Title: If I Could Just Smack Some Common Sense Into Him

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: As per usual, I own nothing of Star Wars. That belongs to Disney, George Lucas, various authors of tie-in novels and the myriad other people and companies I have forgotten.

Summary: This is opening a door to a fix-it, but I wouldn't necessarily call it one. Darth Vader wasn't quite as terribly inhuman as he seemed to the Rebellion. When they get the chance to move against him, they find out and save him before he really becomes a monster.

Notes: This is a set-up to a fixit, not the fixit itself. Hopefully the rest is clearly explained in the fic, but I expect someone will yell at me in the reviews section if it isn't. I am working under the assumption that this is early in Vader's career as a Sith and that without this intervention he eventually he turned into the monster he only thought he was.


It started because one of Darth Vader's officers couldn't take the violence being meted out against the rest of the officers for minor errors and infractions and defected to the Rebellion.

He managed to get the Executor cornered and surrounded by the whole Rebel fleet.

It's when they started targeting a weak point in the shields, one that was unfortunately nowhere near anything critical, that they got a wholly unexpected response. Vader actually surrendered.

It had to be a trick.

Still, the Executor was isolated, they'd checked and rechecked everything and there was nothing Imperial for days' distance in every direction. They boarded the ship and with their whole fleet there for this operation, they actually outnumbered the Imperials on board. The fleet kept their artillery pointed, for the most part, at that sector of the ship that had somehow convinced Vader to stand down.

When they reached the bridge their defector spoke as they were taking the rest captive. He said to Vader, "I can't believe you stopped because of those karking droids."

Vader's helmet snapped around, his focus on the defector. "You will not speak of them again," he declared flatly, and snapped the officer's neck with a thought, killing the man instantly. It was his last use of the Force as one of the Rebels (they had tried cuffs, injections and any number of other things but couldn't seem to get anything to work – not that anyone understood why he was putting up with it) finally got a force-suppressing collar on him.

With a sudden groan Vader collapsed.

While there were a great many Rebels who wanted Vader tortured, one of the most definite things that had come down from on high in their ranks was that they would not stoop to that. If an execution had to be done, then it would. But they would not lower themselves to torture, because if they did then they ran the risk of becoming no better than what they sought to replace. They had to be better than that.

Vader was examined first by a med droid, then by a single medic, then suddenly a cadre of healers descended upon him. Every attempt to convince them to allow questioning was rebuffed. They were told repeatedly by the medical establishment that Vader would not be speaking to anyone until the healers allowed it.

While this was going on the 'droids' were found. They weren't droids. They were clones. Rank after rank of clones. Dead-eyed, silent, as droid-like as their reputations, and wholly different from the vibrant men that Bail Organa recalled from during the Clone Wars. A thought crossed Bail's mind for a moment, that it was odd that Vader had been so defensive of the clones. The moment had seemed almost like a dark parody of innumerable times he had seen one Jedi or another protecting their men from an angry populace that insisted that those dynamic and often personable young men were nothing more than flesh droids.

With that thought, there was something Bail knew he could do, and arranged to put all the clone troopers through the brain surgery, one after another, that they had made standard practice those rare times when a clone was recovered from the Empire. It didn't stop the prejudice that was rampant against them in the Rebellion as well as the Empire, but at least they were free.

Bail was there when the anaesthetic wore off and the first clone woke up.

Finally getting a good look at the man, Bail was startled to see it was Commander Marshall Cody. When the clone's eyes snapped open, Bail spoke. "How are you feeling, Cody?"

"Did you get the number on – Senator . . ." Cody trailed off as he caught up to the situation. His eyes went wide. "What did . . ." he began to hyperventilate. "No. No, I . . . how could I . . ." Then he stiffened. "Lord – no. Skywalker. Where is he?" Something seemed to snap into place with Cody as he spoke.

"Commander," Bail started. "I know you may be in shock, but you need to know a few things before you do anything. The clones' mind control chips, for one."

Cody's eyes narrowed. "What about them?" he asked. "L – Skywalker was particularly aggravated that he hadn't figured out how to disable them all at once. He didn't even dare to do small numbers because of what the Emperor would do when he caught on."

That was . . . not what Bail had expected. "You know about the chips? Rex said he'd never had the chance to tell you before Order 66 went live."

