Where Death is the Force

Lightning was flying towards him and Anakin brought up his lightsaber to block. But the lightning started to arc around, to reach his defenseless family behind him and Anakin jerked his blade to the side to catch it. Ahsoka, though unconscious, was only suffering from broken bones. She wasn't in any immediate danger other than the fact that she couldn't defend herself. Obi-Wan, though conscious, was suffering far more severe wounds. A hole in his shoulder, numerous cuts and burns, and an extended bought of electrocution. Obi-Wan thinking he could defend the both of them was beyond a stretch of the imagination, but knowing him, he'd find a way to do so anyway.

So Anakin held his ground.

Sidious laughed as if this was the most hysterical thing in the world.

"Ah, my foolish little apprentice." Sidious landed on a pod in the same row as theirs, but further down the circumference.

"I am not, nor will I ever be, your apprentice," Anakin growled, holding firm.

Sidious gave a dark chuckle. "My boy," he said with all the gentleness of Palpatine, "I took you under my wing the day you arrived on Coruscant. You've already been my apprentice for years. You just haven't realized it."

Anakin burned and fumed at the presumption of it all. Sidious spoke like he'd controlled Anakin's life, and, though he hated admitting it, that was true. But Sidious didn't make Anakin's decisions. Sidious didn't train and guide him. Palpatine was merely one mentor that Anakin looked up to. And for the Sith to presume that he was the only one that mattered chaffed at all the respect and love Anakin had for Obi-Wan...

Though Anakin was finally thinking straight again, didn't mean he wasn't still pissed off beyond measure.

But he pulled in the anger, using the lesson Padme had taught him ages ago about taking his anger and focusing it into something constructive. Tempting as it was to throw all of his anger in to fixing things by killing Sidious, that was still an act of destruction. And with his feelings of anger and hatred as strong as they were at that moment, that would mean his Fall. And that wasn't going to happen.

"I will never turn to the Darkside," he stated, holding his lightsaber up above his head with both hands, blade pointed towards Sidious in a classic Djem So stance.

"Hnnn, so stubborn," the Sith tisked. "You don't seem to understand you're already half there. Perhaps a more definitive push is necessary."

Anakin readied himself for any attack Sidious might throw.

With a chuckle, Sidious asked, "Who would you rather die? Your lovely wife and unborn child? Or your beloved master and earnest Padawan?"

His blood froze in his veins as Anakin gripped his lightsaber even more tightly.

"A stupid move, really. Something only a foolish Jedi would do," Sidious continued. "You consider them all your family, my young apprentice. And yet you have divided them. You believe your pregnant wife safe in hiding. If she is not halfway to Naboo, then you smuggled her onto Senator Organa's consular ship that is currently in orbit over Coruscant."

Anakin paled.

"After all, you made the mistake of trusting others. A flight plan was filed, but really, with such an easily identified craft? Child's play, my boy. Child's play. And as for your little Jedi family behind you, you foolishly thought they could stand by your side. A half-trained Padawan? Really, I gave you more credit than that. And as for Kenobi, you've done him the most harm, not I."

Sidious stepped forward on his pod, fingers curled like claws, elbows bent. "So with your loved ones split into two groups, I ask you. Which do you love more? I will let one pair live if you join me. Either your wife and child, or your master and Padawan. Deny me, and all of them shall perish."

Anger was a common emotion for Anakin. It was something he'd felt ever since he was a child and truly understood what it meant to be a slave. He was familiar with its cadence, flow, and drive. He would hide in it, wield it, wallow in it; whatever was necessary at various times. Because for all that the Jedi preached no anger, there were times where even a Jedi could feel righteous outrage and it could help them through a battle. Obi-Wan had never denied him the right to feel angry. Indeed, he encouraged Anakin to listen to his feelings so that he could feel what message was being given to him, and then let go.

Anger, Anakin could deal with. Even when it overpowered him, like it had for most of the battle thus far, it could still be pierced, as Obi-Wan had so brazenly done.

