This time when they left the palace, Anakin let Cailee lead him out the main door that normal people used to come and go, rather than stealing a speeder or leaping off a third-floor balcony. She would have made a joke about it feeling anticlimactic if not for the fact that he seemed shellshocked. He walked next to her in a daze as they passed through the stone arcade and waited for the guard to open the heavy, ancient iron gate that led to the sidewalk outside the palace walls. He still hadn't made a sound by the time they crossed the street and entered the park in front of the palace.

After they had meandered for several minutes, and primarily because there was a fork in the walking path ahead and she didn't know the way to the shipyard, Cailee ventured to speak.

"Anakin?"

He sucked in a breath and snapped his head in her direction, seemingly astonished by her presence, despite the fact that her arm had been looped through his the entire time.

"Are you alright?" she asked softly as they came to a halt.

"I—" he began, then stopped abruptly and hunched in on himself, head bowed and shoulders curled inwards, as if he could make his large frame smaller just by willing it to be so.

Cailee panicked for a second when she thought that he might collapse. She guessed he had to weigh at least 180 pounds, and she certainly would have crumpled underneath him like a piece of flimsiplast. Fortunately, he remained upright. She was able to push him sideways, only because he was being so pliant, until his leg hit the edge of a nearby bench.

Anakin sat down heavily.

"Oh gods," he moaned, voice hoarse, and bent forward to put his elbows on his knees. He hid his face in his hands. "I can't believe I did that."

Cailee sat next to him, as close as she dared. "I'm so sorry."

"For what?" croaked Anakin from between his gloved fingers.

"It's my fault," she replied. "If you hadn't come here… If you hadn't decided to stay—"

"No," he interrupted harshly, before she could complete the thought. "It's not your fault. And I'm glad you're alive, so I don't regret it…. I just never let myself imagine what actually walking away would feel like, you know? Even though I've been thinking about doing it since I was about eleven years old."

"Eleven?" Cailee found herself echoing, another bubble of rage starting to build inside her. She had heard the stories of Jedi ripping infants from their mothers' breasts, of course, but it was different attaching the stories to a real person. "Would you have been allowed to go back to your family, if you had told the Jedi that you didn't want to be there anymore?"

His body tensed next to hers. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, but it didn't help him relax.

"Probably not," he said darkly, his voice low enough that it was nearly muffled by his hands and she had to tilt her head closer to him to make it out clearly. "It's funny; I used to be terrified that if I stepped a toe out of line they'd send me back to—" He cut himself off and took another breath. "Well, anyway, in retrospect I see that they wouldn't have sent me home, even back then. They have farming camps and other places where they send younglings who aren't chosen to be Padawans. They'd have probably sent me to one of those."

Cailee wanted desperately to pursue that line of inquiry—the Jedi took children from their families, and then if the children weren't chosen to become Jedi they still weren't allowed to go back home? They were just sent to labor camps to work for the Jedi forever? Her gut twisted at the thought.

But her primary concern was Anakin, and it was not difficult to tell that the topic was painful for him.

After a moment of hesitation, she wrapped her arm around his back and rested her head on his shoulder, the closest she could get to a full embrace in their current position. He flinched at the initial contact, but he did not protest or move away as she had half expected he might.

They sat like that for several minutes, content with the silence between them. It was, blessedly, one of the few days Arkanis got each year where it wasn't raining. The park buzzed with the activity all around them of people taking advantage of the rarely pleasant weather: well-dressed businesspeople conducting meetings or enjoying their midday meals in the outdoors, young people laughing and shouting as they kicked balls around the grassy lawns, young mothers pushing baby carriages down the paved paths… Nobody seemed to recognize Cailee or Anakin, but then, why would they? She had never been to the park before except as part of a royal procession.

Unfortunately, they had not returned to her rooms to dress for the outdoors before they had left the palace. Cailee tried to suppress a shiver at the seasonal chill in the air, despite the fact that heat was practically radiating from Anakin's body into hers, but of course he noticed anyway.

"Cailee! You should have said something!" he scolded her as he sat up from his hunched position and wound his arm around her shoulders to draw her into his side. "I run so hot these days that I hardly notice the cold anymore."

