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CHAPTER 21: ANAKIN'S WAKE
They didn't see Anakin again while being transported from the moon of Endor – the stormtroopers handled that job alone. While being roughly escorted through the bunker, Padmé saw the aftermath of the attack. The place looked desolate, abandoned. It was nothing like the lively home of necessity they'd all made for months. She wondered at the change and wondered how many of them had made it out.
"Where are my compatriots?" she demanded of the stormtroopers.
None of them entertained her demand.
"Where are they? Are you taking them prisoner, too?" she demanded again. "Or did you just kill them all?"
She saw two of them exchange a glance.
"What were your orders?" she asked. "Tell me what your orders were at this place."
They breached the front hatch of the bunker and could see the place where the evening meal had once been. It was an abandoned mess, though she was relieved to see very few motionless bodies, and she strained to see if she could recognize anyone.
She returned her focus onto the stormtroopers. "How did you find us?"
One of the stormtroopers tapped a comm at his ear and said with his tech-tinged voice: "Bringing in the prisoners for transport."
"Clear to receive," said a distant tinny voice, bookmarked by brief spurts of interference.
Padmé and Obi-Wan were forcibly guided onto a shuttle and deposited on a spartan bench in the back. Several troopers guarded them as the vessel took off, but they seemed very mundane about the whole enterprise. Padmé could see one of the troopers had her blaster on his belt.
"When will you return my blaster?" she demanded of him.
He might or might not have given her a glance before ignoring her. It was hard to tell with trooper helmets.
"That was a gift to the Queen of Naboo from its people – you will return it to its rightful place," she said. "It is not some plebeian blaster to be trifled with."
The stormtrooper turned aside.
"I will not see it trifled with, sir," she said, a threat deep in her voice.
He'd had enough, and he said, "You are a prisoner of the Empire and have no right to make demands."
She'd gotten through.
"Be careful of who you belittle, sir, because you never know how quickly the winds can change," she said enigmatically.
There was a pause from the stormtrooper, but then another beside him laughed.
"She talks like she's important, or something," said the other, and then the first one relaxed.
"See that the blaster is taken care of," she told the first. "It belongs to the Queen of Naboo."
"Oh, he will," said the other, mocking. "He'll make sure to personally return it to the Queen."
She gave the other a sharp glance.
"What is your number?" she demanded of him, and he was taken aback.
"He doesn't have to tell you his number," said the first stormtrooper. "You're a prisoner."
"For now," she said vaguely. "You do know where I'm going, don't you?"
"She's going directly to the Emperor," the other muttered to the first.
"Hey, both of you need to stop talking," said the third, intervening.
"But she's with a Jedi," said the other one. "Obviously that means she's in for the worst."
"We had explicit orders not to kill this one, though," said the first.
"Yeah…" said the other. "That's weird."
They both looked at Obi-Wan, who had maintained adequate Jedi mystique throughout the whole charade.
"I said stop talking," said the third stormtrooper.
"I'm just saying," said the other stormtrooper. "What's different about this Jedi? He doesn't seem different. I mean, he seems even more Jedi than a normal Jedi."
"Would you just—" the third tried, but the other one was really on a roll.
"We've only had orders to kill on sight with the Jedi," said the other, and Padmé felt Obi-Wan's force tremor faintly. "It's dangerous to keep them alive. You never know what they'll do."
"I had one throw boulders at me," said the first stormtrooper.
"Boulders? Ha," said a fourth who emerged from elsewhere, seeming drawn in by the topic. "If you've only had boulders thrown at you by a Jedi, then count yourself lucky. Try banthas."
"Banthas?" laughed the other. "You had banthas thrown at you?"
"Dangerous, and messy," said the fourth.
The third stormtrooper groaned in what seemed to be frustration over his fellow troopers being unable to stay quiet.
"But have you ever been thrown yourself?" asked the first.
"No," said the other two.
"What, have you?" asked the fourth with what seemed to be wonder mixed with horror.
"Yeah," said the first one, and he paused. It seemed that he might have cast a glance at Obi-Wan. "It was… very unpleasant."
The other stormtrooper shuddered and they all fell silent. Padmé thought they seemed to shuffle a bit further away from Obi-Wan during the pause.
"So, I'm saying it seems dangerous to keep this one alive," said the other stormtrooper. "The more time you give them, the more opportunity they have to do something… weird."
"That's true," said the fourth. "Well, you could say you had an 'accident' –"
"You will not have an 'accident'," ordered Padmé from her prisoner's bench.