But anger was swiftly leaving Anakin. And anger would have been so much easier to work with right now.

For left in anger's wake, was fear.

Anakin could either lose everyone he loved so desperately, or chose who would die.

Neither was acceptable.

But it was something he had prepared himself for.

When Anakin had first brought up the idea of marriage to Obi-Wan, there had been a set of questions set before him. And once he shared his marriage with his master, more came forth. Anakin understood the cost.

"I reject your 'generous' offer," he growled. Because none of them, not Ahsoka, not Padme, nor Obi-Wan, would want him to Fall. That would hurt them even more than death, because they'd have to live with the knowledge that he Fell because of them. "Me becoming a Sith would kill them any as surely as you promise to."

There was a surge of pride from Obi-Wan and Anakin couldn't stop a smile from flashing across his face.

Of course, this meant that he was about to lose one of them. Maybe all of them. Because he was going to have to fight. Who knew if Ahsoka's broadcast was still going? Padme might not even know she was in danger. If she did, then Typho was already moving her to somewhere secure, with or without her protests. Not that she would be protesting at the moment given that she was in labor.

Even more terrifying to contemplate was that Anakin had just signed Padme's death sentence regardless. Because he still believed he was going to die here.

Something to be watchful of. The future is never certain, Obi-Wan whispered.

I know, I know, Anakin growled back.

But as he'd told Obi-Wan three years previously when he'd first said he was married, he knew he wouldn't take the loss well. He'd mourn. He'd grieve. He'd handle it poorly. But he would accept it. He would. But he had never considered anyone's death as a result of one of his decisions and the guilt that he'd have to live with.

Anakin hated being alone.

The Jedi might spout how the Force was always with you so you were never alone, and who knew if that was true or not, but Anakin remembered being alone. He remembered back before he was old enough to work the long hours by himself while his mother slaved away. And he never wanted to return to that place.

It was the core of his fear.

And the only reassurance he could offer himself in this moment was that he was doing what his family wanted. That one of them might possibly survive so that he wouldn't be alone.

It wasn't much reassurance.

Sidious shook his head. "Still thinking like a Jedi." Lightning was arcing again and Anakin swung his saber to meet it. "When all are dead and you are left with nothing, I will show you the true nature of the Force. You will come begging to me. Asking for the way I would have taught you to keep your loved ones alive."

Anakin shook his head fiercely. "Liar!" he howled. "You've done nothing but lie to me! All those times I visited you were just a game to you. A chance to use me. All that talk about the Republic needing a strong leader to fix what was wrong, you never believed any of it. You only wanted to put yourself on some throne. That story about Darth Plageus is just another treat to dangle in front of me. But now I know what you are, and I'm not biting!"

"And if I die, you will never know."

That hurt. It shouldn't have, but it hurt. He knew it was temptation, he knew it was just a lure to pull him to the Darkside, but with Ahsoka unconscious, Obi-Wan severely injured, and his vision of Padme, Anakin was still tempted. Tempted so badly it hurt. Deep in his heart where he still mourned and grieved the loss of his mother that temptation stabbed at him, bringing up reminders of what he'd feel once the rest of his family was gone. Memories of the swelteringly hot days on Tatooine, working in the oppressively hot garage of Watto while his mother was sent into the steamy streets to get supplies and raging at the injustice of it. Obi-Wan, broken, bloodied, and not looking at all like Obi-Wan, on the overcast world of Riflor barely able to stand through anything other than sheer willpower. Ahsoka with golden eyes and 'sabers lit, leaping towards him with intent to kill. All of his anger and hatred and loss was being brought up from that fucking temptation and scratching at old scabs, breaking repaired damage, wounding his very soul.

And the curse of temptation was that to make the agony stop one just had to stop and give in. Stop fighting. Just relax; because fighting could hurt just as much.

Anakin's lightsaber was dropping.