Cailee shivered again, this time not from the temperature at all, and tried not to think too much about the way her arm had come to rest across the small of his back when he'd sat up. She wrapped it more comfortably around him and tried to keep her fingers still rather than exploring the hard planes of his side.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked, as much to distract herself from the feeling of being pressed against his body as out of real worry (although she was worried about him).

"Yeah," he replied. "I'll be fine. I just don't think it's hit me yet that I'm free."

"It's been less than an hour, Anakin," Cailee reminded him.

He laughed. "I guess I just thought I'd feel different. You know, other than the blind panic."

Neither of them spoke again immediately. Anakin leaned back and tilted his face up to bask in the meager sunlight that managed to make its way through the clouds and the trees to kiss his skin. Cailee leaned further into him to bask in the feeling of his warm body against hers and his strong arm holding her.

After a while, her curiosity got the better of her, and she decided that there couldn't be any harm in asking what she really wanted to know. At worst, he'd say he didn't want to talk about it and she would accept that.

"Anakin?"

He hummed in acknowledgement but didn't make a move to look at her.

Cailee swallowed nervously and, before she could change her mind, asked all in one breath, "What did the Jedi mean about the dark side?"

Although it seemed for several seconds that he wasn't going to answer her, eventually, painfully, he said through gritted teeth, "There are different ways to use the Force. Using the light side means letting go of your passions and your individual desires to give yourself over to the will of the Force. Using the dark side means channeling your emotions and your passions into the Force to twist it to your desires."

Cailee turned that over in her mind for a minute or two, but it still didn't make much sense.

"I don't understand."

"What's not to understand?" he asked as he finally cracked his eyes opened and peered down at her.

"Well, I get the difference," she assured him and shrugged a little beneath his arm. "I just don't get why using the dark side would make you dangerous or likely to hurt me."

"Oh, well…" he began, clearly uncomfortable, "using the dark side can give you a lot of power, but it's addictive. Probably because it gives you so much power so easily, but mostly because it takes more and more rage and hatred to fuel it, people who use the dark side of the Force get lost in it. And once you fall to the dark side, you can't come back."

Cailee tilted her face up to stare at him, befuddled. "But you said you used the dark side."

"Er—yeah."

"And it doesn't seem like you got lost anywhere."

"I wasn't doing it on purpose," he explained. "I didn't even realize I had until you said my eyes were yellow—that's a sign of using the dark side."

"That doesn't make any sense!" she cried, unable to stop herself. "Surely you're more likely to lose yourself if you don't even realize what you're doing than if you're doing it deliberately."

A muscle in Anakin's jaw twitched. "Apparently not."

"Why doesn't it work the same way in reverse?" pressed Cailee, unable to let it go, even though she knew that she should. "You know, if using the dark side makes you get lost in your rage, why doesn't using the light side make you get lost in your happiness or, or… whatever?"

He finally cracked a smile, although it didn't reach his troubled eyes. "You misunderstand. The light side isn't fueled by emotion. 'There is no emotion, there is peace…. There is no passion, there is serenity'. Jedi are taught to release their emotions into the Force."

Cailee genuinely could not remember ever having been so confused by something.

"Release them? What does that mean?"

Anakin let out a long, heartfelt sigh. "Obviously I'm not the best person to explain it, Cailee. I was never a very good Jedi. I've always had trouble releasing my emotions into the Force. Not to mention the other ways I failed."

"But what you're saying is that the Jedi teach children to essentially ignore their emotions, to avoid the risk that they won't be able to stop if they use the Force out of emotion."

"It's more complicated than that," insisted the former Jedi, though he didn't seem particularly convinced of it himself. "But, essentially, yes."

Cailee wanted to pursue the argument further. She longed to point out that it was no fucking wonder that most Jedi apparently went insane if they used the dark side, if they had never learned how to experience and regulate their emotions like most people did growing up. It was infuriating that Anakin had evidently been brainwashed into believing that he was wrong to use his emotions to fuel his power, or even to hold onto his feelings at all, even though he had already proven the Jedi wrong by using the dark side and almost immediately coming back from it. If his yellow eyes were the measure of whether he was using the dark side, then Cailee could say for a fact that he had only used it for a few minutes, first during the confrontation on the sidewalk and then later in the hangar.

