A/N:

I am ever so slowly getting back into writing Star Wars. I didn't expect everyone's support, and it means so much to me! Thank you for your patience :D


;


The Jedi Temple is a place of pain for Dooku, inasmuch as disappointment can be physical. It's hard to hate what runs in one's veins though, and Dooku can't deny what he has allowed to pump through his heart until his most recent years and now, much to his muted disgruntlement, his most recent days.

Jedi compassion.

The Temple was once a house to Dooku, just as one's body is a vessel of their soul — and, generously speaking, the Force itself. He should have known better than to allow himself beholden to the antiquated institution, a structure that can no longer be considered worthy of what it had injected in Dooku's bloodstream. He had in fact severed ties with it, once he had recognised his condition. Still, purpose brings him here, treading its halls once again, because Dooku is quickly learning that a sick person shouldn't perform their own surgery. As a Sith, he had been too quick with cutting.

"This is a poor idea," Dooku vainly repeats.

"This is a library," Luke replies, affronted. "Quiet now, and drink your tea."

It is indeed the densest overlap of the Temple residents' busy hours, which means the salles are packed, the halls are dead quiet, and the librarian lurks elsewhere in the Temple's sprawling bochord, consumed with meticulously straightening out the archiving system before initiates and padawans can finally escape classes — and with them, Jedi knights and masters from meetings. The library hosts the most open-aired privacy one might find in the entire Temple for the hour Luke and Dooku invade it. The former settles at a table with flimsies while the latter brews and sips through a pot of tea, as if they are not planning to fail returning the flimsies or cuppas to where they found them and in fact stroll out with said resources.

At the very least, Dooku can feel civilised while doing so.

For personal clarity, he fails to qualify as an accomplice to Luke's absconding with the Temple's mundane possessions. Dooku shares no responsibility with the Jedi librarian or any Jedi over the flimsies' security as a wanted criminal. Technicalities. The thought passes through his head a second time when, in his internal occupations, a gaggle of initiates manage to unintentionally ambush his and Luke's table. The younglings are playing hooky; there is no more perfect explanation for their particularly juvenile air — and invasion of Dooku's personal space.

Just as quickly, the initiates take one look at Luke before pointing at Dooku. Rude. He makes sure his expression reflects it.

"Who is he?"

"The Count," Luke sociably replies.

"And who are you?" The initiates move their fingers to point, obviously not learning.

Luke indulges them, lowering the flimsy in his hands. "I come today as Etra."

The younglings' glabellae scrunch. "The Count isn't a Jedi master."

"What gave me away?" Dooku drawls.

Scattered huffs answer him. "You're talking to us."

Dooku recognises their uncertain stances, the lack of braids. The little ones are initiates who thirst for a Jedi to accept them as an apprentice before they grow too old for the Temple. Years of study and training, only to flush away into the directionless path of Force-driven farming. They're dodging lessons as if their anxiety will learn to stop following them outside of classrooms. Seeing Dooku alongside Luke reminds them that true Jedi travel in pairs, though Dooku rejects the idea that he remotely resembles someone's padawan. At the very least, he can acknowledge the initiates' loosened tongues around what they perceive as a Jedi pair back from what might feel to them like a lifetime of war, too occupied with adult matters or the preciousness of tea to tell on little miscreants. Younglings are sensitive to moods, and these few can detect the war's touch on Dooku and Luke.

A grey brow arches. "So unconvinced are you, that botany isn't rewarding?"

A look passes between Dooku and Luke over disruptive heads while the initiates crowd their table, several voices immediately defending a shared opinion all at the same time. Luke read about the Temple's approach to evenly distributing Force-sensitives among ready teachers. The boy disapproves of the tradition with more outward reservation compared to his previous exposures. He's likely taking the younglings into account.

Luke respects the initiates' tones with lightness. "Oh? I grew up farming."

Dooku chokes on the rim of a pilfered cup.

"Moisture farming," Luke continues, and Dooku vainly attempts to empty his lungs of tea. Some younglings wrinkle their noses as they echo Luke's words back at him in disbelief, to which Luke patiently points out with, "You'll be surprised by how many organisms can be connected back to a source of even a little water."