Normally, when some temptation or fear was placed in front of Anakin, he'd simply ignore it in favor of getting the job done. Leave it for another day. Another day that had yet to come. It was avoidance and running, but as long as he got the job done, that meant he'd won against whatever was aiming at his heart.

But he couldn't do that here.

Anakin knew that simply turning around; grabbing his family and running would be admitting to Sidious that he was tempted. Running would also mean he'd never learn what Sidious was offering, because he did want to know how to keep his precious, precious family alive. Any of them. But to get the job done, that meant fighting and killing Sidious. And because he was tempted, he didn't want to. There was that vain hope that he could somehow take Sidious in and then just pump him for information.

But there wasn't time for that. Padme was in labor now. Even if labor usually lasted for hours, with someone like Sidious it would take days, weeks, months to even get the tiniest sliver of information on anything.

There was a strong pulse of love along one of his bonds. He reached for it, grateful for the warmth it spread into his tense form, and was surprised to see that it had come from Padme. Wherever she was, whatever she knew of what was going on, she remembered some of what he'd explained to her about how a Jedi can feel things. And despite how awkward she always felt focusing on something without any sense of what it was doing, she was still taking the time in her difficult labor to send him all the love she could muster.

Ahsoka was waking up, awkwardly sending her love back to him, though with difficulty as she was still disoriented.

Obi-Wan, too, was sending his love back as well, though quietly so as not to distract Anakin. After all, the two of them knew how dangerous distractions were in battle.

Battle.

This all came back to battle.

Battle against Sidious. Battle against temptation. Battle against fear. Battle against loss.

The Jedi had been preparing for battle for so long. Lightsabers, defense classes, histories of war, strategy. A Jedi never sought battle, but they were prepared for when it happened.

And though Sidious was clearly good with a lightsaber, his weapon of choice for decades had been words. Something that Jedi were never truly prepared for.

Anakin's lightsaber dipped even further.

He had been fighting and fighting and fighting. Well fighting was getting nowhere.

He may be dooming Padme to die. And he would still be fighting temptation.

But if he was dead, then he wouldn't have to fight anymore.

Anakin turned and threw his lightsaber to his brother.

"Master...?" Ahsoka weakly coughed.

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan shouted.

But Anakin Skywalker turned to Sidious, feet apart, arms loosely at his side.

"You want me to Fall so badly?" he taunted. "I won't. I am a Jedi. Like my master before me, like my Padawan after me, like my child will be. I will never turn to the Darkside."

Because if he was dead he wouldn't turn.

Sidious frowned, his scarred face twisting into an even uglier scowling visage.

"Then, you will die."

"No!" his family shouted.

Lightening struck Anakin and he twisted and writhed. His nerves were on fire and freezing all at once, his brain incapable of handling the sensory overload it was receiving. He fell to the pod under him, bucking and flailing as his neurons reacted to electrical signals that weren't coming from his brain, shaking and shuddering and screaming under the onslaught. He tried to close his bonds as much as he could as pain distracted a thought before it could even fully form. He didn't want his family to suffer this.

His family would carry on. They would hurt; they would grieve. His vision was clear on this. Obi-Wan would be in shambles. Padme would die. But he wouldn't turn. And he would spare them that much at least.

Consciousness faded easily.

"Anakin, this is not your time."

He blinked, looking around confused. "What..."

"That was very brave of you, and a good step in the right direction. But it is not your time."

Something surged in Anakin as he whirled around to a voice he hadn't heard in over ten years.

"Qui-Gon?"

There stood the tall imposing Jedi with the bearded jaw line and thick graying hair half pulled back. There was an easy smile and a bright twinkle in his midnight blue eyes and Anakin couldn't stop running forward to hug the man who he considered a father, who'd saved him from slavery.

"Mister Qui-Gon!" he cried out, reverting to how he'd called him when he'd first met the large Jedi.

Qui-Gon gave a warm hug squeezing Anakin tightly and Anakin felt like a child once more, burying himself into the loving embrace of someone he cared about. He felt so much joy and relief it overwhelmed him. He was crying happy tears at seeing this man again, this giant Jedi who had turned his life upside-down and in the best possible way.

