Anakin spends the whole next day training with Ahsoka and then alone, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion in the simulator salles. It's great for not thinking about things. He taps on Obi-Wan's door as evening falls, after being literally pushed out of his own quarters by Ahsoka, and finds his old Master cross-legged on the wooden floor, nose buried in a datapad. He's pushed his standard-issue couch and side table against the far wall, the only one not blocked by rows of plants in prim little pots, and he's surrounded in the cleared space by what must be every single datapad, chip, scroll, and book the Coruscant Hub Library has on changeling species life cycles and hybridity.

"What to Expect When You're Expecting an Invertebrate," he reads, picking up one of the video cases as he folds into a sitting position in front of Obi-Wan. The picture on the front is of a bug-eyed Shi'ido mother lovingly cradling some sort of slug thing. Anakin considers it for a minute, and then—"Eulgh," he exclaims, dropping it back on the pile to Obi-Wan's left. "Never thought about that before."

"Yes, the diversity of reproductive processes in the universe is a truly wondrous thing," Obi-Wan recites drily without looking up from his datapad. "And you of all people don't get to judge them, dear one, since you have yet to be explained by science."

"They just haven't built a DNA sequencer that can hold me," Anakin says smugly. Is that something you can be smug about? He supposes so, although it's not particularly helpful now that they have an actual pressing reason to inquire into his species-level heritage. "Anything interesting?"

"Yes, actually, did you know that a Clawdite's lungs are fully vestigial because regardless of the form they take, they breathe through their skin?"

"Fascinating."

"Yes, and also Shi'ido hybrids don't gain the ability to shapeshift. In any capacity." On the last word, Obi-Wan finally looks up. He says it lightly, but Anakin can hear his master's heart sinking in time with his own, and his eyes are pained. "Some Clawdite hybrids do, in the rare event that they live to adulthood, but not human-Clawdite."

Wait, but Anakin can see a glimmer of hope here. "But…?" he prompts.

Obi-Wan nods. "Yes, but you're already half inhuman, in a sense, so would your midichlorian persuasion be able to somehow reactivate genes that were dormant in your mother? Perhaps to make up for the lack of DNA from a second parent, prevent recessive genetic diseases? We just don't know. There's no way to know."

"So this was a waste of time."

"Learning something new is never a waste of time," Obi-Wan says absently, like he's forgotten that Anakin isn't nine years old anymore. Then he catches himself, blushes, and coughs into his hand. "But yes, essentially."

Obi-Wan looks terrible, Anakin realizes, looking into bleary blue eyes with the beginnings of dark bags underneath. He feels a pang of guilt for putting this on Obi-Wan during his short leave. His old master should be resting and catching his breath, not dealing with Anakin's messes.

"There is one thing—" Obi-Wan starts, and then cuts himself off. "No, never mind that."

"What is it?"

"It's nothing, an irrelevant thought."

"Obi-Wan…."

Obi-Wan isn't meeting his eyes again. "No, it's like you said, you would know, if…. Or even if you didn't, I imagine I certainly would, since we still have a bond. So it would be truly pointless to try advanced joint meditation at this juncture. Pointless and dangerous, even; it's probably unwise for any Jedi to lower their shields that much in the middle of a war."

"Oh. Yeah, you're right, that would be stupid." Anakin laughs uneasily. Dim sunlight filters through the window of Obi-Wan's empty apartment, which is neat and sparse if you ignore the plant life. They sit in silence for a moment, avoiding each other's eyes.

"So, are you going to make it to the seminar tomorrow?" Anakin seizes on the first change of subject that floats to the surface of his mind. Tomorrow morning at 9, the healers have arranged a seminar on self-healing with the Force in high-stress situations, when you don't have the option of entering a healing trance. It's the first in a series of demonstrations of Force techniques that have been discovered or recovered since the beginning of the war. This series is the reason a lot of Jedi who are usually on campaign practically nonstop, like Anakin and Obi-Wan, have been temporarily replaced on the frontlines—the Jedi may be generals now, but they've found a way to make even that about learning. Not that there've been a lot of conferences and scholarship going on since Geonosis. But they're trying, is the point.

"I'll be there, but I'll be a bit late. You and I both will, actually, have you forgotten about the joint strategy meeting in the morning?"

"Ah, sh—definitely not, nope," Anakin informs him. "I'm gonna go…not finish up any paperwork." He levers himself to his feet as he speaks, feeling rather young. "And, uh." Standing in the doorway, he waves his hand, indicating Obi-Wan and the reading material strewn around him at a sweep. "Thanks. Please take a nap, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan's face acquires that lost look he gets sometimes, where his eyes go soft even as he kind of awkwardly stiffens his body language. He used to look like that when Anakin hugged him as a child. "Will do, Padawan." He sighs, then brushes a hand through his hair and starts to stand up as well, gathering books and tablets into a stack. Anakin moves to help him, but he waves him away. "No, go do your paperwork, you absolute beast. I swear, it's like you don't even read the schedule."