The Commander chuckled humourlessly. "Skywalker likes to talk. He'd call me into his quarters and talk at me for hours about everything. How Padme dying was all his fault, how it was too late to be a good person because once you Fall you can't go back – I'd really like to smack General Yoda for that one, because it seems like its something he told Skywalker that Skywalker never understood. He's really bad at introspection and thinking things through. He told me about the chips, about how Fives found out and told him and Rex and he didn't believe Fives because Fives was pretty strung out at the time."

"I . . . wait. He told you he wanted to free you all but couldn't because what? He's not allowed to be good anymore because he'd Fallen?" Bail really couldn't believe his ears. Padme had always told him that Anakin needed subtleties spelled out for him because he just wasn't wired to think that way, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined.

Cody's expression was painfully sardonic as he quoted, "Once start down the dark path you do, forever will it dominate your destiny." He sighed. "I'm pretty sure Palpatine had a hand in convincing him of it, but there's more," he said. "Skywalker described how he felt and what he was doing during the sacking of the Temple on Coruscant, and I think . . . I'm no psychiatric expert, but one of the things we learned about on Kamino were psychiatric breakdowns on the battlefield and how to identify them. Skywalker talked about feeling dissociated and I think he suffered a mental break of some kind. When he came back to himself, he just assumed that he'd fallen and that he had no choice." The Commander took another deep breath, steeling himself. "When he started to buck Palpatine, the Emperor started using us, the clones, to leash Skywalker."

"Leash Vader?" Bail prompted when Cody seemed to have lost himself in a memory.

"When Skywalker gets too much above himself, The Emperor would call him and several Vod'e into his throne room, then he'd deactivate their chips, one by one, for the entertainment of watching a vod try to kill, him, run or kill himself. I don't know what he did the first time Skywalker objected, but I know he was in medical for days afterward." Cody shook his head sadly. "One time, following a skirmish I was severely injured and Skywalker dipped into his own bacta to heal me. The Emperor killed five vod'e and made it clear he would kill five for any one vod he saved." When Cody named the date, Bail was startled to realise that that date marked the time that Vader had gone from being a general on the field to a whirlwind of death to anyone his troops faced.

"He was protecting you." Bail was stunned. This turned everything he thought he knew about Vader on its head. "What about his treatment of officers-" Bail cut himself off. Their spy who had dismissed the 'droids' on the Executor had rather starkly explained that. "He's been protecting the clones," he said wonderingly.

"Where is he?" Cody demanded again.

"Honestly," Bail told him, "Our medical staff has him and they haven't let anyone near him since we took him captive. I have no idea, other than that we have a strict no torture policy, so they must be treating him, for what I don't know."

Bail sent a message to Tatooine for Obi-Wan to come yesterday in between sitting with Cody as they explained to clone after clone what had happened and why they had turned on the Jedi.


There were a few very tense moments between Cody and Rex when Cody had defended Vader to Rex, and Ahsoka had to get in-between them. Before it turned physical though, Cody managed to finish his explanation and both Ahsoka and Rex stopped, looked stunned, and then Ahsoka's lekku jerked in frustrated motions while Rex groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "Of course he did, the di'kut."

When Bail was finally allowed in to speak to Vader he was followed by Cody, Rex and Ahsoka, all three of whom refused to be left out of the conversation.

An exhausted-looking Anakin Skywalker was lying on the bed. There were clear grafts all over him, bacta bandages that were there to heal surgical incisions and he was bald instead of sporting the hair that had apparently made many a teen girl swoon – at least according to some of the popular holonet shows in the final days of the war. The primary difference to before was that this man had no limbs, mechanical or otherwise. Bail absently thought that this explained why injections and cuffs hadn't worked on the man. He tilted his head a little, winced as the movement doubtlessly pulled on something, and said, "Kenobi's handiwork. He was always good at disarming people." Rex snorted and Ahsoka groaned quietly.

Cody strode past them and dropped into a chair at Skywalker's bedside. "You and I never got along," he began.

Skywalker – looking like that it was impossible for Bail to think of him as Vader – interrupted. "You never cared for me," he said, that stilted formality that so characterised Vader's speech sitting oddly in Anakin Skywalker's mouth. "I attempted to befriend you at first, then I realised that you were of a sameness to Obi-Wan. No effort would be enough, so I put my efforts elsewhere."

"I'm sorry," Cody told him solemnly. "I thought you were drawing false parallels. I had no idea that you understood the lack of choice that we had. I thought you were . . . people make comparisons sometimes, and they never understand what it means to have no choice."