And even though he had been furious at her specifically, he hadn't hurt her. If anything, he had nearly panicked at the idea that he might have hurt her. The yellow had drained out of his eyes just as quickly as the blood had drained from his face when she had started crying.

But Anakin had been growing increasingly annoyed with every question, and Cailee knew it. He had been done with the conversation several questions back. And, if he was staying, then she would have plenty of time to work on him later.

Once she had fished around in her mind for another topic of conversation, she settled on inquiring, "Didn't you say that only a Force-sensitive techno wizard can access your ship?"

A slow smile spread across his face, whether at her change of subject or the question itself, or both, she couldn't immediately tell.

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Are either of those two Jedi techno wizards?"

"No. No, they aren't."

Cailee's delighted laughter briefly drew the attention of the people nearest them, but fortunately nobody seemed to recognize them as anyone other than an attractive couple canoodling on a park bench.

She bumped her shoulder playfully into his chest. "And I don't suppose you plan to put the ship back to rights when you retrieve your droid."

Anakin's responding grin was fully joyful but also fully malicious.

"No. No, I don't."


By the time they got back to the palace, Anakin was seriously questioning his decision to get Artoo off Windu's piece of shit ship. In fact, he was almost ready to start rethinking his entire attachment to the droid in general.

Artoo had been less than impressed when Anakin had explained that he had left the Jedi Order, most particularly because he was upset about Anakin no longer being in charge of the 501st. The droid had formed relationships with some of the men just like Anakin had. He had talked nonstop about it until about the time that they had left the shipyard, at which point he had started a running commentary on how much he hated the rain and the crowded sidewalks and the hills and Arkanis in general. He had only paused long enough to add a few complaints and accusations about Anakin's relationship with Cailee, after Cailee had plastered herself to his side once they had started walking through the crowds.

Just before they rounded the last corner before they reached the private entrance to the palace used by the family and senior staff, Anakin stopped walking and turned an irritated look on his friend.

"Artoo, buddy, I understand that you're upset, but I really can't take much more of listening to you complain."

The droid hissed at him.

Anakin sighed, his chest feeling at once too heavy and too small. "Do you want to go back to Padmé?"

Artoo deployed his electro-shock prod, but Anakin took a step out of his range, pulling Cailee with him, just in case.

"Okay, okay!" exclaimed Anakin, raising his free palm in the universal sign of surrender. "I don't want you to go, but I don't want you to stay if it will make you miserable."

After a moment, Artoo asked, "What will we do?"

"For now, we're going to stay here and figure out who's trying to assassinate the princess. After that… Well, I don't know. But we'll figure it out. Surely somebody has a use for a former Jedi and general. And I always have a place for you, buddy."

Cailee squeezed his elbow where she had her hand looped through it. "I already told you that you'll always have a place here. If you don't want a position in the palace or as my private guard forever, then we can figure out something else. I know there are some ongoing projects to develop new flight technology, and you seem to have an interest in that sort of thing."

Anakin wasn't sure whether he could ever be happy knowing that there was still a war going on and he was not fighting in it. That his men were fighting in it but he wasn't. Other than a few exceptions, like Plo Koon, most Jedi didn't seem to care about the clones like Anakin did, or even to see them as real people rather than cannon fodder. He couldn't stand the idea that his men were going to be put under the command of someone who wouldn't treat them right—at best they would be joined with Obi-Wan's legion, but even Obi-Wan didn't view the clones the same way Anakin did.

Almost as soon as the trio entered the palace, they were met by a harried looking aide who had apparently been waiting for them. Anakin could feel the princess's anxiety as they made their way to the empress's office for the second time that day, and it was almost enough to drown out Artoo's comments about the décor and the number of stairs.

"What could she want?" mused Cailee, keeping her voice low so she wouldn't be overheard by the guards lining the corridor. "Surely the Jedi aren't still here?"

"They're still on the planet, but not in the palace. They'll wait to catch me alone."