/B/

"Seminar" may not be quite the right term for this kind of gathering. If it were a traditional seminar, they could have just holorecorded it and transferred it directly to the generals on their various fronts, and thus avoid all the trouble and risk of recalling some of their most important battalions. However, these kinds of skills are extremely difficult to learn from description alone; pedagogy is important, but higher-level Force skills are generally passed on at least partially through mid-depth communal meditation.

Anakin shuffles into the room behind Obi-Wan ten minutes after the seminar begins, when most of the attendees are already seated, taking up all of the 250 or so meditation pillows positioned in advance around the enormous hall. Unfortunately, this means it's standing room only in the back; Anakin and Obi-Wan end up joining the awkward lines of latecomers, maybe 50 Jedi in total, leaning in staggered clumps against the back wall. He's not in a great mood, since the need to be up early and prepared for the four-hour strategy briefing he just got out of prevented him from being able to see his wife last night. His admittedly poor mental state prevented them from properly enjoying their last rendezvous, and he only has so many nights left to make it up to her.

All this to say, Obi-Wan gave him a quick check on their way here and confirmed that his eyes weren't actively yellow, but he'll still be keeping his glasses on tight for the rest of this seminar.

One of the healers at the front, a female Mon Calamari Anakin is vaguely familiar with from physical therapy, waves a hand, and a huge hologram lights up above her, showing a microscope view of cells dividing and growing. Supplementary holograms also materialize along the walls, in front of or in some cases halfway through the crowd of standing latecomers, causing a few flinches of surprise and some embarrassed shuffling. A number of Jedi in the back rows of meditation pillows turn to look at these instead, with the result that a hundred or so Jedi are now turned in their seated poses to intensely scrutinize Anakin's general vicinity.

All those Jedi, all those eyes….Next to him, Obi-Wan gives him a sidelong look, then subtly swats his flesh hand down from where it's drifted up to fiddle with the arm of his glasses. Embarrassed, he folds his arms over his chest to preempt any more incriminating wandering and leans back against the wall.

The healer at the front of the hall was nearing the end of the initial verbal explanation when they came in, so they only get to listen for three minutes or so before she invites up her hapless volunteer, a male Twi'lek Jedi with an arm in a sling, and everyone closes their eyes and sinks into meditation. Anakin regrets it, because this technique seems damn useful, but he doesn't join them, not wanting to risk that a hall full of literally hundreds of Jedi will sense his…his fear from their communion in the Force. Feeling a bit like he's a youngling in a meditation class again, Anakin closes his eyes and lets his mind drift to his plans with Padme this evening.

—And then he opens his eyes again with a jolt, because someone just gave off a pulse of darkness in the Force, and it sure as Sith hells wasn't him.

The rotten, inky aftertaste was faint to begin with and is fading fast, so there's little time for stealth; he frantically scans the room while endeavoring to narrow in on the source telepathically. No one else seems to have noticed—before him in all directions are the backs of peacefully mediating heads—but it was somewhere off to his right—there. That Besalisk Jedi in the brown robes, standing against the wall fifteen yards to the right. His signature still feels-smells ever-so-slightly rotten. Hungry, if Anakin had to put a word to it. And he's—Anakin could be mistaken, he was never the best student in Intro to Species Biology and Behaviors, but he thinks the way he's shifting on his feet means the Besalisk master is bored. He's not meditating either; he's daydreaming. Apparently about something that's not quite kosher.

The Force chimes a warning and Anakin manages to face front and close his eyes right before the Besalisk's head swivels in his direction.

Anakin burns with impatience for the rest of the 30-minute meditation session, barely resisting the urge to try to poke at the other Jedi's shields again without alerting him. That wasn't just a moment of anger or discontent; that kind of Darkness smelled like Dooku or even Maul. Dangerously dense, even when all he caught was the faintest whiff.

At long last, the session finishes. The Twi'lek Jedi who's just healed his arm about a third of the way in a series of two-minute increments, all the while awkwardly jogging in place to simulate a high-stress situation, grins and waves at the crowd, looking slightly embarrassed when his padawan and a group of her friends start cheering and whistling loudly from a cluster in the back. The two healers leading the demonstration try not to smile but can't quite manage it, bowing to their volunteer as he fast-walks out of the limelight and the crowd starts to rise to its feet. "That concludes the presentation," the human healer, who's having a harder time concealing his amusement, announces. "Thank you for coming, and may the Force be with you all."

The moment the murmur of chatter reaches an acceptable volume to cover it, Anakin leans over to Obi-Wan, who's done blinking himself into awareness. "What's his name again?" he mutters as quietly as he can.

"Who?"

"The Besalisk master, in the brown robes."

"Oh. General Pong Krell."

Anakin frowns. "There's something wrong with him. Can you sense it?"

Obi-Wan stares for a moment, then closes his eyes. Anakin feels him slipping a few levels deeper into the infinite well of the Force. About thirty seconds pass, during which Anakin shifts awkwardly from foot to foot and exchanges polite waves with Aayla Secura across the room, and then Obi-Wan's brow furrows. He only floats for another few seconds before resurfacing and opening his eyes again, frowning. "You're right, there's something…artificial about his presence."

Huh. Anakin didn't pick up on that, just the convenient burst of darkness from underneath the surface. By now, Krell's signature feels completely normal. Well, Obi-Wan is a Master for a reason. "He felt Dark for a second," Anakin passes on as they push off the wall together. Obi-Wan's brow acquires another wrinkle.

