VIPalpatine sat now in a dead-looking throne room, a place of gray metal and bare conduits instead of art and sunlight. He cultivated no holier-than-corruption mein now, but displayed his Jedi-scarred face in a contrasting cowl and robed outfit of dull black. The viewport behind his square-winged chair showed flashes and ripples of emotion from the Endor space battle.
Ruen swept Anakin up in his wake, up the metallic stairs, and stood straight and silent.
Anakin found himself thinking; He is strong. I could be proud.
Palpatine croaked in his voice of wily control, "Welcome, Skywalker. I have been expecting you." Condescendingly he glanced at the binders. "You no longer need those." With a twist of the dark side they clunked against the floor and Anakin shook his phantom-twinging hands.
Palpatine ordered the red-robed guards away.
Anakin surprised himself by being able to see black and white. Once he had been dark, but now he opposed that lapse, that momentary cataclysm, and opposed Palpatine, and opposed his son–
The emperor said, "You have returned." Softly he cackled. "Come again to call me Master."
"No," said Anakin. "You're gravely mistaken. I have come to save my son from the path you led me on."
Palpatine rose, with a grace now that Anakin could barely believe after all these years and the age inflicted on himself, and descended the shining floor toward his acolyte. "Oh no, my young Jedi. You will find that it is you who are mistaken...about a great many things."
Palpatine had lost all friendship toward Anakin that he had shown him since childhood, and even all pretense of weakness such as he had shown him in the fight against Mace, and even all gritty teaching he had shown him in the dark time and must have shown Dooku and Grievous. Anakin remembered Obi-Wan and asked the Force its permission to act.
"His lightsaber," muttered Ruen, and handed over the weapon to Palpatine's pale hand.
The emperor almost sighed. "Ah yes, this Jedi's weapon. Do you remember what you have done with it? You know that your son can not be turned from the dark side. And neither can you."
Ruen kept his face as still and dead as Grievous' metal visage, except that the human's eyes also seemed shadowy, blood-red.
"It will not matter. Soon I'll be dead...and you with me." The Rebels play-fought on the edge of his thoughts.
No. Real-fight...
Palpatine crowed, "Perhaps you refer to the imminent attack of your rebel fleet."
The Death Star Run...he knows.
"Yes! I assure you we are quite safe from your friends here." He intoned, and crept back toward his throne.
But it would work. "You overconfidence is your weakness."
Palpatine turned, and snapped, "Your faith in your friends has always been yours."
I had faith in Mace...and it broke. Faith did not raise its head in the Council Chamber, and so I had none in Obi-Wan–but that has been long mended. Long mended.
Ruen said, "It is pointless to resist, father."
He calls me father.
But Palpatine stole any victory from him. "Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends out there on the sanctuary moon are walking into a trap, as is your Rebel fleet!
"It was I who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops await them."
Anakin found himself wondering whether the acquaintances he had made were good enough, and swamped his mind with the light side instead.
It showed far away. They cannot. He stared at his old blue lightsaber and wondered whether he could point it at Palpatine again.
The emperor's voice dripped with false pity. "Oh...I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive."
"I gave you power, boy. Look." Anakin stepped to the window beside the dark throne, and Ruen paced him like a bodyguard. "You could be commanding this yourself."
A pinpoint light show of a military clash swept around the Death Star.
Palpatine touched the lightsaber, laying beside him on the chair, with his fingertips. "You want this, don't you boy? Fulfill your Sith legacy. Strike me down with it. Give in to your anger."
Some of that felt like a release. Permission, to attack the old Master.
But to the wavering, eternal Force it felt like a test, and Anakin struggled against beautiful revenge, struggled to keep his eyes on his target, his son.
"You have spent years only becoming more my own." Palpatine continued, and Anakin searched for proof to deny that. What was he doing here? "No!"
"It is unavoidable," Palpatine stated as if discussing trade minutiae. "It is your destiny. Like your son, you are now mine."
And to his terror, it felt familiar.
It felt motivating.
Anakin's middle-learned power tore the lightsaber into his hand of metal and circuits. Finally, he fed momentum on the thrum of the blue blade and swung at Palpatine's neck. Smoothly, precognatively, Ruen drew his own blade and twisted Anakin's stiff limbs with his lightsaber away from the emperor.
Palpatine stared at the crisscross, but his hands found a button on the throne's arm and he spoke to it with excitement, "Fire at will, commander!"
The Death Star's unprepared superlaser coalesced and stabbed into a Mon Cal capital ship in the near distance, raining it with particles of itself.
Anakin remembered that sinking, sour feeling of the world falling apart around him.