Everything suddenly made sense... this whole war. Obi Wan told him to search his feelings and that something was not right with the chancellor. But the chancellor was his friend. The one person he could talk to about anything. Who were they to decide he was evil? Who were the Jedi to decide that Palpatine should be executed over a philosophical difference?
Anakin docked his speeder on the Jedi landing dock and ran inside. His legs were shaky and buckled when he touched the elevator. They didn't want him to kill his friend? They couldn't ask him to do it...
And Padme... how would he save Padme if Palpatine were dead?
Anakin entered the control room were Master Windu waited .
"Master Windu," he panted, his voice as heavy as lead... "It's--" Anakin fell over, leaning against the Master. Mace Windu held him up, a look of concern on his face. He searched Anakin's eyes.
"What's wrong? Can you speak?"
"Master...Master Windu... it was him--- he, Palpatine--"
"Center yourself, Anakin, breathe...meditate."
Anakin panted, steadying himself at last, though still unable to control his quivering hands.
"Palpatine is the Sith Lord we were looking for."
Master Windu's stomach rolled, awash with feelings of dread. "Are you sure?"
"He confessed!" Anakin was near tears but didn't know why he was crying. Was it Palpatine's betrayal? Or was it the fact that the Palpatine might die, taking the secret to save Padme with him?
"Then our worse fears have been realized. I will deal with the chancellor. You will go upstairs and wait for us."
"But, Master--"
"If you wish to earn my trust, then you will stay here."
Windu laid consoling hands on Anakin's shoulders.
"Yes, master."
Anakin turned on his heels, wondering how they would arrest the chancellor without the chosen one. He went upstairs to the Room of a Thousand Fountains and waited as instructed. Seconds were like minutes, minutes were like hours, and hours like days. They were going to kill the chancellor... he could feel it. Anakin stood on the balcony and gazed at blazing Coruscant skies and felt somewhere out in the distance, that Padme too, stood and gazed as she watched for his ship. A ship that would never come. Their love leapt and bound, overcoming time and distance to unite them in spirit. He could almost smell her in the air.
Padme had once asked him... if he had to choose between her and the Order, what would he choose? The answer had eluded him since the day they married, but now that answer was clearer to him than ever. Master Windu said, if he wished to earn his trust... why care about an order that didn't trust him anyway? Did they not think of him as a brother?
To Padme, there was no "if". He was. He was her husband and the father of her child. Anakin turned, suddenly not caring that he disobeyed a direct order anymore. He ran from the Room of a Thousand Fountains as fast as he could to the top of the Jedi Temple where his speeder waited.
The speeder raced across Coruscant, toward Senate Hall. He landing his ship on the landing bay nearest to the chancellor's office and leapt out, without even a hint of consideration for where he even landed the ship. Already his lightsaber was in hand. His heart pounded and his legs carried him faster than he had ever run. He could only think of what they were doing to his friend.
Anakin pushed the door the Chancellor's office open, finding a pile of bodies blocking the way. Two of those bodies were headless, one belonging to his friend Kit Fisto. Anakin's heart filled with ever deepening dread. He looked around but could not find the chancellor or Master Windu. Until he heard the distant whirring sound of lightsabers clashing.
He raced toward that sound. A few offices down, the Master and the Sith Lord battled in a window. The ever powerful Master Windu stood over a cringing Chancellor Palpatine.
"You have lost, my lord," Windu was saying.
The chancellor, having already sensed Anakin, turned and looked at the Jedi. "Anakin! Save me. I told you they were conspiring to kill me."
Anakin turned and looked at Mace Windu, who had raised his lightsaber over his head. "He must be destroyed."
"You can't!" Anakin cried. "You must take him before the courts..." he must live, to save Padme, he wanted to finish.
"He owns the Senate and the Courts. They'll never prosecute him. He was behind the war--everything. Anakin, the chancellor must be destroyed!"
Suddenly, a blast of Sith Lightening shot out of the chancellor's wrinkled old hands. Master Windu deflected the bolts. This was Anakin's time. When the chosen one would fulfill his destiny, Mace decided.
"Anakin, you must destroy him."
The lightening deflecting back onto the chancellor had begun to melt his face, deforming him, revealing a rotting, corrupt old man. Palpatine's true face. And it was ever fitting as he shot lightening from his hands. Somehow, Mace sensed, the Chancellor didn't seem as afraid of Anakin as he should have been... dare he think it, the chancellor trusted Anakin to be on his side.
"I can save the one you love," the chancellor cackled. "I can save Padme..."
"--what?" Mace said. Save Padme? Why would Anakin...
Anakin looked at Mace, and suddenly the master knew... there was a reason why he couldn't bring himself to trust Anakin. Their fates were tied to this very moment. That Anakin didn't know whose side he was on.
"I can save your wife, Anakin! Save me!"
How can he save Padme, when he can't even save himself, Anakin wondered. He looked to Master Windu, then to Palpatine... and again back and forth to the two men.
"I'm too weak!" Palpatine cried. The old man slumped and the lightening began to fizzle.