They join the throng of people beginning to filter out. Pong Krell, Pong Krell, where has he seen that name written down—"Isn't he the one with the really high casualty numbers?" Anakin adds in a whisper. He noted them reading through GAR-wide statistics reports for the meeting this morning.

"The highest, on average." Obi-Wan has a grave look on his face now, hand on his beard. "I should look into him."

"I'll ask Rex what his battalion says," Anakin offers, feeling again the curl of shame at creating more work for Obi-Wan. He always says he won't bring Obi-Wan any more messes, and he always ends up crying to him anyway.

"Please do. And thank you for bringing this to my attention, it's…certainly concerning." He strokes his beard one more time, deep in thought, and then shakes his head slightly, dismissing it for now. "Although I suppose this means you didn't catch any of the demonstration, did you."

Anakin grins. "I'll just get Ahsoka to teach me in hyperspace somewhere."

The crowd in the hallways is starting to thin; the next turn will take Obi-Wan back to his quarters while Anakin heads to the salles to meet Ahsoka, who managed to get a seat at the front for the seminar. They linger at the turn-off, Obi-Wan raising an eyebrow. "Your lack of a sense of irony disturbs me, young one."

"Teaching is an important Jedi skill! She has to learn somewhere," he defends himself.

Obi-Wan smirks. "Hmm, yes, I suppose she does," he says lightly.

It takes Anakin a second to figure it out. "Wha—hey!" he sputters, but his last-word-obsessed master is already seeding the Force with smug amusement halfway down the hall.

/B/

Unbeknownst to our heroes, Anakin and Krell were not the only ones pretending to meditate in that hall. One more being sensed a dark pulse in the Force, one more pair of eyes opened and turned in Anakin's direction in response. Only, the owner of these eyes happened to be sitting on the ground, in perfect lotus position—at the perfect angle, coincidentally, to glimpse right up under the arm of General Skywalker's glasses as he looked to the right at Krell, and see his irises lit up a brilliant amber.

/B/

That evening, Anakin is just turning the corner to the hallway leading to his and Ahsoka's rooms when he feels the slightest twinge in the Force, a moment before someone grabs his hand. It's his right hand, and they immediately let go as a flush of shock and then slight embarrassment blooms in the Force. People are weird about prosthetics. She recognized what it was much earlier than most, though, which is his first clue as to her identity. The height difference is the second.

"Barriss?"

"Master Skywalker." Ahsoka's little Mirialan friend bows gracefully.

He glances between her (or really, the top of her head) and the door of his quarters down the hall. "Oh, were you looking for Ahsoka?" he ventures uncertainly.

She shakes her head, dark headscarf fluttering with the motion. "I was actually hoping to talk to you, Master Skywalker." At his quizzical look, she hurriedly adds, "It's about Ahsoka." Her heavy Core accent changes the emphasis on his padawan's name, lengthening and narrowing the "oh."

Fear instantly floods his nervous system with the power of a learned response. "Ahsoka? Is she okay?" he asks, stepping forward and inadvertently causing her to back up a step.

"Oh! Oh, no, she's fine, I just had—is there anywhere more private we could talk about this?"

Anakin is now thoroughly confused and still fighting that burst of adrenaline, but he acquiesces easily. "Uh, sure, maybe…"

"There's a good place in the library. If you don't mind?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure, that works."

They start back down the hallway, quickly arriving at the grand staircase down to the library level. The echoing of their feet on the steps makes the silence more awkward, finally motivating Anakin to cough into his hand. "So, Padawan Offee, how've you been? How's Master Luminara?"

"Oh, I'm—fine. My master is fine. The same as ever." They fall into silence again.

Anakin has spoken with Barriss before, more than once, but always either with Ahsoka in the room or, like, making small talk at the door while Barriss waited for her friend to finish brushing her teeth. So she's an acquaintance, but not one with whom he really knows how to hold a conversation. There's also a puzzling dynamic in terms of seniority, as she became a padawan only a year after he likely would have become a padawan under normal circumstances, so for years he thought of her as a slightly younger peer, but she remains a padawan due to Miralians' slower maturity process and is now good friends with Ahsoka, whose age makes her more of a little sister to him. Well, he shouldn't think of her in those terms. His padawan, anyways. He respects Ahsoka immensely, of course, she is better than he is in so many ways, but he still won't be thinking of her as a peer for years yet, Force willing. He doesn't want to think about her knighthood yet. He wants her to have a childhood, as much as possible in this meat-grinder of a decade, and even when she is his peer, he's certain she'll still always be his kid.

All this is just to say, he looks at Barriss and isn't sure whether he should talk to her like an adult like himself or a kid like Ahsoka. It's a common issue with interspecies interactions, one Anakin dodged dealing with in any meaningful way during his Temple childhood by not having friends.

