Writing this is giving me a mild panic attack. Make sure to take some good deep Jedi breaths before and after this chapter.
Anakin could have caught a speeder-cab home but chose to walk. His head was whirling with confusion and fear and countless questions. How was this possible? How could Sheev Palpatine be anything other than good and kind? Why had he agreed to come here? What was he supposed to do now?
Master Yoda and Windu had hardly outlined to him what they planned to do once they actually found the Sith Lord – the task had seemed insurmountable, perhaps.
But how would they do it? They couldn't use the clones. How many Jedi did it take to arrest a Sith Lord? It was like the start of a bad joke. Anakin had dealt with his fair share of apprentices but the Master's power would be something else entirely. Could the Jedi ever possibly be powerful enough? Or would the whole mess be futile from start to end?
Obi Wan would know the answer to these questions. Or he would, at least, know the beginnings of answers. He would call Master Yoda and together they would make a plan.
Anakin hadn't told Obi Wan about his dreams. He was ashamed to have failed again so soon and had known Obi Wan's advice would be the same as that which he had given him about Shmi, which is to say that he would be supportive but not necessarily useful. It wasn't his fault. Obi Wan couldn't control the great tides of the galaxy and had never aspired to do so.
But he would understand. He would listen. He would hold Anakin tight and tell him that it would be okay. Obi Wan had known Anakin's every darkness. He had always loved him. He had always stood by him. He would stand by him again. If Anakin told him of his dreams, told him of the way the Sith Lord was trying to tempt him, then Obi Wan would take him by the hands and pull him back into the Light. Just as he always had.
He would tell Obi Wan. They would find a way to fix this. They would-
Sidious watched Anakin's tiny figure stride at hectic pace through the streets of Coruscant on a mission to betray him. The boy's Force signature was ablaze with fear. He was almost running, desperate, towards his anchor. His back was turned to Sidious and he did not intend to look back.
But Sidious would make him.
He sent a tendril of Darkness out towards the young man. Anakin's footsteps slowed. And then a tidal wave.
Anakin crumpled to his knees, clutching at his head.
Sidious smiled and took up his vigil in the Chancellor's throne.
Coruscant melted from around him. All he could see, everywhere he looked, clear as day…
Obi Wan.
Obi Wan lying dead on the floor of the Chancellor's office. Clean lightsaber cautery. Shoulder to opposite hip.
Anakin shuddered and panted but could not escape it.
Obi Wan dead in the Chancellor's office. Anakin had thrashed through a lifetime of nightmares but he had never seen anything this horrible. He had never seen anything so sharply defined, so hyperreal. He felt tears on his face.
What good was it to defeat the Sith if he would lose them both?
He had never been anything without them. He did not know how he ever could be.
"Sir, are you alright?"
Voices, fading hazily in. Anakin's whole body was arrested by tremors. He screwed his eyes shut. Reality was shaky and everything was frightening. He had forgotten where he was.
"That's Anak-"
"Hush, Albie."
The child's voice sounded again, shriller now at being ignored.
"That's Anakin Skyw-"
There were wails of protest as the mother dragged her curious child away. Babbling all around him.
He wanted to tell them all that he was alright. That they could all leave him alone.
But the tremor was in Anakin's chest and voice too and he could not utter a single word.
"Ani, by the stars, what…"
Padme found her husband on her way home from Bail and Breha's apartment. He was on his hands and knees on the pavement of Coruscant's upper level. He was shaking violently, head to toe, gasping raggedly for air. She pushed the crowd out of the way and came, clumsily, to kneel beside him.
"Go away, thank you everyone!"
She lowered her face to meet his.
"Ani, beautiful Ani, what happened?"
He sank back onto his heels. Tears glazed his face. He found her gaze and gave a moan of relief and pain.
"Padme," he managed.
"I'm here," she murmured, taking his hands in her own.
The crowd had not, predictably, heeded her instructions. They surrounded them, gaping, still. Padme paid them no attention.
"What happened?" she pressed again.
"Another- another-"
Anakin's breaths were catching in his distress. His chest rose and fell sharply, his body trembling still.