Cailee shot him an alarmed look. "Will they really?"

Anakin brought up his free hand to rub the back of his neck, trying unsuccessfully to relieve some of his tension. "Don't worry, princess. They're unlikely to try anything in public or if you're there to witness it."

He didn't need to be able to feel her skepticism to know that she was not fully convinced, but by then they had reached their destination, and she didn't have a chance to say anything else.

Empress Elissa did not look particularly pleased to see them, even though she'd been the one to summon them. She was not behind her desk but rather was sitting primly on the small, pink velvet settee that had been shoved haphazardly into the furthest corner of the room. Her feet, clad in sensible low-heeled pumps, were crossed at the ankle and barely touched the floor. She would have looked like a child playing dress up, if she hadn't been nearing eighty and hadn't had an expression on her face that would have made most people wither.

The empress folded the newspaper she had been reading (an actual, flimsi newspaper, of all things!) and set it on the cushion next to her.

"Anakin Skywalker," she pronounced every syllable of his name in a way that made him feel like he'd never heard anyone say it before, "it seems that there is no end to the trouble you will cause me."

Cailee stepped in front of him as if to shield him from the tiny old woman. "Grandmother, surely you don't bla—"

"Quiet, girl. The last thing the man needs is your protection."

Anakin could think of several things he needed even less than Cailee's protection—a hole in the head, for example—but it did not seem like an appropriate time to make a joke. Cailee, for her part, snapped her mouth closed as if her grandmother had physically shut it for her.

The empress folded her hands over her knee. "Now, Skywalker, do you know who called my office today and demanded that I postpone meeting my governors in order to talk with him?"

"Uh—No. But if you did it then it must've been someone important," Anakin assessed neutrally.

If he didn't know better, he would have thought that a glimmer of amusement flashed through the woman's mind. Nothing of the sort showed on her face.

"Indeed. The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic is an important person."

"Chancellor Palpatine called you?"

Empress Elissa dipped her chin in acknowledgment. "He did, yes. He said that you must have neglected to give him your new commlink information, and he was hoping I could put him in touch with you without him having to resort to going through official channels. I was not aware that anyone in the galaxy is close enough to the chancellor to speak with him outside of official channels."

"The chancellor and I have been friends since I was a child," he told her as he rubbed the back of his neck again.

"Yet he does not have your commlink."

Anakin cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I destroyed my old communicator the day before I left Coruscant, and I left in such a hurry that I didn't have time to give out the new number to anyone."

"Well, we may as well call him back now. I admit I am curious to know what he has to say to you. I imagine that he has heard about you leaving the Jedi Order."

Even though it had only been a few hours, Anakin figured she was right. Even if Obi-Wan may have wanted to delay telling the Council so that he could try to get Anakin to change his mind, Windu would have called them immediately. And they would have informed the chancellor as soon as possible so that they could figure out what to do with the ships, men, and equipment under Anakin's command.

It turned out that the empress had a fully modern communications room right next door, which looked nothing like the cramped, mismatched office to which it was attached.

"Ah, Empress Elissa! How lovely to see you twice in one day," the chancellor said almost as soon as his full-length hologram had appeared in the center of the table. "And Anakin, my dear boy! It has been far too long since we last spoke."

"I apologize, Chancellor," Anakin told him sincerely. "I left Coruscant in such a hurry, and things have been so crazy here…"

Palpatine offered his usual kind smile, which went a long way towards making Anakin relax. "Yes, so I hear. Master Yoda called to give me Master Windu's report. I must say that I was surprised to hear the news. Whenever we have spoken before about you leaving the Jedi, you have always seemed so determined to see things through."

Anakin suppressed the urge to shrug, which he knew the chancellor didn't like.

"This time it didn't seem like I had any reason to stay," he explained as matter-of-factly as he could manage. "I only stayed as long as I did because of my position in the war, but this time I knew that the Council would remove me from my command even if I stayed."

"My boy, you know that I have often disagreed with the Council, but I have trouble believing that even they could be so short-sighted." The Chancellor tutted disapprovingly and began pacing, his hands held behind his back. "You are the most effective general we have, and, under your leadership, the 501st is our most effective legion by far. Not to mention your personal achievements on the battlefield."