Leaving the staircase, she leads him into Master Nu's sprawling subterranean domain through a side entrance. Only one of its floors is aboveground; he'd estimate they're about seven floors deep, but he doesn't really know the library well enough to be sure. At this time of night, the lights are off except for the small, bright white lights over reading desks spread at wide intervals throughout the space. It's completely empty, he can tell at a glance—the stillness, in the room and in the Force, confirms it. The tall shelves housing flimsi, servers, and scrolls alike loom as great, solid shadows out of the bluish darkness around them, only resolving into diverse arrays of individual shelved objects where one of the reading lights brushes them with the barest suggestion of color. It isn't dark enough to make it hard to navigate, but it could get there pretty quick.

Just when he's starting to worry about being late to see Padme, Barriss points out a shadowed door in the opposite wall that opens at a wave of her hand. "A few of the other padawans used to hang out here, before the war," she explains in library-appropriate tones. The words "hang out" sound kind of awkward when she says them. "I never joined them, but I know it's a good place to speak."

He's starting to panic again, just a little bit. Because they haven't actually gone that far out of their way—only about five or six minutes' walk, if that—but it feels very remote, and now he's wondering again what she has to say about Ahsoka that requires this level of secrecy. Does she have some deep-seated issue that she hasn't felt comfortable telling him about? Did she tell Barriss something, the night after she saw his yellow eyes, that she was too afraid to tell him? Or is she—is she not recovering well from the battlefield, mentally? Is she socializing healthily? Is she eating and sleeping, when he's not there?

It doesn't help that he senses a strange, intense emotion wafting from Barriss. It's…something about it is deeply familiar, and yet at the same time it's impossible to identify. Emotions are different, in some ways, sensed from the outside; sometimes it's hard to match your own feelings to someone else's even if an objective observer would say they're identical.

The room appears to be a small, out-of-the-way classroom, disused if the dusty-looking desks pushed against the wall are any indicator. Then the door closes, leaving the room very dark; he can still see her, but only just. Barriss stops, turns to him with a quiet swish of layered fabrics.

"I may have misled you. This isn't actually about Ahsoka."

"Oh." Part of his anxiety drains out of him in a rush, but alarms are also going off quietly now in the back of Anakin's mind. But this is his padawan's friend. "Then is there something you need my help with, or…?

In the dark, her eyes flash yellow.

Anakin simultaneously draws and recoils. They have their lightsabers at each other's throats in seconds, lighting their faces with eerie strokes of neon blue and green.

"Why the kriff are you a Sith? How the kriff are you a Sith?!" He pauses. "…Also, how did you do that on command?"

"Second eyelid. You don't have them."

Damn.

"And I'm not going to hurt you. I doubt I could. I just want to talk."

"Yeah, you're gonna be talking a lot, because you're going to explain—uh, everything. Now," he threatens. Shit, wait, she's friends with Ahsoka. She's best friends with Ahsoka! Ahsoka sleeps over with her and her master regularly! He suppresses a retroactive shudder of intense fear that morphs almost instantly into anger. The servos in his mechanical hand, gripping his lightsaber, start to whirr quietly in protest.

Barriss must sense it, or maybe she can just see it in his eyes, but her dark eyes widen in understanding even as her lightsaber drifts closer to his jugular in warning. "Master Skywalker. I would never harm Ahsoka, I promise you. She's a dear friend of mine."

"Sith lie."

"A bit hypocritical, perhaps?" She glances down at his saber, then back up. "Regardless, you clearly haven't told anyone about it. You can't kill me here, because you would be caught and your secret exposed, and you can't reveal me because I can just as easily reveal you. I can't kill you for the same reason. Mutually assured destruction."

He frowns at her logic, and then her words catch up to him. "Wait, what the hell are you talking about, I'm not a Sith!"

She doesn't even respond to that, just raises an eyebrow until he starts to sweat. "Really, I don't know what you mean," he tries.

She sighs slightly; it's not audible, but he has to shift his 'saber slightly so he doesn't burn her when her shoulders shift down. "Well, you've got the eyes, and that's enough to get you killed if any Jedi hears about it. So can we lower our weapons and interact like civilized people?" Her Core accent makes it sound less ridiculous than it should.

His neck is starting to grow clammy from the heat of the plasma sizzling next to his skin. There's a long moment of consideration. A Sith has been spending time with Ahsoka, months of opportunities to hurt her while he was worlds away, and that still makes his heart pound and his head hazy like nothing else. However, he doesn't sense any danger in the Force, and in all that time, she didn't hurt Ahsoka at all. She's a healer, too, that counts for something. And his padawan is a good judge of character, better than him.

He makes eye contact and nods. Slowly, moving no faster than she does, he lowers his 'saber to his side. With the other hand, he removes his evidently useless sunglasses, which suddenly makes it way easier to see in this very dark room. Resolutely ignoring that, he gestures that the floor is hers; she takes a deep breath and begins.

"We took the same theology classes. We both know the Light hasn't always been all that good, and that there are Force traditions we respect and coexist with that do not acknowledge the Light-Dark binary, but don't commit any atrocities. Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plageius the Wise?"

"…No? Um. It doesn't sound familiar."