The stormtroopers went stiff and silent as if caught, but then remembered she was a captive.
"Not that she can order us around," said the third stormtrooper, "but don't you dare do anything to that Jedi. Our orders were explicit."
"Yeah, whatever," said the other stormtrooper, playing it off. "I was just saying. They're dangerous, that's all."
"Definitely dangerous," said the first.
"Yeah, for sure," agreed the fourth.
They all seemed to grumble and move back into guarding mode.
There was a cacophony of droid beeps and the third stormtrooper shifted to move. "Come on then, we're at the Destroyer."
Padmé and Obi-Wan were hoisted from the benches and dragged out of the transport vessel onto the docking bay of a star destroyer. Through the energy field she could see the curve of Endor's moon, filling a quarter of the view with a deep green arc. Inside, stormtroopers were everywhere. Padmé drew a breath and huffed it out, glancing at Obi-Wan. He received her glance and remained impassive, as if he'd not deign to offer their captors any insight into what he might be thinking.
"Where are you taking us?" she demanded, though she didn't expect a reply, this time.
They were marched into what seemed to be a plain holding cell and were left alone as the door clanked shut behind the stormtroopers that had put them there. After all the madness, the silence and stillness of the white walls of that room felt almost absurd. Seconds passed as they both stared at the door, hands still bound behind them, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing did.
"Well," said Padmé. She glanced at Obi-Wan and his eyes shifted to meet hers. "What do you think? Shall we live or die?"
"You know what they say about life," he said. "No one makes it out alive."
Despite the circumstances, she almost laughed, but not quite. She considered, then drew a breath to speak.
"Nh," said Obi-Wan. It was a short, intent sound, as if he were indicating that she remain silent.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
He gazed at her, and it was that soothing blue gaze which was so particular to him that made her give him her trust in that moment.
She stepped closer and she watched a caution rise in his gaze, but she didn't relent. Instead, she stayed close and observed him as she liked, observing the minute changes in his expression as the caution drained away to reveal his underlying ease.
In time he drew in a breath to speak, but she stopped him.
"Nh," she said, shaking her head halfway.
His eyes widened slightly at her, his lips parted, and then he saw her eyes and the half-smirk she bore and the realization of her tease lighted across his face. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at her.
She smiled widely and stepped even closer and, despite his warning glance, he didn't budge, allowing her to be close enough to be eye level to the cross of his Jedi robes at his neck and to smell his earthen scent. As she drifted her eyes upward to his lips – faintly parted – and finally to his eyes, his head was bowed to look down upon her and she heard a faint hitch in his breath. A tremble.
She stood, basking in the shimmering glory of this precipice, this place between engaged and not, between submersion and withholding. She felt his force shiver; the energy around him begged to be kissed and begged not to be kissed. By her estimation, he was absolute perfection. Perfection in his imperfection.
Of course, she wasn't going to kiss him. To do that, in there of all places, would have been absolutely ridiculous. But to connect to him in that way, right then, grounded her with a firm resolution that made her feel on an instinctual, basic, primal level that if anything or anyone were to try to take him from her, she would tear them into a thousand shreds with her bare hands.
He must have sensed the intensity of her emotions because an adoration radiated from his gaze and his precipice of control shifted, stumbled, crumbled, and she simply knew in the next moment he would be kissing her. She stepped back before he could.
His aura grew quiet and he stepped back as well until he brushed the wall with his hands, and then leaned there, collecting himself in silence.
The door opened.
"Anakin," she said.
"You two will come with me," said Anakin, appearing much the same as earlier. Cold and unyielding. She wondered where he really was, underneath all that ice.
Obi-Wan gave Anakin a glance and seemed to respond by becoming as opaque in the force as Anakin, though he wasn't hard and unyielding like Anakin's ice. He became deep and mysterious and still.
"Are we going to see Chancellor Palpatine?" she inquired.
"Emperor Palpatine," clarified Anakin. "And yes."
"Aren't you worried about Obi-Wan?" she asked.
"Follow me," said Anakin, and he didn't give her time to inquire further as he whisked out the door.
Padmé really did have to wonder at the clockwork organization of the Empire as she was escorted through the Destroyer by Anakin, and how quickly everything seemed to have been put together. It must have been planned previously, in fact, Sheev Palpatine must have been planning this for quite some time. She found herself falling into going over her past meetings with the Chancellor, searching for signs of when he might have been planning to make this happen. It must have been years. It must have been more than years. She wondered if he'd been planning it even before she was Queen of Naboo. It made her feel a very special sort of betrayed, one that includes being the fool for someone you'd thought of as, at the very least, a decent associate, but at best, something of a friend.