"How long were you in moisture farming, Master Etra?" one youngling asks, mistaking Luke's experience for that of a formerly rejected initiate since uniquely knighted as a Jedi. "What did you do after collecting water from the air? Did you then become a Jedi?"

"Oh, I wasn't anything close to a Jedi until much later." Luke begins to stack the flimsies in neat piles. "I was in moisture farming until I could be considered an adult. After that, I blew up a moon."

Dooku gives up on his tea.

"Why?" the ignorant initiates ask.

"In order for star systems to live," Luke replies. Dooku wonders how Luke can so easily breeze over the creation of the galaxy. "After that, I spent many years flying through as much space as possible; I skimmed the treetops of different planets, tried growing edible plants in a variety of climates, catalogued which systems were habitable for a lot of sentients and which ones were not…." He loses himself in thought before returning to the present. "I finally settled on an ice planet for a while––" now Luke covers the customary Ice Age for most star systems, of which some planets still haven't left to this day, "––before I flew to a swampy planet. I met my master there. Then I visited a gaseous planet –– which could have been dangerous –– but from within its clouds, the planet is truly a beauty." Please spare the younglings such ideas. Dooku's lifespan is shrinking just by listening. "It's all very exciting, I assure you."

"Yeah?" an initiate wrinkles her nose.

Dooku decides he has had too much excitement. No one notices.

"It was for me," Luke defends only a little childishly. "I had never been to many planets before! I probably could've seen more if the routes around the galaxy hadn't been messy, but at the same time, I probably could've stayed longer on the planets I had visited just the same. Dodging, fending off, and sometimes engaging with imperials can make just existing in the galaxy difficult."

"What empire claims these 'imperials' you speak of?" a youngling asks.

Luke hesitates. "The…Empire. They were misguided or outright bad people. They caused unnecessary pain and death, once even blew up a planet of non-combatants, and they had a centralised system of power, meaning there was only ever one awful butt-face in charge."

"Language," Dooku scolds quickly, and Luke clears his throat in apology. Dooku ignores how Luke is summarising the Sith with unconventional terms, although describing the Dark Side as an empire is an unusually good visualisation. He tries hard not to visualise a Sith overlord with symmetrically saggy skin for a face. For some reason, his mind uses Sidious as a model.

Naturally, the younglings fail to grasp it. "The Empire isn't the same as the Separatists?"

Luke glances at Dooku, lips curling. "No more than cause and effect are the same."

The thinnest pile of flimsies slips under Luke's cloak, and on cue, he and Dooku rise and smoothly move for the library's doors with a balanced cuppa in Dooku's fingers. The initiates patter after them in open curiosity, entirely missing the meaning of Luke's subtle actions, and Dooku turns to suggest they play hooky elsewhere — when he and Luke hastily scuttle the younglings back around a corner from a passing pair of Jedi.

"The Chancellor is coordinating Jedi assignments?"

"Next thing you know, the Chancellor's Office will be directing what the crèche-lings eat for breakfast…."

Dooku, Luke, and a half-dozen heads at knee height wait out fading echoes caught by arched ceilings before they move again, finally leaving the library. The initiates blink up at Dooku and Luke, not expecting their sneaky behaviour any more than they did the passing Jedi, or Dooku and Luke did the younglings themselves, initially. For a busy, deliberate hour of the Temple, the halls host more wanderers than expected. Dooku can see the exact moment the initiates realise that he and Luke are, mayhaps, breaking rules themselves.

Luke ruffles their heads in response to their bewildered, open mouths, before he and Dooku continue on for the Temple's central security station as if they aren't wearing black. Luke's flimsies quietly tap against each other in a percussion to the quiet melody from Luke's fleet-footedness, identical to his gait across deserts and wrecked ships drifting through space. In his swiftness, he's never running away, rather instead moving forwards as a pelikki through water, dragging reality around him in his wake. One can distantly gaze at the effects and dismiss them as watery illusions, but drawing closer reveals their depth. The energy stirs curiosity towards Luke's direction, towards where he's heading.

