how to stop them."
Dooku's eyes widened.
"You know about the chips?"
"Kriffing hell I do," Anakin snarled. "Now tell me."
At this, Dooku smirked and raised a brow.
"Why would I tell you that, my boy?"
"Because I'll kill you!"
Kriff. He shouldn't. It wasn't the Jedi way.
"I am no Jedi," Anakin gritted out, perhaps to convince himself.
Dooku did not appear particularly perturbed by his threats, smirking at him still.
"Those soldiers are my friends, Dooku," Anakin managed, his voice trembling with almost insuppressible rage. "Their leaders are my friends. Do you really think I won't kill you?"
"On the contrary, Anakin, I understand that you have no choice but to kill me," Dooku countered calmly. "If you didn't kill me then I would warn my Master of your knowledge and you would be killed instead. I concede defeat, Anakin."
"Then why stand to destroy the galaxy when there's nothing in it for you?" Anakin demanded.
Dooku spoke with perfect composure.
"The Jedi and Republic are corrupt, boy, and they must fall. No matter whether I am alive to see it."
Anakin shook his head firmly. The Republic was Padme, it was the Chancellor.
"You can't really believe that," Anakin growled. "There are good people in the Republic and Jedi both, Dooku."
Dooku made a noise of reluctant assent.
"But when one wishes to change the galaxy, Anakin – truly change it, on monumental scale, not like the senators in their Republic – one cannot afford to be so precious about the lives of good people."
"That's not true!"
"It is."
Anakin was almost yelling, Dooku's voice remained soft. He was losing control, he knew. He shouldn't talk to him a moment longer. He should kill him – no, he should take him prisoner – and he should leave this damned planet.
"There are slaves working fields in this galaxy," Dooku went on, his voice like poison. "Good people who deserve better. But if they were paid, then the good people only a pathetic social rung above them who can barely afford their grain would starve."
He watched Anakin's stricken expression with a curling smile.
"There is pain in every pathway, Anakin. The strong embrace it."
And Anakin did not want to hear another word. Didn't know if he could hear another word. He felt somehow disconnected from his body.
"Tell me how to fix this!" he roared.
Dooku grunted with the blow. One, and then another.
Anakin had kicked him.
They looked at each other in mutual shock and fear. But Dooku, breathing heavily through the pain in his ribs, found his composure first.
"It is one matter to kill your prisoner, young Skywalker, and another matter entirely to beat him as you interrogate him."
Anakin knew that. Kriff. He knew it in every cell of his body. He was sweating profusely and it drenched him in shame. He was drowning in it. He had never felt such potent disgust for himself in his life.
"I shouldn't have done that," he managed, through heaving breaths.
"It certainly isn't Obi Wan's style," Dooku mused.
"It's not," Anakin agreed shortly.
Obi Wan. Anakin tried to fix an image of him in his mind. Obi Wan who had always forgiven him. Obi Wan who would forgive him again.
"So you're going to give me nothing?" he asked, levelly.
"Nothing," Dooku agreed. "There is nothing I could tell you that would be of any use. My Master controls the chips and his power, young one, is immeasurable. Truly. I confess I was never fit to be his apprentice. The entire Jedi Order would stand no chance against him."
Icy fear in Anakin's gut again. He held steady.
"Where is he?"
Dooku chuckled.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Anakin breathed steadily, pushing back at the rising desperation. He had to get something out of this. Anything. Some sort of win, some sort of gain towards the safety of the people he loved. He couldn't have come all this way and lived this pain for nothing.
"When will he activate the order?" he demanded.
Just one answer. One answer would have soothed that horrible ache in his chest.
"I don't know, Anakin," Dooku enunciated calmly, and Anakin knew that he was telling the truth. "A matter of months, I suspect. It is only logical to wait until Republican victory in the war, to ensure the Separatists are crippled. But you must understand that he does not tell me everything. Far from it."
Anakin nodded stoically. Everything he'd guessed already. Kriff. He'd cry if he wasn't careful.
"I'm sorry, Anakin," Dooku offered. "This is a truth that you cannot fight. There will be the deaths of a great many good people across the galaxy. It is for the best."