It hurt. To have everything she'd ever worked for destroyed so quickly, and to have all her life's efforts tossed aside as if they never mattered and were for nothing. As if everything she cared about wasn't important, wasn't valid, and had not meant anything significant, or anything lasting. How could that be, when she'd always worked for the benefit of others?
It was like the greatest gaslighting the galaxy had ever known was happening right now, everywhere.
Anakin led them onto an elevator and the doors shifted shut and it plunged into the depths of the destroyer, light passing in fits and shadow as they passed floors.
"Anakin," said Obi-Wan, breaking his deep silence, much to Padmé's surprise.
Anakin blinked partway like a reaction only half spent and then halted. Perhaps he hadn't expected Obi-Wan's direct engagement, either. He didn't acknowledge it any further.
"Anakin," he said, again, his bottomless gaze upon his former padawan.
Anakin's eyes diverted to Obi-Wan and their eyes locked. Padmé felt movement in the force, a sort of dissonance, like a dull, cruel crack that ice might make as it hardens, or the waiting terror of dark, depthless fathoms.
"Where are you taking us?" asked Obi-Wan, though he might have already known, and he might have not cared much about the answer. He was really asking something else, entirely.
"To the emperor," said Anakin, water-tight.
"Is he your master, now?" Obi-Wan inquired, as if that were a simple question that wasn't heavily loaded at all.
Anakin only paused a fraction of a second before replying.
"He is."
Obi-Wan absorbed Anakin's response; it was like a stone dropped into deep water, and she realized Anakin was waiting as intently as she was for what the rebound would be to that weight in the depths.
"Why?" asked Obi-Wan, his voice almost a whisper. Tremulous frequencies edged along the force and Anakin, for once, looked faintly annoyed. The elevator began to slow.
"Silence," he said sharply, taking Obi-Wan and Padmé each forcibly by an arm. "We're here."
The doors slid open to reveal a stark hallway ending with a door guarded by two stormtroopers and an officer of some type. Judging by the number of buttons on his left breast, she assumed he was of the higher-ranking sort. Anakin "escorted" Padmé and Obi-Wan to the doorway and the officer straightened up as he approached.
"Lord Vader," he said.
Padmé wanted to say something as stupefied sounding as she felt about Anakin being called whatever that was and with such deference, but she knew better to simply let it pass. She glanced at Obi-Wan, whose eyes stayed forward, absorbed in whatever Jedi training had prepared him for a situation such as this. He looked intensely present yet detached.
"Let us in," Anakin ordered.
"Shall you require an escort?" inquired the officer, eyeing the senator and the Jedi which accompanied Anakin as if they would spontaneously explode, killing millions instantly.
"No," said Anakin, pulling his prisoners inside.
The doors shifted shut behind them with an exhale of pressure, and the only sound was the dull, rhythmic hum of the ship's breathing mechanics. The room itself was large and difficult to take in for its eccentric industrial design of blackened steely gears and piled grids. The floor was made of the same material and was a series of grates through which a vaguely pulsing blue glow emerged, casting them all in an ominous underlighting and giving the general sense of an unstable foundation. Anakin looked colder than normal in this light. More unyielding. At least, she thought it was the light. Maybe he'd become even more impassable than previously, somehow.
He almost seemed robotic. After she thought about it, she realized she knew droids that were warmer than Anakin, currently.
"Ah, has my apprentice returned already?" a reedy voice called from the end of the room.
Padmé hadn't noticed before, so engrained was the figure in the surrounding cacophony of industrial grating, that there was someone sitting on a throne afar, hooded in a voluminous black shroud that seemed to have no beginning nor end; the edges of the ragged fabric faded ramshackle into the edges of the structure of the throne, which itself looked as if it had been fashioned from the skeletal remains and assorted parts of a hundred diverse droids, all blackened the same shade of soot and somehow fitted together to create a presentation upon which the figure could be displayed. The underlight of blue shone through cracks and fissures in the industrial cacophony and vague, sickly puffs of steam wafted here and there, obscuring the edges, and making it even more difficult to discern exactly how any of this had been put together properly. It was unsettling in how it confused the mind, and Padmé suspected that might be an intentional feature.
"Yes, Master," said Anakin, stopping with them both, retaining their distance from the throne.
"Ah, yes, very good, very good," said the voice. "Let me see them. The Senator and the Jedi."