"Anakin?" Mace Windu said, turning his blade to deflect the weaking bolts.
Anakin closed his eyes and his lightsaber came up. He decided he would let the force guide his decision, guide his blade. The truth was, he couldn't choose. His friend and his wife needed him. The Jedi Master on the other hand, never wanted him to begin with.
The blue lightsaber came slashing down with vicious ferocity and the lightening fizzled. Anakin sank to the ground. There was no saving Padme... The chancellor was dead and she was going to die.
He felt the heat of Master Windu's lightsaber blazing near his face. He looked up, meeting the master's eyes... "What have I done?" Anakin cried.
"You did what you were chosen to do," Mace replied.
"I killed a friend!"
"Yes..." Mace replied, eyes dead. "And that friend has revealed something about you, that was not previously known to myself, or the Council. Stand! You are coming with me."
"What?"
Anakin slowly collected himself, rising to his feet. Master Windu pointed the lightsaber at his neck.
"What are you doing?" Anakin asked.
"I'm taking you before the council. To decide your fate."
"My fate?"
"You've violated the tenets of your oath. And must stand trial for treason against the Order."
"Treason? Master Windu what are you talking about?"
"You were friends with the Sith Lord. We can't be sure that you were not a part of his plan."
'I destroyed the Chancellor, he was my friend but i had no part of his planning."
"And what about your wife?"
Anakin felt as though he had been pushed out of the window.
"How can you serve the Order, when you are married? And everyone knows the senator is pregnant, and now... it can be no secret that you are the one who fathered her child. You have shown yourself to be untrustworthy in every sense of the word. It was you who discovered that the chancellor was a Sith Lord. We don't know how long you have known, and therefore you are to be treated as an accomplice until otherwise vindicated. Democracy will be restored to the Republic, and all those who oppose it, will perish."
He pointed the lightsaber at Anakin's chest. But Anakin pulled back and withdrew his own.
"What are you doing?" Mace asked.
"I'm not going with you."
"Turn yourself in!" Mace said, wind from the blown out window blew his dark cape behind him. "You must be stopped!"
Anakin whirled his lightsaber around, meeting Master Windu's. The Master jumped back, deflecting the blow.
But Anakin had no wish to kill him, he turned and ran as fast as he could. Mace Windu took after him, calling for the Jedi to turn himself in. Anakin slipped into a nearby office then ran out onto the balcony. He scaled the side of the building to the landing bay where his speeder waited. Somewhere inside of the complex, Mace Windu searched for him.
Anakin landed the speeder on Padme's veranda moments after leaving the Senate Hall. He leapt out of the ship and raced inside.
"Padme?" he called in a panicked voice.
Threepio came tottering out of one of the rooms, looking, as nosily about as Anakin came running through the apartment toward the bedroom.
Padme laid in bed, sleeping peacefully, having exhausted herself with worry. He sat on the bed and shook her awake, his hands rough on her arms.
She turned and looked at him, then jolted upright to throw her hands around his neck. "Anakin, I was worried senseless... I'm so glad you came back to me."
A tear streamed out of the corner of her eye.
"Padme, get your things, we have to leave."
"Leave? What do you mean?"
"The Jedi are plotting to kill me."
"The Jedi-- they wouldn't," she gasped.
"Tonight I learned a terrible truth about chancellor Palpatine. He's the Sith Lord the Jedi had been looking for. He was behind everything, including the war."
Padme clutched her chest.
"I killed him," Anakin said. "I killed my good friend, and now they have turned on me."
"You killed the chancellor? What about trial?"
"He was trying to kill master Windu, I was told to fulfill my destiny as the chosen one. When I did, Master Windu turned on me. They know about you. They know about the baby. He is using that, to further his suspicion that I was a part of the chancellor's plotting."
"Were you?" Padme said, her eyebrows gathered together in doubt.
"Of course not!" Anakin raged. "It's bad enough they don't trust me, and now you?"
"I'm sorry, my love..."
Anakin pulled her out of bed into his arms. They hugged. He turned and opened drawers and cabinets, while Padme fetched a suitcase. He tossed as many clothing as they could find into the bag, stuffing it until clothes spilled out.
"Credits, we'll need credits," Padme said.
"I don't have any. Everything I had came from the Order."
"I'll take care of us," Padme replied.
"No, I will."
"We'll take care of each other."
Padme raced to him and hugged him once more. "I have credits here in the apartment. I've been stowing away, should something like this ever happened. What do you think they'll do if they find us?"
"They'll execute me. And take our baby."
"I don't understand."
"I was friends with a Sith Lord. The same Sith Lord who appointed me to the council. It looks suspicious. Only I didn't know he was a Sith Lord. And I was married to you, which divorced me from my oath to the Jedi. This could only mean, in their opinion, that I was there to spy. They know I'm powerful, and my child would be powerful indeed. They will claim her..."
Padme almost smiled, at his calling the baby 'her' yet again. But times were grave. She couldn't smile if she wanted to.