They looked at each other in painful silence, Anakin's glare fierce, Dooku's gaze mellow.
"I'm afraid Obi Wan's unconventional training of you, his propensity towards attachment and family…"
Dooku shook his head as though sympathetic.
"It will make this painful for you," he finished. "You'd have done better with a wiser Master."
Anakin tilted his chin antagonistically.
"With you, I suppose?"
Dooku smiled, faint but true.
"With me, Anakin… you would have been great."
He could hear no more. He could do it no more. Anakin drew across his arms – such a gentle motion, so little fight in it – and Dooku's head rolled.
Kriff.
But he'd had to, hadn't he? If he'd brought him back as his prisoner then his Master would have known that their secret was unsafe and the order might have been activated before Anakin could do anything about it. This was his best chance at buying time.
Although buying time for what, Anakin didn't know. He was still no closer to stopping any of it.
He stalked from cell number five, two 'sabers at his belt. The hallway was littered with guards who had presumably been thrown by Dooku in his violent entrance.
"I thought you said…"
The voice was faint, groggy. The guard who had let him in, sitting propped upright against the wall, slurring his words.
"I thought you said you were just gonna talk to him."
Anakin clenched his fists and the prison lights extinguished. He stormed for the prison and did not look back.
Nineteen days. Nineteen days of knowing without telling a single soul. Without ever saying the words aloud, even for her own ears. And she'd suspected it, of course, for far longer.
Padme was fourteen weeks pregnant and she had never felt so alone in her entire life.
It wasn't Anakin's fault that there was no right time. The anguish over Ahsoka that had started this whole mess had been followed by his departure from the Order and week after nightmarish week of trying to get the HoloNet to leave them the hell alone. They were woken at night by camera-droids at their window-panes. Padme was asked questions when she left her home for the Senate and she was asked questions when she went to lunch (barely eating, of course, so as not to be caught vomiting) and she was asked questions when she went home at night. Waning now, thankfully.
Right in time for their latest disaster. Anakin's obsession with some elusive darkness in the Force, some fabled enemy of the Republic. Late nights spent hacking the Jedi Archives and climbing into his ship almost without warning. And now. Oba Diah. Anakin returning home with the lightsaber of a Sith Lord and telling her it was nothing.
Nothing?
He wasn't sleeping. He was barely eating. And he was absolutely, definitely, not telling her everything.
Which made it easier, somehow, not to tell him. Except that sooner or later her body would expose her and then…
Stars. She simply could never find the words when she looked at him. Anakin's eyes were sunken, these days. The words would surely break his heart and she couldn't bring herself to do it.
She should have told her mother, at least. Her sister. Sabe. But all of those precious people in her life thought that she was good and she was trembling at the thought of how abundantly not good she had been. She removed her implant without telling him, for star's sakes. She had been selfish, deceptive, short-sighted… Everything she prided herself on not being, usually.
But the time for watching, waiting, hoping – hoping that by somehow, by her desperate love, she could bring Anakin back to how he once had been, turn him back into the man who had always wanted children – was over. It wasn't working and Padme was running out of time.
So on the nineteenth day she dialled Satine. She forgot to say hello like a normal person.
"I know you must be so busy," Padme fumbled. "With Korkie and the constitution and everything but… I think Anakin needs Obi Wan. Can you please tell him to come to Coruscant?"
"Of course," Satine answered, without hesitation, before frowning. "He's back from Oba Diah then, I take it? We hadn't heard from him."
"I'm sorry, he should have called you but…"
Padme grimaced.
"I don't think he's going so well."
"I'll tell Obi Wan," Satine resolved. "And what about you, Padme? Are you alright?"
Padme chewed at her lip and wondered if she could say it.
"Not my best," she managed.
Satine appraised her in steady silence, her gaze sharp and astute.
"Will I arrange to come to Coruscant as well, Padme?"
Padme could have cried with relief.
"Yes please, Satine. I'm so sorry."
"Don't apologise."
Satine made to give her a comforting smile but it was strained. Kriff. Padme had made her worried.
