"I don't know, Obi-Wan. I just don't know."

Their debate involving just mere looks and expressions at times, both Jedi shook their heads in exasperation in the parlor of their small suite on Hosnian Prime, several floors up from the Consular accommodations. Sitting down onto the couch as if he were exhausted by the disagreement, Quinlan Vos shook his head.

"It's the mission," Obi-Wan pressed, looming over his friend. "You can't question the evidence at this point! Amidala and the boy are steeped in the Dark Side, and they have proven they are willing to use it to murder friend and foe alike."

"I'm not questioning that," Quinlan said, dropping his face into his hands. He knew the moment of truth would arrive at some point on their mission, he just hoped it would not have been so soon. "They are Siths, so what else can you expect?"

"I don't get what your hangup is then. Bail and Mon have agreed implicitly to help us. Fafi gets rid of Gunray, Bail and Mon vote to negotiate regardless of what Amidala says, we agree to a favorable location, the Jedi stand ready there, we arrest the Consular, and peace is restored in the galaxy."

Quinlan looked critically at his friend. "You are blinded by the mission," Quinlan said, choosing his words carefully. "Ignoring the fact that this involves an unconscionable interference into galactic politics unprecedented since Ruusan...I mean...there are so many things that can go wrong here. What if Amidala boycotts the negotiations? Who knows what she will do, backed into a corner?"

"Let her then," Obi-Wan shrugged coldly. "No more of her acting...let the galaxy see her as the aspiring despot she truly is. But that will not happen. She will be there. She knows she has to show. Amidala cannot resist not having her say in the matter, or more likely, she will see it as a chance to sabotage the negotiations firsthand. Either way though, the alliance between, well, the Alliance, and the Sith is history, and the divide within the Republic, and our Order, will be bridged."

"Do you even know how Fafi is planning to depose the Chancellor?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "I think the less we know the better, considering that I doubt the Senator conducts things entirely within the frame of the Constitution."

Unsatisfied with any of his answers, Quinlan continued to gnaw on his fingers. "What if Skywalker doesn't accompany his wife? The Hutt resistance is surprisingly strong. Skywalker is a General, not a politician. We capture one Sith, yet the more powerful apprentice is still free to roam the Galaxy and plot his revenge."

"I'm actually banking on that," Obi-Wan said with a smile, surprising Quinlan. "What do the ancient stratagems say? Divide and conquer. Skywalker and Amidala are strong together. Separate them, and we risk less casualties with the arrest. You recall what happened on Takodana." Walking over to the viewport, he looked ponderously at the cityscape outside. "Besides, Amidala is the mastermind. Cut off from her, the boy will be lost."

Realization dawned in Quinlan's eyes as he looked to his friend in disbelief. "You think you can still save the boy, is that it? All this planning a caper just so you can regain your lost apprentice."

Obi-Wan shook his head sadly. "Skywalker will never be a Jedi. That door has long closed, considering it was barely open to begin with. But he is far less ingrained in the Dark Side compared to Amidala. However she has twisted him, it seems nowhere close to what Sidious did to her. Both of them may stand a chance to be rehabilitated, true, but Amidala is the leader, and Skywalker a follower."

"No." Quinlan stood up sharply, his voice and tone forcing his friend to turn and face him. "I cannot stand for this. Not only will I not participate, I am urging you to reconsider."

Backing up in shock, Obi-Wan braced himself. "I don't believe. Are you going to fight me on this, Quin?"

"Of course not. I will not stand in your way. And for the sake of our friendship, and only our friendship, I will not tell Amidala or Skywalker about this conspiracy. But I say this, as a friend, as a confidante...as someone whose judgment I hope you trust and value...this is not the way."

"I see," Obi-Wan said, his demeanor suddenly shielded. "You're going the path of Sifo-Dyas and Dooku, then?"

"I don't know, Obi-Wan." He paced the room, trying to gather his thoughts into words. "This just feels right. My entire life as a Jedi, never had I had a mission or assignment that has been this...rewarding. This satisfying. The looks on the faces of all the slaves we are freeing, the families, mothers and children we reunite...I can understand their cause, their zeal. Even if it can be...somewhat extreme...at times, the good they are doing, the good that we all accomplished together...it simply outweighs their evils."

"This is a slippery slope, Quinlan."