"I thought not, I've never seen you in the library." That part, she mumbles under her breath, but she raises her volume and barrels on before he can take offense. "He was a Sith lord from, maybe three hundred years ago? The dating isn't very exact. But the legends suggest that he had discovered a way to use midichlorians to create life, through the arcane powers of the Dark Side. He used it to protect his loved ones, but just think…the Dark Side, having the potential to create life. Do you know what a healer could do with that? Do you realize how many lives we could save?" Her voice grows strident, ardent, at the end, and she pauses for a second. Reins it in. "If you even barely dip into the scholarship, you'll see that Jedi attuned to it have long hypothesized that there is something not entirely Light about the Living Force, as a construct, as a concept—but they've almost always been dismissed as insane, theologically unsound. Or they've been feared. And so the orthodox view goes on associating Light with Life and Dark with Death, destruction, self-destruction…even when the evidence is right before our eyes that the Dark Side is creative. Far more creative than we have been.

"The boundaries between dichotomies are falling apart, if any dichotomy could ever really meaningfully describe—well, everything. Good and evil: You can't deny that the war has blurred that line, if there really is a line, beyond our understanding. Life and death: The Order does not teach its children to prioritize life over all else. Much the opposite, we are taught that there are many things worth dying for, and the lives of others are only part of that number. We are taught to idolize martyrs and, in the ideal case, die in service of something greater. Anyways, there is no death, there is the Force, so the binary is meaningless regardless," she finishes in a rush, then levels him with a defiant look as she waits for a response.

He feels like, theologically, her argument is a bit unsound, and definitely the bit at the end there, but he's never been good at articulating how. Anyways, he can't deny that the war has led to a greater emphasis on glorious death in practice.

No, semantics like this aren't his area. Better to bring the conversation back to practicalities. "Sure, okay, that's all fine, but why are you still at the Temple then?" His voice hardens. "Are you planning to betray the Jedi? Undermine the Order from the inside?"

In the dim blue glow of both of their lightsabers, he sees her eyes go wide. "No! No, I'm not. My interest in the Dark is about helping people, and ending this war. I'm a healer, I would never perpetrate meaningless violence."

Her words ring true in the Force, now that he's listening closely. Not that he totally trusts that. "And Ahsoka. You have no interest in hurting her? You're really just friends, unrelated to all…this?"

"Yes, she's my closest friend. I would not hurt her."

Truth, again. But this situation is still all wrong. Time for his specialty, stating the obvious: "Okay, so leave the Order," he says bluntly.

She breaks her intense focus long enough to bring up a hand and grind the heel of it into her forehead. "I can't abandon the clones under my command," she says with gritted teeth, and that distressed feeling in the Force redoubles in intensity. "And anyway, I could say the same to you."

She can't, actually, but that brings up another important point. "How did you realize I'm…?" He realizes halfway through the sentence that he has no idea how to finish it, and trails off.

Luckily, she takes his meaning. "Today at the seminar, I felt a Dark Force user's signature flare, and when I looked back you were looking to the side. I could see up under the rim of that…accessory you wear. You had the eyes."

"The flare wasn't me though, that was Pong Krell," Anakin says defensively, and then could immediately kick himself for his big mouth. So this is why Rex calls him a walking opsec hazard.

"Pong Krell? He's Fallen too?" Her expression changes very little, but he catches an impression of shock, and worry, and a tinge more of that something else he can't place.

"Hey, careful with that 'too,' kid, the only Sith here is you," Anakin feels the need to warn, his mechanical hand itching on the hilt of his lightsaber. She still hasn't deactivated hers either.

If she were Ahsoka, she would have rolled her eyes. "Master Skywalker, you realize you reeked of the Dark Side a minute ago."

"Aftertaste from Krell. Or the last time Dooku zapped me, or something."

She inclines her head in a way that reminds him distinctly of Master Luminara, the solemn nod she uses to move along the conversation with people who are being ridiculous and wasting her time. In Barriss, it comes off as more sarcastic, but somehow no less grave.

"Regardless. If Pong Krell is a Sith, that could be a serious problem. I've treated clones under his command, and he has a reputation for cruelty. I certainly wouldn't approach him as I approached you."

And look at that, they've circled all the way around to his original question. "So why did you approach me? What do you think I can do for you?"

The indefinable feeling spikes, peaks in its intensity as she stares at him, seemingly lost for words. "I thought—" she begins after a long silent moment. He sees her hand fidget on the hilt of her lightsaber. "I mean…you're one too."

He sighs. "Sorry, kid, but I'm really not."

A fun fact about Mirialan physiology: It's actually very similar to human in terms of facial musculature. This means he gets the full force of her devastation on her face as well as in the Force, as she positively wilts in response.

She's trembling, he notices with a start. The hand that he thought was fidgeting on the lightsaber—she's actually trying to hide the fact that she's actually shaking like a leaf.

Sith hells, he realizes, this kid is actually in the middle of some sort of crisis.

It's this realization that prompts what he says next.

"I—I get your concerns about the Code, though! I mean, I certainly can't judge you for having doubts. I have—a lot. About the Order, and the war. Especially about the war."

She just nods, not meeting his eyes. Kriff.

"I could talk to you about it more, sometime? Outside the Temple, where it's safer? It's—it can be valuable, to get a second opinion on things. Even if the other person doesn't know exactly what you're going through."