Dooku glances back at the gaping younglings they leave behind. He supposes it should be typical for Luke to inspire a generation of criminals, or at least a thinking that colours outside the lines. The Light Side of the Force has a home in Tatooine, after all.

With faint memories of a proximity with the Council, Dooku opens the way for them to steal into the central security station, a space reserved for surveillance content that a Jedi might investigate should a crime have breached the Temple walls. After wiping his and Luke's presence from record, the data bank that Dooku specifically unlocks is for the secure holo-files only privy to Council members. This does not stop him. It certainly hadn't stopped Qui-Gon in the past.

The thought of a beloved student with Luke's mischief swirling in hazel eyes doesn't lance Dooku in the chest, and his breathing even stutters only a little.

Luke quirks a brow Dooku's way at the access allowed to the blonde, recognising another act of nudging Luke toward eye-opening material. He indulges Dooku until he starts playing back the holo-files — then the count witnesses a familiar implosion of emotion seize Luke's chest himself. It's quieter than Dooku's. A shallow gasp, like one not hoarding the pain of disappointment so to speak, but…rationing it out in consumable chunks. Dooku thinks he knows betrayal. He has felt it from a nation's philosophy, because Dooku has seen the galaxy's institutions, has driven and pressured trade federations with his heel as one does a lowly steed; he recognises that the Jedi Temple, regardless of its origins, has become a nation in itself with its own form of political relationships. But Luke? The shadow of a past betrayal quivers within him like a muscle scarred by lightning.

Or a wrist once severed.

In the eyes of the current Jedi, one or two members falling to the Dark Side is regrettable, but not a cause for the entire Jedi body to move. In the eyes of the Sith? Even one new potential acolyte is a resource. Sith masters and apprentices rise and fall by the Rule of Two, and Luke evidently takes the descent of an individual to the Dark Side equally personally, though from an unselfish point of view. He must treasure followers of the Light.

Fool, Dooku immediately berates himself. Luke cares about him. He treasures everyone.

"Secure holo-files…" Luke murmurs, eyes lifting to meet Dooku's, "and they're only accessible by council members?"

"Like Master Yoda," Dooku confirms. "These holo-files' existence is likewise only known by them."

A past meeting in the Chancellor's private office is playing between them.

"The Council rarely exercises this privilege," Dooku admits. "Before the Clone Wars, they had little interest in the Senate's finer affairs, and even now they prefer exposure to politicians through direct interaction — grants Jedi with insight from the Force, see, and not mere technology. We have no fear of encountering company in this station for a reason."

Still, the fact of the matter is that Jedi are secretly surveilling certain people without their knowledge. If the Council wants to spy on the galaxy's highest seat of power, for example, they need only send someone to monitor the chancellor outside of his office. For an institution that values a professional distance from the galaxy it tries to protect, the Temple is oddly irreverent of certain boundaries.

Luke stretches a hand over miniature Chancellor Palpatine as one would over a poised viper, cautious, before reluctantly dismissing the holo-file and its challenge with a tap. The blonde motions for Dooku to follow him out of the security centre; if they are to meaningfully act in response to Luke's new knowledge, they will evidently do so another day. Dooku recognises the suggestion for what it is, and still contemplates his tea for a heartbeat before unashamedly tossing it into the station's surveillance controls. Whoops.

"The next hour is nearly upon us," Luke sighs, shaking his head at more than Dooku's brush of juvenility. "It's time to leave the Temple before we're truly noticed, and I have many thoughts to shape."

They're gone without leaving a record of their faces behind. It will be a considerable length of time before anyone thinks to ask the Temple's younglings if they've encountered a dragon in the halls before.

X

X

Tatooine decidedly falls by one rank among Palpatine's greatest grievances.

