In the Hands of the Sith
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Anakin Skywalker, Emperor of the First Galactic Empire, was growing irritated. He had been listening to one of his councilors elaborate on what he saw to be a very simple matter for what was coming close to fifteen minutes. However, he could sense the explanation was coming to an end. He held his tongue and allowed the man to go on, understanding that not all of his cabinet had the same grasp on the situation that came so easily to him.
Anakin bided his time by surreptitiously picking out which of his councilors were as bored as he was. They numbered forty-two, but some number of them had been appointed as a gesture of courtesy acknowledging their heritage or popularity and had very little influence on Imperial policy. In truth, he placed the most trust in the personnel he'd hand picked for their individual talents, who, beyond the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ki-Adi-Mundi, came from positions of minimal prestige. He found that, with one or two exceptions, his cabinet was holding up against the tedium admirably. He imagined they deserved medals.
Anakin had modified one of the meeting chambers within the Senate building to suit these smaller gatherings, and he frequently regretted it. Looking out upon the small assembly floor -- surrounded on three sides by two tiers of seats -- one grew increasingly claustrophobic when meetings dragged on.
Mustering his willpower, Anakin managed to focus on the matter at hand as his councilor began wrapping up.
"This is the second month Amon III has thought it unnecessary to come through on their tribute, my lord. The trade embargoes have done very little to encourage their compliance. Allowing this to pass again will set a poor precedent for our other suzerainties."
Anakin sized up the stocky man standing straight-backed before him until he could sense him becoming distinctly uncomfortable. The fear was an important factor during dealings such as these. The fear kept too-comfortable diplomats on their toes and ruled out any too-comfortable ideas. Councilor Gunwhell had made several ill-considered advisements in recent months, with unfortunate results, and, while Anakin valued him for very specific purposes, his patience with the man was beginning to wear thin. He had discovered long before that people were much less likely to give him bad opinions when they were in immediate fear for their lives.
"I would recommend the authorization of military force, my lord," the man asserted, mustering his confidence though he remained daunted. Some people simply couldn't be taught, by methods of fear or otherwise.
Anakin let a silence hang over the hall for an appropriate amount of time. He found that gave the illusion that he was duly considering a suggestion. When he broke poise, it was with a nonchalant and almost-dismissive smile.
"Your recommendations are always consistent, Gunwhell, I'll grant you that much," he replied coolly. He let his eyes wander to each of his advisors, but he glanced out the wide window at his right as he asked no one in particular, "Does anyone else have an opinion?"
The red-skinned Twi'lek Roona Nas spoke up after a tense interval, fixing Gunwhell with a derisive look. "Sending one of our generals in to negotiate with a detachment of stormtroopers in escort would make a clear enough gesture without beginning ground operations. But I don't trust Amon III's new prime minister. I agree we should authorize force, and put an army in orbit."
Anakin nodded to Nas, giving her words more weight than he gave to those of Gunwhell. He caught the looks other members of the cabinet angled her way, as if they imagined they were so subtle as to escape his notice. He had made few pretenses to disguise the favoritism Nas currently enjoyed, although there were none on the cabinet brave enough to voice the opinion that this was because she, like Anakin, had once been a slave. Only one of the many benefits to being in charge meant he didn't have to disguise favoritism very well to begin with.
"I believe General Aarrak has been looking for a chance to prove himself at diplomacy," Anakin decided. "Are there any objections to sending the fourth army to Amon III?" Anakin smiled his most unfathomable smile, the sort he wore when he was pleased and when he was not pleased equally.
There were no objections.
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With one hand over his mouth, index finger curling against his beard and jaw, Obi-Wan Kenobi was readying himself for extended contemplation. If he was allowed to continue along this path it would be as if the meeting hadn't concluded at all, and was invading the rest of Anakin's day with an overabundance of diplomacy. Anakin believed in equal halves deliberation and action; too much of one outweighed the other, and both lost their efficacy.
"There are, of course, other ways," Obi-Wan began.
"I asked before if there were any objections. You should have said something."
"Other considerations," Obi-Wan amended. "Other tactics, perhaps more -- subtle."
"The time for subtlety is gone. If we continue to be subtle, we will get nowhere." Anakin sprawled back against his bed, the easy nonchalance he had adopted with Obi-Wan burning of simpler times and more youthful honesty. It was, if nothing else, an appealing tactic. He waited.
"Certainly, yes," Obi-Wan agreed. His hand didn't leave his chin. His thumb, now, worked the graying hairs just under his lower lip, bristling them, it seemed, only to smooth them again.