Skywalker blinked at him, shocked. "You . . . why do you not -" he paused, then seemed to make a decision. "Why don't you hate me?"

"Because you did your best for us. Because Palpatine used you. Because the Jedi clearly never understood that you didn't understand. Because you need help, Skywalker, not condemnation."

At that the Emperor's pet monster reared his head. "I do not need help, Commander. You cannot understand the power of the Dark Side-"

Ahsoka broke in. "Ventress was able to stop being a Sith and Master Vos came back from the brink too, Skyguy." The way she said it was something Bail hadn't heard from Fulcrum in quite a while, but the slight shake of Rex's head told him that this was calculated on Ahsoka's part. She wanted to remind him of who he was.

Cody stepped in to add, "You don't have Palpatine holding us over you anymore, General." There was the slightest hitch that spoke to ingrained habit of calling the other man something else, but it was barely noticeable. "You can walk away."

"If this is about Yoda," Ahsoka said, "The whole, 'once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny', thing, I always wondered about that, because it's like saying that people don't have free will. You have the ability to choose otherwise, Skyguy."

Skywalker looked stricken, "Palpatine said-"

"You're listening to a Sith? A politician who's not Senator Amidala?" Rex cut in. "I know you thought he was your friend, but it's clear he wasn't, General."

"When I killed . . ." he stumbled over the words, then seemed to find some inner resource to continue. "I killed those children in the Temple. I did it and I didn't feel anything."

Cody stared him down. "You weren't sleeping. For days you weren't sleeping. You were strung out, exhausted and worked up over Padme." Skywalker looked confused. "You told me this, Skywalker. All those months and months that you'd talk to me. I remember it all."

"But you weren't-" A twitch that suggested an aborted effort to gestures. "You were unresponsive and Tup didn't remember anything from when he killed Tiplar."

"You said it yourself that his chip was malfunctioning," Cody said. "I remember everything you told me, Skywalker. Everything from how isolated you were because the other Jedi children didn't understand you and you didn't understand them, to how you felt when you realised that Senator Amidala had died at your hand."

Skywalker's eyes closed. "I don't know . . . I just saw Obi-Wan come out of the shuttle from behind her and I didn't even notice that she was surprised to see him. It was just like it confirmed what the Emperor – what Palpatine had told me people were saying. It made sense. Then."

"What did he tell you?" Rex asked.

Cody grimaced. "That General Kenobi and the senator were having an affair behind his back."

"What?" Ahsoka looked baffled. "That doesn't even make any sense."

"Doesn't it?" Skywalker was bitter. "I was never a very good Jedi. Master Kenobi is perfect." There was longing and sarcasm and love and hatred and a thousand other emotions packed into the word. "He's good-looking, smarter than I am, better with a sabre, better with words and politics and sophisticated manners. The only thing I was ever better at was mechanics and piloting and Padme didn't care about that. It just . . . made sense she'd found someone better."

"But she fell in love with you," Bail said. This was a side to Skywalker he'd never imagined – no matter what Padme had said. A raw vulnerability he'd never seen but could be so easily exploited by someone without moral compunctions. Probably had been exploited by that madman with no moral compunctions.

The Emperor's attack dog smiled sadly. "I didn't understand why, I just chose not to look too closely. Better that than finding out my angel had made a mistake."

Bail shook his head and let the other three take over. This was complete lunacy and seemed to be a strangely different narrative to what Obi-Wan had told him. The broad strokes were the same but all the motivations were completely different.

It was at that point that the message reached him that Obi-Wan had arrived. The others barely seemed to notice that he was leaving, though Bail didn't think they were as unaware as they appeared. He arrived at the shuttle bay to see his friend looking tired and much older than the last time he'd seen the Jedi. "Bail," he said, looking serene to anyone who had not known him for so many years. To Bail he looked nervous. "I do hope you are being careful in keeping Vader captive."

"Based on what Cody's said, Skywalker's likely to turn around and join us once he, Rex and Fulcrum have shaken some sense into him," Bail said.

Obi-Wan's face blanked. There was a pause. "Cody?" he finally asked.