A distracted mind drew him to his present state. A wink of particularly bright light in the blurred edges of Palpatine's senses had caught his attention, had made him reach through the Force and focus on the Temple before he had eventually withdrawn his attention for such fruitless behaviour. Though crowded with brilliant energy, the Temple houses none worthy of a thought in Palpatine's mind, and who in the Temple would conceal their presence while in their own "home?" The brief anomaly had likely been the product of Palpatine's hyper-vigilance, a diplomatic alternative to him — of all people — falling for a trick of the mind. He's balancing a pyramid of plots standing on their point. He's not tired.

He's a Sith.

It's why he can trust his ambitions to keep him ever sharp, as only a true master of tools like the Force can. The thought of light — an enemy, a mistake — in his periphery had therefore plucked on a thread in Palpatine's mental web, deeply woven into his subconscious and thus into the Force. There's a flimsy in Palpatine's office. He hadn't touched it since his…experiences with the faulty, unsecured models that rotate through his hands, and he hadn't needed to, until inspiration had hit him.

So Palpatine retrieved the flimsy from its barrier of puzzles in his office and thoroughly picked through its contents.

That's when agents of the Light launched back up to the top of that which Palpatine earnestly detests.

He knows better than most, as a manipulator, the influence a persistent idea has on a placid mind. He has craftily planted before a large-scale concern in one Master Sifo-Dyas, which had led to the anxious creation of the clone army as Palpatine wished. The late Sifo-Dyas had taken the concern that "the Republic is vulnerable" to the extremes that Palpatine expected — the Jedi Order is itself a possible danger — and applied it in his One-Hundred-Fifty Orders. Yet here at the edge of Palpatine's world the Sith Lord stands, every breath silently screaming.

The model of Jedi coolness, Sifo-Dyas had as a lake before the moon and sun indiscriminately absorbed two contrasting possibilities regardless of source or direction. In one Order does he condemn corrupted Jedi.

In the next, a corrupt Chancellor.

In his silent anxiety, the Jedi Master had drawn from an old code to guide his actions:

"There is no passion, only serenity."

Sifo-Dyas had serenely written the destruction of the Jedi and the government, placed the trigger in the hands of a sitting Chancellor and in that of Jedi masters, and neglected to inform each side that he had done the same with their opposite. He had behaved without bias and panic.

As is the Jedi way.

Palpatine crushes the flimsy in his hands until glass ceases raining from his fingers like stars.

Cursed Jedi!

Building rage topples over to flush into an endless vortex between Palpatine's lungs. His blood burns as his mind races. The Master Jedi aware of the clone command in their grasp are unlikely to take advantage of it, still deep-rooted is their mistrust in the philosophy of serving the Republic as soldiers, and thus also the living model of this idea: the clone troopers. Should the Jedi ever determine that Palpatine's constant amassing of emergency powers requires direct action, they will predictably attempt to arrest Palpatine themselves without assistance from outside their Order. Palpatine can easily keep the Jedi and clones' emotional distance alive by virtue of subtly comparing them as a concerned chancellor. Clones are reliable rule-followers, after all, but what can one say of the secretive Jedi who had initially opposed the idea of a Republican army in the first place?

The more pressing question was: how shall he sever the noose around his neck? Planting anxiety into a Jedi now proves unreliable, yet a Jedi poses the cleanest and most unquestioned solution to altering the Orders in Palpatine's benefit. He cannot carelessly send a Jedi to resolve another Jedi's error. Furthermore, what pitfall has in all this time awaited Palpatine in his path of turning young Anakin, has sat in Palpatine's blindness until the blunder of Sifo-Dyas enlightened him?

Palpatine reflects deeply on his puppet strings, the remnants of his last and final oversight glittering at his feet.

X

Unknowingly, dozens of crowded Coruscanti skyscrapers away, Leia heads for the Senate Chamber alone without assistance or protection, before she stumbles across a fidgety gangster nervously awaiting her. There have been better assassination attempts. The way this vagabond is physically sweating, Leia also smells Luke's involvement, else the bold act of killing a senator on the Chamber's steps wouldn't shake a sentient up even this much. Desperation, the thrill of fame, professionalism – Leia knows what a hired gun looks like. When she walks up to the gangster and stares, waiting for an explanation, she sees it as their eyes meet:

Wonder.

