Chaos:

Alex stifled a sigh as his Jedi guests made speedy departures from the conference room. He should have known with that lot that they'd be unpredictable. They had been fondly dubbed as the 'Reckless Trio' after all.

"My apologies for their rude behaviour," Padmè said via Threepio (with a little help from Whitely as the droid paused at a word he hadn't yet learned the English translation for, pausing to ask Whitely what it was in Huttese) (ironically, the word was 'rude'), drawing Alex's attention as he moved to stand and follow Ahsoka, Anakin, and Obi-Wan up to the roof.

"It's not your fault," Alex replied to the woman who was actually more beautiful than Natalie Portman as he gained his feet and gave the golden droid a chance to translate. "I should have known that Ahsoka would not stay put once her mate arrived and that the other two would follow her."

The former queen's eyebrows rose as she also stood, along with the rest of their entourage. "Ahsoka's mate?"

"Yes, Captain Rex," Alex said as he courteously waited for Padmè to go through the door first, Threepio, Whitely, Captain Typho, and the unnamed handmaiden following along after. "They have one of the most beloved marriages in the entire Star Wars franchise. And one of the very few long-lasting ones. You didn't know?"

Padmè shook her head as they strode down the hallway towards the elevator. People were peering out of their offices again, no doubt drawn by the speeding Jedi that had already passed. Jaina Gibson, his badass Chief of Information Security Officer that bore a striking resemblance to the Legends character she'd been named after, fell into step beside him with a nod of greeting and a quiet, "Sir."

The two women did that brief fake smile of greeting thing that seemed to be a universal gesture between two friendly-but-indifferent strangers and then Padmè was focusing on Alex again. "No, I didn't know that Ahsoka and Rex were romantically involved, but I'm not all that surprised. I've seen them fight together and it's practically a dance. And the care and concern they have for each other is palpable." She slanted a look at Alex as they waited for the open elevator doors to figure themselves out and the lift to arrive from three floors below. (Ahsoka had most certainly used her Force powers on the whole system to make the doors open like that with no elevator there. Alex had looked up the shaft before the doors started to close and had been impressed by the jump the Jedi had made to make it to the level of the roof, even if he knew it was possible because of the movies.) "You said one of the few long-lasting marriages. Can you tell me if mine is one of them as well?"

Alex felt his throat close in immediate panic. Gibson didn't help by snorting under her breath. Neither did Whitely's uncomfortable cough. The elevator finally arrived but he couldn't move. He swallowed hard, brain whirling, and did his best to come up with an answer that didn't sound as bad as it actually was. "Uhhhhhhh," was all that came out at first as he watched Padmè's expression turn from open and hopeful to closed and afraid. "Well, you see. There's, um, issues, that, uhhhh..." Even Threepio's stunted translations sounded awful.

She put her hand on his arm, big brown eyes filling with pain. "Stop. Your response is answer enough. Something happens to one of us, doesn't it?"

Alex winced at that rather epic understatement. "Yeah. But..." He finally stepped forward into the elevator and waited for everyone to join him and pushed the button for the roof before he finished his thought. "I wonder, if you knew what was supposed to happen, maybe you could change it? It would probably also change absolutely everything that comes after that too, but that wouldn't be a bad thing."

"Are you sure, boss?" Whitely asked tentatively. "What if the future we know is the only one that is supposed to happen in their galaxy? What if, by trying to fix things, they make it even worse?"

Alex rubbed at the sudden ache behind his forehead. "I don't honestly know if it's possible for their future to get worse."

"I agree, Sir," Gibson murmured. "It sucks balls. Giant sweaty and unwashed ones."

After choking a bit at Gibson's uncouth but accurate description, Whitely shrugged his narrow shoulders, bottle-green eyes looking huge and concerned behind his glasses. "At least some of them live with the way things are."

Alex realized he should have told Threepio to stop translating for a moment when Padmè exchanged telling glances with her Captain of Security and her trusted handmaiden. She then levelled Alex with a piercing look he felt all the way to his bones. He had no doubt whatsoever that this woman had actually ruled an entire planet at the age of only fourteen. "Tell me. I'll judge for myself."