The hooded figure swayed unnaturally as he sat, reminding Padmé of the movement a snake might make, and he asked, "Do you have his weapon?"
Anakin removed Obi-Wan's lightsaber from his belt and held it aloft, after which the Emperor held out his hand and the hilt floated into it with practiced grace.
"Wonderful," he said with a soft cackle as he placed it upon the arm of his throne. "I have quite a collection of these, now."
Padmé felt rage begin to toil in her gut.
"Release them from their bindings, those must be terribly uncomfortable," said the figure as if he were friendly. Anakin removed the bindings from their wrists and Padmé rubbed her sore skin. "Come forward, then. Don't be shy."
"No, thank you," replied Padmé.
He laughed. It was a dumb, shrill laugh that made Padmé want to hurl a bag of rocks at his face.
"You need not worry, Padmé Amidala. You're both here for a very specific purpose, and there's nothing that will change that," he said.
"Palpatine, how long have you been planning this?" she demanded.
He looked at her directly, then, and she saw what had happened to his face. He looked like he'd been melted.
"Ah, you see my disfigurement?" he said, and then he feigned sorrow to say: "It was a terrible explosion that day at the Senate."
"Are you still going to pretend you didn't do it yourself?" she asked, feeling rage burning at her edges.
"I have no idea to what you refer," he replied, as if he were a cat playing with a moth.
"You'll not get away with this," she seethed.
Palpatine's hand shot forward and Padmé suddenly found she could not longer speak.
"You always were too outspoken for my taste, Senator," said Palpatine, and it was as if he'd taken hold of her spine from across the room, for she was forcibly moved aside in front of Anakin, then thrust upon her knees to kneel in silence. Then he smiled. "Though fairly easy to manipulate."
She could only clench her fists in frustration at her sides as Palpatine, perhaps bored with her, turned the fullness of his attention on Obi-Wan.
"Anakin's previous master," he greeted, though Obi-Wan remained passive despite the veiled insult. "I had been hoping we would meet, and perhaps discuss our methods… and how they differ."
Obi-Wan seemed to have no interest in discussing anything of the sort.
"When I took Anakin under my wing, I'm afraid to say he was an absolute mess," Palpatine began to ruminate. "He was never going to reach his potential under the path of the Jedi, and he knew it. I surely knew it. I would venture to say you even knew it, Master Kenobi."
While it was true that nobody ever really knew what to do with Anakin Skywalker, that was still an incredibly rude thing to say.
"But look at him now!" said Palpatine, extending a bony arm proudly in the direction of Anakin. "So focused. So centered. So… powerful."
Anakin was impassive as well, but in a different way from Obi-Wan. He was a sheet of ice through which no one would pass, nor see within, and it wasn't even worth trying. Obi-Wan, on the other hand, had a softer power, somehow. More pliant, and even absorbent. Both of them seemed quite well trained in the Jedi art of dissociation to Padmé, who thought she might lose her marbles at any moment.
"I think we can both agree that I've been the better master," said Palpatine.
"Perhaps that is for Anakin to decide," replied Obi-Wan, his voice serene.
Palpatine seemed for a moment to dislike that response, or the idea that Anakin could decide anything but that he was the better master, but after a moment he seemed to defer to "playing along".
"Well, perhaps it is," said Palpatine, though Padmé felt as if she might have noticed some faint cracks in his sheen as he turned to look at Anakin. "What say you, Darth Vader?"
Padmé hated waiting to hear what Anakin might say, as much as she hated his ridiculous new name. Yet, when it was uttered by Palpatine, she felt a shudder in the force come from Obi-Wan that she didn't expect and was then obligated to assume that it meant something she didn't know anything about. Or did she? She seemed to recall the word "Darth" being used before, in a being of immense malice who came to fight upon Naboo. Darth Maul.
She knew that name to be one which Obi-Wan didn't like at all.
But what did "Darth" mean? Did it mean Anakin had become a Sith Lord? Despite the power he exuded, and despite his frigidity, he didn't exude the menace nor the frequency that she'd sensed from Maul, nor the chaotic, almost gleeful menace which Palpatine emitted, but she had to admit her experience with the dark side of the force was severely limited. Perhaps every Sith Lord was different. But how could Anakin be a Sith Lord? It was Anakin!
Turning to glance at him, as if to check and see he was still there and he was still Palpatine's apprentice, his eyes fell to her for a moment but left immediately as if refusing to linger, returning to Palpatine with distinct, precise, frigid purpose.
"He had his purpose," said Anakin without emotion, as if he didn't care.
