A/N: Depur and the associated concepts of the Amavikka belong to Fialleril and their amazing world building on Tatooine Slave culture, customs and language in their Double Agent Vader series. If you haven't read it, do so.
Chapter III
"He's taken a hostage with him. Senator Amidala."
Scarcely have the words struck Obi-Wan's ears before he's drowning in fury, an unrelenting battery like a swoop racer in a Kaminoan storm.
"Breathe, Master," he dimly hears Ahsoka's ragged command and the rage splinters, shards of it burying in his heart as he feels Anakin reach for the slithering sickness of his bond to Sidious.
Where? his former Padawan spits down that Dark braid.
Come and find her, it invites, and Obi-Wan can see the disgusting pleasure Sidious takes in Anakin's raw desperation.
"Anakin," he manages, pulling up his shields to block out the worst of his brother's unleashed temper. He steps forward, through a Force-engaged guard so thick he might have been shoving through Mon Calamari seas, and grips the younger man's arm. "Don't give into him. Don't give him what he wants."
Anakin's eyes flash, and Obi-Wan is terrified for a moment that they have burned Sith gold, but they are merely the iron grey of his unwavering determination. When he speaks, his voice is distorted by his terror.
"I have to find her. Come with me or get out of my way."
"Fall into his plot, you must not," Yoda cautions softly. Anakin spins on the diminutive master, his teeth bared.
"Trap or no trap, it does not matter," he snaps. "He cannot have her."
"I will come with you," Obi-Wan promises, and Ahsoka's bond is flooding them both with certitude-warmth-Light. "I promised you would be with her for the birth of your child and I meant it. We need to find out where he's gone with her. We can't help her if we've run to the opposite end of the galaxy."
"I can find her. It's not my fault the rest of you are too weak to do so." Anakin shrugs off Obi-Wan's hand and starts for the shuttle, violence in every step.
"And then what, Master?" Ahsoka's voice sounds behind him, strong and certain. "When Sidious has you and Padmé and there is no hope to rescue your child." Anakin whirls on her in fury and stalks to tower over her–
–only to discover that his one-time Padawan has grown, and she stands nearly at his height. "Let. Us." She is pressing love-care-compassion into every word. "Help. You."
888
"Darth Sidious did not leave Coruscant."
It's the middle of the night. Not that Obi-Wan, his one-time Padawan and former grandpadawan are sleeping. Nevertheless, he blinks at the grim-faced Kiffar who has interrupted their…brooding.
He had barely scraped Anakin here following Mace's pained confession. It had taken Rex, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka together, the latter two leaning fully into their bonds, seeking Anakin through the raging sandstorm of his fury, the eye of that storm that was rooted in justice instead of the terrible vengeance-fury-cannot-be-stopped seeping from the bond to the Sith, a discordant crooning summoning poison in Anakin's soul.
"We will figure it out. You will see her again." Ahsoka's words, her reassurance, her determined presence pressed up against his Force signature that cut like glass, had finally penetrated.
So here they are. Hours of talking in circles and arguing over whether Anakin could follow the destructive seed of his bond with Sidious to Padmé, his attempts to do so even though it made Obi-Wan sick to feel such filth against their own bond–
"It's 0200 hours, Quinlan," he protests.
"Yes, General, it is two am."
Anakin snorts from his place on their low couch, a stone-cold cup of caf gripped in his hands where it has been for at least the last hour. Obi-Wan forces his tired brain into action, staring into the face of a man who had been amongst his dearest friends as a Padawan…
"Darth Sidious did not leave Coruscant."
Suddenly, he's wide awake, the familiar shock-flash of adrenaline lighting up every cell, bringing the Force and the galaxy into sharper, immediate focus.
"Where is he?" he asks sharply, and clearly Anakin's brain has undergone the same process, because the taller Jedi is suddenly looming over Vos from behind the master as he growls:
"Where did he take Padmé?"
Quinlan actually takes a step back at the undulating menace in Anakin's words and bearing, and Obi-Wan turns, lifting a hand to plant it against the younger man's chest.
"Breathe, Anakin. Quinlan is here to help," he reminds the other man gently. The sickness of Darth Sidious' unasked-for intrusion writhes around their bond as it has for the past hours, sinking into the cracks of Anakin's own Darkness which is–
–not as insignificant as Obi-Wan would like. But he cannot address it this instant. After they eliminate the Sith. After Padmé is safe–
After, after, after.
