"It wasn't just what he said." Anakin is leaning forward, trundling his open hands together in a gesture that struggles to convey something vital. "It was the way he said it. In all the time I've known him, he's never... come acrossin quite that way before..."
"In what way?" Obi Wan frowns. They are sitting at the back corner booth of a small cantina in CoCo Town. It is too late for lunch, and too early for dinner. In lieu of both: noodles in a mild, dark broth, and pulpy, blood-red fruits with stringy pink pith.
"It was as if... He just kept... looking at me as if he was expecting something. And going on about this... 'legend,' he called it. And I just sort of sat there, taking it in." Anakin is nervously chewing on his thumb. He tears at the cuticles with his teeth, sometimes to the point of drawing blood, a filthy habit which his master has never been able to break him of. (The loss of one flesh-hand has only driven him to visit twice as much abuse upon the other.)
"And you think he took your... silence as acceptance of some sort of offer, which you think he was extending. By means of this... legend."
"Well, yeah."
"You are making an awful lot of assumptions, Anakin."
"I told you, it's him!" he whispers avidly. "He's the one we've been looking for."
"I'm not saying I don't believe you. But we're going to need a little more evidence."
"It is him. You don't know him the way I do," he waves his mechanical hand irritably. "Or, the way I thought I did, anyway..." He looks down, fathoming the moiling depths of his mostly untouched soup. When he speaks again his voice is soft and pained: "When I think back over all the things he's said to me- things about the Council and- about you- I thought he was just concerned for me. But now I think he was trying to, I don't know- drive us apart. On purpose. He tried to make me think I couldn't go to you for help- That I should go to him instead. And it was... working. I was... falling for it. And then at the opera house... it was as if everything had lead up to that conversation. As if he had chosen that precise moment to let his mask slip a little. And he was just..."
"Testing you."
"Yes, exactly. Waiting to see if I would call him on it. But I-"
"You didn't."
"Well, no."
"Because you were actually considering it." Before he can even finish his sentence, Obi Wan is struck by a wave of guilt from Anakin so excruciatingly bitter that it's all he can do to keep himself sitting upright. He releases the feeling by touching the Force, like grounding lightening, before it can do too much damage to his over-taxed soul. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"
"You are apologizing to me,Master?" Anakin looks as if he might cry for the second time today. "How can you even stand to look at me right now?" Obi Wan is about to say something along the lines of castigating yourself won't solve the problem, but he stops short. This, he realizes, will probably come across as dismissing the boy's feelings. Which is, if not exactly what got them into this mess, then at the very least a contributing factor.
"Anakin," he begins, gently. But he doesn't get very far at all before the boy is frantically talking over him.
"I should have gone to you a long time ago. I should have told you- Some of the things he's said to me-" He struggles for a moment, applying the heels of his hands to his eyes. "No doubt he's been plotting against us for ages. I should have known. I've been in a better position to see it than anybody... I just didn't want to. I wanted to believe that he meant well, because I thought he was my friend. But now, when I think about some of the things he's said to me- and some of the decisions he's made about the war-" He halts. "Master, you don't think-" His gaze snaps up in horror. "When he asked for me to go after Grievous- Do you suppose... he knew the Council would send you instead? Is it possible that that was his plan? To separate us, so that he could..."
"So that he could do what, exactly?" Obi Wan is absently stirring his noodles with a tapered silver implement, his brow furrowed in vexation. "That's what I still don't understand. He's been Chancellor of the Republic for fifteen years. If he is indeed a Sith- And if his aim is to destroy the Jedi- Well, what has he been waiting for all this time?"
"For me, Master," Anakin cants his head in stricken realization. "He's been waiting for me." The breath seems to freeze inside his lungs. His belly slowly fills with inky, brumal despair. In his mind, the echo of a scornful Ferus Olin: The galaxy doesn't revolve around you, Skywalker. Oh, but what if it does? What then? "If you'd gone to Utapau- If you hadn't been here-"
"I am here."
But Anakin will not be allayed so easily. This current of histrionic self-loathing which has suddenly developed over the past few hours is showing every sign of becoming another one of his fixations. "Obi Wan," he groans, "if you hadn't come to me when you did, I think I might've-"
"Let us reckon with what is, before we worry about what might have been."
"No, listen!" he says insistently. He is grappling with something deep inside himself. His thoughts are starting to run together, pooling and flooding and rolling like drops of mercury over the glassy shoal of his mind. "The Chancellor wanted to separate us because-" Because he knows how weak I am without you.
Luckily the cantina is all but deserted at this time of day, because Anakin is once again openly weeping.
Obi Wan makes a sound which might have begun life as a word. The boy's pain is like a sinking stone, and he is inescapably anchored to it, being pulled along to the bottom of a black, briny, psychic sea. No matter how he thrashes, those filigree threads hold him fast. They are neatly woven into his very flesh; To rip them out would utterly destroy him.