Even though he very much did not want to do so in front of Empress Elissa and the princess, Anakin could feel himself blush at the praise. He had to make a concerted effort not to duck his head in embarrassment. Cailee found his hand under the table and clasped it for a few brief moments, just until he glanced over to see her encouraging smile, before she let go. He dared not look at the empress.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and managed to get out, "Thank you, Chancellor Palpatine. I think you may be a little biased in my favor, though."

"Nonsense!" cried the chancellor. "As you know, I have been following your career since you were a child, and I have been just as impressed as I suspected I would be." He turned to the empress. "Did you know that Anakin single-handedly destroyed a droid control ship and ended the invasion of Naboo, my home planet, when he was only nine years old?"

Empress Elissa managed to sound singularly unimpressed even as she said, "Did he, indeed? We have been most impressed by his efforts here."

Palpatine turned to face the camera and clasped his hands in front of him, his flowing sleeves making even that simple gesture seem grand.

"I'm afraid that is why I wanted to speak to you both—I simply cannot allow Anakin to step down from command."

Anakin felt his jaw drop, but he couldn't seem to get any words out.

Cailee did not have any such problem, even though she had not been included in the conversation up to that point. "Chancellor Palpatine, as I explained to the two Jedi who were here earlier today, my life depends on Anakin's protection."

"Yes, of course, my dear," replied the chancellor. If he was irritated by her interjection, he did not show it. "If Anakin feels that there is no adequate substitute for his protection, then he may agree to bring you along, at least until other arrangements can be made. It would be unusual, of course, but the Integrity and its guest list would be his to command."

At that, Empress Elissa sat up even straighter in her chair, if that were possible. "You cannot be suggesting that I allow my granddaughter to leave home and enter a warzone?"

The chancellor's expression turned serious, and suddenly he did not sound at all grandfatherly or jovial.

"Your Majesty, the decision is, of course, yours. But I'm afraid that I need Anakin to return to the front lines immediately. The lives he can save as a general in the Grand Army of the Republic far outweigh the life of one girl from a system outside the purview of the Republic, even a princess. I feel that my suggestion is quite generous. I offered it because I do value the relationship between the Republic and the Regency Worlds, and the Jedi's poor treatment of Anakin has put us all in a bind."

The empress looked like she had bitten into a lemon.

This time, Anakin reached under the table for Cailee's hand, which she grasped so tightly that he was glad it was his prosthetic and not his real fingers.

"I… Chancellor…" he tried to articulate his thoughts. "Sir, to be clear, are you saying that you want me to join the army?"

Palpatine's smile returned in full force when he turned to face Anakin. "Yes, that is exactly what I want. You will be given the rank of general, and you will be given command of the Integrity and the 501st Legion. It will be like nothing has changed, save that you will answer directly to me and no one else."

Artoo beeped and whirred from behind him, pressing him to accept the offer immediately and assuring him that he was an idiot if he didn't. Anakin ignored him.

"But… I, I don't know what to say. The Jedi…" Anakin trailed off, unsure of how to encompass all of his thoughts into mere words.

The chancellor waved away his concerns. "The Jedi are not always effective or willing to do what we both know needs to be done to win this war. You and I have discussed this many times before."

"Yes… that's true," Anakin had to acknowledge.

"When I heard that you had left the Jedi Order, my first thought (other than concern for your well-being, of course) was that you have given me the perfect opportunity to establish a special operations unit under my sole authority, to do those things that the Council is unable or unwilling to do. I have thought about this many times over the years, yet there was never anybody I could trust in such a critical role." Chancellor Palpatine's stare seemed to bore into Anakin's very soul, even through the hololink. "But you, Anakin, my dear boy, are perfect! You already know me, and this war and all the players in it, and you already have men who would follow you to the ends of the galaxy and back."

It did sound perfect. Whether or not the chancellor's high praise of him was true, Anakin didn't think he could turn down an offer to be with his men again. To rejoin the war and be able to make a real difference, one even greater than he'd been able to make when he had been held back by the constraints placed on him by the Council.