"Another vision," he managed. "Like my nightmares. But awake. Worse. Worse than normal."
"Oh, my love," she soothed, leaning into him and cradling his head against her chest. "It's alright. You're still here. I'm still here."
One of the babies gave a kick inside of her. I'm here too. Their sibling retaliated. Padme made an effort to steady her own breaths. She loved these babies but they were stressing out their father enough to kill him. She just needed to have them, blast it. She needed to birth the babies and everything would be fine and Anakin would know that everything was fine and they could finally celebrate and know the joy that Padme had intended to bring them.
There were tears in Padme's own eyes now.
Kriff.
There was a rumble of displeasure as the circle around them was disrupted. Obi Wan Kenobi appeared like their guardian angel, the light of the setting sun behind him.
"Get away!" he instructed firmly of the crowd, with a sweep of his hand. "You will leave them alone!"
The crowd, stunned and presumably Force-drugged, nodded their compliance and dispersed. Obi Wan crouched down and pulled Anakin and Padme both to their feet. He held Anakin by his trembling shoulders, his face creased deeply with concern.
"Padawan, dearest one, I felt such terrible sadness, what did they…"
It was an endearing slip of the tongue that Obi Wan only made when he was truly worried.
Padawan.
Anakin wiped furiously at his tears and found his voice, reverting in turn to their old roles.
"A horrible vision, Master. I-"
He heaved a steadying breath and stood taller.
"I couldn't keep it out. I couldn't manage it. I'm sorry, I-"
"No apologies, Anakin," Obi Wan counselled firmly.
They set off at a slow walk on their way home, Anakin gripping Padme's hand tightly. Obi Wan must have been casting some sort of protective shield in the Force around them; pedestrians granted them a courteous berth and paid them little notice.
"Is there anything that we need to do right now, Anakin? About the Chancellor?"
Anakin shook his head.
"Alright," Obi Wan soothed. "In that case, we can go home, have some tea and some dinner and then we can talk about it."
"It's just… stupid," Anakin protested, through residual tears. "Padme knows already. I see her dying in childbirth. In my dreams and… and now. This one was more real than usual."
Obi Wan nodded gravely, a noise of sympathy rising in his throat.
"I'm sorry, Padawan. That is... a difficult matter."
He had rescued them like some guardian angel but he had no solution to give. Anakin nodded miserably, leaning his weight into Obi Wan's shoulder. They limped home.
Obi Wan had thought himself patient but it was a difficult thing to allow his Padawan – no, not his Padawan, his brother – the time he needed to find stability before discussing the day's events. He was certain that the worsening of Anakin's visions upon their return to Coruscant could be no coincidence. There was Darkness here. The Sith Lord was close. And Anakin had been in close contact with Sheev Palpatine only this afternoon.
Anakin had stomached a whole mug of tea, sipped slowly, and three mouthfuls of dinner before wandering off to tinker on a spare ship part. Obi Wan followed him cautiously.
"We should talk, Anakin, if you're up to it, about seeing the Chancellor today."
A curt nod.
"What did you find?"
Anakin shrugged.
"He took me to the ballet."
Obi Wan waited. Anakin sighed and discarded a tool.
"I know what Master Yoda and Master Windu mean," he conceded. "Something's not right, I agree. He's…"
The words were coming slowly, painfully.
"Paranoid," Anakin settled on, eventually. "He thinks the Jedi are planning to betray him. He doesn't trust me so much anymore either so I don't know how much I can…"
He sighed and rubbed at his forehead.
"The Darkness is near him," he declared. "Whether it's him or… or Mas Amedda or… I don't know. I don't know for sure. And we have to be sure, don't we?"
He looked pleadingly to Obi Wan.
"I take it there's no chance of taking him alive if it's him, right? He'll be too dangerous; we could never manage a fair trial because of who he is…"
Anakin swallowed painfully.
"We'd have to kill him, right?"
Obi Wan nodded reluctantly.
"I imagine so, Anakin. We've had difficulty enough in the path keeping Sith apprentices in custody. A Sith Master…"
Anakin paled and sat down against his work bench.