Honestly, he has seen Anakin lose control of himself over much less than this. But in the past, he has always managed to find some way of avoiding having to deal with it. Perhaps this is the Force's idea of a poetic punishment; Now he is obliged to deal with it in the most urgent, visceral manner imaginable. Gathering his nerves, he surrenders to the irresistible pull of Anakin's emotions, allowing himself to be subsumed...
The inside of his apprentice's soul is a terrifying house of mirrors. Perhaps (and he now strongly suspects this to be the case) it always has been. Obi Wan is waist-deep in nonsensical dream-images. They seem to froth and churn about him: misty, creeping, numinous, wild. Some are sinking out of sight. Others are rising to the surface, like beads of oil in water. The Chancellor, or some fictive version of him, suddenly appears, speaking, inaudibly at first, but then rising above the storm:
The Jedi have merely taught you dogma, Anakin.
They have not prepared you to make your own decisions.
They have taught you to despise yourself.
To fear your own power.
They have kept you from fulfilling your potential.
Whether these are dreams, or memories, or portents is unclear. In any case, they seem to be causing the boy incredible distress. It is shocking, really, the extent to which Anakin obviously lacks the tools to cope with the contents of his own imagination. How long has he been such a mess? How is it possible that no one noticed?
But someone did notice.
Palpatine noticed.
Fighting to maintain his coherence through the miasma of shame and despair, Obi Wan reaches across the table to cover Anakin's flesh hand with his own. The physical contact immediately causes that warm, golden hum to resonate through both of their bodies. The improvement in his mood is so sudden and extreme, that its almost enough to make Obi Wan laugh out loud.
Anakin hisses both in pleasure and pain. He struggles against the felicity filling his heart at his master's healing touch. He is trying to drag them both back into the tempest again. There is something he must recover down there, something key, swimming in the soup of all of these dreams and memories and portents. A puzzle he didn't know resided within him is finally being resolved, the variegated pieces snapping into place...
"Master," he gasps. "The war-!"
"No," Obi Wan shakes his head. "There is... no reason to jump to conclusions." His eyes are closed, and he is absently stroking Anakin's hand. This balmy, honey-thick bliss is almost as hard to think through as the abject misery that preceded it.
"The entire war."
"No..." The spell is broken. He looks up in horror.
"From beginning to end. It explains so many things-"
"But, how could he have-?"
"Tricked us? All of us? For years?"
Anakin is on his feet in an instant, dashing across the room, and Obi Wan is following him only a half-second later. The creature behind the bar counter clicks and buzzes, its compound eyes flashing angrily.
"Sorry!" Obi Wan calls. "I'll wire you the credits!" That is, assuming Republic Credits are still worth anything by the end of this crazy day.
There is no time to debate the issue, because Anakin is already disappearing through the door with a swish of his cloak. There it is again, that mounting, white-hot desperation. He is getting to the point where he will not be consoled. It's all Obi Wan can do to keep up with him.
"Anakin-!"
"Don't!" There is nothing his master can say that will make this better. Because they have both been deceived and used, in the most horrific manner imaginable. Because their entire life's work together is based on a lie.
The Chancellor hasn't been biding his time, waiting to destroy the Jedi; He has already destroyed them: quietly, intimately, without their even noticing. He has already made them kill for him.
They are heroes of a sham war. There is no honor in what they have done.
In no time at all, they arrive at the stately silver building which houses the senatorial offices. Without pausing or saying a word, Anakin is tearing through the high-ceilinged lobby like a madman, tossing security droids out his way with a flick of his hand, and entering one of the personnel-only turbolifts.
"Anakin, stop this!"
But at this moment, there is nothing in the galaxy that can stop him from finding Padmé and burying his face in her chocolate hair.
The lifts are fast, and before Obi Wan can offer much of an argument, they are stepping out into a grandly windowed chamber, at a dizzying height above the surface of Coruscant, with only the most elite speeder-traffic whizzing by. Anakin presses the buzzer outside of Padmé's office about thirty times in as many seconds. Obi Wan considers laying a hand on his shoulder, but decides against it.
"Master Skywalker! Master Kenobi! What a pleasant surprise!" A recently-polished, and therefore quite cheerful, C-3PO answers the door.
"I need to see Padmé! Where is she?"
"I am afraid Her Ladyship is in a very important meeting. Perhaps I could take a message-"
"No! This is- an emergency!" Anakin practically sputters. "I need to see her right now!"
"Oh, dear." C-3PO moves his arms nervously, and cants his gleaming head. "She left explicit instructions that she not be disturbed-"
"Where is she?"
"Now see here, Master Skywalker: I am informed that this is very delicate political matter. It wouldn't do at all for you to go barging in on-"
"Threepio, I will disassemble you here and now. Where is she?"
"Oh, heavens!" The droid seems to struggle momentarily. "She is with the Chancellor! But I wasn't supposed to tell you!"
Fear and anger fill the chamber, palpably rising, like a choking black smoke.
"Anakin, where do you think you are-?"
But the boy has disappeared into the lift, and is already rocketing down.