Anakin, Obi Wan and Darth Sidious staggered down the alley, each hanging on to the rest for stability.
"We shou fine a bar." Obi Wan wondered what had happened to his lady friends, but it hardly mattered after so much Corellian Whiskey.
"We shoul buy a bar." Anakin was well aware that Padme intended to keep him too poor to buy lunch, let alone a drink. "Tha be wizar."
"No money." Obi Wan wrenched himself free of the others, staggered over to a wall and vomited heroically, not noticing the paralytically drunk Sith Lord fall quietly to the pavement behind him.
"Ah! Man Down!" Anakin tried to pick Sid up, but ended up sitting on the pavement too. It was comfortable, so he laid back.
"I- "I'll go ge' help." Obi Wan concentrated and staggered off down the alley, blind duty the only thing left holding him up.
Anakin lay for a time, watching the narrow gash of sky spinning so far above. It was sort of peaceful.
"You disgust me."
"Zat you, Padme?" Anakin didn't want to sit up.
"So low has the mighty Jedi fallen. The Chosen One, the most potent Jedi alive, the man with a midi-chlorian count of ten thousand per cell, come to this. How utterly pathetic, Skywalker."
"Mom?"
Asajj Ventris leaned over until his eyes could focus on her face.
"Wha? Oh, kriff."
"Kriff indeed." Asajj kicked Darth Sidious in the belly, prompting gagging, but no spark of consciousness. "Another of your degenerate Jedi friends?"
"Tha wass sooo mean. Wimmen are jus' mean alla time. Wh- Why r ya all gotta be … mean?"
Asajj actually smiled. "Ask your wife. It makes fools such as yourself so much easier to leash."
This was way too much for Anakin to consider. "Wha you wan?"
"I am thirty standard years old today, Skywalker." Asajj loomed over him, every line of her body a deadly threat. "What do you think that I want?"
"Appy birfday. I woulda got you sompfin but Padme took-way my 'lowance."
She laughed, delightedly. "Oh, but you did. You aren't even a warrior anymore, are you, Anakin. I had such plans to break you, to turn you to the Dark Side, to own you. All unnecessary." He moved and she placed her foot on his chest, holding him pinned to the pavement. "You haven't so much fallen to the Dark Side as fallen to the street. Just a scared little boy, hiding in a bottle."
"Wasa scared boy. Ain real no sides an issa scary galaxy." Anakin wasn't good or evil, light or dark. He was human and often drunk. "Been slave. Been Jedi. Always scared. Any not scare isn' payin' 'tention." He took a deep breath. "You gon' kill me?"
She smiled even wider. "Now that would be such a waste. It happens that I have foreseen a pleasantly ironic future in which I may require occasional… infusions of your numerous, numinous midi-chlorians, Skywalker."
The last thing that he knew was her laughter as she straddled his torso, pinched his nose closed and forced him to swallow something very, very nasty from a flask.
Anakin woke in a comfortable hotel room bed. He lay in it for a time, his mind almost completely blank. Sitting up, he groaned hoarsely and spied a large carafe of water on the table between two overstuffed chairs. Getting his feet to the floor took some effort, but he finally managed to shamble over and pour most of the cold water down his parched throat. Sitting down with another groan, he saw his clothing, freshly laundered and laid out on the dresser. After a time, he went over.
Anakin sighed with relief when he found Sid's pad and holocron in the drawer. The hotel droids must have taken care of it. He stood up and went into the bathroom, urinating for a long time. He hesitated and then used the shower, wondering who had paid for the room, because he had nothing. When he dried off, he suddenly cursed at what he saw in the mirror. Lividly scarlet against his right butt cheek was a very feminine bite mark, the ring of tooth marks deep and perfect. It had already scarred over in some unnatural way. A reddened female palm print decorated the other cheek.
"Padme is just going to kill me." Anakin sighed deeply, remembering snatches of the previous night. He had always wanted to be faithful to Padme, but between the Dathomiri joy juice and Asajj speculating that he could lose more than an arm for any show of reluctance, he hadn't been able to help himself. There were some parts that he was not eager to conduct regrowth experiments with. Moving over to the hotel fruit basket, he selected one that he'd never tried before. Biting in to a watery pink sphere, he saw the message light flashing on the holodisplay, so he hit the 'play' function.
Asajj appeared on the screen, engaged in a fierce kata and dressed only in her lightsaber holsters. "Ah, the Pross has worn off and you stand unharmed and eating fruit as I have foreseen. I shall return you to your rightful owner for now, but make no mistake, Skywalker, you WILL supply me with what I need in the future. When my daughter is whelped, you will be pressed into service as often as it takes so that I may build up my clan. I may someday expound to you upon the grandeur of my vision, but for the moment you do not need to know. I have left you a gift upon the desk. Spend it in good health, should you somehow manage to win the liberty in which to do so."
Anakin picked up the ten thousand credit plaque and shook his head. "Kriffin insane Dathomir witch." Anakin thought about throwing the plaque out, but he'd damned well earned it the hard way. Looking worriedly in the dressing mirror at the bite mark on his butt cheek, he shook his head. He could keep Padme from seeing it for a while, even after she popped, but it was up to bacta and the teachings of Darth Plageous the Wise to save him. He would have to sober up for a while, clean up his act, go all 'meditating Jedi,' hang around at the temple and be really dedicated about learning more Jedi flavored Force stuff, just like the old days when he actually cared about Jedi poodoo. He would be able to slip in plenty of holocron time there. Obi Wan would cover for him, now that he'd fallen to the drunk side and turned human. It was amazing how a little booze, nookie and PTSD could change a guy.