CHAPTER XIII

Living the Truth

The Supreme Chancellor of the Republic had asked his contacts in the Theed Palace to inform him the moment the Senator of Naboo returned to her official residences. That morning, almost five days after he spoke to the same Senator on Coruscant, the message finally came through.

Palpatine considered the new development for a long time.

There were many reasons why pursuing this particular venture would be purposeless. On one hand, the woman in question had certainly thwarted his original plans by breaking off her budding relationship with the Jedi's Chosen One and thus preventing him from making the damning choice that Palpatine had hinged so many plans on. On the other hand, how much difference had her refusal made in the larger scheme of things? If Palpatine's Force-enhanced intuition served him well – and it usually did – then the boy was even more conflicted and disturbed by her rejection than he might have been had she accepted him. For sure the decision to remain with the Jedi had been taken out of Anakin's hands; Palpatine knew the boy well enough to realize that if Anakin had not turned in his lightsaber the moment he arrived on Coruscant, he was not about to turn it in at all. But it was a grudging service the boy would give from henceforth. A reluctant one. Because now the boy would have two losses to hold against the Order – his mother, and the Senator.

All in all everything had gone according to plan.

Still, as a matter of principle, he would have to punish Senator Amidala for her interference, intended or not.

Not now, most certainly not now when all his more important plans were bearing fruition. But sometime in the future, there was a debt to be repaid.

Palpatine made the call to the Royal Palace.

Senator Amidala of the Naboo had expected the call from the Supreme Chancellor much later but she was glad for his timing.

She believed in slaying her dragons quickly.

"I am so glad to see you well again, Senator. These past few days have caused me incessant concern. I thank the gods for your successful recovery."

"I thank you for your concern, Chancellor," she said quietly.

"How I have missed your companionship and counsel on Coruscant. Seeing you again is like seeing home," he declared passionately.

"I am hardly as beautiful as Naboo but I thank your Excellency for your kind words."

There were more such pleasant exchanges. Sightlessly, Amidala watched a flock of birds fly across her window. She replied by rote, tapping the fingers he could not see on her desk while she waited for him to get to his point.

He did eventually.

"When will you be returning to Coruscant? As you can see in your short period of convalescence, there have been many changes made. Great changes indeed."

"I am aware of the changes, your Excellency."

Oh she was well aware of them. She had never been out of circulation even during the period she was being nursed to health in her own bed. There would have been very little point to the decisions she had made of late if she had gone out of circulation. And the day that the HoloNet announced that the Jedi Order was formally pledging its services to the Republic Military, she had got to her feet and started packing her things.

Her mother and sister's protests had fallen on deaf ears.

"Padmé, you are still weak! You can barely stand let alone walk!"

Amidala had leaned against the chest of drawers and ordered Dormé and Artoo around the small room. She was too weak to argue with them. What strength she had was better channelled into the task at hand.

"Ruwee, talk some sense into the child!" That had been her mother to her father.

Ruwee Naberrie had been watching the whole scene from the threshold of Padme's bedroom. He lifted his arms hopelessly.

"Do you not see the look on her face, Jobal? She may have been a child to us once but now she belongs to Naboo. And she has a job to do."

Indeed. Talking to Palpatine was part of that job.

"I tried to make as many of these decisions according to what you would perhaps have guided me," Palpatine said. "But I am afraid that it would have been hard to say exactly what you would have had me guided by!"

"I don't understand, Chancellor." She understood all too well.

Palpatine threw up his hands as if he, too, did not understand.

"Certain parties in the Senate spoke of how you would have approved of the militarization of the Republic. 'Isn't it ironic that the leader of the opposition to the Military Creation Act was a soldier in the very first conflict? I think her actions speak louder than her words,' they said and I quote." Palpatine said with the shamefaced expression of a man who is repeating an insult to its intended.

It rolled off Amidala's back like water over an Alderaani duck. It was no better or worse than she'd heard from her contacts on Coruscant already. And she doubted very much if it had made any difference to Palpatine's final decision. She doubted very much if Palpatine had even once considered her when he made his final decision. About the present Jedi militarization declaration. Or even about that first Battle of Geonosis.