The elevator had arrived at the roof and the door was open again and waiting for them to disembark. Alex closed the doors and hit the override button to make it stay put until told otherwise. He leaned back against the doors and crossed his arms over his chest. "All right. But what I'm about to tell you isn't something you're going to want to hear."

Padmè copied his pose, but more hugging herself than anything as her posture sank just a fraction. "It's Anakin, isn't it? He falls, doesn't he?"

Somehow, he wasn't surprised that she'd already figured out the vital part. He wanted to hug her to help heal the defeat in her tone. Fortunately her friends were on top of it, the lookalike handmaiden moving to stand behind Padmè with her hands on her shoulders. Typho moved a step closer as well, a solid wall of support now behind her. "In a word, yes," Alex admitted. "And it's not a good thing for anyone."

Padmè stifled a whimpering sound that was barely heard but felt like a shot to the chest. "I've been so afraid that something like that would come to pass. Anakin's been having nightmares for months about feeling frozen from the inside out and he's mentioned seeing a terrifying man in black armour more than once. He's always assumed it was the Sith Lord we've been looking for, but that just never felt right to me. And then there's his temper, getting worse with every day the war draws on, and his distrust of the Council, and what he did to the Tuskens..." She stopped the cry of words abruptly, breath inhaling shakily as she shook her head in helpless slow motion. "I don't know what to do to help him. I've been trying already, but... I just don't know."

Fuck.

Alex felt like he'd been ripped apart and left to bleed out just listening to her. And that was through Threepio's translations. It could have been even worse firsthand. "There's been many debates and thousands upon thousands of fanfiction stories written on how to stop your future from happening. In my opinion, there are three things that you need to do to save your husband and the galaxy from decades of war and oppression that will last generations."

Padmè blanched at the translation when she heard it. "What are they?"

He'd thought about this a lot. So had millions of other people. But Alex had his own theories. "First, convince the Jedi to take all of the clones, even the Coruscant Guard, to a planet or moon somewhere and leave them there with no means of long-distance communication or way to get off the planet until it's safe to go back for them. And for the love of all that's holy, get them their rights as sentients and the cure for the accelerated aging."

She blinked at his pleading tone. "I'm assuming there's a good reason for the first part of that? I've already been working on the second."

He was happy to hear that. Very. It had never been made clear in the movies or shows. "There is. They all have hidden chips in their heads that takes away their free will and forces them to follow the orders of the Sith Lord, who engineered their making in the first place as a trap for the Jedi. The clones will kill all but a handful of them in a matter of hours and hunt down the rest later. Many clones will suicide later when they realize what they've been forced to do."

He'd thought Padmè had paled earlier. He'd been wrong. She looked positively ghostly now. "Dear Goddess," she whispered. "There's too many to operate on in a timely fashion. That's why you said to hide them."

"Yes. Exactly. You can do the surgeries later. I know the clones will want the chips out." He paused as she nodded in understanding. "Next, take Anakin somewhere safe, Naboo or Alderaan maybe, and convince him that the Jedi Order is not something he wants to stay with. The conflict caused by hiding your marriage is a large part of his stress induced fall."

"I know," she said, her eyes looking haunted. "He said he would leave for me when the war was over, but his sense of honour and duty won't let him do so before."

"Tell him that if there's no clones or Jedi available to fight the war, there is no war," Alex reasoned. "The whole thing was orchestrated by the Sith Lord anyway to deplete the galaxy of funds and to give himself more power."

"Kriff," Typho muttered, needing no translation.

Padmè swallowed. "Okay. That might work. Then what?"

"Leave Anakin wherever you've stashed him. Don't let him go back to Coruscant for any reason. Leave Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Rex with him to sit on him if necessary."

She looked surprised at this, understandably. "Okay, but why?"

Here was the hardest part. "Because Palpatine is the Sith Lord and he's been poisoning Anakin's mind for a decade. He will convince your husband that the only way to save what he loves is to fall to the dark and become his apprentice." She gasped and sagged a little in the handmaiden's hold, Typho reaching out to catch her under an elbow. Alex felt like a right bastard to do this to her but he forged on. "You have to go to him and kill him. He won't expect it from you. If a Jedi or a group of Jedi go to confront him, they will lose and he will call them all traitors and the galaxy will believe him. If you don't kill him, he will destroy everything you hold dear; Anakin, the Jedi, even the Republic. He will be Emperor and the galaxy will suffer terribly for it. And so will your children and their children. You have to stop him."