Fear.

Symptoms of encountering a dragon.

"You know who I am," Leia states, referencing herself beyond the image of a senator.

"E-Evening, ma'am." He wipes his brow. "I've been indefinitely commissioned to accompany you as a bodyguard from now on. The name's Krim."

Leia pauses. "Is there a reason for you to be nervous, Krim?"

"No…?"

"I'm asking you."

"No! Ma'am."

"Then hold your head up high and don't slouch. You're a guard, not a schoolboy." Leia passes him and is followed by only a beat of hesitant silence before harried footsteps quickly catch up behind her. Few sentients in Krim's profession have seen the inside of a government building, much less the Chamber. It's also likely that Leia's easy acceptance of Krim as her bodyguard surprises him. "You've met my brother?"

Krim jumps. "E–Etra, yes." The syllables leave him bizarre in such proper settings. He doesn't know if he's allowed to breathe the name within walking distance of the galaxy's most public politicians, but to be honest with himself, the whole situation is absurd. "I, erm, overheard a last-minute update – legally – and apparently the Chancellor can't make today's session due to sudden illness. He is on the old side."

A sentiment shared with most sentients in the Chamber. Krim also notes that Leia doesn't discourage his slip of details, though Etra has paid him and Don well enough to cover information services. When Leia's pod is eventually summoned to the Chamber floor and all eyes train on her, Krim belatedly realises he's witnessing information – no, history – being made while standing behind its main sculptor. Fresh sweat blooms down his back.

Leia is as cool as ice, in contrast. Vice Chancellor Mas Amedda is largely ignorant of Palpatine's true nature – that of a Sith – but supports the perpetual funnelling of power into the Chancellor's Office for less altruistic reasons than wishing for an end to the war. When Palpatine gains privileges, after all, so does his Vice Chancellor. Despite Palpatine's absence, this session is yet another scheduled barrage against Tatooine's senator the moment she finishes giving her piece left over from the last session.

Predictably, Mas Amedda's voice booms throughout the Chamber once she's done. "The Republic has a history of acknowledging system-wide struggles brought to attention in the Galactic Chamber, but talks of a neglected system feel out of context between war strategies and difficulties. Some critics argue that Tatooine is heaping more on the Republic's plate." Blue eyes narrow Leia's way. "Our benevolent Chancellor is doing the best he can."

"The Chancellor can't do his best without checks and balances on him," Leia returns. "This is the Galactic Senate, not the Chancellor's Yes-Men."

"Senator Leia, I'm afraid you don't grasp traditional Republican politics."

Mas Amedda is offended. Leia wonders how transparent it is to the other senators in the Chamber and the countless sentients following the session through the Holonet. "The only Republican policy I've witnessed consistently is the neglect of Outer Rim Territories which, as the name suggests, are territories of the Republic. Clearly, this war is proof that the Senate's grip is brittle on any system outside the Core."

"I suppose you have a better solution."

"I propose a transformation in government."

The vocal astonishment that seizes the Chamber is on her.

"You…sound like a Separatist!" Mas Amedda accused.

"Well I'm not," Leia flatly defends, voice slowly easing into the cool, refreshing purity of snow-melt. "I can hardly call myself a Separatist after working so hard to join the Republic. I've merely observed that Republican systems deserve a voice and that the spread-thin Chancellor needs advisors. The Republic's founders never intended for the current system to last forever because they knew that times and people would change."

Her liquid tone gains passion, mountain water meeting desert sands. She turns towards the key mic and its holocam as a blooming oasis flower. "It is now time for the birth of the political system this galaxy deserves."

Her energy surpasses the Chamber – a roar of approval rises from the depths of Coruscant and infects the upper levels in a rushing wave, until the entire planet is cheering and every sentient cued in on the channel is exchanging excited looks and sounds. They feel a change coming, and its legendary arrival is only a matter of time. Leia's words resonated with the people's hearts, their unvoiced opinions and observations that had no description until today.