He is abruptly furious. He's been promising himself 'after' for three years now. Every campaign. Every time he felt the Darkening of their bond. Every time he sighed in relief when the shadow slunk back, beaten by the irrepressible tide of Anakin's blazing Light, fed by Obi-Wan himself and Ashoka.
But the Dark lingers longer every time. The shadow is permanent - has been for longer than Obi-Wan could have guessed or feared. He cannot put this off for much longer. The Jedi master swallows the dread that he has already delayed too long. How long until after becomes now?
But now, he is grimly aware, Anakin is not capable of hearing him. There is only his wife, his child, and the erupting fear that he's just barely keeping in check, tethered to the Light by his bonds with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka.
And those bonds look awfully fragile against the gaping maw of the Dark thundering beneath.
Obi-Wan has placed his life in the balance of this bond. The Team. Standing here, Anakin glowering behind him in a tornado of barely-leashed violent instincts, the Negotiator no longer knows if he can.
"One of the benefits of my Fall is that there were certain…secrets…Dooku revealed as he consolidated his power over me." Quinlan's smile is sharp and unpleasant. "One of them is the place that both Dooku and his master operate out of here on Coruscant."
"And?" Anakin demands, pushing against the hand Obi-Wan still has on his chest.
Quinlan tilts his head for maximum casual effect as he meets Anakin's storm-blue gaze. "How familiar are you with the Works, Knight Skywalker?"
888
"He is here." Anakin's voice is coldly lethal as he brings the speeder to a halt several blocks from the Li Merge building. Next to Obi-Wan, Ahsoka shivers.
"You feel it, don't you?" Quinlan says, his voice almost off-hand except for the tension clipping his question.
"I have to go alone." Anakin is already vaulting out of the speeder as they object in hurried, hushed tones. He raises his hand, eyes already searching the long shadows. "He killed Masters Saesee and Tiin. I can't…" his blue eyes lock on Ahsoka. "I can't lose any of you."
"He's not wrong," Quinlan agrees, and Obi-Wan's grey-blue eyes flicker to the Kiffar's dark brown in betrayal. "Don't make him choose, Obi," he warns. "If you go, if she goes," he tilts his head at the bristling Togruta, "Sidious will set it up so that Skywalker must choose between you and the senator. Don't let him force that decision. Everyone will lose." He eyes Anakin with an arrogance that borders on flirtatious, smiling disarmingly.
"I'll go with our illustrious Chosen One and watch his back."
"I won't choose you," Anakin seethes at him.
"My dear Skywalker, that is precisely the point. You barely know me. That is what will keep me safe." Quinlan eyes the yawning span of the Works around and below them, all bluster fading. "I know this place. And I know Dooku's master. In all the things he never said about him."
"I didn't come here to wait in the speeder like a good little youngling," Ahsoka hisses.
"We won't be." Obi-Wan doesn't like this any more than she does, but he sees Quinlan's point and he…he has to trust Anakin. Has to keep faith in his brother's bonds to the Light. "We'll have his back another way."
"Let's go. Don't get in my way," Anakin snarls at Quinlan, already in motion, lightsaber unclipped and in hand. Ahsoka stares after him, visibly agitated as Quinlan claps Obi-Wan on the shoulder and the general gives him a disgruntled side eye.
"Watch out for him. And yourself," Obi-Wan murmurs.
"Why, Obi, I didn't know you cared," Quinlan flirts back. Obi-Wan can feel Ahsoka rolling her eyes through her worry and he gives the other Jedi a shrug.
"Just come back in one piece."
"With Senator Amidala and Skyguy," Ahsoka adds, and Obi-Wan allows the fine grain of her impatience and half-trust run over their bond like sandpaper as Quinlan gives them a jaunty salute and jogs after Anakin, the younger knight's long strides eating the durasteel decking as he rapidly disappears into the gloom.
"So what are we going to be doing, Master Obi-Wan?" Ahsoka asks warily as they fade from sight.
"Meditate. Hold your bond with Anakin and flood it with as much happiness, as much joy, as much Light as you can. I will do the same."
Her cerulean eyes snap to him, assessing. "You are worried for him. That he might Fall. And we're meditating on it?"
"Sidious has his wife. His child. Men have Fallen over far, far less. You felt him in the hangar bay. Many of the most important battles are not the ones we fight with lightsabers. We are all that is tethering Anakin to the Light. We have to stay with him, remind him that he doesn't want to Fall."
With a troubled sigh, Ahsoka sinks back into her seat in the speeder, and closes her eyes.