"You don't need to lecture me on slippery slopes, Obi-Wan, we all took the same youngling classes." The words came out of Quinlan's mouth in anger, surprising them both. He quickly released his frustrations into the Force, then continued evenly. "Besides, I think it's a bad idea to separate the two. Light or Dark, the Force sings when they are together. I fear the consequences of what you're planning."

"You are letting your emotions dictate your course of action," Obi-Wan said calmly, trying not to unwittingly offend or insult his friend. "Clear your head, take some time to meditate on it..."

"My mind has never been clearer," Quinlan replied back, equally calm. "And I am far from alone in the Jedi Order in this."

"And I will not forget the innocent lives taken, lives like Queen Jamillia, or Luminara, who sat in the same creche classes as you and I. We cannot trade death for life. We cannot take baby steps down the road of darkness, however right each increment may appear."

"We will not agree," Quinlan said, moving to leave the suite.

"Our paths diverge now," Obi-Wan said, more as a statement than a question.

Quinlan looked back at him, a kindred spirit ever since they were younglings in the Temple. Though Obi-Wan would never admit it, there was supplication in his eyes, asking Quinlan to reconsider, if not as a Jedi, then as a friend. Quinlan nodded.

"I don't know how it has come to this. But I depart in peace."

"May the Force be with you then, old friend," Obi-Wan said sadly, whispering the last two words.

"May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan Kenobi."

The Senate halls were eerily quiet as Ahsoka crept through the darkened corridors. It was fitting, she thought, that this was how politics were conducted during these last days of Nute Gunray's regime: in the shadows. Fafi had all but admitted it himself, telling her that most of their real decisions were made not in the chambers of the Senate, where little meaningful legislature was being proposed and passed by the mostly now indigent legislators, but late at night, after all the Senators and their aides and retinues had departed. When Fafi, Amedda, and the Chancellor hammered out the course of the war and all the rest of the matters governing a Republic, if any of those words could still be used honestly, entailed.

"It's mostly me and Mas making the decisions anyway," Fafi had said to her during a clandestine meeting in the lower levels earlier that day. "I'm afraid the Chancellor's lost his bearings a long time ago. We listen to his rantings and ravings, we try to curb the worst of it, honestly. Of course, there's some things he is determined to have to get his way on. The public execution of that poor Naboo girl for one. All the treasury credits being diverted to Trade Federation accounts, the wholesale embezzlement and conquering planets and milking their resources stuff, yeah, he's a stickler for all that. But you should realize that we've prevented far worse. He's proposed quite a few mass executions of entire planets he suspects, not always without cause, is sympathetic towards the Alliance. He gets these big enslave everyone kicks, too. But let him have few billion more credits here and there, and he tends to forget the mass murder stuff. For the most part anyways. There's been some things we couldn't help. Corellia, Sern Prime, Mimban, Kashyyyk..."

It occurred as she listened to the old Senator's ramblings that maybe Fafi had some semblance of a conscience after all, or else why would he bother trying to justify and rationalize so much of his crimes to a teenager like herself. Perhaps he did feel guilty for the role he played in all this, the deaths and destructions in so many of the Republic's own worlds, not to mention the complete fracture of the Republic and the Jedi Order. Maybe he actually did want to right some of his wrongs. She doubted it though. Politicians like Fafi were always out for their own benefit, and someone as crafty as him were astute enough to sense which way the wind was blowing.

The Alliance was winning the war, that much was clear. Fafi and his crew could either go down with the ship, or they could grab a lifeline and try to weasel their way out through a negotiated peace. Ahsoka didn't give a kriff about what befell their lot. To her, Gunray was the problem, he always had been. Let the politicians sort out their own messes. Gunray would never surrender, but by helping Fafi take him out, she could single-handedly prevent what would likely be the bloody endgame of the war: a catastrophic siege of Coruscant.

"Security is minimal at these meetings, obviously, since we don't want to risk any eavesdroppers listening in. Only a few droids guarding the Chancellor's office, something I'd imagine is easy pickings for a Jedi. He will be expecting myself and Amedda at 2122 standard hours. Of course, give us the word, and we can arrange to be...truant."

She inched her way along the wall as she approached the Chancellor's office, feeling the presences of a small squadron of droids beyond. Taking a deep breath, she leaped into the lobby, slashing several droids in half before any of them had a chance to register her attack. Rolling onto the ground, she sent a gentle Force shove down towards the Chancellor's office, sending two more droids crashing into the doors, before deflecting the return fire to disable the last of the droids. Standing up, she brushed off her shoulders and opened the doors to the Chancellor's office.