How does one know when one hears the truth? When Senator Leia speaks it.

Mas Amedda's greed doesn't erase his political acumen, however, and he threads the needle of the Chamber's noise to suddenly snuff it. "A representative whose system is still enjoying an infant government would offer limited insight on the better workings of the Galactic Republic."

Leia smiles.

It isn't the reaction the Vice Chancellor expects. He isn't, after all, the sly snake Leia has been battling since her first day as senator.

Mas Amedda's pause is enough for Padmé to sweep in with timeliness. In the Chamber, everyone possesses political acumen. "And what do you propose as the perfect government, Senator?"

Leia appreciates the anticipatory silence rather than falls intimidated by it. The fact that anyone is willing to ask the question – and consider an answer – means Leia is getting somewhere. "No government is perfect," she diplomatically replies, "but if you seek my opinion, I find a government based on greed as an improvement to the current system."

Mas Amedda starts losing it. "Greed!?"

"Of course." Leia resists the urge to smirk on live Holo. "One branch of government may write laws to their own desires, but a second branch may shut them down to their own desires. If a law passes the two branches despite this, a third branch may deem the law unjust and write it off existence to their own desires. In the end, the three branches learn to cooperate but also keep each other in check. A system of checks and balances, if you will."

"Why, yes…but…." The Vice Chancellor visibly struggles with the concept of a greed-driven government despite his personal pursuits. In a corner of the Chamber, Bail isn't smothering a laugh. Really.

"We are naturally greedy beings," Leia softens. "Whether we prioritise our needs above others, or help other people before ourselves, we do so because it makes us feel good. This leads to a pattern of us continuing such behaviour, don't you agree? This checks and balances system acknowledges us as individuals with our own senses of good and bad, and works with it. In contrast, a purely republican system, dictatorship, or oligarchy depends on our inherent goodness, which by now we all understand to be difficult to define."

Padmé innocently nods, neither rescuing Mas Amedda from his stumbling nor humiliating him for it. As a delegate from the same system as the Chancellor, she appears as a neutral figure sincerely dedicated to the Republic – not an office. "You certainly give a lot to think about, Senator. Thank you."

It's a dismissal that Leia accepts, her pod retreating as Mas Amedda is suddenly left alone to continue the session. To suddenly uproot an established tree like the Republic is to kill it – but to graft new life into it, to slowly encourage a bond across differences is to help it grow. Leia is unsubtle in her impact, and in contrast, the Chamber's senators don't realise their quietly developing acceptance of Padmé as the floor's main guide in the Chancellor's absence.

If Leia stirs up energy, Padmé gives it direction.

And Bail gets a kick out of it.

X

X

Anakin and Obi-Wan tanked out the powder keg between Hutt ships in the sloppiest manner possible. They lost their unmarked ship, gathered no relevant war intel, and left behind witnesses of two Jedi penetrating the Outer Rim within the vicinity of less-attentive Separatist forces.

The GAR is still covertly cleaning up leaks while Anakin and Obi-Wan have been ordered to stand aside at the ready, and to industriously use their time by working their way through intelligence that might be a little more useful than Anakin's microimage of Dooku's unconfirmed escort. Though the galaxy's most-watched pair smartly retreated to the nearest clone-manned ship to rethink their approach to recon, they should know better than to expect apathy from Dooku's small firepower that might be neutrally settled just beyond the border in the Outer Rim.

If Anakin is allowed an opinion, however, it's that he can contrarily expect inaction due to his and Obi-Wan's novice performance in the Hutt firefight. Dooku has evidence that Anakin and Obi-Wan can fail their missions just fine without the Sith lord.

A side glance at Obi-Wan analysing a star map for possible Separatist trajectories has Anakin thinning his lips to contain a sigh. For the hundredth time, he thinks he and Obi-Wan need a brief escape from war. Though the Council insists that the mission still has potential due to Dooku's possible presence, Anakin feels like a lizard slipped out of his hands. He wonders why he's standing near star maps if he can't contribute anything but the many routes one can take towards Tatooine.