888
The Li Merge power building is the skeleton of a once-proud structure, durasteel decking slashing across exposed, twisting pipes, roof and floors uneven, often caved in. Sometimes unnaturally so, where lightsabers slashed through support beams, collapsing whole sections.
Neither Jedi cares overmuch about the uneven ground. Anakin stalks forward in relentless silence, his eyes more than half-closed as the Force guides his movements unerringly down, into the dark underbelly of the ancient construction where he can feel Palpatine - Darth Sidious - waiting.
Along with his wife. He can taste Padmé's combined fear and determination, disgust and condemnation. Their child surges, and he can feel that purity lending strength to his ferocious spouse.
He jumps, reaches for the Force, cushions his landing, his boots connecting with the deck some fifty feet below feather-light. Behind him, he senses Vos, feels the other man's rough pull on the Force, and turns, softening the other man's landing. Something like gratitude presses at the edge of Anakin's mind, which he ignores, knowing his impatience is clear. Vos has to keep up on his own merits.
The stench of the Dark is growing overwhelming. A physical smell of decay invades his nose and mouth, joining the freezing cold misting his breath and the fetid pressure seeking to bow his shoulders, to suborn his soul.
Come my boy. This does not need to be difficult. The training bond forged by his would-be slaver dripped false concern and sympathy. My only wish is to help you.
By the time he reaches the door at the base of the building - one opening to a well-reinforced bunker that has not fallen prey to the encroaching centuries - and it whispers open, Anakin does not know where Vos might be. Nor can he feel Obi-Wan or Ahsoka.
He is alone.
Except for the man standing in the middle of the bunker, still dressed in the resplendent robes of his office under his black cloak, somehow every bit as composed as if he were preparing to open a session of the Senate.
"Please, Anakin…you cannot believe I truly wish any harm to you? Or to Padmé?" Palpatine's black hood is settled around his shoulders, open hands empty and spread wide, eyes still the pale blue they've always been. He feels of nothing in the Force. The man before him is a politician pleading. A consummate lie from an inveterate liar.
"You are both so very important to me," he continues, and his voice even cracks on the very last word.
Padmé is behind a ray shield, shackled to the floor by cuffs around her ankles, hands bound behind her back. One of her many over cloaks puddles at her feet, the thin, shimmery blue nightdress Anakin adores all that covers her as she rolls her shoulders and bares her teeth.
She is alive. And so far unhurt, though the ray shield evaporates his relief and brings his ever-present rage to boiling.
"If you're so concerned for Padmé, why is she chained in a cage?" Anakin snarls.
The fallen chancellor spreads his hands wide, innocence in every gnarled, extended joint. "To prevent her from harm. From your supposed allies, or even yourself in your ignorance."
Hurt his wife? Anakin will put his lightsaber through his own chest before he hurts Padmé. But he can feel the delighted growl of the Dark bond he shares unwilling with his Depur, and he knows the truth, no matter how well Palpatine parades his good intentions.
"Anakin will never be a danger to me. Nor will any Jedi. Don't listen to him!" she urges. "He's the Sith behind the war!"
"I told you, my dear, that your husband already knows that," Palpatine smiles paternally. "He is here because he knows what's good for him, and for you, and for the Republic. Don't you, Anakin?"
"What Republic?" Padmé snaps. "The one you've gutted with your ever-increasing emergency powers?"
"Come, Padmé, you're too intelligent to believe such nonsense. Uncertain times require strong leadership. You've always known that," his grandfatherly smile turns smug and cold at the edges. "It's why you helped me get elected to begin with."
Anakin feels his wife's self-loathing crash over both of them, constricting his lungs, and he strides forward, re-claiming his supposed mentor's attention.
"I am here for my wife. Not for your games," the Jedi levels his unlit lightsaber at the former chancellor. "I will ask you once, out of courtesy to Obi-Wan and his attempts to teach me good manners. Release her. Now."
Palpatine shakes his head, radiating sorrow. "Alas, if it were only so simple my friend."
Anakin settles into the opening stance of a Djem So kata. "The Jedi will not mourn your passing. Your apprentices are captured or slain. The entire Separatist Council is on Coruscant to stand trial. There is no one coming for you, Darth Sidious." His face twists as he spits his next words. "If you let Padmé go, I will let you live. You will be free to go in peace."
At this, Sidious chuckles. The sound grows sinister as it reverberates off the bunker walls, filling Anakin's head. He grits his teeth and ignites his saber, reaching for his connection to the singing kyber, using it to focus himself as it focuses his blade. The pounding in his head retreats fractionally.