The only thing preventing him from immediately accepting was the empress's decision. He couldn't imagine leaving Cailee to die. He turned to face the empress, ready to plead his case, but it was unnecessary.

"You will keep her safe?" she demanded, suddenly looking every bit of her age.

Anakin nodded. "I swear I will. In fact, she will be a good deal safer on my ship than she is here. Nobody there will be aiming to kill her specifically, and I will have much more control over who has access."

"And it will only be temporary, of course," interjected Chancellor Palpatine. "Just until the investigation on Arkanis unearths the culprits."

"Right," agreed Anakin. "I will leave my apprentice here to continue investigating."

He didn't actually know whether Ahsoka would agree to stay, but he would certainly ask her. Right after he explained to her about everything that had happened that day while she'd been gone. That was going to be fun.

"What do you think?" the empress asked her granddaughter, who had been uncharacteristically silent since her earlier outburst, though she had been doing her best to short-circuit Anakin's mechanical fingers with the sheer strength of her grip.

Cailee spent what seemed like a long time studying Anakin's face as if it held the answers for her, until she finally seemed to see what she needed and turned to give her answer to the empress.

"I would like to go."

"Excellent!" declared the chancellor before anybody else could react. "Anakin, the Integrity's repairs are scheduled for completion in a few days. If you leave now, you will be here in time to inspect her yourself. We can discuss the details of your new position while you're here."


Padmé had once been enraptured by the Coruscanti skyline visible from nearly every room in her apartment. She had positioned the furniture in her living room so that the windows were in sight of nearly every seat, and she had often spent evenings there or on the balcony enjoying the view while she reviewed proposed legislation or answered her correspondence. When Anakin had started spending the night, she had even made sure to claim the side of the bed nearest the windows as her own.

After nearly two weeks of being confined to her apartment (and on full bed rest for one of those), she had long since grown sick of the view. But it was deeper than that. She could hardly remember now what it had felt like to be that girl who was so full of optimism and joy and plans for the future.

Her burns would heal. Many of them already had. The more serious ones still required a few more treatments, but her skin would end up as unblemished as it had ever been. Her arm was well on the way to a full recovery, although her hand was less certain. The surgeon had repaired the damage to the best of his ability, but she would have to undergo months of physical therapy and perhaps another surgery or two to graft new nerves into the area. The doctors had brought up the option of amputating the hand and replacing it with a prosthetic, which would restore full functionality almost immediately without the pain of physical therapy, but she had declined.

Her baby was gone. The clone medic had been able to collect some of the tissue and run a genetic test, at her request—it had been a boy. A son.

Padmé wasn't sure, now, whether it was better or worse to know.

Anakin didn't know. He was gone, too, driven away by Padmé herself. She blamed him, sometimes, for leaving so easily. For not trying harder. He loved her, didn't he? So why didn't he love her enough to fight for her?

That was unfair, and she knew it, when she wasn't allowing herself to wallow in her bitterness.

She had said awful things to him. Maybe they were true, but even if they were, she had not expressed them in the best way possible. She had been too caught up at the time in her fear and disappointment to consider how poorly her husband would take what she had said, particularly that he made her feel unsafe. She could not blame him for fleeing the planet to get as far away from her as possible. She especially could not blame him because, knowing Ani as well as she did, she could well imagine that a large part of his decision to go was because he had thought it would make things easier for her.

That didn't make it any easier to see him with another woman.

Padmé had set up a news alert for Anakin's name years ago. It had gone off twice since they'd been separated. The first time was because of the holovid showing him carrying the crown princess of the Regency Worlds out of a burning building and subsequently fighting with a group of palace guards in the street. Then, a few hours ago, it had gone off again, only this time it was a tabloid story out of a local Arkanis gossip rag about whether he was dating the same princess.

There were a series of images showing them embracing on a park bench, at first with the girl's arm around Anakin, and then with his arm around her shoulders as she tucked into his side. In one picture, Anakin had his head tilted backwards and his eyes closed, and the princess was gazing up at his face as if she'd never need to look at anything else ever again. (Padmé could hardly fault her for that.) In another, the princess was laughing heartily, and Anakin was watching her with a pleased grin spread across his face.

