Obi Wan observed how a clone waved one of his brothers to help him. "That's not a jedi.", Obi Wan heard him saying. Obi Wan stepped to them to confirm what he had already felt.
"Open the door.", he said. The two clones turned in surprise. "Are you sure, sir?", the clone asked with a frown. Obi Wan only smiled. "He is an old friend.", he stated. The clone nodded then activated the gate.
Obi Wan went for the exit to meet Anakin. It wasn't long until a frosty wind greeted him. "You came.", Obi Wan said as Anakin entered. "Don't ask me why.", He only replied before he looked around briefly.
"This is a step down from the temple on Coruscant.", he remarked. Obi Wan chuckled. "Certainly.", he mumbled. "I thought you would be on your way to the rebels.", Anakin said. Obi Wan sighed as a reply.
"I had to wait for you first.", he stated. "I wouldn't let you face them alone." Anakin arched a brow. "You're one of them, you know." "I am on you side...", Obi Wan began. "You've always been.", Anakin intercepted before he finished.
"I don't know why I didn't realize.", he added quietly. Obi Wan looked at Anakin for a few moments, as he demonstrated once more, how the Emperor had changed him. "Come on. Surely, the masters have felt your presence by now."
Anakin narrowed his eyes. "But you also told them that I was coming, right?" Obi Wan shook his head. "I don't even know how much Yoda told them. Maybe the only thing they know about is what you did to Shaak Ti."
The look Anakin gave him, was enough to show Obi Wan that his words had been poorly chosen. "She would be on your side in there, if she wasn't still in the medical bay.", Obi Wan added for good measures. Anakin sighed.
"Let's get this over with.", Anakin concluded and walked past Obi Wan. A few clones stood ready to check that Anakin was no intruder. "Deserters.", he stated. "How did you manage that they weren't tracked."
Obi Wan frowned. "What do you mean?", he asked. "Sidious never told the republic about the chips that they grow with. They can be tracked and also suppress every rebellious thought." Obi Wan's eyes widened.
"How barbaric. They are people after all." One of the clones had overheard the conversation. "We don't have those chips anymore, sir.", he explained to Obi Wan. "Took them out a long time ago." Obi Wan nodded his understanding.
He felt the curiosity in the clone grow and grow, while the soldier studied Anakin. He was asking himself how it was that he, apparently a civil in favor of the jedi, knew about one of the empire's secrets.
But Obi Wan and Anakin ignored the question they both felt and moved on. "They will demand to know what happened two years ago, when Mace Windu died.", Obi Wan told Anakin, who was already expecting as much.
"I don't figure they will understand why I did what I did.", he murmured. Obi Wan shrugged. "Time will tell. Yoda is known to be quite openminded." Anakin nodded. "They shouldn't forgive me. Not after everything I've done.", he said anyway.
"I believe that you think that, is proof that you can be redeemed. That you deserve to be listened to.", Obi Wan replied. Anakin might have not shared his faith, but he was sure that the other jedi masters would see what he was seeing.
In the moment they entered the round room, Anakin was taken aback. The seats of the masters were still arranged in a perfect circle.
Even though the skyline of Coruscant was replaced by thick, temperature isolating walls, Anakin felt as though he had returned to one of the places he despised the most.
Many of the faces were identical to the ones he had seen after coming from Tatooine to be tested. Obi Wan left his side to stroll over to his own seat. All eyes were set on Anakin, and he felt extreme alarm radiating from the jedi.
With one brief glance he counted six hands that had been put around the hilts of lightsabers. The wrinkled face of Yoda however, was completely calm. "Sooner than expected you arrive, Skywalker.", he began.
Anakin wondered why he hadn't been called Vader. He had considered himself to be Vader until only shortly. "Why would you lead him here, Kenobi?!", Luminara Unduli demanded angrily. "Because it was time.", Obi Wan replied simply.
"Of the day two years ago, you must tell us.", Yoda stated. "There you were, when Master Windu, Master Fisto and the others were killed."
"Only Master Windu was left when I arrived. He had defeated Palpatine, and was about to kill him.", Anakin answered. "I prevented that.", he added quietly. Anakin felt how disgust formed in the minds of the jedi.