Amidala had done a lot of great deal of thinking during her 'convalescence'. It had caused her to start doubting a lot of things.

"Whichever way I would have voted, it hardly makes a difference now, does it?" Amidala asked coolly.

The answer was certainly not what the Chancellor had been expecting. There was a tiny, tiny pause from the image, one that she would have missed if she had not watched for it. Then Palpatine spoke and when he did, his voice was not quite the same. It had flinted very, very marginally.

That she did not notice.

"It will make a difference in the future." He said mildly. "When similar matters that you feel strongly about are placed on the decision table. Your presence in your office – preferably the one you hold on Coruscant – would make a strong difference."

"Might, your Excellency."

"Pardon me?"

"With all due respect Chancellor, the operative word there should have been 'might' not 'would'."

There was another pause, this one much longer. Then suddenly Palpatine burst into laughter. The transmission distorted the sound so what had to have been deep, merry booms in his office light years away, came out of her audio speakers like high, dry cackles.

It was a warm sunny day and her sun-walled office was warmer still, but Amidala shivered slightly.

"Oh how much I miss you!" Palpatine managed between chuckles. Amidala noted wryly that reminding her how much he missed his misinterpretation of her humor was not exactly flattering. "You will return to Coruscant soon, won't you?"

"Short of an executive order, your Excellency," and she watched him carefully as she said it, "no."

His laughter finally subsided. He sighed deeply. "I would be a sad man indeed if I had to order my friends to come to me whenever I needed to." He sighed again. "You are resolved to stay on Naboo? You genuinely believe that you serve our people's interests best by remaining away from the Capital?"

Now an appeal to her sense of duty. The first was an appeal to her personal political ego. It should have been the other way around. It served to show how little he knew her, no matter how much he claimed to.

"Yes, Chancellor, I do. And the Delegation on Coruscant has not been abandoned. I have able Representatives there, not the least being Representative Binks."

Palpatine smiled suddenly, a wide hawk-like grin that was so disconcerting that when it flashed away the next second, Amidala was convinced that she had imagined it.

"Able Representatives," he repeated. "Very well, my dear. I will not trouble you further. I know you have a great deal to do."

She nodded with relief. That smile was still bothering her. She was reaching for the off switch when his words stopped her again.

"By the way, have you heard from Padawan Skywalker of late?"

Like a trap closing over a nati rat, the steel cage that was her chest closed so tightly over her heart that she could almost hear the ribs slam. She froze with her hand poised over the button and studied the wall-flower pattern of her carpet that was visible but distorted through the holo projection.

"No."

It was not a whisper. It was loud and cold and indiscernible from the voice she now used.

"He got himself into some trouble a few days ago. An unscheduled trip to Naboo, I believe." Palpatine laughed his laugh again. "These Jedi are impossible sometimes, the way they treat their charges like infants. Anyway, I wondered if he had come to see you?"

"He must have come during my illness." Careful, but without hesitation. She gave him an answer without missing a beat.

"Oh, how unfortunate. He is inordinately fond of you, you know."

"Indeed, Chancellor?"

"Oh indeed. A less busy man than myself might have even wondered if his recent assignment had not proved problematic for that reason." His voice was self-disparaging, the voice of an old man scolding himself for digging for gossip but unable to stop all the same.

Amidala did not answer. The intricacies of the floral pattern occupied all her concentration. If her heart was slowing or her breathing cooling, it was of no consequence.

Her silence stretched long enough and Palpatine broke it by laughing for the third time. "Listen to me, gossiping like an old woman. We both have work to do, I'm sure. My regards to you, my lady, now and always."

"Thank you, your Excellency." And she completed the halted motion and ended the transmission.

Dormé stepped into the office a few minutes later to find her mistress elbow-deep in the files on her desk.

"You cancelled my appointment with the Education Mistress?" Amidala asked promptly.

"Yes, my lady. Your schedule was already stretched thin -"

"But it could be stretched some more. Push up my inspection of the new handmaidens to noon then."

"But my lady -"

"We cannot insult the Mistress by making the same appointment twice."