"What is meaning here," Gunray asked angrily, his buggy eyes widening to a comically impossible degree. "Who are you? Prostitute? I told Fafi meeting first, whore after! Always whore after meeting, this is his rule, not mine!"

Lighting both her blades, she pointed them forward at the Neimoidian. "Chancellor Gunray, by the authority of the Jedi Order, you are under arrest."

"Treason! Treason! Treason!" The Chancellor screamed at the top of his lungs in a frequency so high, it even jolted Ahsoka momentarily. As she moved towards him to apprehend the Chancellor, she her the footsteps of more droids approaching the office. Pivoting, she deftly deflected several more blasts at the unwanted intruders, but not before Nute Gunray had a chance to evade her as he scrambled towards the outer lobby.

"Kriffing Neimoidian," she muttered, marveling at how fast the lumbering frame of the Chancellor moved when he was fleeing in fear. She gave chase, catching up to him in the hallway, when the Chancellor tripped and fell over a disabled droid.

"Dying! I dying! Weep for me oh galaxy, I surrender my peaceful soul to thee..."

Ahsoka kicked lightly at the prone frame of Nute Gunray. Hearing more footsteps approaching and sensing it was Fafi, she disabled her weapons and turned to face the obese Senator, who gestured for her towards the Chancellor's office.

"I think he fainted from fear when I was about to arrest him," Ahsoka said once they were inside. "I'm pretty sure he soiled himself too."

To her surprise, her words elicited anger from the Senator.

"Arrest him? I thought you were going to kill him!"

"What? No! A Jedi does not murder in cold blood...no matter how much some people may deserve it."

Fafi sighed in exasperation, shaking his head. "I knew I shouldn't have entrusted all this to a child," he muttered, walking back into the lobby, where more footsteps were clambered closer. Within seconds, a coterie of Senate Guards entered the office.

"Arrest her," he ordered to the captain of the guards, pointing at the young Padawan.

"For what," Ahsoka yelled indignantly, hands ready to grab her lightsabers. "I was just..."

"Attempting to assassinate the Supreme Chancellor. I'm afraid she has gone insane." Fafi started backing his way out of the office. "Show caution. She may be in league with the Sith, possessed by a Dark Side."

For a moment Ahsoka had decided to fight back, slash her way out of this mess. But then she realized that these Senate Guards were merely following orders. She couldn't kill them, especially seeing as she couldn't have even brought herself to kill the Chancellor.

"I surrender," she said, raising her hands in the air. Hopefully everything could be sorted out once Master Fisto heard about this.

"I see that I am outvoted in this measure," Padmé said calmly, even though she knew the argument was lost before the meeting ever started.

"Bail and I understand your concerns, Consular Amidala," Mon's holo said diplomatically. "However, it must be stressed that our favorable strategic position extends both militarily and diplomatically."

"Our goals have always been the peaceful reunification of the Republic," Bail added, "not its conquest. If there is a chance this peace may be achieved without war, then we are bound to pursue that path."

"Do you really believe Fafi and Amedda will negotiate in good faith? They are tasting power for the first time. Both have committed innumerable crimes to reach this point...do you really think they will let it all go without a fight?"

"I do not doubt they will fight," Bail said. "They have no chance of winning outright, so they will try to undermine us during the negotiations. Try as they might to entrap us, we are not stepping into the gundark's nest unaware."

"There are options on the table palatable to all," Mon said. "Let Fafi keep his ill-gotten fortunes. Let Amedda keep his seat in the Senate, perhaps even as a minority Councilor..."

"And let their crimes go unpunished," Padmé asked indignantly. "Let their followers see our leniency towards the corruption and vice that got us here in the first place, and reunite the Republic under the same flawed foundation we pretended to ignore before these Clone Wars?"

"Last I checked, this is still a democracy," Mon scolded angrily, the first time she had ever raised her voice against her colleague from Naboo. "We cannot simply wipe out one half of the Senate's elected representatives just because they are not saints. The Senate is flawed because the galaxy is flawed, so has it always been. We've learned our mistakes, the cost being the blood and lives of thousands. Is that not enough, or must we seek to punish anyone who has ever stood against us? Is it reconciliation we seek, Padmé? Or is it blood?"