Her head snaps up at the offer, suddenly animated again; there's a manic hope in her eyes. He has no idea what he's done to inspire such a strong reaction. "Yes! Yes, that would be—you're right, it's not safe here. And I'm taking up too much of your time."

"No, don't worry about it. I can always make time for a friend of Ahsoka's," he assures easily, affecting more control of the situation than he really feels.

"I'm busy with Master Luminara tomorrow, but I could—the day after, around noon? I have a few hours free?"

"Sure, kid, I can do that," Anakin agrees. What is he doing. What is he doing. He is not qualified to talk a deranged Sith teenager back from the brink!

Who could he pawn this off to? Obi-Wan? The thought curdles as soon as he thinks it. Barriss is an actual, confirmed Fallen Jedi. Teenager or not—especially because she's a kid, actually—Obi-Wan would turn her in to the Council 'for her own good.' Padme knows people, but she doesn't know anything about the Force. There's nobody else. There's really nobody else but him.

Barriss breathes out, slowly, regaining her equilibrium again. There's a new resolve on her pale green face when she straightens from bowing deeply to him. "Thank you, Master Skywalker. I will see you then."

He nods back to her, warily, and hits the button to open the door, letting her leave first. The room fills with dim light, washing their faces in grey as she swishes out into the library proper. Barriss switches off her lightsaber, and Anakin follows suit a beat later. They move to part at the top of the staircase.

"Wait! Please don't tell Ahsoka." When he looks back, Barriss looks truly young for the first time in the conversation. Closer to his padawan's age—insecure, uncomfortable. There's a pleading look in her eyes.

Of course he caves.

"Fine, I can do that. But only if you don't come within five meters of Ahsoka until I'm certain you're safe." Ahsoka comes first. Always.

She looks unhappy but bobs her head gracefully, the picture of a composed and perfect Jedi. "Understandable, Master Skywalker."

He nods, and hopes very ardently that he's doing the right thing.

/B/

When he finally, finally makes it to his lovely wife's apartment that evening, after a delicious dinner (takeout, Padme can't cook to save her life) and then otherwise making up for lost time, he tells her all about his newest problem. His main remaining question is why Barriss chose to seek him out, and secondary to that, what the hell he's supposed to say to her the day after tomorrow. He knows where he'll take her: Dex's, the diner where Obi-Wan used to take him as a kid and where he now takes Ahsoka on leave. Comforting atmosphere, well-protected, and a hub of illicit information exchange, making it excellent for evading prying ears. But he doesn't know what he's going to say.

"Is she looking for a Sith master?" he muses, incredulous. That would say flattering things about her assessment of his teaching skills, certainly, but it doesn't seem like a very logical move when you're a Sith hidden in deep cover in a Jedi temple. Incredibly risky, even: If he were really a Sith, he probably would have just killed her.

The furrow in Padme's brow and the way she readjusts herself to lean more upright against his chest tells him she's giving this her full attention. "This girl—how old is she?"

"Uh, I think she's like, 18, 19 standard, but she's Mirialan, they're long-lived. So in baseline human-Twi'lek maturity, that's like, 15? 16? Around Ahsoka's age."

"And bookish? Doesn't have many friends?"

"Ahsoka never said so exactly, but that's the sense I got."

Padme nods thoughtfully, inadvertently tickling his neck with her stray hairs. "And the Order—correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like that provides a very…structured lifestyle, if you're born into it. Ideologically, and in general? And a very tight community as well, wrapped into that." Anakin hmms his confirmation, not wanting to interrupt her train of thought.

"So if that was what you were used to your whole life, and all of a sudden you didn't believe in that anymore, and you were different from everyone else. I imagine I'd feel very…lost, without a Code to guide me. And very isolated."

"You think she's just desperate to talk to anyone who understands what she's going through," Anakin concludes. And yeah, really, that makes perfect sense. Her answer to his question,"You're one too"—he was looking for some kind of hidden meaning behind her words, but that really was it, the whole reason.

"Especially if she views that person as an authority figure," Padme reiterates seriously, entwining her fingers more firmly with his. "It sounds like she's looking to you for guidance, not just a lack of judgment."

That's what that undefinable emotion was! It wasn't just distress, it was that longing. Thinking back further over the conversation, he realizes: All of that bantha shit about binaries and creativity and idolizing martyrs, there's no way she really believed that. That was all abstract theorizing, the sort of thing an edgy padawan might have said to impress their friends back before Maul surfaced and killed Qui-Gon, long before the war, when the Sith were still a bedtime story and not something real and present and threatening. Theologically sound or not, binaries and abstractions don't give her anything to hold onto. They don't tell her anything about how to move forward, to live as a Fallen Jedi in the day-to-day.

It's the same problem he's always had with the Code, the way it feels too restrictive in some areas, too abstract in others, and so arbitrary in where it leaves unanswered questions. He still doesn't understand how Obi-Wan and practically all the Temple-raised Jedi he knows can love it so much, can build their lives around that structure, but he can imagine what it might be like to have that for your whole childhood, only to have it ripped away by circumstances beyond your control.

"So, what do you think I should tell her? When I meet up with her day after tomorrow? Well, tomorrow now," he adds, glancing at his discarded wrist comm on the bedside table.