Dormé opened her mouth to protest – and shut it. She nodded mutely and turned to go.

"And Dormé?"

She turned back. "My lady?"

"Next time you break an appointment I make without duly consulting me, you will seek your appointment elsewhere. Am I understood?"

Dormé recoiled as if she had been slapped. She stared wordlessly at her Mistress for a long time, her eyes filling gradually with tears.

Amidala's head was already bent over her work. After a long time, she heard her young handmaiden leaving the office, her steps as muffled as her sobs.

Amidala impressed her seal upon the letter to the Malastarian Senator. There was work to be done.

"Good-day, your Excellency."

When her form had materialized on the holoproj and for the first time in his life, Palpatine had experienced that sensation of displacement in time – the one the Falleen called the déjà vu – so strongly that for a moment, he had really believed that this was ten years ago, and the image in front of him was of the pale, stern Queen of Naboo that he had last paid homage to.

The sensation had passed quickly but not the impression that caused it. And the more Amidala spoke in her cool, stern tones, her voice forming words that in more than one occasion gave him pause, the more deeply the impression remained with him.

The last time he had seen Padmé Amidala in the flesh was after Geonosis, right after the first Battle of the Clone Wars as a matter of fact. Then she had been tired, grimy and flushed with battle adrenaline and the emotional bond that was forming between her and the Chosen One. She had looked older, more mature, more woman.

Now this Amidala looked nothing like that woman but rather she looked like that girl-Queen of a decade ago. There was no flush in her cheeks, nor softness in her face. Instead, she was pale enough to rival ritual make-up; and she looked impossibly young, with innocence that was neither naïve nor foolish, but righteous, wise, ruthless…

It was more than a distortion from the transmitter, more than the defined lines of her face, condensed to fit the small volume of space of the projection. He had heard it in her voice, in its fine modulations. Certainly, it had not possessed the timbre of Royalty but the accent, the authority in it was the same.

And when Amidala had made that statement about 'might' vs. 'would', he spared himself a fraction of a second to say to himself, "All that remains is the crown of Zenda on her head and Queen Jamilla would be bowing to this girl."

Palpatine drifted to the window of his office. Even though it was nighttime on Coruscant, the traffic lanes were forever busy. He watched the pattern of lights in the sky… in his sky as he pondered this new development.

What does not kill you makes you stronger.

It was a lesson that he had had to master in the course of his other career.

Whatever existed between Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker had not succeeded in killing her. And so it had hardened her. She was brittle now, all sharp lines and cutting wit.

Whether she realized it or not, she was his enemy now in a way that she had never been before. In the past, he had gone against (whether she realized it or not) a woman with so much passion and fire that he had watched in amusement, waiting for the time her own zeal would consume her. Now this girl was cold, cold and hard, brittle and sharp as the dangerous ice shards of the planet Hoth.

If she is brittle then she is also fragile, the Sith Master decided savagely.

And when the time was right, he would break her.

Obi-Wan felt it in slow motion, a clenched fist sailing gracefully towards his right temple. It was too fast to see, but the vibrations in the air were unmistakable. He didn't even have to think, his body instinctually moved centimeters to the left. The blow glanced off his hairline. He felt its shimmery heat on his temple.

Across from him in the wide sun-lit expanse of the Jedi training room, Anakin stood slouched over, as if nothing had happened, unaffected, yet… dangerous. He stared at Obi-Wan with a dull expectancy.

The Knight felt a prick of warning on the back of his neck. Anakin's period of solitude had ended this morning and this was the first day Obi-Wan had spent with his apprentice since the incident with Ferus Olin.

He had no idea what to expect from his apprentice.

"Again."

Without hesitation, and the formality of an attack stance, Anakin spun to the left, forearm targeting his Master's shoulder blades. Mimicking his turn, Obi-Wan reached his arm around, grabbing his opponent's wrist easily.

"Anakin, you're not trying."

Anakin wrenched himself out of his Master's grip.

"This wasn't my idea."

Obi-Wan sighed the quiet sigh of a parent with an unruly child, knowing that showing his exasperation would only encourage further insubordinate behavior. Unfortunately it was extremely difficult to hide anything from his gifted Padawan. It was one of Anakin's most useful and annoying traits.