Padmè stared up at him like a wounded kitten, tears falling down her cheeks now. "This can't be true."

"It is. I swear. At least as far as our stories of your galaxy have unfolded. And you've proved already that they are accurate."

Her fists clenched in her purple dress as she processed what he'd said for a long, drawn out moment of silence. And then she took in a shuddering breath and straightened, her shoulders becoming as impossibly square as her raised chin. "If that is what I must do, then it will be so."

"You are very brave. I am sorry to have put this on you."

The woman shook her head. "No. I'm glad you told me. Now, please, open the door so that I can get my family back home and fix my galaxy, before what you say comes to pass does."

Alex gave her a flicker of a smile as he opened the door with the touch of a button. "I'm not sure exactly where you are in your timeline right now, but based on Ahsoka's burgundy battledress and the fact that you aren't visibly pregnant yet, you've got about a year before everything goes to hell."

Padmè paused just as she was about to step out into the daylight, shooting him an almost comical double take and her hand flew to her stomach as she heard the translation of his words. "What?"

Whitely and Gibson both coughed to cover a laugh, and the handmaiden and Typho looked secretly gleeful, like they'd just won a bet.

Alex smothered a grin as he stepped out onto the roof before turning back to the look at Padmè. "Since I'm spilling secrets anyway, you're going to have twins soon. And they're going to be amazing. I hope you can change their futures, though, so they get to grow up together and with their real parents, where they belong."

If Padmè had looked determined before, she was doubly so now. Her dark eyes looked like hardened steel as she gazed across the rooftop to where her husband was standing by a large NASA transport, shoulder to shoulder with Obi-Wan Kenobi. And where Ahsoka appeared to be kissing Captain Rex very enthusiastically and with zero care that she had an audience. (That was certainly worth a double take and a raised eyebrow or two.) "They will if I have anything to say about it," Padmè said, her voice falling off slightly as she took in the scene across the roof.

Alex smiled to himself as he led the way towards the transport. "I believe if there's anyone capable of changing your future, it's you."

Padmè glanced at him. "Thank you."

They walked the last hundred meters or so in silence, the weight of his disclosures heavy in the air.

Anakin turned around as they approached, sensing the presence of his wife, prompting Obi-Wan to do so as well, which revealed that Smythe, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, was dressed in a hazmat suit and blocking the stairs to the transport with a stubborn stance. The Jedi beamed at Padmè like he'd personally engineered the wormhole and the entire day just so that his Padawan would finally have a good excuse to confess her feelings for Rex. (In the franchise's current canon, she doesn't do so until after Order 66, so there was proof that things could be changed! Alex felt a burst of hope at the realization.) Anakin called out something as they approached, which Threepio quietly translated as, "Angel! I'm glad you're here! Now we can all go home as soon as this yellow slimeball stops holding Cody hostage!"

"I'm sure the nice man is just doing his job and not actually holding our beloved Marshall Commander hostage," Padmè reassured Anakin as she took the hand offered her with a visible eye roll in Alex's direction.

Captain Rex managed to pull his lips away from Ahsoka's for a few seconds to say, rather dryly, "Actually, Senator, he kind of is. Along with Artoo, two police officers, a civilian woman, her large riding beast, and two tookas."

This was clearly news to the Jedi, because they all looked at Rex with wide eyes, Ahsoka's the biggest of all as she finally stopped kissing random bits of Rex's face and pulled back a bit to stare at him.

"What the hells for?!" Anakin exclaimed.

Rex shrugged and shook his head, not looking burdened at all by his very affectionate and clingy Togrutan Jedi. In fact, if a man could look smug, flabbergasted, turned on, overwhelmed, and completely in charge of the situation all at the same time, then the clone was doing so. And the girl looked perfectly happy to stay all wrapped around her Captain like a suction-cupped monkey for as long as she could get away with it. (Alex doubted they'd be able to pull off the same position so easily once she finished growing in another decade or so, so they might as well get the most out of it now.) "Don't know why the animals had to come too, General, but I can tell you that you're going to have a hell of a time separating Cody from the woman. He's found his cyar'ika and..."