Taking a deep breath, Padmé backed down. Of course she wanted blood, but not was not the time to reveal her true intentions. "Your wisdom is beyond question, Consular Mothma. Though my objections remain, I accept the decision of the Tri-Consulate."

She turned off the transmission, and looked sadly at Anakin, whose barely simmering rage she could feel through their bond.

"You can't go along with this," he protested.

"I have no choice," Padmé answered softly, though her mind continued to race. "A temper tantrum will do nothing for our optics."

The room shook as cannon fire rained upon nearby embankments below. The battle still raged on, husband and wife leading the 501st to quell yet another insurrection on Nar Shaddaa, a moon where many of the surviving Hutt oligarchs had fled to regroup. The urban warfare breaking out below was more intense, more critical, with less margin for error, and every minute they were engaged in petty political trifling was valuable time wasted away from the counterinsurgency.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he said slowly, while studying the reports from the battle. "Bail and Mon Mothma...something seems off about them."

"They are shielded," Padmé agreed. "I know they have been wary of us since the revelation, but not this much. Something has changed."

"The Jedi," Anakin snarled. "We let them in. They turned them against us. That was their plan all along."

"You may not be wrong," Padmé conceded. "If so, then we are outmaneuvered on this play."

Everything had been going according to plan until some rash Padawan attempted to kill the Chancellor. From everything her sources were saying, Coruscant was a mess right now: Gunray was in a coma, the Jedi Padawan in the custody of the Senate Guard, and the Jedi were denying culpability or knowledge in the matter...the only certainty was that Fafi and Amedda had taken charge in the interim of both the Senate and Nute Gunray's droid army. It seemed rather odd to her how Bail and Mon had conveniently dismissed the likely unsavory ways in which Fafi gained his power. From her own standpoint, Padmé had been initially happy that Gunray was still alive; she always planned to end his life herself. She would curse the rash Jedi girl who tried to take that away from her, if she didn't admit to admiring her boldness, her willingness to act amidst the indecision of the Council.

"This is a trap," Anakin said, his eyes shifting between blue and yellow. "I'm certain of it. And you'll step into it because of optics?"

"We got this far because of optics," Padmé replied despondently. "We are not Sidious. For us to rule by force without mass bloodshed, we must hold and maintain the support of the people."

"Then screw it all. Let's fight back."

"That road will see the massacres of millions. Mass enslavement, because we failed to persuade. I may be far gone...but I'm not that far gone. Are you?"

It took him some time to answer. When he did, he surprisingly found himself calmer than before. "No. We haven't come this far to become slavers ourselves."

Watching his wife walk over to him and almost fall into his arms broke his heart. He had never seen her so helpless before, not even after Jamillia's death.

"I'm afraid, Ani. I must go to Coruscant. You must continue the siege here. I don't know what to do."

Her admission scared him to the core. "I am...so afraid." Instinctively, he clutched her tighter. "Surely there's something...some action we can take..."

"If it's a trap, then spring it," Padmé said after a long period of thought, her voice muffled as she spoke into Anakin's chest. "To quote Bail, we are not stepping into it unknowingly. We will not be unprepared. Let them have this round. But we will not give into this. We will strike back."

"You have a plan," Anakin asked, hope creeping into his voice.

"Not yet. But I have faith that we will come up with something. Together."

"I love you," Anakin gasped. There was no need to hide the panic in his voice from his own wife. "I can't lose you."

"You won't," Padmé said, lifting her lips greedily to capture Anakin's. Lost in their kiss, Anakin wondered whether or not her words were based on faith alone.

Nightshade's sydneylover150: I'm going to do my best to try!

Paul Lenzen: Looks like the Jedi are one step ahead of the Sith. But they don't all agree amongst themselves...

1saaa: Thanks! I'd say this story is about 2/3rds of the way done...or maybe more.

Praetor-Canis: Personally, I don't think Kenobi and Bail are doing things for the sake of power, though to them, there is always more comfort in the status quo. Everyone, from Obi-Wan, to Quinlan, to Bail and Mon, and even Padmé, are acting on what they believe to be right. But clearly we've reached the point where all the lies and compromises and secrets have led these characters to inevitably turn against each other, because ultimately there is no bridging the gulf between the ends of where their principles and ideals lead.