But this was not about Anakin's incredible mental gifts; it was about his childish behavior. Obi-Wan had thought formal personal combat training would help refocus his Padawan's mind, mend the recent rift their relationship had suffered. Apparently he had thought wrong.

Enough of this.

"You seem to have forgotten what it means for a Jedi to fight. I intend on reminding you until it is no longer possible to forget."

The Knight's usual placid demeanor was tinged with frost. The change was not lost on Anakin. Before the Force could even warn him, Anakin's palm shot towards Obi-Wan's chest, stopping directly over his heart.

"I haven't forgotten."

Anakin's icy blue eyes bore into Obi-Wan, and for the second time in as many weeks the Knight was actually afraid. Not of Anakin – for Anakin.

Obi-Wan grabbed the young man by the shoulders. This had to end now.

"What is wrong, Anakin? Why are you acting this way? First you defy the Council and myself, you physically attack a fellow Padawan, you run off to Naboo for Force knows why…. People are dying, Anakin. We're in the middle of a war. We Jedi do not have time for pettiness and senseless anger. What is wrong?"

Anakin's eyes narrowed.

"Wrong? Wrong?" he spat the words as if their simple meaning insulted him. His icy calm had dissolved. "Don't presume that you know me. You have never known me. The Jedi can't possibly understand."

Turning his back on Obi-Wan, Anakin stalked across the wooden floor of the private training room. As he moved the room's artificial light seemed to darken, billowing behind him in a cloak of shadows.

Obi-Wan stood in the center, rooted to the spot. For the second time in his life, the first since his Master died in front of him, he was utterly lost.

How did he ever think he could properly train Anakin? This perpetual state of helplessness was completely foreign to him. Anakin was becoming unraveled, and he was taking Obi-Wan along with him.

The suffocating feeling of indecision pressed on the Knight from all sides. He watched the boy's dark figure stalking away and he grappled with his helplessness. What to do… who to turn to? Advice? Not from the Council. No.

Obi-Wan sighed in deep sadness. The only thing he could do was trust in the Force.

So he gave himself completely to it, letting go of all his thoughts and emotions, pouring them into the great abyss of space and time, letting them radiate outward through the omnipotent entity called the Force.

From across the room Anakin winced.

He hated him for doing it.

Usually Obi-Wan was so guarded, so private about his feelings that Anakin never really felt them. Never knew his Master had feelings as a matter of fact. And now, when I want most to be angry with him, and everyone in this place… he goes and becomes open and vulnerable.

Obi-Wan's confusion and sadness washed over him in waves and Anakin had to lean against the wall with his mechanical arm to bear it.

No matter how independent, the child never really wants to know their parent is lost. They want them to take care of everything.

"Anakin, please." It was such a quiet, simple request. But Anakin couldn't quite let go, not yet.

"What? What do you want from me? You want me to say I'm sorry for fighting Ferus? Well I'm not, he deserved it." He said to the wall.

"No…" Obi-Wan tried to continue, but Anakin cut him off, spinning around to face his Master.

"You want me to be sorry for taking that shuttle to Naboo? You want me to be sorry about the way I feel for Padmé? You want me to be sorry for talking back to you? Sorry for my mother's death? Is there anything else I can be sorry about Master?"

Padmé. Gods, it still hurt to say her name.

Damn her

With each question Anakin advanced further towards Obi-Wan. Each step felt heavier, as if he were forcing himself to continue, as if he were walking against an unyielding force. His Master looked at him in curious anticipation. Perhaps deciding that is was better to let Anakin rant than to interrupt him.

"Fine! I am sorry, alright? For all of it. More than you can possible know. I wish it didn't have to be… but it's too late, there's no other way." Anakin's eyes glazed over, "it's too late."

Obi-Wan had opened up a connection between them so big a Corellian Battle Cruiser could fly through it. But Anakin was unwilling to participate. He was so strong in the Force that normally his emotions broadcasted through it unwittingly, but now all Obi-Wan could feel coming from him was a dull ache, and that alarmed him more than anything.