There were no videos, thank the maker. Padmé didn't think she could handle a video.

It was impossible for her to think that Anakin could love her as deeply as he did—she knew he did!—and move on so quickly with somebody else. It had to be a misunderstanding. But the pictures were hard to dispute.

She had thought that as soon as Anakin returned to Coruscant, they would be able to work it out. That she would be able to apologize to him, and he would accept. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Now, she wasn't so certain.

The downward spiral of her thoughts was interrupted by her guard announcing the entrance of Chancellor Palpatine. Before she could tell the guard to send him away, to tell him that she was not up for visitors, the man was gliding gracefully into the room as if he owned the place.

"My dear Senator Amidala," he greeted and leaned forward to kiss her cheek, "I must say that you look well on the way to recovery. I am so pleased to see it."

Padmé was in her dressing gown, and she hadn't brushed or washed her hair in half a week. Or her face for that matter. She had not been expecting visitors. Certainly not the Supreme Chancellor, of all people. She felt acutely embarrassed at his seeing her in such a state, but she managed to force a polite smile onto her face.

"Thank you, Chancellor. You are too kind."

"Not at all, my dear!" he denied, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. "You must be wondering why I have come over unannounced, so I will tell you immediately: I just spoke with Anakin, and he has accepted my invitation to become a general in the Grand Army of the Republic."

There were any number of reasons why that announcement made no sense to Padmé, not least of which was why Palpatine thought that she would want to know. Surely Anakin hadn't told the chancellor about their marriage? No, he would have mentioned it to her if he had. And putting aside why Palpatine was telling her this in the first place, the content of his message made even less sense the more she thought about it.

After a too-long silence, when the chancellor's happy, expectant expression had started to crack, she finally managed to say, "I don't understand. Anakin is already a general in the army."

Palpatine leaned forward to search her expression.

"Oh! Well! I am sorry, Padmé, if I have overstepped," he apologized, sounding sincere. "I just assumed that Anakin had already told you."

"Told me what?"

"Why, I shouldn't say—I should allow him to tell you himself, since he no doubt did it for your benefit—but I feel that I've already said too much."

Padmé's heart beat a staccato pattern against her breastbone. "Chancellor, please!"

He wrung his hands in his lap, as if he were struggling with the decision whether to tell her, but, ultimately, he said, "Oh, alright, but you must tell Anakin not to be too angry with me if he was hoping to surprise you…. He left the Jedi Order."

Padme stared at him.

The chancellor frowned in seeming concern. "My dear, are you alright? I thought you would be pleased."

"Pleased?" she echoed, unable to find any other words.

Could it be? Had he really done it for her? Had he thought that they could make their relationship work if he could solve some of her greatest complaints about having to conduct themselves in secret? But then, if he had done it for her, why hadn't he come to tell her himself, or at last commed her? Why had he been snuggling with another woman instead of telling his wife about him leaving the Jedi Order?

"Well, yes," replied Chancellor Palpatine, his frown deepening. "I know that neither of you has ever told me, and I understand why not, but I flatter myself that I know you both rather well. I have known about your relationship for some time. I was quite pleased when the Jedi Council informed me that he had left the Order, because I thought that the two of you had finally decided to seize the day, as they say."

"No," Padmé heard herself tell him from far away, as if she were under water. "Anakin and I have been separated for several weeks."

The chancellor's eyes widened in genuine shock, which she realized was perhaps the first real emotion she had ever seen from him.


Author's Note: I realize that Anakin and Cailee's discussion of the light side versus the dark side of the Force and how the Force works in general isn't fully nuanced or accurate or deep. But consider the source; Anakin Skywalker is not exactly a model Jedi who understands what the Jedi mean by releasing your emotions or finding peace. He wasn't capable of doing what the Jedi taught about releasing his emotions (which is why the Jedi generally only take young children who are essentially blank slates), but he also wasn't able to experience his emotions normally and learn to work through them or self-regulate in the way that normal people learn growing up.

Has everyone seen episode 5 of Ahsoka? Chef's kiss. Really. Fully balanced Anakin is just beautiful.