The Council was stunned, motionless, the door thoroughly broken and sealed shut. They had just witnessed the birth of a new Sith, in the very heart of the Temple, right in front of the Chamber of the High Council, in a twisted caricature of the ceremony surrounding the knighting of a Padawan, even down to the use of the Master's lightsaber to remove her padawan braid. It was sickening, it was terrifying, and it was no small part mildly intriguing for the more anthropologically inclined in the room. Within minutes, however, they began to process both what had just happened as well as their predicament, particularly after Master Yoda attempted to open the door and it groaned and beeped in response, refusing to budge. Obi-Wan immediately went to calling Anakin to see if he could come and fix the control panel, Plo Koon was considering just cutting it open and they would have to replace it later. Ki-Adi was pacing back and forth, anger and frustration pouring from him like a spigot as he tried to get it under control.

Master Shaak Ti sat in her chair, arms crossed, and bit back a sardonic laugh, "Would now be a good time to say, 'I told you so?'"

"No, it would not," Windu retorted in a flat voice, stare boring into the sealed door as if he could force it to be fixed by sheer willpower alone. It wasn't working.

Gallia was fidgeting more than normal, her eyes darting back and forth between different people and the windows, her thumb tapping against her fingers one at a time. It had been hours since she last had a hit. Somebody was going to find the spice in her dormitory, she didn't know who it was, as far as she knew nobody else even had her passcode number, but it would be somebody. She should try to meditate. Everyone was looking at her, they were all thinking about how suspicious she was acting. What else could they possibly be thinking about? She was sweating. She started bouncing her leg, she needed to stop moving but she just couldn't. She needed that spice, and she needed it now. She swallowed, her mouth was dry, so terribly dry, she took a drink of the water she had brought with her, futilely hoping it would ease the discomfort.

Billaba sat in her seat, looking quite flushed. There was something about that level of barely contained rage and power that seemed almost exciting. Surely, she wasn't being tempted to follow in Kalifa's footsteps. She toyed with the collar of her Jedi robes for a few seconds, and decided should just put it out of her mind and move on, "Is anyone else really warm? I'm going to open a window."

"Please!" Gallia answered, perhaps just a hair too quickly and too sharply. Depa nodded and stood up, opening the one between their seats, allowing a cool breeze to enter the room, providing relief to them both.

A knock at the door, Skywalker's signature, "Masters? You still in there?"

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes, "No, Anakin. We've grown wings and flown away."

A pause. "I know you're being sarcastic, Obi-Wan, but it really wouldn't surprise me if Master Yoda actually could fly."

"Can you fix the door or not?!" Obi-Wan asked, exasperated.

"Why, I haven't even heard a 'please,' yet!" Skywalker replied in feigned shock. Oh, Anakin was enjoying this far too much.

Obi-Wan sighed for what felt like the ten thousandth time that day, "Anakin, can you please open the door for us."

"Thank you," he paused again. "How much of the door do you want left?"

"Preferably all of it." Windu answered, his patience being exceedingly tried today.

Anakin took a sharp inhale on the other side, "Yeah, this is gonna take a while. I hope you brought snacks. I'll ask Ahsoka to bring me my toolbox."

"Bring it with you, you did not?" Yoda inquired, his ears drooping in mild disappointment.

"From what Obi-Wan was saying I thought it was a software glitch that I could splice past and work out from there. Turns out the control panel's completely shot, and the security measures sealed the door," he muttered lower, probably to himself rather than the Grandmaster, "Kriffing hell, it looks like somebody took a grenade to the damn thing." The Masters inside heard metal groaning, he must be removing the wreckage that used to be the door's control panel to get behind it. "Hey, did the Chancellor come by earlier?"

"No?" Fisto answered questioningly, "Why?" he looked to the other Masters, "Was he supposed to come by today? Did I miss a memo again?" The other Councilors shook their heads in the negative.

Anakin hummed, "Sensed something earlier, felt pretty similar to being around him." He cried out after electrocuting himself.