Palpatine nodded his goblin head, that ridiculous, hideous smile on his face as he took in Anakin's response and began to chuckle, a slow, ponderous sound.
"Yes, indeed," he intoned. "He had his purpose. But no longer."
Palpatine straightened a bit and said, "It is time, Vader. You must now kill your master."
Padmé reacted viscerally. A scream pulled from her belly, through her heart, and ripped out of her throat – "No!"
Palpatine turned to look at her, momentarily speechless, and then squinted after a moment's thought.
"Now that's interesting," he said, as if she were a specimen in a tray to be observed. "I didn't know you were force sensitive, Senator Amidala."
"You will not harm Master Kenobi," she demanded, as if she could demand anything in this position. Still, she did.
"If I'd known you were force sensitive, I would have put a stronger muzzle on you," he said, his normal menacing glee dulled into a sinister sneer.
"Leave him alone!" she yelled.
"Silence!" barked Palpatine, and he thrust his arm out, flinging her back to fly prone on the floor at Anakin's feet. Though she tried to cry out in pain from the force of the impact, she was entirely unable to utter a sound.
She felt Obi-Wan's force spread out, as if deepening his ability to absorb friction, and Anakin's sheet of ice thickened. Perhaps she was muzzled, but she was still able to pull herself up from the floor, at least to a knee. Palpatine watched her with amusement.
"You're going to have to kill her, too, you know," said the Emperor, as if he were saying something mostly insignificant, or just an aside thought, but Anakin didn't respond. "But first, of course, will be Master Kenobi, because, as you know, such an important part of your training is the ability to eschew authority, to destroy that which would bind you from pursuing your desires, and what is more grating, more binding, or more suffocating than the Jedi order?"
Palpatine then looked upon Obi-Wan with contempt.
"A worthless, outdated order so embroiled in its own hubris that you didn't even know why you did what you did anymore," he said darkly.
Padmé looked at Obi-Wan. He seemed determined to fight Palpatine with a serenity that couldn't be broken.
"You just followed," he spat. "Blindly. Stupidly. Repressed. Reduced to shells of people, pretending emotion doesn't exist, just like you are, now."
Then a sinister smile spread across Palpatine's face.
"But I know it's in there," he sneered. Then he glanced over at Anakin and Padmé, as if he were now teaching a lecture. "Do you know what a Jedi hates the most?"
Anakin and Padmé didn't respond, because it was obviously not necessary. Palpatine was going to go on with this regardless.
"For his emotions to be laid bare," said Palpatine with a smile. He turned back to Obi-Wan. "Isn't that right, Master Kenobi?"
Padmé thought she saw a hint of darkening about Obi-Wan's eyes, but he didn't answer.
"I suppose we'll have to find out, then," said the Emperor and his hand shot out like a striking cobra and she felt it; a chaotic power slammed into Obi-Wan, who physically braced against his recoil from the attack. It was like a chaotic jumble of tendrils, black as ink, a force of dark madness seeking to penetrate and find the secret innermost workings of Obi-Wan's psyche, and though the depths of Obi-Wan were able to absorb the initial blow it was clear that he would not withstand it forever. Palpatine's force was too much, too chaotic, impossible to head off every searching black tendril because when one was repelled ten more were coming, seeking, driving deeper. She saw Obi-Wan struggle with the resistance. He was only so deep. He trembled with the exertion, and Palpatine only seemed to grow stronger, more gleeful with the strain under which he put Obi-Wan.
He was near to crying out, she felt it; he was losing and she couldn't stand it so she flung what little she had in the defense of Obi-Wan, which wasn't much, but it was everything, all of her force that she could muster, and it scattered through the struggling war of black and blue between Obi-Wan and Palpatine like glittering stars, causing the Emperor hesitate in his onslaught.
That was all Obi-Wan needed, it seemed, for he thrust his attacker out like a crashing tide and solidified himself in defense, waiting and ready if another assault should come. A sheen of sweat had broken across his face; he was panting but determined to resist.
Palpatine sat in silence for a moment, and then he started laughing. He laughed long and hard and, in Padmé's opinion, in poor taste. Eventually, his mirth subsided, and he dramatically wiped a tear from his eye.
"Well," he said. "This has all been delightfully entertaining, but I've got an empire to run, and you two are what we like to call in the Empire… 'problematic'."
Anakin lit his red lightsaber with a rich, powerful hum. Its red edges mixed and flowed with the blue underlighting, blurring its edges with a violet bloom.