Jedi do not know Fear.

"It's never too late, Anakin. Tell me what's wrong." Obi-Wan could hear the agitation in his own voice. "We don't have time for this. There's a war beginning. As it is now you are not fit to fight in it. I will recommend that you stay behind. But I don't want that. I know you don't either. I want you by my side. But you have to stop this."

There was a momentary crack in Anakin's resolve. He had moved close enough to touch, He now stood head down, dark blonde hair falling over his face. Obi-Wan could feel that he was concentrating on breathing, slowly, and methodically. For several long moments they remained, the tension between them rigid.

Then slowly Anakin tilted his head towards his Master, his face a mask. It was his eyes, blue as the lakes of Naboo, that truly frightened Obi-Wan, they stared through his Master with eyes that were so completey hollow it hurt to look at them. But Obi-Wan had to: had to make himself look into them, past the tears Anakin was furiously blinking back, past the surface and into the black pool beyond.

All he could see was pain, suffocating and blinding pain. Images flashed at a frenetic pace, too short for him to process them one and a time, but the one underlying emotion hit Obi-Wan like a Gamorrean prizefighter.

Pain.

There is no pain, only the Force.

Obi-Wan could not keep the shock from registering on his face. He looked at Anakin as if he'd never seen him before. This was not the naïve child he had watched grow up over the past ten years, this was a man overflowing with pain and fear, anger, love, compassion, arrogance, confusion…

Abruptly Obi-Wan shut the connection, which left both Master and Apprentice swaying on unsteady legs, breathing hard. He found himself staring with blank fascination at the wood grains on the lacquered floor beneath their feet. The air in the room felt unusually hot; sweat trickled down the sides of his face.

Obi-Wan slowly forced himself to stand upright, to look his Padawan in the face. When he did, he saw a completely different person. It was not the rash, angry, insubordinate young man who was here just minutes before, but instead Obi-Wan finally saw Anakin how he truly was: fearful, confused, still in deep anguish over his mother's death and… in love with Padmé. There it was, the crux of it all. Thinking back over the past few months Obi-Wan realized just how blind he had been. How he had ignored all the obvious signs, because he had trusted blindly in the advice of the Council, the Code and his own arrogant wisdom and forgotten that Anakin was a unique human being with feelings he had never been taught to deal with.

And at the bottom of his soul, Obi-Wan had the insidious feeling that it was indeed too late, and he was profoundly ashamed.

Anakin still hadn't moved. Obi-Wan, unsure of what to do, put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"How foolish I have been. I am the one who should offer an apology. I didn't know… I…"

"What's done is done, Obi-Wan." Anakin interrupted him. It was amazing how easily Obi-Wan could read the vulnerability in Anakin's hollow eyes. It was amazing to realize that he had never bothered to truly look before.

"I cannot change what has happened," Anakin continued. "I cannot change the way I feel, but it's over. All I can do now is trust in the Force." He sounded as if he was trying not to convince his Master, but himself.

Obi-Wan let him speak. He had no words of comfort or wisdom that would even begin to be adequate enough. It was time for Anakin to be the bigger man.

"You're right," Anakin was saying, "there is a war happening. The Jedi are at its centre and there isn't time for immaturity. I want to fight. I'm ready to fight. And I want to do it beside you Master, if you will have me."

He lifted his chin. Some of the color was retuning to his face and he stood more upright. Resolution showed in every line of his body. And more importantly, he seemed content for now to let their understanding go by unchallenged, and for that Obi-Wan was grateful. It would take him a long time to fully process and understand all that Anakin Skywalker was, but he wanted desperately to try.

"I… of course, Anakin. Of course, I want you." Obi-Wan answered, his mouth dry.

Anakin simply nodded. There was no smile or grateful look. Rather, the look of disquieting sorrow had never left his face, his eyes… Without another word, he turned on his heel and exited the training facility leaving his still speechless Master standing in the middle of the room, feeling like the only person in the Jedi Temple who did not deserve to be there.

Authors' Notes: This is the last chapter of Volume 1. Thanks to all our readers who managed to stay with us during this long narration.