"How are we even going to stop them once we find them?" he asked. "How many Jedi…"
"I don't know, Anakin," Obi Wan conceded. "Master Yoda will no doubt choose several Knights to accompany him."
"You and I?"
His eyes were alight with fear. Obi Wan came to sit beside him.
"No one would begrudge you, Anakin, if you were to choose against facing a Sith Lord, with your first children on the way."
Anakin shook his head furiously.
"You have a child, Obi Wan."
"You have not yet had the chance to know yours, Anakin," Obi Wan counselled softly.
He saw the frightening pallor in the young man's face.
"I'm not planning on dying, Anakin," he reassured him, reaching for some humour. "I know I'm not that old. If Master Yoda asks for my help I will give it to him, but in truth, Anakin, I imagine he'll choose a better swordsman."
He smiled at his former Padawan, wrapping an arm around him, but Anakin did not lean into him as he usually might. His eyes were frightened and distant.
"Anakin, talk to me, I'm worried-"
"Another vision," Anakin muttered, grimacing it away. "I just keep seeing such horrible…"
He shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Obi Wan."
He breathed slowly, deliberately. As Obi Wan had taught him so long ago.
"I want to go back to Naboo," he confessed. "And I want you to go back to Mandalore. I want to hide until it's all over and we can be together again but…"
A grimace.
"We'd never get there, would we?" he asked. "To our happy ending?"
The fairy-tale flitted between them. A Mando wedding with tihaar on tap. Bright eyed infants. One for each parent to hold.
The enormous pain attached to this future – it should have felt so close, but instead appeared impossibly distant – brought a grimace, almost a grotesque smile, to Anakin's face. It was true. Obi Wan had come to this dark and horrible planet because defeating the Sith Lord now was their only chance at the lives they had dreamed of. It was as Satine had said. Some causes were worth the risk.
"We'd never get our happy ending if we walked away," Anakin went on. "If we walked away from the Jedi and let the Sith kill them all and while the Republic fractured and…"
He set his jaw.
"One more day, Obi Wan," he vowed. "I'm going to stay here for one more day and I'll meet with the Chancellor one more time and I'll be more direct in my questions and I'll give it everything I can towards finding that Sith. One more time."
They did not speak of what would happen after that.
"You can go home tonight, Anakin," Obi Wan reminded him gently. "Truly. You can."
Anakin shook his head. Tears were glazing his eyes once more.
"I'm not abandoning you all," he whispered. "I can do this. I can end it."
And though the tears ran his expression was stoic. Obi Wan had seen this look a hundred times before. Anakin had a plan and would see it through no matter what.
Anakin lay awake, reaching out with the Force. Padme slept deeply beside him, pillows propping her onto her side. Their babies slept within her. The very existence of these children seemed a miracle in Anakin's weary mind. The connection he felt to them was the greatest gift the Force had ever given him. A boy and a girl. Padme had forbidden him from telling her; she looked forward to the surprise. Any day now, they would come.
Outside the bedroom, Obi Wan was not sleeping on the couch that Padme had insisted on preparing for him; the rich duvet would be untouched. Obi Wan was in meditation, deeply entwined with the Living Force, sending his consciousness out over this enormous city. He was alert but calm. He did not feel the fear that grew like a cancer in Anakin's body, tightening like a vice on Anakin's beating heart and crowding out the room for air in his lungs. Obi Wan did not know to be afraid. He had not seen what Anakin had seen. The image that returned to him every time he closed his eyes. Obi Wan dead in the Chancellor's office.
There are no absolutes in this galaxy, Padawan.
Obi Wan had taught him that lesson on a diplomatic mission in the early years of his apprenticeship. Anakin had watched him mediate the negotiations between warring ethnic groups that had, before their arrival, engaged in a week of vicious combat and massacred almost a thousand civilians without advanced weaponry. The Agbui and Chiss had appeared in an impossible stalemate, their leaders wholly wicked to their cores. But Obi Wan had found reason within them; he had extricated compassion where Anakin had seen none.