"I didn't mean to worry you or cause trouble. It's not urgent, you can come when-"
"I'll see if I can come tomorrow," Satine resolved calmly. "Please don't apologise again, Padme. I'm sorry. It sounds like Obi Wan and I were distracted by all this Mandalore business at precisely the wrong time."
Padme nodded, sniffling.
"A little bit," she admitted.
Satine nodded and rose to her feet.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Padme. I'll make sure of it."
Ahsoka would have liked to go to Coruscant, to speak properly to her former Master – who everyone was obviously abundantly worried about but pretending otherwise – but she was still a wanted criminal there, blast it. No one had got around to proving her innocent. Which Ahsoka couldn't really begrudge, given all the shit going on. She waved off Obi Wan's apologies as he and Satine prepared to board their ship.
"Someone's gotta look after the ad'ik, right?"
She had meant it as a joke, more or less, but Obi Wan and Satine both gave her warm smiles and emphatic hugs – clumsy, in Obi Wan's case, navigating his crutches – and murmured their gratitude.
"I don't need a babysitter," Korkie scowled.
"We know you don't, vod'ika," Ahsoka assured him.
Korkie did not need a babysitter but Ahsoka had to admit that he needed a friend. A sister. He was still in the habit of taking long and pensive walks out to the edge of the palace gardens where the bodies of Maul and Opress, Clanless and homeless, had been buried. He still whirled with sorrow and guilt and unanswerable questions, sometimes. And he was never as calm as when they performed their nightly ritual, Korkie lying on his bed and Ahsoka sprawled on the rich rug beside him, working their way slowly through Classical Mando Folklore: Volume I, teaching Ahsoka his language.
"We finally get to start a second story tonight," Ahsoka reminded him, as they watched the ship close its ramp and begin to hum with engine vibrations. "I want to read the one about tiny Korkaran."
Korkie grumbled and flushed.
"It's a stupid story to be named after. I'm normal-sized now."
Indeed he was; irritatingly, even in the few months that they had lived together, Ahsoka could swear his height was beginning to encroach on hers. She chuckled to herself. She was starting to think like a real ori'vod now.
"Mum was nearly dead from how much blood she'd lost," Korkie muttered onwards, as they turned from the departing ship and strode back towards the palace. "She shouldn't have been allowed to name me in that state."
"I like your name," Ahsoka protested.
Korkie shrugged.
As they made their way through the palace, they were greeted at every turn by deep bows, whether from grand politicians or palace workers. The word Prince was intoned with great respect.
"I can't figure out whether they respect me more now because I've won the Darksaber or because they know I'm actually the son of the Duchess," he mused. "I know foundlings are supposed to be treated all the same as a biological child but the issue of royal foundlings has been a quietly contentious one over the years."
The announcement had been made, in the days gone past, simply because the rumours were so abundant and the grounds to deny it too thin. Satine had apologised to her people for the deception but there had been little need – what had presumably once been an unforgivable Mandalorian crime of procreating with a Jetii, let alone unmarried, let alone keeping it a secret – was readily forgiven by a people who had seen Obi Wan and Korkie combine to defeat Maul and win the Darksaber. The royal family's popularity was at an all-time high.
"Probably a combination of the two," Ahsoka reasoned. "Now, exceedingly important Prince, do you have time to spar with a commoner before breakfast?"
Korkie feigned deliberation.
"I suppose that with the suspension of Parliament today, I might be able to accommodate…"
They grinned as they turned towards the dojo. Ahsoka loved her vod'ika, she really did, already. She would look after him as long as Obi Wan and Satine needed her to. They'd saved her life and she owed them that.
But she couldn't stop thinking of Anakin. Her teacher who had become so much more. She loved him and she owed him so much. And yet they were so far from each other. He was struggling. Out of her reach.
It was easy to forget, on resplendent Mandalore, but the war dragged on and there was still some enormous darkness out there. Chips implanted in the brains of soldiers. The end of the galaxy as they knew it, not so improbable.
She had to get back out there soon.
Satine and Obi Wan exited their ship to an enormous wall of sound. Snapping, flashing, chattering. Ah, Coruscant. The glorious home of the HoloNet.