"Yes, it is time," said Palpatine to Anakin, the sage instructing his apprentice. He nudged Obi-Wan with the force to stand front of Anakin, beside Padmé, despite Obi-Wan's resistance. Padmé, though unable to vocally object, tried to beat against Anakin with her force, though it was like throwing confetti at a solid wall. She could do nothing to move him, and she felt tears fall across her cheeks with the effort.
"As you wish," said Anakin, raising his lightsaber straight ahead, only a foot to the right of Obi-Wan's neck. "I will now kill my master."
At that moment Padmé felt Anakin's force reshape itself completely; instead of a hardened wall of impassable ice it became a focused spear of immeasurable power, focused not at Obi-Wan, but at Palpatine. He released his red lightsaber and it vaulted forward, like a fired javelin, towards the Emperor. The black chaos was quick to respond and Obi-Wan's lightsaber had lighted and vaulted from the throne of Palpatine in an instant as poisonous malice filled his yellow eyes, and she knew he meant to cut down his apprentice with the very trick his young protégé had tried to use. Though it all happened in an instant, she knew, somehow, that Palpatine's attack was faster and would reach Anakin first, and she panicked and reacted out of instinct.
Throwing her arm up, she slammed the red button in her fist and her force shield ignited, humming into existence in deep bass tones as the blue lightsaber slammed into it, careening sideways. She saw the shock on Palpatine's face the instant before he was impaled by Anakin's lightsaber, and then she felt the strength and intensity in the force with which Anakin finished the Emperor with the lightsaber, ensuring he would not survive, not even for another moment. He was thorough; disturbingly so, but they were so shaken with the potential of the Emperor's darkness and the uncertainty that he could possibly maintain any sort of consciousness under any condition that Padmé, at least, was not going to object. However, she did douse her lightshield and turn away from the sight.
It all happened so quickly that within moments they three were standing in the cascading silence of after, unsure of what was to come. Padmé turned her head to see Anakin's lightsaber hilt hit his palm and he clipped it on his belt with practiced ease. He turned and force-pulled Obi-Wan's lightsaber into his hand and turned to face them both.
He stepped forward and held out the hilt to Obi-Wan.
"Master Kenobi," he said, deferring, yet a jaunty half-smile was on his face, that particular smile that only Anakin had. The real Anakin. The one she knew. The wall of ice was gone. The immense power remained, but he was revealed again as himself, though reformed in some way she didn't yet understand.
"Oh, stars," cried Padmé. "Anakin!"
She threw her arms around him in relief, feeling as if she might burst into tears at any moment knowing he wasn't gone; he hadn't left them. He wasn't a monster.
Anakin was surprised by her attack and stumbled slightly as he received her hug and let out a chuckle.
"Anakin," she heard Obi-Wan say behind her, and she pulled away as he took the lightsaber from Anakin's hand. Obi-Wan radiated a warmth and relief, though cautious uncertainty underlaid it. "You have so much to tell us."
"I…do," said Anakin, and his gaze faltered and he glanced away. "But right now we, um… well. I know this is sudden, but how do you feel about running an empire? With me?"
"Wait, what?" asked Padmé.
"You've got to be joking," said Obi-Wan.
"I hate the Empire, Anakin. It's awful," said Padmé. "Literally awful."
"It got some good points," offered Anakin. "It's pretty organized."
"I will never, ever support the Empire!" proclaimed Padmé.
"Though I am inclined to agree with Padmé, we must not confuse the evil acts of the Emperor with the entirety of the Empire," said Obi-Wan.
"We can work out the details later," Anakin said, glancing at the door with some urgency.
"Yes but-" began Padmé.
"Look, we have to stay alive and usurp authority first," said Anakin, pointing at Padmé. "Politic must come later."
Padmé drew a breath and puffed it out, glancing back at what was left of Emperor Palpatine and his throne. It looked like someone had shredded some rags and left them on a pile of rubbish.
"Someone's going to have to pay for that," commented Obi-Wan.
"It was garbage anyway," said Anakin, taking them both by the arms and shuffling them forward towards the way out. "Now brace yourselves, we're in the middle of a coup."
They burst through the door with confident purpose. At least, they were able to exude enough purpose to be convincing.
"Lord Vader?" inquired the officer at the door, an uneasy mixture of greeting and question.
Anakin's lightsaber ignited with quiet, dark promise and Padmé felt the officer and the storm troopers in the causeway shrink away in response.
"The Emperor is dead," he announced, daring anyone to object.
No one really did.
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