Padme mulls it over. "Maybe just…listen to her? Listen to her concerns, and make sure she knows you're there to support her. And if you can think of anything, any sort of experience you have with the Dark Side—"

"No, I've never had any experience with that," he cuts her off too roughly, too abruptly, and immediately regrets it.

"Well." Padme turns over to give him a pointed look, propping herself up on her elbows so she's no longer leaning so heavily against his chest. Yeah, he deserved that. (Especially because they both know he was lying, but he doesn't think about that. He doesn't.) "If you have experience with anything analogous to the Dark Side, tell her about that. Just try to show her that you understand, and then maybe get her talking about options. Can she stay in the Temple?"

Anakin reclaims the hand that she disentangled from his to turn over, squeezing it in unspoken thanks for her unspoken forgiveness. "No, it's not safe. Not in the long term."

"Well, if she seems open to it, talk to her about her options."

He nods. It's good advice, really good. Sometimes he thinks about how much better of a Jedi Padme could've been than him, and then he has to pinch himself hard as a reminder not to get upset about stupid things. Speaking of Padme, they spent most of dinner talking about her latest holodrama obsession, so he still doesn't know much about what's happened in her actual life in the last few weeks. "Enough about my problems, how's Bail? Are you two up with anything exciting that's gonna require a military evac in the near future?"

She rolls away so she can punch him, lightly, on the shoulder. "Oh, come on, we are not that bad."

"I've got several hundred dead battle droids who would say different."

"You're incorrigible," she sniffs with dignity. "And yes, actually, I was just talking to Bail about a new bill…."

He keeps the pun to himself in favor of marveling at his angel's sense of purpose, at the way she talks with her hands, and it doesn't even occur to him to wonder what color his eyes are this evening.

/B/

The next midmorning, Anakin and Ahsoka go to check in w the 501st at the barracks. It's a lovely day on the Coruscant surface, the sun streaming down a cool yellow and the streets clogged with motorists on colorful speeders. The barracks is only a short walk from the Temple. On the way over—speaking in cautious terms, of course—Anakin mentions Obi-Wan's suggestion of joint mediation.

"I mean, we could do that too, Skyguy," Ahsoka suggests easily.

"Absolutely not!" Anakin is abruptly enjoying this conversation much less. "There's no way you're not lowering your shields that much in the middle of this war, Ahsoka, especially not for something this pointless."

"Sure, fine, no sweat," his padawan acquiesces suspiciously easily. "It would just be great if we could clear it all up with the Council so you don't have to wear those things anymore." She wrinkles her nose. "No offense, but you kind of look like a douchebag."

Anakin touches his glasses self-consciously. "Who made you the fashion police?"

"Master Vos, last time he visited Obi-Wan. He had to relinquish the title for an undercover mission, remember?"

"Oh, Force, don't remind me." The conversation dissolves from there.

He's having trouble meeting her eyes this morning. Anakin feels bad for not telling her about Barriss, but he promised, and it ultimately is to help her friend. He doesn't think she'll begrudge him the delay, if he's actually able to convince Barriss to help herself.

Rex greets them at the chrome-plated gate of the barracks, helmet on but radiating happiness in the Force—he always does better on leave, knowing all of his brothers are accounted for and safe. "Morning, General, Commander!"

"Morning, Rex," Ahsoka chirps.

"Everything going smoothly?" Anakin adds.

"Yep, everything's fine for now. Some of the guys in engineering were hoping to get your eyes on something in the wiring of the new starfighters, but that'll keep for a few days."

"Nah, I've got time now, might as well get it done," Anakin responds, failing to conceal his eagerness behind a casual air. "Snips, you're good to help Rex with inspections?"

Ahsoka knocks her shoulder hard into his, pride warring with irritation on her face. "Yeah, I got it," she grumbles. "But don't think you're getting away with this."

"Wouldn't dream of it!" he calls over his shoulder, already halfway to the hangar.

Two hours later, he rolls himself out from under a starfighter to find Rex looming over him, helmet off, while Screws and Cable squabble over something in the background. "Inspections are finished," he reports by way of a greeting. "Commander Tano asked me to let you know she's playing sabacc with the Domino Twins, and she may or may not have started a challenge among the vod to be the first to steal those goggles of yours."

"Kriff, she is a vengeful one," Anakin says admiringly. The fashion statement in question is currently hooked onto his belt, since dark glasses aren't exactly conducive to fine-detail starfighter repair. He'll have to put them back on in the hallways—cameras everywhere, even if half of them are conveniently broken. "How is everyone? Are the shinies making the most of their leave?"

"They weren't going to, but Jessie and some of the guys from the 212th got on it, and now they've been hungover for a full 15 hours," Rex manages to say with a straight face. Then his mood clouds over. "What about you, did you get your…medical condition…checked out yet?"

Anakin grimaces, leveraging himself up to a sitting position on the boards of the rolling platform. "Yeah, I got Obi-Wan on it. Inconclusive. I'm not sure what else we can do." Rex nods, digesting that. "Wait, that reminds me, though, I've got something to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from the men about General Pong Krell?"