There are no absolutes in this galaxy, Padawan.
But Anakin had found one. He knew as he closed his eyes and saw Obi Wan dead in the Chancellor's office that this vision could not come true. It simply could not. There was nothing to unpack nor discuss. He simply would not allow it.
Master Yoda would never listen to him; he would insist, presumably, on Obi Wan's presence in the fray. He would talk of eternal life in the Force and of the future, always in motion. He would not understand what Anakin knew: that he owed Obi Wan everything. That Obi Wan was everything. He would not understand that Anakin would endure a thousand deaths before he would allow any harm to come to him.
But he didn't need Master Yoda. He could fix this. Anakin knew it with a strange certainty. He could fix this now as Obi Wan stayed safe at home. They had waited long enough. Anakin was the Chosen One and he could fix this now and forever.
He reached out for Obi Wan in the Force again. Their training bond was as deeply intact as it had ever been; the loss of their respective titles did little to diminish it. But Obi Wan's focus was wide and deeply meditative. He was not focusing upon Anakin. Their consciousnesses were not intertwined but instead comfortable beside each other, nudging each other only occasionally, granting the comforting assurance a mother gives her child in the dark.
I'm still here.
Anakin rose to a seated position and focused all of his energy into that gentle, unwavering contact.
I'm still here.
It was far easier to slam down one's shields resolutely, to leave one's bond aching and open, but that would do Anakin no good. Obi Wan would notice the abrupt change. This would be a more delicate task. Anakin applied to this meditation the diligent focus that Obi Wan had begged him for in his Padawan years.
What does it matter, Obi Wan? Anakin had used to grumble. What does it matter where my mind is while I'm sitting here in this room?
But this meditation mattered profoundly.
Anakin donned clothing and boots. Brought his lightsabre to his belt. Hiding his fear, broadcasting only his presence.
I'm still here.
Padme stirred but did not wake. Anakin pressed sleep more heavily upon her.
I'm still here.
Obi Wan's mind was somewhere far away. Anakin glimpsed the intricate cascade of water in the Room of a Thousand Fountains and heard the deep voice of Qui Gon Jinn and felt the delicate warmth of winter sunshine in Sundari. He was not looking for Anakin. They were existing, together, like ships noting each other's flashing lights as they travelled through deep space. Anakin rose to his feet and treaded silently, wrapping great swathes of silence in the Force around him, until his hand touched the cool metal of his bedroom door.
I'm still here.
There was a strange, cool focus settling through Anakin's body now. His fear had almost subsided, replaced now by a sense of certainty. He was going to fix this. He was going to end this tonight. Obi Wan would be safe. Everything was going to be okay.
He opened the door and crossed the apartment. He reached with the Force out towards Artoo, flicking a reset switch before the droid could act on what he had seen. Perhaps he should have done more; the droid would only be non-functional for a few minutes as his systems rebooted. But he couldn't bear to do any worse to him.
Obi Wan, sitting upon the balcony with his back to Anakin, did not move, nor did his meditation waver.
I'm still here.
Anakin blinked back tears – why was he crying? He was going to fix everything, wasn't he? – and slipped out into the night.
Something was wrong. Very faintly wrong. Had the Coruscant air become colder, or warmer? Perhaps there was a stirring wind.
Obi Wan opened his eyes and rose to his feet. In the sprawling city before him, the late-night transports glided serenely onwards. There were the distant cries of closing-time brawls at the bars. But nothing out of the ordinary. Obi Wan almost sat down again, to continue his meditation, but had somehow lost his focus. He turned and padded back into the apartment.
The living space was illuminated only faintly by the city lights through the large balcony window. Threepio was powered down in the corner of the kitchen. Artoo, usually brimming with busyness and anxiety when taken away from his natural habitat in a hectic warzone and kept in the dull domesticity of a city apartment, appeared to be on some form of standby. His machinery whirred with a singular light on, but he was unresponsive to Obi Wan's entry back into the apartment. After a few moments the whirring stopped, his regular lights illuminated and he greeted Obi Wan with a rather shrill whistle.