All his memories of Qui-Gon were clamoring for attention, of seeing the huge, yet gentle man coming into Watto's shop, of spying the lightsaber under the poncho, of talking around the table with Qui-Gon, Padme, his mother, Jar Jar, of the master's quiet belief in him when everyone else was worried at the Bonta Eve race, of watching him face off against that scary Sith creature in the blazing heat of Tatooine's suns and all the time spent with him in transit to Coruscant and later Naboo.

Quickly followed were all the memories Obi-Wan had of Qui-Gon, unwittingly seen when in the midst of an argument Anakin had done something completely unorthodox and impossible with the bond to show Obi-Wan that he was important to him.

Anakin pulled back and slapped Qui-Gon's arm. "Qui-Gon! You owed Obi-Wan a lot of hugs!" But the joy at seeing him overrode his brief flash of anger as he buried himself into the hug again.

"I've missed you," he mumbled. "Me and Obi-Wan both. You should have seen Obi-Wan after you died. He was a mess. Not that I really realized it at the time. Waitaminute. That's right, you're dead! So how..."

Qui-Gon chuckled, his large chest rumbling. "So many questions. You're much the same as when I first met you. Insatiably curious."

Anakin pulled back to look around again. "So I'm dead, right?"

Qui-Gon reached out and tapped a finger on Anakin's nose. "Not yet. Hopefully not for a long time. It's not your time yet, young one."

Anakin pulled out of the hug entirely, running his hands through his hair in frustration. "And what in the seven Correllian hells am I supposed to do?"

"You already know."

"Bantha poodoo, I don't!"

"You do, Anakin. You may not realize it. But you do. Now you'd best get back. My old Padawan is going to do something foolish if you don't. Your Padawan as well, given how much like you she is."

"What..."

He was still being electrocuted.

To say that that hurt would be something of an understatement.

He was still screaming. He was still twisting and flailing on the pod. Control was difficult, but Anakin reached for the Force. Along the bonds, he could feel Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both trying to crawl over to him, lightsabers ready to absorb the lightening. But that would just expose the two of them.

He looked over to the two of them and to his shock, he could see Qui-Gon standing behind them.

There is no death, Anakin. Only the Force.

The one lesson that Anakin never really believed in. Yet proof stood before him.

So even if his loved ones died... They'd still be with him. He'd only have to reach to the Force to feel them. See them. Talk to them.

Suddenly, Sidious's offer to keep his family alive seemed completely pointless.

His bonds were beyond flooded with love. Both the love he'd been sending to his family, and the love they were sending to him. He grabbled all that love. Held it close to his heart. Letting it fill him with strength.

Somehow, he took a deep breath, focusing on all that Light and love. And as he drew from the Light, he felt Qui-Gon's love for him as well, a second son he was proud of.

Really, with all that love, standing wasn't a problem. Even as more lightning danced along his muscles and tendons and nerves, he didn't really feel it any more. He still jerked stiffly and he didn't have complete control of himself. But the Force was there and it was filled with love.

Anakin would never be alone, because the Force wasn't darkness. It was love. Love could be twisted and knotted into darkness, but at it's core, it was still light.

"Anakin!"

"Master!"

Ani!

Anakin turned to Sidious, who was still laughing at something Anakin would never understand.

With a leap, Anakin was on the same Senatorial pod as Sidious. His landing was ungraceful and more of a tumble, but then, his body was still jerking out of his control.

Sidious wasn't laughing anymore.

His face snarled in a horrible expression, but Anakin wasn't paying attention. He merely wrapped his arms around the Emperor as lightning seemed to pour anew into his already beaten and fried body. And when Anakin's feet jerked underneath him, he lost his footing, taking both himself and Sidious off the pod.

Lightning was sparking and flying everywhere as Sidious screamed. He reached out for anything, but Anakin held firm. They were too high up for anything to be in reach and with a small twist, Sidious was the one to hit the ground first.