"Do you have to deal with this all the time?" Satine asked, stricken, as she approached Padme's waiting figure. "This is horrible."
"I don't get it this bad anymore," Padme reassured her.
Her voice was barely audible over the clamouring press.
"This is for you, you know."
Satine and Obi Wan exchanged a glance. They should have anticipated it. They strode through the chaos, protecting Padme between them.
"Duchess! Duchess!"
"Where's your beautiful son today?"
"Our warmest congratulations, Duke and Duchess, for-"
"He's not the Duke, kriff's sakes," Satine snapped. "Do your due diligence and read the Clan Kryze press releases before you start spouting this banth-"
"It's usually best not to engage at all," Padme informed her mildly.
Satine scowled but complied, turning her face from the journalist and charging onwards.
"Is that one your building?"
"Yes. Just half a block away."
Obi Wan tripped a journalist – accidentally, of course – with a crutch.
"We can move faster than this. Come on."
Crutches groaning in protest, Satine clutching Padme firmly by her elbow, and chaos all around, HoloNet's heroes hurried home.
Obi Wan had known where Anakin would be before Padme told him: in the study, fixing things. He left Satine and Padme drinking tea and otherwise recovering from their nightmarish journey through the city and knocked gently at the door.
"Anakin?"
"Hey."
The greeting was casual, offered without a backward glance over his shoulder.
"You're fixing Artoo?"
"Trying to improve his signal capacity," Anakin muttered. "Given our Sith Lord seems to be technologically advanced…"
Obi Wan crossed the room to sit beside Anakin where he worked.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't come to Oba Diah with you," he professed. "It was terrible timing. I want to be around to help you, Anakin, as much as I can."
"Don't apologise."
Anakin still hadn't looked at him. He was fiddling with some switchboard deep inside Artoo's hull.
"I mean, I'm sorry I couldn't help out on Mandalore," Anakin went on. "We're even, right?"
"Right," Obi Wan agreed.
Anakin was presenting well. But Padme was a wreck of nervous energy in the Force when she was usually strong and steady, her characteristic ferocity gone. Something must be wrong.
"So what happened on Oba Diah, then?" Obi Wan prompted.
Anakin unclipped something from his belt and handed it to Obi Wan.
"Nothing good," he conceded.
Obi Wan's eyes widened and he struggled to speak, beholding the object in his hand.
"Is this Dooku's?"
"It's lucky you weren't there," Anakin muttered. "He'd probably have hurt you again."
Obi Wan pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I'd heard the media chatter of his unknown whereabouts but I had no idea that-"
"Well, now you know."
"Anakin!"
Obi Wan seized the young man's hands and pulled them from his work.
"Anakin, look at me, concentrate, and tell me what happened."
Stars. It was like some bizarre re-enactment of a bad day in Anakin's early padawanship.
"I went to speak to Silman," Anakin recounted, with a sigh. "He told me that the Pykes didn't shoot their ship down. That it was someone else, someone who wanted to impersonate Sifo Dyas."
He ran an agitated hand through his lengthening hair.
"Dooku showed up. It was him, Obi Wan. He turned earlier than we thought. He killed Sifo Dyas and showed up to Kamino in his stead and had the chips put into the clones right from the start."
They breathed together in horrified silence. A grand plot so many years in the making. The perfect trap. And they were deep within it.
"Dooku didn't give you any useful information, I take it?" Obi Wan asked wearily. "No indication of the Sith Lord's plan or how it might be stopped?"
Anakin shook his head, grim.
"His guess is the same as ours. That the order will be activated at the end of the war, once the Separatists have been defeated."
They looked at the lightsaber between them.
"Dooku's death won't help the Separatist cause," Anakin reported, perhaps before Obi Wan could say it himself. "Hey!"
He hitched a painful grin.
"Maybe we should go be Separatists. Keep the war going. Be Grievous's side-kicks."
Obi Wan shared in the smile, his equally unconvincing.
"What he need to do, Anakin," he resolved, voice quiet but determined, "is speak to Master Yoda."
There was a lurch of fear in the Force.