"General Aarrak is already assembling his army," Anakin said dismissively, aware that his former mentor had no intention of giving way so easily.
"The number of times this Empire has resorted to armed intervention in the past two years is beginning to worry me." Obi-Wan was pacing the floor slowly and deliberately. Watching him do so was making Anakin tense. Obi-Wan went on. "We are no longer at war, Anakin. I know you have more foresight than to think the Imperial Armies are the answer to every incursion against your authority."
"I see why this didn't come up in the assembly. You wanted to lecture me." Anakin's tone grew derisive, his mood sliding more rapidly southwards.
"It would be a discussion, if you gave any input."
"There is no room for input in one of your lectures."
"It is hardly a lecture, Anakin; only observation." Obi-Wan lifted his arms, an offer of good-natured supplication. "And certainly without its place in the assembly."
"If it is without its place in the assembly, you know as well as I do that it's one of your lectures." Anakin sighed. The more he watched Obi-Wan, at times standing still, at times breaking to pace, or shifting the weight of his folded arms from one side to the other, the more he distrusted this misplaced observation. He forced himself to relax and rubbed the muscles where neck met with shoulder, an ache like a headache in the joint beneath. "Come now, Obi-Wan, we've solved the matter. The fourth army is as good as sent."
"Then there was little reason for the assembly in the first place." Obi-Wan paused his pacing and stilled once more. Now, however, he watched Anakin over the quiet gravity of his fingers pressed to his chin, his jaw.
"As little reason as there is for this discussion, and we both know it."
Obi-Wan's lips twitched. If it was a slip, he meant to show it.
"Are you trying to make me angry?" Anakin demanded, and the silence on Obi-Wan's part was his answer. "I have enough to consider without you making ambiguous accusations against my methods. It's easy for you to stand there and say whatever you want. You don't have any responsibility except to yourself."
"You're accusing me of being selfish?"
Anakin swung his legs over the side of the bed as he sat, then rose to his feet, in no hurry to cover the three steps it took to close the space between them. His mechanical hand closed over Obi-Wan's wrist as he wrenched it away from his face, inflexible steel digging into his skin through its glove. He held it at an awkward angle, forcing strain. On some level, he was dissatisfied that Obi-Wan allowed it.
"You're trying my patience," Anakin said. "And you're doing it on purpose."
The familiar furrow worked its way into Obi-Wan's brow. He had turned his head, chin to the side, arm not limp but offering no direct resistance, only the angle of his eyes and the unperturbed set of his lips. "I thought perhaps we might spend further time on such matters as befit extra counsel."
"I've had enough of assemblies for today, Obi-Wan." Anakin's grip tightened before it eased. "We can befit extra counsel another time -- when I ask if anyone else has another opinion. There is a time and place to air your grievances, if you're so concerned about the number of times this Empire has resorted to military interventions." Anakin softened to the extent that it was necessary. With his hand, flesh and bones and young knuckles and the calluses of practice, the wear of human life no metal and no replacement could account for, he cupped Obi-Wan's chin with a gentler touch, arched a brow, turned his lips to a smirk and calmed the swell of frustration that rose in him. There were other ways to rebel than contend a hard twist of the wrist. There were other ways to meet rebelliousness than with the hard twist in the first place. Military interventions or not, Anakin gave himself credit for more subtlety than Obi-Wan registered. If it was to be a sparring of gentler actions and quieter tries of patience, Anakin preferred it so; the more interesting it would be to ease into the pleasant moods they both preferred. Obi-Wan was never completely predictable, although, to Anakin's experience, he could be easily manipulated. Anakin stroked his bristled jaw, brushing his thumb from the corner of Obi-Wan's mouth to just beneath his ear.
The change in the Jedi was immediate: a squint at the corner of his eyes, a slight straightening of his back and a firmer set to his jaw. Anakin knew these defiant nuances to be deliberate, but he ignored them. Manipulated, convinced; the two were so similar sometimes it was unnecessary to distinguish between the two. Anakin convinced very well. It was well enough that Obi-Wan required the extra effort. If he were easier than this to satisfy there would be no need to keep him close, act as had been necessary at first and was now some new and interesting and endlessly-faceted dynamic. Anakin drew his hand to the back of Obi-Wan's neck, where the hairs were short and the bone was hard and the muscles had stiffened. Manipulated, convinced, acknowledged; the three were inextricable by this point, tangled as Anakin's fingers in Obi-Wan's hair.