"Oh my boy. Your destiny lies with me. It has since I crossed your path after you saved Naboo. I have always considered you a friend. I have no wish to fight you. But if I must, I will. You will learn the true nature of the Dark Side and the power it offers, the power you have always deserved. One way or another."
"There are too many who know who you really are. You cannot hope to win."
"No, my young apprentice," a casual gesture, and the ray shield tightens around Padmé. "I think it is you who will find yourself without hope." Anakin is suddenly aware of an off-kilter hum, just shy of a screech, in the shielding.
"You always were good with machines, Anakin. Tell me…what will an unstable ray shield do to human flesh on impact?"
Kill Padmé. Kill his daughter.
Red drops over his vision and Anakin snarls. He launches himself at the older man.
Two lightsabers burst in bloody shafts from Sidious' fists, and Anakin is on him, blue blade crackling as Sidious catches it with both of his. Anakin breaks the lock and swipes for his enemy's feet. The Sith flips backwards, lightsabers thrust out to cleave Anakin's arms at the shoulders. The Jedi jerks back, blade barely parrying in time as Sidious presses his advantage, shoving off the back wall to fly at Anakin, blades humming with lethal intent.
"Anakin, no!" But Padmé's words are lost in the storm of their fury.
Thrust, parry, duck. Jump, slash, strike. Anakin is one of the best duelists the Order has ever produced, his natural strength in the Force combining with the ruthless instincts honed as a slave and thousands of hours of training to make him nearly unstoppable.
But Dooku had not been an easy enemy to defeat. The master is worse. Anakin can feel the weight of the Dark Side around them as he blocks an overhead strike, his return lunge batted aside. He can't breathe properly, the Dark like freezing water invading his lungs, icing them over and choking him.
"Draw on it," Sidious coaxes, dancing out of range. "Let it flow through you. You have always struggled with your fear, your anger. Don't cast them out, feed them! Let them make you stronger!"
The anger he had unleashed on the Tuskens rippled under his skin. Use me, it crooned. Together, there is NOTHING we cannot do. Invite me in… It sings, and although the pitch vibrates painfully in his bones, Anakin knows the power he's craving, the power to protect and defend, is there if he reaches for it–
"I know you. And I know you're better than that." Padmé is right here. He cannot surrender to the Dark with her watching. With their child watching through her eyes.
"No!" he snaps, closing on his former mentor desperately.
"Do not sabotage yourself!" Sidious hisses as they lock blades again, blue biting red, kyber screaming their fury. "You think she needs some weakling for a husband? A man who refuses to become all that he can because of some Jedi children's story? Who cannot defend her? Who cannot defend your children?"
Anakin's heart nearly freezes there, and he stumbles backwards. Palpatine knows. And…children? Plural?
Rage rips through him, thundering in the Force, sundering his foundation. His children will not belong to this Depur, this shadow feeding on the Dark. His children are freeborn, the first of their line, and their light will be unfettered as the twin suns of his native world.
No Skywalker will bend their knee or endure the lash under threat of detonation. Never again.
Even if he dies here to prevent it happening.
"Yes, my young apprentice. Use it. Use it against me. Protect them."
"Anakin!"
Heedless of his wife's cry, Anakin charges.
888
Obi-Wan gasps, blue-grey eyes snapping open. He meets Ahsoka's brilliant ocean-blue as she jerks herself up, meditation broken by the rage-grief-fury flooding over their bonds.
"Anakin…" she whispers.
"Come on!" Obi-Wan's lightsaber is in hand, his footsteps sure as he starts for the building.
Ahsoka palms her returned blades and follows, canines bared in a snarl.
She is no Jedi, bound by their code of Light and Dark. Let this Darth Sidious try to take her family from her.
888
Anakin's blows fall fast and brutal. For all Sidious' considerable power, the Son of the Suns is the Force's Chosen child, and it roars at the Jedi's request, Dark and Light twisting in a vortex around him. Sidious slips backwards, crafty enough to keep his blades between him and his enraged apprentice. The Sith smiles.
Even as he gives ground, meeting each bone-numbing blow with just enough skill to keep the blue blade from searing his flesh, he catalogs and admires the sheer strength Lord Vader has. This same strength will be with his children. And in decades, when Vader has grown old and the Dark Side has consumed him, and Sidious himself has transferred his consciousness into a younger body…then Vader's twins will stand ready to do his bidding, at his service as their sire ever was. At his command, the three of them will spread the coming Empire throughout the galaxy, Sith ascendant at last as the weak-willed Jedi are wiped from its very existence.