"It seems that Skywalker used to unburden himself by talking to Cody. Now that his chip is out, Cody's using his insights to explain to Skywalker how choice works. Based on Cody's recommendations I've already contacted a hopefully useful psychiatrist and therapist to work on Skywalker's . . . issues." Bail watched Obi-Wan carefully. Obi-Wan was a good friend, but he still had a long history of an occasionally only passing concept of truth. Obi-Wan twisted words in ways that were convenient to him, but sometimes he'd twisted concepts in order to justify things to himself. He never lied, but it was only on that technicality of perspective he loved to tout, and sometimes he lied to himself with those not-quite-wholly-truths. Something told Bail this may have been one of those times.

"Issues?" For a second there was a flash of anger before Obi-Wan seemingly purged himself of it. "Bail, I think issues is a pale descriptor of the murder of children in cold blood."

"Cody learned about mental breaks in his training and said that from what Skywalker told him, he thought there was a psychotic break that Palpatine took advantage of."

Obi-Wan blinked at him and Bail fancied he could hear the thoughts racing through his old friend's head. Then the Jedi focused again. "I don't . . . Cody ordered Lucky to shoot me," he said. "Why would he . . ." he trailed off in confusion.

"Didn't I remember to send you a message about it?" Bail asked him. "The clones didn't turn on the Jedi, Palpatine arranged for a chip to be implanted in them. It overrode their free will. From what I gather, at least half of what Skywalker's been doing for the last three years of Empire has been trying to protect the clones."

"Where is he?" Obi-Wan asked urgently. Something in him seemed to be unfolding, as though the confident Jedi Bail had known had withered, but this information had allowed something to bloom again.

"In Medical," Bail said, "I'll take you there. Cody, Rex and Ahsoka have been talking to him."

When they arrived back at the room Bail had left so recently Ahsoka had climbed onto Skywalker's hospital bed while Rex and Cody sat side-by-side, leaning into each other with an easy brotherly affection. Skywalker looked . . . something had indefinably lightened in him and the devil-may-care personality, the deep caring for others that had so characterised the young man seemed to be shining through.

Obi-Wan stepped through the door, looking almost drawn in by some force. As the three in the room noticed him they fell silent.

Cody spoke first, standing nearly to attention. "General," he said.

"Cody," Obi-Wan breathed, two suddenly lengthy strides taking him to Cody's side and pulling him into a tight embrace. "I'm so sorry. I never knew. I just found out from Bail about the chips-"

The former Marshal Commander was clinging just as tightly. "I gave the order," he said, his voice cracking. "It was the chip, but it was also me. I'm sorry," he replied.

A moment later they drew apart, sharing a significant look before Obi-Wan greeted Rex and Ahsoka with less exuberance, but just as much relief and joy. Then he turned to Skywalker. "Anakin," he said, carefully.

Over the next few minutes Bail was treated to a perplexing verbal dance of Obi-Wan making increasingly sardonic jokes as he dodged any sort of emotional sincerity, while Skywalker attempted to speak genuinely with his former teacher. Finally, Anakin snapped, "Do you ever actually give anyone a straight answer about anything, or is everything a joke to you? I tell you that you're like a father to me, that I care for you and you tell me that I don't listen to you enough. I say that I'm worried about you and you tell me that I should worry about myself because I'm borderline incompetent. I try to tell you that I'm sorry and you make a crack about my hair!"

Before Obi-Wan could say anything, Cody stepped in. "General – Obi-Wan. You're reading subtext where there isn't any. He's not laughing with you, he's aggravated because you haven't told him that you care for him."

Obi-Wan's head came up and he stared at Anakin. "You think I'm being insincere?"

Ahsoka said, dryly, "No, you just sound like you're doing everything possible to avoid telling him that you care about him to the point that Skyguy is – not unreasonably – thinking that you don't actually like him, because if you did you'd respond to emotional confessions by treating them as serious and not as straight lines for jokes."

"But he's just being sardonic," Obi-Wan protested. "No one actually says things like that and means it, it's gauche."

"Obi-Wan, you've been a very good friend of mine for years," Bail said, "But if you actually mean that, I'm going to get a therapist here for you, because that is genuinely crazy talk."


Three weeks later Obi-Wan and Anakin were in therapy sessions both jointly and separately, Anakin had designed ridiculously incredible prosthetics and was on a mission to rescue every Force-sensitive held by or in danger from the Empire, Obi-Wan was following him everywhere, Cody had basically taken over all the military aspects of the Rebellion – much to Bail's relief – and it looked like they might actually turn things around.