He released Obi-Wan's wrist. Anakin's prosthetic hand, which could not really be warmed by any flush of Obi-Wan's skin, crept to the pulse at Obi-Wan's neck. There was no reason. The metal fingertips couldn't really feel it, whether it quickened or was hot with refusal to cooperate, with close proximity, with inevitable desire. Anakin let his head drop, felt the shadow conceal most of his face, only his lips -– which often refused Obi-Wan's mouth, a particular quirk, a preference for something a shade shy, his jaw, his chin –- still curved in smile and light.
"Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan," he reprimanded, adjusting his mood to something more pleasant. "Must I be the diplomat with you, too?"
"Oh, no," Obi-Wan said. His voice had lowered to a still, rough hush, measured but by no means distant. It was, Anakin did admit, a pleasure to hear that quality overcome him. "Certainly with me you are never the diplomat, Anakin."
Anakin chuckled. Intimacy, honesty: these were things he could no longer expect from others. They were so sorely needed at times, and valuable, even coming in answer to provocation. The young Emperor could feel the tension of a demanding day sloughing off. He took one step in, so that there was no distance between them, and kissed the Jedi beneath his ear, the whiskers of his beard tickling his smile. He was pleased to hear Obi-Wan's next breath escape unevenly, the first sign of some capitulation, though the way he tipped his chin away from Anakin's lips booked a last protest for modesty.
He was right. Anakin didn't intend to politick. He wasn't one for slow seductions.
At times it baffled him, what point Obi-Wan meant to make when they were both aware he'd get his way in the end. Anakin saw no mystery to this necessity. This was not materialism, he had told him before, neither attachment, nor want of possession – only proportionate compensation, an exercise purely of the physical when his days too often surrounded long and over-involved parlances. If Obi-Wan didn't believe him, why would he allow himself to do this? The strange resistances sometimes stirred his ire, though he was too exhausted to allow himself that, tonight.
His lips were demanding, their determination at Obi-Wan's throat, where that unfeeling hand still lingered carelessly, slowly winning allowances. Anakin felt a thrill of pleasure as the tension seeped from Obi-Wan's body until his former Master was compliant to his attentions. Anakin was a leader in as many ways as necessary, sometimes his duty and sometimes his delight. With Obi-Wan he could not say how much of that delight was reciprocated with duty, even as it was resisted by it. However in the end there was always the little tremble that signaled compliance, not victory but something even more transient, a victory that visited itself upon both sides. While Anakin may have been familiar with these motions, Obi-Wan still did not allow him to become too familiar. There was often a pull before the relaxation, a push before a simple touch. When Obi-Wan tilted his chin from and then to the rasp of lips over the line of his jaw, both steps had been acknowledged, like the outdated rites in some ritual they need only nod to now.
Anakin's fingers gripped Obi-Wan's hair, his blood racing. Real kisses came often at this stage. For the insistence of his hands and the suddenness of his body, the breath that caught now in Obi-Wan's throat and trembled between them, there was no urgency to Anakin's mouth. It still played with the corners and balances of a smile. As always he conceded to Obi-Wan as Obi-Wan, not some creature of release or necessity. He drew away to share a look with him, one that was both contested and understood. It was a combination of direct gaze, of mixed urgencies, of a simple expression that did implore Obi-Wan as Obi-Wan and whispered of the things they knew as if those might be the reasons for the embrace, a subtle revenge before Anakin kissed him. He belied again the tense press of his body and the hard clutch of his fingers with a mouth more slow and more gentle than his patience ever liked; but a kiss was an intimate thing, more startlingly intimate from the first through the last, and Anakin would not steal it.
He coaxed it, rather. Drew it forth, and received it willingly.
The Jedi's hands coming to rest on his waist and the small of his back stirred an eager euphoria in him. It was the same way he felt when a general came to tell him they had gained control of another planet, the same pleasure that came with the defeat of a worthy opponent, but more valuable, to him, secret from Obi-Wan. There would always be more planets and new opponents, but there were times he wondered how long he could sustain this. These times they came together were tangled with so many little deceptions.
They were beyond hesitations, now. Anakin asking, Obi-Wan allowing, at first, and now returning. It was a different man whose fingers were knotting in Anakin's shirt and whose lips were beginning to make their own demands, a side of a person Anakin had believed he knew so well that had taken him years to coax out in his presence: someone who quipped instead of lectured, who slouched a little when he sat, who smiled and laughed easily; a man who existed very much for and in the moment. Anakin much preferred him.
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