"Obi Wan, no, you agreed that wasn't a good idea, remember? If the Jedi decided to sacrifice the clones-"
"Even if they decided to, Anakin, they couldn't," Obi Wan countered grimly. "We cannot defeat an army so large. It's impossible. What they can do, however, is go into hiding."
"And give the Sith Lord a free path to victory?"
"And save invaluable lives," Obi Wan corrected him. "Save our culture. For the future, Anakin."
"We can't be thinking about the future, Obi Wan, we have to think about right now!"
Obi Wan shook his head, hapless in the face of his former Padawan's distress.
"Anakin, there's nothing we can do! We have no leads!"
He took Anakin's hands again and looked at him with piercing gaze.
"If the order were activated tomorrow, Anakin, could you live with yourself knowing that you'd known and failed to warn anyone?"
Even as Anakin made to protest, Obi Wan knew that he'd got through to him.
"It's not going to be activated tomorrow, Obi Wan, it'll be…"
"Dooku's death may change matters," Obi Wan reasoned. "Please, Anakin. Let us talk to Master Yoda. I know that the Council hasn't always got it right but he's the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy and he's lived a long life. He knows far more about Sith Lords than we do."
Anakin sighed, his shoulders slumping.
"Alright."
Obi Wan and Anakin emerged shortly from the study to announce that they were going to the Jedi Temple. The apartment door had barely closed behind them when Padme fixed her eyes on Satine, scrunched her fists stoically in the rich fabric of her skirt and spat it out.
"I'm pregnant, Sati."
No sooner had the words left her lips than the tears began to bubble up. This, at least, erased any ambiguity on Satine's part as to whether she ought to be giving her congratulations. She placed her tea down and leaned across the couch to embrace the younger woman.
"Oh, dear one, it's alright. We can find a way to manage this. Just breathe, Padme. It's alright. It's going to be alright."
"I- I- I-"
Padme took a deep, shuddering breath.
"I did it on purpose!" she wailed.
Padme was the sort of woman that Satine had never even been able to imagine crying; she was always too fierce, too strong, too unflappable. But it seemed that Padme was, indeed, capable of crying, and that she applied to this task the same power that she did to any other. She howled.
"Alright, Padme, okay."
"I h-h-had my imp-p-plant taken out because I wanted a b-b-baby because this war was never going to end and I meant to tell him, Sati, b-b-b-but I-"
"-didn't," Satine finished calmly, saving Padme from finding the painful words herself. "It's okay, Padme."
Padme gaped at her.
"It's n-n-n-not…"
"It is," Satine resolved firmly. "You have been under terrible stress, Padme. This war and the Senate and Anakin always coming and going. Of course your communication was-"
"I was being selfish and un-unfair and I-"
Padme was hiccupping through her waning sobs.
"I know all about being selfish and unfair, dear one," Satine consoled. "That's why I kept Korkie with me on Mandalore all those years while Obi Wan was in the Order. Sometimes you have to be selfish."
Padme nodded, sniffling.
"He will forgive you, Padme. You just need to tell him. Sooner rather than later, I can tell you from experience…"
She gave a wry smile.
"I take it you're not twenty-two weeks yet?" she asked.
"Fourteen."
"Barely out of the first trimester," Satine reassured her breezily. "You're not too late at all."
Padme leaned her head against Satine's shoulder.
"But what if he doesn't forgive me, Sati?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Stars knows he's always worried about me more than enough, and now here I am, causing him more trouble, giving him something else to worry about when the galaxy is already so…"
She floundered for words.
"Shit."
Satine nodded her solemn agreement at Padme's appraisal of the state of the galaxy.
"I think he will forgive you, Padme," she reiterated, calmly. "But if not, if it's too much for him straight away… you'd have me and Obi Wan and all of the family to support you. It would be hard, but it would be alright."
Padme accepted some awkwardly proffered tissues from Threepio.
"Thanks."
She blew her nose and sat straighter.
"I want them, Sati. I do. That's why I made this choice. But part of me wonders if I were too selfish, too short-sighted…"
She lifted her hands to indicate at the enormous windows, through which the late afternoon light illuminated bustling Coruscant.