"Are you alright?" Depa asked in concern.

Anakin let out a string of curses in Huttese, then, "Yeah, I'll live." He paused for a moment, "Ugh, this gonna take hours."

Piell crossed his arms and muttered, "The mechanical wizard of the Order, everyone." If Anakin heard that, he said nothing as he went back to working.

A wave of furious darkness crashed against the walls of the Council Chamber, Skywalker scrambled to his feet, he must have been sitting down, "What the hell are you doing he-"

"Shut up, 'tis not about thou," Flayseno ordered, before unleashing his wrath against the door, causing it to crumple and be blasted off its hinges, only stopping when Yoda created a wall with the Force to keep the heavy, durasteel ball from crushing him, "Why dost she not know what ice cream is?!"

Anakin muttered, "Well, I guess the door's fixed."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It was an eventful day for Flayseno and his new daughter/apprentice. Between discovering Kalifa did not know how to read or write (which made the flimsiwork that much more enjoyable), running around half of Coruscant trying to buy her, and himself, new clothes, renting another room in the hotel next to his own (kriff, he was going to need to find a more permanent arrangement soon), finding doctors and pediatricians to get Kalifa checked for any hazards she picked up on Wasskah (the doctors he managed to take her to in the walk-in clinic were shocked she was still alive she had so many problems, chief amongst them being worms), and researching the best ways for himself to quit drinking (he had a child to care for now, after all), the Sith Lord was starting to realize he may have acted a bit brash. He looked up from his datapad to Kalifa sitting on the bed in the hotel room, legs swinging as she was practicing her writing, and his heart melted. Brash or not, it was beyond necessity. His heart and soul felt little different to when Elara had told him she was pregnant.

The very same crashing, conflicting waves of hope, fear, anxiety, joy, love, worry, swirled within his chest and stomach. More than anything else he had wanted to be a father, more than anything else the very idea terrified him. He saw the corners of her lips turn up in a very small semblance of a smile as she traced the letters on the datapad with the stylus. He swallowed, thinking of every failure with Elara and their child, through his own fault or not, through his own control or not. "I promise, I shalt die before anything should happen unto thee," he thought, "I swear by Elara. I shalt not commit the same mistakes of the past." He was under no illusions that there would not be new mistakes made, but he would do everything in his power to keep his new daughter safe and protected, especially from the machinations of the Jedi. An alarm went off, "Kalifa?"

She looked up, "Yes, Master?"

"It's time for your medication."

She made a face to show her displeasure with the pills.

"I know," he could sympathize. The tablets were massive, but they were necessary. "It's only a few more days, then you should be parasite free." He took the knife his wife had gifted him on their wedding day and smiled at the memories, then used it to slice the pill into a more manageable size for her, handing her the halves and a cup of water. She was so small, so fragile. One of the doctors he had made an appointment for was a nutritionist to get her to a healthy weight, but her growth would probably be permanently stunted. Flayseno would never again be able to look at a Trandoshan without feeling an intense urge to perpetrate a genocide.

"Art thou making progress?"

She smiled and nodded, "I have five letters down, and I know the rest of the sounds and names." She looked down in embarrassment, "But, remembering the rest is… really hard."

"You shall get it eventually. There is no rush."

"I know but," she sighed and flopped onto the mattress, "I'm so far behind everyone else!"

"Everyone else had not spent a decade being hunted by monsters from the age of four," he reassured her. "No one can master literacy in a day in any tongue."

"And there are some I know the shape of, but I can't remember which letter they are, or which sound they make, and, it's just, ugh!" She grabbed a pillow and put it over her face, "I feel so stupid."

"It shall come with time and practice. It is by no means as easy as it looks." He came over and sat beside her, "Wilst thou look at me?"

She tossed the pillow back to the head of the bed.

"Hark, I shalt regale thee with the tale of Darth Regina." She sat up to listen to her master/father's story. "Darth Regina wast a Dark Lady of the Sith, a brilliant mind, a cunning tactician, and a scientist beyond compare. None were her equals in the realms of physics nor esoterica."