Anakin! Anakin!

Master! Skyguy!

Ani! Don't you dare die on me!

Anakin's breathing was hitched and difficult. He rolled off of Sidious and Qui-Gon was crouching above him, smiling.

"Hugs... can save... the galaxy..." Anakin whispered.

Author's Note: Really Big Grin.

Gosh, where to start in talking about this finale...

We'll start with Anakin and whether or not he was supposed to turn. We've stated before that the original and sole purpose of this fic has been about fixing Mustafar. (We rather think we did a decent job with that...) When watching the movies, even though you knew that Anakin would Fall and Obi-Wan would have his lightsaber etc, etc, by the time you got to the end of Revenge of the Sith, you were left screaming "Nooooo!" And after having read many fanfics and having learned though them (and researching the Expanded Universe) just how close Ani and Obi are supposed to be, we decided that Mustafar just couldn't happen.

However, as we did research and really looked at the prophesy, it became clearer and clearer that Anakin actually needed to walk up to the Darkside in some way shape or form to create some sort of balance. As it stands, Anakin is firmly in the light, but darkness will always be with him and something he fights with. He has too many midi-chlorians to not feel both sides of the Force keenly. He may not sink into the Darkside as he does in canon, but he will always have it with him, striking a balance in that manner. Of course, the amount of time it took to figure that out.

A lot of things fell into place when we realized Obi-Wan's place with Anakin as his sort of moral compass. Even in the original movies, Anakin often goes to Obi-Wan, in ways sometimes too subtle for Obi-Wan to notice, for advice. Palpatine laid out a trap to kill Obi-Wan (see: Utapau) but he ultimately needed to place doubt in Anakin's mind. If Anakin can't trust the one person he's always gone to, then all that's left is Palpatine. (Padme wasn't with Anakin while growing up, plus she's his place to go for passion, not advice.) Once we realized that the easiest way to fix that was to build the trust between Obi/Ani till it was unbreakable. Anakin knows and understand secrets, he's kept them for a long time, be it building a podracer under Watto's nose or his secret marriage, and he can't suspect a secret from someone he trusts because that would destroy that trust. Hence stronger bonds to remove any doubt.

Approaching the finale, the two of us also had quite a bit of debate on what Ahsoka's role would be. We knew that we wanted to include her, she's too cool a character to not add into the story, but the question was how to use her. For set up and going up to the finale, she could be "child" for our little family, plus go-between for some of the intrigue that lies so thickly around the story. This gives her a nice fresh take. She an earnest youngling who can give us a way to explain some of the threads going on. But when coming to the end, we no longer had to do political maneuverings, so we were left wondering what to do. On some level, we knew she had to be part of the final battle, another casualty to push Anakin closer to the edge, but how to get her there without feeling forced was problematic.

Then we realized that, as Anakin's student, she'd be a damn god slicer. We had our little oh-duh moment and things flowed beautifully from there.

Of course, another thing we approached carefully was Padme and her "death". Clearly, we didn't want her to die, but that doesn't change the fact that the vision occurred. More research and more poking around and we both realized that a possible reason she died wasn't that Anakin choked her, or that she was broken-hearted, but because she couldn't survive the Darkside coming through a link with Anakin. Anakin loves her so much and needs reassurance that she loves him so desperately we don't see why he wouldn't create some sort of bond with her, much like the one he bore with Obi-Wan. In canon there wasn't time to develop it, but it would be something he could cling to. And once Anakin went Vader, the Darkside that he was drowning in dragged Padme down as well. Ergo, once Anakin chose Light for this story, her labor went easier and there was no more risk. (Though if Anakin died, who knows. Anakin's vision could be about his Fall. Or it could have been about his death. By this point, it's open to interpretation.)

And shame on you readers for not picking up on Qui-Gon in the last chapter. He was a HUGE hint for this chapter. ^_^

Next week: Epilogue for Christmas Eve.