"I had no idea he was such a monster.", he said. The masters only gave him arched brows in reply. "Even though you saw the killed jedi?", Master Unduli's voice, dripping with mistrust, asked.
"I knew he was evil, but not how much he had planned to do to the galaxy." "Then Follow him why did you?", Yoda asked, impersonating serenity. "He offered something I couldn't decline. Something of great meaning to me."
"Power and wealth?", someone guessed, clearly believing it to be that way. Anakin shook his head. "He said he would show me a way to save the life of my wife, who I had seen die when giving birth in visions."
Some gasped, some shook their heads in disappointment. "How often have you been told, that attachments lead to the dark side?", one demanded. "Often.", Anakin replied simply.
"Later, Palpatine told me, I had killed her, which was a lie. She survived, which I have learned a few weeks ago. The dark side had enslaved me." "Finding your wife freed you has?", Yoda asked.
Anakin looked up. "Mostly, yes. But somehow, I've always felt that she was alive, although I refused to consider it." "Really? A beautiful woman is your excuse for what you've done?", Unduli demanded.
"You have ignored the sacred code, betrayed the ancient prophecy, and slaughtered the members of the order.", she continued furiously. Anakin observed how almost all of them began pressing whispers to each other.
"I did break the code, and I did hunt down the jedi.", Anakin admitted. "And failed your sacred obligation as the chosen one.", Unduli added harshly. "I disagree.", Anakin replied. Unduli jumped off her seat, ready to activate her saber.
"Settle yourself you must, Luminara.", Yoda instructed. "Wish to hear what Skywalker has to say I do." Unduli took her seat reluctantly, although she was refusing to look at Anakin. "So, not the chosen one you are?", Yoda asked.
Anakin frowned. "I don't know, but that's not what I mean. I believe the prophecy had been misread all along." Unduli's eyes shot back at him. "Misread? You understood destroying the sith as joining them?", she challenged.
"No.", he answered. "But have you understood balance as the total eradication of the dark side, for only the light one to remain?"
"How dare you? The jedi fight for balance, you fought for balance before you became a traitor to everything you should have stood for.", Unduli spat. "Luminara.", Yoda warned in his usual calm voice.
"I might be a traitor, but the jedi have not fought for balance throughout the last few millennia. Not since the order started refusing the dark side." Unduli's eyes turned into blue fire, but she knew better than speaking up again.
"Right you are, Skywalker.", Yoda murmured. Every pair of eyes in the room snapped onto the Grandmaster. Even Anakin widened his eyes in surprise.
"Never clear, the prophecy was. Destroy the sith you should, but be defeated the dark side cannot. Kept the balance is by the force." Obi Wan spoke up for the first time.
"What do you mean, Master? Surely we have to aim on stopping the dark side's destruction." Yoda didn't reply immediately, as his frown deepened. "Always wondered about this I have. Uncertain what to expect I was."
Anakin took a few seconds to digest what Yoda had said. "Wait... are you saying you never knew what the prophecy meant? Never knew what the order was to expect of me?"
Yoda looked up, his eyes even more sincere than usual. "A great risk, training you was. Great power you would hold, and unclear it was how the prophecy fulfilled would be."
Anakin remembered how he had arrived on Coruscant as a boy, how he had been examined in the council's chambers. It was strange to know that Yoda had always known Anakin's betrayal was possible if not probable.
"Why would you take that risk then?", Anakin asked bitterly. "The only chance to guide the chosen one it was. Fell into the hands of the sith at young age you might have." Anakin said nothing.
If it never been clear how the prophecy would be fulfilled, he wondered why the jedi hadn't eradicated the threat he posed the moment he entered the temple.
That they hadn't done so restored a tiny fraction of the respect Anakin had once held for the order. "Apologize I must.", Yoda continued. Anakin suppressed a sarcastic chuckle.
"You? Apologize? I'm the one who committed unspeakable crimes.", he snarled. "Better guidance we should have given you. Come to me often you did, but helped you, I never truly have." Anakin's eyes widened.
Could it be that Yoda actually regretted some of his own actions? Anakin recalled the countless times he had went to the Grandmaster to seek his advice, and how his words had always pushed Anakin closer to the abyss of the dark side.
When Anakin had consulted him about the dreams he had had about Padmé's death, Yoda had told him to let her go, to forget her, which had been the worst thing he could have heard at the time.