"How can I bring children into this galaxy, Satine?" she asked. "With democracy collapsing all around us? With blackouts every other night? With Anakin being so miserable and worrying about all this darkness and…"
Satine had the sinking feeling then that Anakin had not told his wife exactly why he was so worried about the state of the galaxy. But now wasn't the time.
"Did you say 'them', Padme?" Satine asked instead. "Children?"
Padme gave a nervous, watery smile.
"I've only had the one scan. Just the basic one. But it said…"
Satine couldn't help it. She gaped and shook her head in wonderment. A baby was colossal news enough but…
"Twins?"
Padme nodded.
Satine gaped for a few moments longer, then laughed, and wrapped her arms around Padme once more.
"By the stars, my dear, you don't do things by halves, do you?"
Padme shook her head, a stray tear falling.
"I don't. I never do."
Satine kissed her upon the head.
"Congratulations, Padme."
Yoda listened in silence to the story of his estranged Knights. Obi Wan Kenobi in Kryze House blue and Anakin Skywalker in oil-smeared work clothes. Bringing him the news that seemed so impossible, and yet made such perfect sense.
A trap.
An enormous trap.
And darkness all around them. Just as Yoda had sensed.
"Thank you enough, for this intelligence, I cannot," Yoda managed, bowing deep before them. "Thank your son, Kenobi, we must."
Obi Wan gave a strained smile.
"Understand, I do," Yoda went on, "that to come to our Temple with such information, easy, it was not. Much gratitude, I have, for your trust in me."
He paced, slowly, before their watching eyes. Sometimes the galaxy made more sense when one was in motion.
"Understand your concerns, I do, about an immediate turn to exile," he mused. "Lose an opportunity, we would, to find this Sith Lord before too late, it is."
Anakin shot a look at Obi Wan.
"So you think it can be done, then, Master?"
Such desperate hope in his voice.
"You think that we can find them? Stop them?"
"Perhaps."
Anakin would not like his indefinite answer but there was no other he could give him.
"Beyond the scope of young Knights, this mystery is," Yoda went on. "To the right place, you have come. All of my efforts, now, concentrated upon this task, they shall be."
Obi Wan nodded his support. Anakin was frowning at him faintly.
"You mean-"
"Done well, you have, Skywalker," Yoda commended him. "But the matter of locating a Sith Lord… best left to me, that is. Spend time with your families now, you should. This dark planet, you should leave, if you can."
Anakin's expression contorted into anger.
"Master, you'll need help!"
"If need help, I do, then call you both, I shall," Yoda vowed. "But delicate, extremely delicate, in this task, we must be. Allow me, young Skywalker, to take these next steps alone."
Anakin opened his mouth as though to argue again but with the laying of Obi Wan's hand upon his knee he snapped his mouth shut.
"It is of great consolation to us, Grand Master, that you will be treating this threat with delicacy and your full attention," Obi Wan told him. "You will create some plan for the activation of the order? So that the Jedi may flee into exile?"
"Establish a framework for a turn to exile, I shall," Yoda agreed. "Communicate to them the precise nature of this threat, for the time being, I shall not."
Obi Wan dipped his head in gratitude.
"That is wise, Master."
Yoda nodded and continued to pace.
"Disturbing, deeply disturbing, this discovery is," he mused.
He looked to the young men before him.
"Overcome by fear, in such an instance, we must not be," he declared. "The present moment, with your families, you must cherish. And trust, always trust, that when right, the time is, call for you, I will."
"Yes, Master," Obi Wan agreed, with an effortful one-legged bow.
Anakin was slow in rising to his feet.
"Thank you, Master," he managed.
Yoda watched the two of them on their way and then sat to meditate. He would not move until the sunrise. If it were the will of the Force to find a way through this enormous darkness, he would find it.
I hope you all enjoyed some more Anakin time this chapter - I certainly enjoyed getting another chance to write more of him. Not to mention Satine and Padme's beautiful moment together.
Next chapter, Padme gives the news to Anakin. Anakin grapples with the idea of sitting back and watching (doesn't sound like his style, does it?).
I'll get it out to you as soon as it's written :)
xx - S.