Rex hasn't been overly cautious around Anakin since the first month or so of his command, when he realized Anakin was more than happy to fudge the numbers on casualty reports away from MIA and toward "dead and accounted for" despite how it affected his own performance ratings. (It's not like he's aiding deserters on purpose. He's an engineer, okay? Notorious for incautious rounding. Any Jedi with his experience…as a mechanic, would do the same.) However, when a few select topics come up, Rex's face still goes impenetrably blank. This is apparently one of them. "I hear he's an incredibly successful campaigner, sir."

"Worst casualty numbers in the GAR, though."

"Yes, sir. That does give some of the boys pause."

Anakin sighs internally. He's going to have to go about this directly, isn't he. Well, he's never been good at subterfuge. "Rex," he says, lowering his voice, "We have reason to believe he might be a Sith."

Rex pales. "Not like—I mean…."

"I mean an actual Sith," Anakin responds, vaguely irritated at the implication. His fingers drift to his glasses against his will, reassuring him they're still there.

"That—I honestly haven't heard much. Unsubstantiated rumors, really, but from what little I have heard, it wouldn't….I can ask around."

"Do you mind? We're pretty certain, but we need to confirm."

"Of course, General." Rex squints down at him, a hard look in his eyes. "And…if you don't mind my asking, what are you planning to do if we get that confirmation?"

Anakin smiles grimly. "I'll deal with him, of course."

Rex nods, satisfied. "Good luck with that, General."

/B/

But how is he planning to deal with it?

Inspiration comes that night, in the form of a screaming nightmare. Anakin's had them on and off for a long time, worse since the war, a jumble of images, sensations, and odors that would probably be prophetic if there weren't so much distortion in the Force as of late. They're part of the reason he has such strong shields, the durasteel walls that protected a very young, powerful psychic from a planet's worth of malignance and agony reinforced twice over by a preteen's desire not to share his nightmares with the several thousand psychics in his immediate vicinity. Now, his shields protect the dirty, ugly parts of him that lie beneath the surface. Not that he's Fa—not that he's got anything crucial to hide, other than, y'know, the whole secret marriage thing. That's not dirty anyway, he sometimes thinks that's the only good thing about him. But the fear, the self-disgust, the longing, the rage—all of his normal shitty-Jedi feelings that aren't, like, okay but they also aren't, y'know, Sithly. He's not that bad. (Right?)

But anyway, he wakes up from a nightmare in his own Temple quarters around four standard. He sits on the edge of the bed for awhile, carefully restraining himself from pulling at his hair because as grounding as it is, his mechanical hand always catches chunks by mistake. Then he shuffles silently to the kitchen for a cup of water (Togruta have good hearing) before finally feeling calm enough to lie back down again, uncomfortably clammy from sweat and the feeling of his heart finally easing off from the kriffing spree it went on while his brain wasn't paying attention. It's during this period, staring at the low, white-painted ceiling and thinking idly about everything and nothing, that it occurs to him. What if they don't have to reveal Pong Krell? What if Anakin can make him reveal himself? He unintentionally shared his nightmares with Obi-Wan and their hallmates many a time in his youth, when his shields were weaker; what if he could do it deliberately with Pong Krell, deprive him of sleep and torment him with anxieties until he snaps and his emotions betray him?

Gosh, that's actually a really great plan. Wonder if anyone's ever tried it.

He can't see anything wrong with the idea, and Rex's investigation is really just to confirm what they already know, so he might as well start trying now. He only has so many days of leave left, after all, and they need to expose Krell before he reassumes command in the field. If it turns out that there was some mistake, or Barriss lied, and Rex reports back that Krell's men actually love him, then Anakin can just stop; it's not like a few bad dreams are gonna kill the guy. But how to go about it?

Experimentally, Anakin thins his shields by a hair, letting his Force awareness trickle out in a subtle stream. Soon every life force in the Temple has a foot in his metaphysical puddle, sending quiet ripples back to him and to each other as they breathe in their sleep, burn the midnight oil, or in the case of the nocturnal species go peacefully about their "day." His "puddle" is, of course, submerged in the "ocean" of the Force, simultaneously continuous and contiguous with it in the manner of a drop of oil in a water tank. Anakin used to be a lake in the Force, way back in his infancy before he began to suspect he was a person (and before his suspicions were disconfirmed). Since then, he's trained hard for the ability to keep in what most Jedi spend their lives struggling to put out.

He lets his consciousness drift on the currents, focusing in on each of the more turbulent, clamorous ripples in turn, until he catches a whiff of something rotten in the water. He zeroes in immediately—yes, it's Krell, asleep and dreaming halfway across the Temple, and something is definitely wrong with his Force signature. There's anger there, but also more than a tinge of cruel, sadistic pleasure that reminds Anakin unpleasantly of Tatooine. Barriss' signature doesn't feel at all like that, when he checks Krell against her now. Beneath a deceptively thin-feeling calm facade, she's all fear-and-anger-and-grief-and-and-longing-and-questions, but no cruelty, at least not yet.

So Krell. Yeah, he's definitely going down.

Banishing sleep for the moment, Anakin sinks deeper into the Force, taking a moment to "eye" his prey's vibrations like a krayt dragon on the hunt.

Slowly, steadily, he begins.