"You offered me the wisdom of the order.", Anakin remarked. If only those ancient teachings had been what would have helped. "Need it you did not.", Yoda replied simply.
"Born to change the order you were. Too old our ways have become." For a moment nothing happened, as though everyone was checking the other's reactions to assure that they had heard correctly.
Then most jumped off their seats calling out, Luminara Unduli was beside herself. Only Obi Wan remained seated and stroked his beard silently. Anakin couldn't believe what he heard either.
Did Yoda just renounce the ancient ways of the jedi, and had he said Anakin, who had betrayed the order, was to reform it? "Surely, you don't mean what you say. The prophecy spoke of destroying the sith, not the jedi."
"And destroy the jedi you will not. Only reformed the order will be." "I don't understand, master.", Obi Wan began. "I thought you believed his children were to fulfil the prophecy in Anakin's stead, after he had joined the sith."
Yoda nodded. "Unclear, the prophecy was. That the chosen one would bring balance, by creating the ones that would, possible it seemed to me. After heard I have, that redeeming himself he began, I grew certain."
Yoda leaned further back in his seat. "Meditated on this I have, until revealed to me the truth was. Wronged you the jedi have, Skywalker. To stop the change you would bring we have tried, when encouraging it, was what meant to do we were."
This truly wasn't what Anakin had expected when coming here. That Yoda would not patronize but in fact apologize had been even more surprising than Obi Wan telling him where the jedi were hiding.
Clearly, Yoda and Obi Wan were the only ones that were in check of their outrage at this point. "Defeating the lord of the sith, the most important thing is.", Yoda continued, not irritated by the other masters that had all risen by now.
"Join Obi Wan you should now. Defeat the Emperor with help of the rebellion you could. Come to help, the jedi will, when the time comes." Anakin nodded slowly, still processing all he had heard.
"Then we shall leave.", Obi Wan said, stepping forward to Anakin. Yoda nodded. "Time an ally is not. Your only ally the force will be." "How encouraging.", Anakin murmured before Obi Wan and he left the room side by side.
"I doubt the jedi will ever fight by my side.", Anakin said. "You are the only one approving of his plan." Obi Wan shrugged. "It's Yoda. He will change their minds." Anakin sighed. "Yes, maybe." Obi Wan put a hand on Anakin's shoulder.
"We should get going. Nuha already told me that the base is on Dantooine." Anakin frowned. "That undeveloped rock in the outer rim?" Obi Wan chuckled. "I assume it's a good place to hide."
Anakin began chewing on his lip. "Will Ackbar tell them who I am?", he wondered. "It wouldn't matter.", Obi Wan replied. "They can't deny that they need you. They're planning to assault an imperial stronghold, you're their best ally now."
"Could we stop on Naboo, before Dantooine?" Obi Wan frowned. "Don't you think the deathstar is a little more important than seeing your wife?" Anakin shook his head.
"She doesn't know what happened here, also the twins are without force sensitive protection. I just want to make sure they're fine." Obi Wan sighed. "Fine. I didn't consider that they're vulnerable with you and Ahsoka gone."
"Thank you.", Anakin said sincerely, before they left the base and were greeted by the desert of ice outside.
Sidious felt something. He wasn't certain what it was. He had felt this before, but it had been absent for a while. He opened his eyes, and stared out of the circular window that was installed behind his throne on the deathstar.
With Vader gone, and only a traitor and a child as apprentices, he had felt the urge to protect himself better, and moved to the fiercely protected building site. The station was far from completion, for the construction had begun two years ago.
Sidious searched his emotions, analysed every aspect of what he received through the force. The sensation was familiar, he only had to remember why. It had appeared out of nowhere, as if a veil had been pulled off.
Suddenly, he knew when he had felt it before, and what this meant. He lost the feeling, but only because his mind was clouded by the pure rage. Somehow he had been deceived.
He didn't yet know to what extent he had been betrayed, but he would soon know. He called onto his abilities to channel the hatred, and use it instead of being used by it. He tried to find the signature once more, which wasn't very difficult.
He ensured himself, that he wasn't mistaken, but all doubt disappeared. These were the children of Skywalker, the ones that had died in the attack of the rebels.