He's not homesick. He's standing next to Obi-Wan.

He would think clearer if Padmé was also with him, though.

"Mind in the present," Obi-Wan calls in.

What is always coming but never arrives? Tomorrow.

"Apologies, Obi-Wan," Anakin says earnestly. "You were saying?"

"Nothing of note, apparently." Obi-Wan's words aren't mean-spirited — it isn't like him. He's just as weary as Anakin, only Obi-Wan prefers to hide it. "The shipwreck in this star cluster better portrays a bad crossover than an honest battle. If one of the parties involved were Dooku's forces, they were long dismissed by him and merely encountered the same luck that had you and I tripping over a Hutt conflict. Their final destination doesn't suggest movement towards any militarily meaningful locations."

"The Council sent us on a useless mission."

"Even Dooku's forces can share our luck, it seems." Obi-Wan slips him a grin that Anakin returns.

Obi-Wan's about to shut down the projected star map until Anakin's intuition flashes and he throws out a hand and a terse word.

"Anakin?"

Holy Shavit. "The Hutts we crossed paths with didn't give us the impression that they'd be involved in this shipwreck, right?" Obi-Wan's nod encourages him. "Then by following black market trade routes, the shipwreck's location is most accessible by Jabba the Hutt. For whatever reason, the CIS irritated the wrong gangster."

Commander Cody perks up from his station across the ship's command room. "News that has no strategic value in campaigns travels slowly from the Core to here, sirs." He carries a flimsy over. "However, this information just checked out against our validity tests. Tatooine's Senator Leia confirms in one interview that Jabba—"

Anakin has an out-of-body experience after the first three words of Cody's last statement. Anakin is a passenger in his body as his mechanical arm grabs the flimsy and brings a childhood dream into view. Obi-Wan tells him to unclench his teeth, but Anakin's already telling his jaw to let his bleeding tongue go and it refuses to obey. The flimsy cracks down the middle, and the glitching array of colours that used to be enlightenment reflects in Anakin's eyes before blacking out with the flimsy's release from Anakin's fingers.

Obi-Wan's telling him to calm down — even an initiate can sense the Force warping around Anakin's distress — but Anakin can't hear him.

He can still see it. His mother's finger pointing at a twin sunset.

Obi-Wan grips Anakin with one hand while the other accepts a holo marked urgent from the Council. "Another time, Mace—"

"Your mission's changed. New information suggests—"

"Count Dooku is long gone—"

"We know Obi-Wan," they're forgetting to use honorifics, they're forgetting that Anakin's there, "we aren't expecting action or possibly even life from him after flying too close to the twin suns…Force blast it! Senator Leia's tight lips on a shapeless reptile has me rubbing my bald head like only your former student can—!"

Hearing the Council speak of a freed Tatooine and a sun-born dragon somehow makes the two more real.

Anakin feels sobs coming up his throat, and he suddenly laughs.


;


A/N:

I could be mistaken as I'm writing from memory, but in the movies, Obi-Wan learns of Anakin's turn to the Dark Side through a holo recording of Anakin kneeling before Palpatine in the chancellor's office. The recording could source from Anakin's personal comm link or that of the dead Jedi sprawled around, but constant activation of Jedi comm links seems less likely to me than planted surveillance in a politician's room. I'd sooner believe that Palpatine is aware of and knows how to fool such surveillance (and in the previous chapter, Luke does describe Coruscant's CCTV as the Emperor's web), than Anakin's marriage with Padmé somehow never getting caught by a constantly activated comm link for years. It's also just extra sad to me that technically, the Council doesn't need to order Anakin to spy on his father figure in ROTS, yet this dishonest task helpfully pushes him into Palpatine's claws. Anyway, that's just my thought woven into this fic.

Also, this is your disclaimer that I obviously don't know how to build and run a government. Don't take the governmental structure bits too seriously – the focus of this fic is really about Luke and Leia spreading hope throughout the galaxy. The Clone Wars is merely a vessel for it.

I hope you dear readers enjoyed this chapter, and thank you for your support and patience!