He will have to disarm the boy now, of course, to keep him at bay, but his sword arm is prosthetic. Sidious will have to take the other as well. Vader will consecrate his path to the Sith through pain, as all his forebears have done.
First, though, he will sever the line to Anakin's treacherous Jedi master, the man that has nearly succeeded in wrenching the boy from Sidious' side. He delves into their bond and rips at the braided Light binding master and apprentice. Loss of this bond will dwarf the loss of his hands, and leave an aching root that will welcome Sidious, cement his bond in his servant's mind–
The former politician is so busy planning the future, the green saber that ignites under his nose nearly succeeds in decapitating him. He jerks back, automatically bringing the Force to bear on the interloper–
But that green blade then swiftly parries a thrust from the livid blue blade seeking to bite into Sidious' flesh, turning Anakin aside.
888
Obi-Wan buckles, and Ahsoka seizes her one-time grandmaster to keep him from collapsing on another unwieldy deck plate.
"Is he…?" her own connection with her former master is weaker than it once was. She had not sought to excise it in the months following her expulsion from the Order, but neither had she maintained it. It had been paradoxically comforting and painful, a reminder of a life when she'd known her own place in the galaxy and of all that she had lost.
"Sidious is trying to…to expel me," Obi-Wan rasps. "He's…he's ripping…Anakin. He's trying to take…Anakin." Blood begins to drip out of his nose, and he sends as much of himself as he can spare down their beleaguered link.
Hold on, dear one, hold on. We're coming. You're my brother, Anakin. I love you.
"He can't have him. Come on, Master," she feeds him through their much-weaker bond, bolstering him as the Dark closes around them. Wiping his lip with the back of his hand, the veteran Jedi grimaces in disgust and firms his steps.
"You're right. We won't let him."
888
"...not like this," Palpatine can hear another, unknown voice urging. "Not this way, Anakin! If you kill him this way, your Fall is assured!"
"I told you not to get in my way, Vos!"
"No. Will you kill me too?" Sidious stays his hand, eyes fixed on the newcomer even as Vader's blue eyes seethe with fury…is that gold flickering to life in his irises?
"If it is the only way to save them, yes. Don't make me destroy you, too."
"Obi-Wan will never forgive me if I just let you hand yourself to the Dark. This is what he wants." Vos extinguishes the blade holding against Lord Vader's and ducks to the side as the blue saber cleaves the air where the Kiffar had been standing, closing the gap between them and gripping the back of his neck, pulling the taller man's forehead down to meet Vos' own with an audible crack, heedless of the seething blade crackling next to his skin.
"I have tread this path, Skywalker. There are a thousand ways to be enslaved," Vos breathes.
Unbelievably, just like that, the Dark slinks out, weak and useless, ceding dominance to the sudden Light surging under his apprentice's skin. Sidious snarls. Karking Jedi and their karking philosophy.
But the Force does not fail him now, as it has not failed him over the past decades.
He throws out his hands, catching the interloper Vos with cackling lightning, slamming the Kiffar head-first against the bunker wall. The meddling Shadow-turned-Dark-returned-Jedi collapses and stays down. Another of Dooku's failures. If his former apprentice were still alive, he'd kill the incompetent himself for this lapse.
But that blood is on Lord Vader's hands. Even as his eyes clear, a reflection of his blade once more turned towards the Sith, Sidious can sense the two presences about to burst through the door, and he seizes them both with the Force, thrusting the door open and dragging his apprentice's former master and padawan into the bunker. With one hand, he casually pins them against the wall. With his other, he reaches for Padme in her shielded cage. The shield screeches again as it inches closer to her. Her eyes widen and her hands go to her throat as Sidious begins to cut off her air.
"I had so hoped you would see reason, Anakin. You always have before. However, my boy, you have forced me to go about this the hard way. So now you must choose. Your wife and your children. Your faithless master and your poor, broken padawan."
A casual tug on the Force pulled a comm link, spinning gently, to hover in front of the dethroned chancellor. It flickers to life, the rigid forms of clone commanders bursting to blue holo-life in the dark bunker.
"Your orders, sir?" they chorus together, and Sidious exults in the sick despair pounding from the three conscious Jedi.
"Execute Order 66."
"Yes, sir!"
Sidious' grin is a hideous rictus of triumph as the holo fades. "That was the execution order for every Jedi in the field. Only I can revoke it. Even you cannot save them all, Chosen One. What will it be, Lord Vader?"