Rex paused as Obi-Wan audibly groaned and facepalmed. "Force, not another one," the Jedi mumbled. "I'm surrounded by lovesick fools."

Rex's mouth quirked up a fraction, betraying his amusement. Anakin looked at his Master, and didn't bother to restrain his laughter. Neither did Ahsoka.

"Not sure you have much room to talk, there, Obi-Wan," Anakin said through his chuckles. "What with your own secret wife and son and all."

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan protested, face turning an interesting shade of pink.

Alex glanced at Gibson, who looked like she was going to explode with the mirth twinkling in her bronze eyes. "Fuck. You were right about Satine and Korkie. I'll transfer the money to your account later."

The woman grinned as she snickered.

Obi-Wan groaned again as Padmè and Ahsoka both goggled at him. "You're married too, Master Obi-Wan?" the girl said incredulously after a moment.

"Yes," the red-faced man admitted.

"Does no one follow the Code anymore?" Ahsoka asked.

"I think it's just the ones descended from Master Yoda's line that have rebelled to such a degree," Anakin said with a snicker, earning a swat on the arm from his wife. Which he ignored. And a glare from Obi-Wan, which he also ignored.

"Actually..." Rex said, drawing everyone's attention as he finally set Ahsoka on her feet but kept her held close. (Not like the girl was going to get any further than a millimetre away anyway.) "I know for a fact that Bly and General Secura are married. And General Ti is to Alpha-17. And General Billaba to Grey and Styles, inseparable as they are. So are Ponds and High General Windu." This last caused quite a few choked reactions (staggered due to translation factors), including from himself, but perfectly understandable. It was Windu, after all. Rex only took a breath to gauge everyone's reactions before he forged on with, "And I know Fox has an 'understanding' with General Unduli that would easily be more if both of them weren't such sticks in the mud. And... between them, General Fisto and General Vos have slept with approximately half the ranking officers of the GAR and the Guard so far, usually together, and they have no intention of stopping anytime soon according to the gossip. And that's just the most famous of the Jedi and clones. Aside from the Jedi who've attached themselves to Senators or other civilians, which our gossip chain is more sketchy about, there's probably been another fifty or so quieter marriages between our two groups and countless more affairs."

"By the Force, the Order has lost their collective minds!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, shaking his head in clear shell-shock.

Padmè, ever the voice of reason, huffed. "What did you expect, Obi-Wan, when you throw so many people together in a stressful situation like a galactic war? I believe you met Satine during another intense survival situation years ago and it resulted in the same thing? With an added present, no less?"

Obi-Wan groaned yet again, apparently giving up as Anakin clapped him on the back with an epic, shit-eating grin on the younger man's face. Alex didn't blame him. Either of them, in fact.

Since Gibson was currently having a giggling fit unlike anything he'd ever seen her succumb to before, that left Alex to take control of the rapidly unravelling situation. Leaving the Jedi to their own devices for the moment, he turned to Smythe. "Okay, you were told to 'contain' the situation in Canada. I can see that you picked up the crashed Y-Wing, the droid, and the clones, which is good. But why the fuck did you pick up two cops, their transport, a woman, her... horse? and two cats?"

As if to punctuate his statement, and before the clearly way-too-cautious medical officer could answer, there came a loud, piercing whinny from within the hold of the transport, sounding almost like a dinosaur due to the acoustics and whatever incredible vocal range the horse (question answered) was blessed with.

Smythe's eyes all but popped out of his head and a stuttered, "Uhhhhhhhhh," emerged, barely heard under the various exclamations of surprise and alarm that came from their space visitors. Like magic, Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan all had their lightsabres out and ignited and were looking for the threat. Rex's blasters were in his hands only a fraction of a second slower.

Gibson nearly fell over, she was laughing so hard.

Alex knew the headache currently pounding behind his left eye from this was going to need more than his usual pain-relief dosage. Probably double.

The horse neighed again and started banging the walls too.

Only moments later, a short, brunette woman appeared at the top of the stairs, looking like she was out for blood, Commander Cody right on her heels and looking just as pissed off. Her gaze immediately fell on Alex like she just knew he was the only sane person here. "Tell the idiots to open the cargo hatch this instant! They won't listen to me in there! I need to go calm down my horse before he injures himself kicking a hole in your wall!"

Make that triple.