"Everyone's sleeping, Artoo, please."
The droid rolled back and forth, irritated, refusing to keep his voice down.
"Artoo, what are you-"
Obi Wan turned towards Anakin and Padme's bedroom, expecting a disgruntled member of the pairing to come out and tell Artoo to shut up, but no one did. Artoo gave a long whistle of approval and nudged Obi Wan forwards.
"Stars sakes, Artoo, they are sleeping, please will you…"
His voice faded as he treaded, cautiously, forwards. Something was wrong. Anakin's presence was strange. Hollow.
Obi Wan stumbled as Artoo nudged him again. He didn't reprimand the droid this time. He laid a hand against the door and wondered if he was really going to barge in on them in the middle of the night for such a vague bad feeling…
He reached out for Anakin's presence again, more deliberately this time. It was hollow, displaced. Not right.
They would forgive him. Obi Wan palmed the bedroom door open and peered inside.
Padme's silhouette was unmistakable, her gravid belly obscuring Obi Wan's view of the farther side of the bed. He took a step further, Artoo whistling encouragement behind him. At this, Padme stirred.
"It's me, Padme," Obi Wan murmured. "I'm so sorry to wake you, I know it's the middle of the night. I'm just checking…"
He froze in his tracks. Padme, rolling instinctively to her husband's side of the bed, did the same. It was as though their thudding heartbeats were suddenly audible.
The space beside Padme was empty.
Obi Wan's body was still but his mind was racing, reeling, forwards and backwards in time. Anakin's visions of a loss he would be desperate to circumvent. The Darkness is near him, he'd said of the Chancellor. I don't know for sure.
Padme turned on the bedside lamp and sat upright on the edge of the bed, looking to Obi Wan with liquid brown gaze.
"Where is he?" she asked, her voice tremulous.
The pieces clunked into devastating place.
Kriff. Kriff, kriff, kriff.
Obi Wan dropped to his knees before Padme and took her by the hands.
"I need you to listen to me very closely, Padme. We mightn't have much time."
Her face was blanched and horrified.
"I'm going to go get Anakin. I'm worried he's gone somewhere dangerous. You must go to Mandalore, Padme. You must take your ship and go to Sundari right now. I fear you are no longer safe here."
Her voice was choked and seized rising sobs.
"Obi Wan-"
"Padme," Obi Wan interrupted, firmly, squeezing her hands. "I know it's in your nature to help. But Anakin needs, more than anything else, for you and those babies to be safe. Go to Mandalore right now. Satine will protect you."
"But-"
"I will bring him back to you, Padme," Obi Wan vowed. "I promise. But you need to leave right now. Do not do anything that will put yourself in danger."
He rose to his feet and pulled boots, travelling clothes, from her closet at random. There was so little time. Padme was sobbing now. He piled the clothes into her lap and took her hands again.
"Please, Padme. Trust me. I love Anakin. You know I do."
She nodded, screwing her face up against the tears.
"I know."
"We need to move, Padme. Right now."
She took a shuddering breath and pulled on the leggings beneath her nightgown.
"Okay," she managed. "I'm going. But you have to bring him back to me."
She jammed her feet clumsily into her boots and pulled a jumper over her nightgown.
"You have to, Obi Wan."
"I promise," Obi Wan repeated.
It was not a promise he should have made. Padme rose to her feet and laid her trembling hands on his shoulders. She gripped him like a vice.
"Just be fast, okay?" she choked out, through tears. "And safe. Please be safe. Both of you."
"I will," Obi Wan vowed.
He strode from the bedroom and collected his lightsabre. Padme trailed behind him, her face glistening with desperate hope.
"We will," he amended himself.
He flicked on Threepio as he made for the door.
"Take the droids and some water and nothing else," he instructed. "We'll see you on Mandalore."
Padme nodded, stoically, and they went their separate ways.
Sidious is so, so, so, so horrible and evil. I'm sorry.
I hope you're all doing okay with all that panic and drama. I'm thinking ~3 chapters to go.
xx - S.