Kalifa was obviously confused, and Roto, remembering her lack of formal education, cleared his throat and opted to simplify, "She knew how to make things work, either through their nature or through the Force." That wasn't exactly right, but science was never his forte like military strategy. "She wast not always a prodigy. In fact, she had been a slave to the Hutts for her youth, and could nay even write her own name until she was of the age of four and thirty." He looked down to see her eyes sparkling in wonder, he reached down to pet her head, "And thou hast two decades longer to learn over her. Imagine then what wonders thou shall achieve." He continued, "It tooketh me years to master the Sith tongue, which I shall teach unto thou one day, but not for a while yet," he smiled and chortled down at her, "By far, the hardest part for me wast learning to read all over again." She laughed back.

A knock at the door broke their thoughts, and Roto summoned his lightsaber to his hand. "Stay," he ordered before going to the door. He sensed nothing, perhaps a droid had been sent. That could have meant any number of things. The door swished open at his command and he was greeted to the sight of… nothing. He peered down the halls to the left and the right. No one fleeing the scene, not another door being so much as jostled. He looked down to see a commlink and a note. Picking them up, he furrowed his brow as he read the note:

From an ally against the Jedi,

Call ONLY after 2230, not a second before.

-S

He hummed, placing the commlink and note in his pocket and set an alarm to remind himself to check on this so-called "ally" of his. For now, he needed to take care of other matters. Namely, finding a permanent home for himself and his new ward. Coruscant was far too dangerous for her, for now, and he was not exactly a fan of living in the Jedi Temple's front yard. He had made appointments with the first specialists he could find, but similar professionals could be found on most civilized worlds. He considered a return to Alderaan, to rebuild what had been stolen from him all those centuries ago, his descendants mostly seemed to live on Naboo, however if he fled from Coruscant then the Jedi may harass him even more due to paranoia that he was somehow plotting something. "No harm in looking into all three," he supposed, he certainly had the funds to have options. Another thing to be concerned about, if he was going to care about staying alive now, he should probably hire a financial advisor, or perhaps buy a droid to handle it; a droid would probably be far more trustworthy. One could always trust droids. He stood still and breathed for a moment; all of this thinking demanded he have a drink, but he just didn't have the time.

"Put away the pad, thou hast earned a break."

"Yes Master.

"Hither follow," he beckoned, "We shall get food and then begin lightsaber training on the morrow. Thou mayst borrow one of mine."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Anakin's comm flashed and buzzed again. For whatever reason, in the past few hours Padmé had been blowing up his commlink when he really, really couldn't be answering it in front of the Council. He hated to leave her messages unread and calls unanswered, he really did, but he had no choice at the moment until he was able to get Master Rancisis to stop breathing down his neck, in some instances literally. Why they couldn't just hire an actual, licensed contractor to fix or replace this kriffing door he didn't know, but Master Mundi had spun something about "budgetary restrictions" and "added expenditures need approval by the Senate in a time of war." He wasn't going to bother arguing with the man in charge of the Jedi Order's coin purse. All that would do was irritate him even more.

"Yeah," he groaned, "it's shot. You're going to need to get Mundi to order an entire new computer system on top of the new door blades."

The elder, serpentine Jedi stroked his fur, "Any ideas on how much that will cost?"

"I don't know!" Skywalker cried out in exasperation. Was this what Obi-Wan and Master Windu felt like any time he had to deal with him? He might need to buy those men a lovely steak dinner with an expensive wine as an apology. "The company that made the old one got bought out centuries ago! I don't even know if they make the same measurements without it being a special order! And Force knows how long that'll take to come in, if it even does!"

Rancisis hummed in acknowledgement and Anakin hoped beyond hope he had gotten the old man to finally understand something. "And when it does arrive, could you install it?"

How the Thisspiasian Master was such a brilliant strategist and master tactician, an endless font of wisdom for the Order for centuries, and yet couldn't understand such a basic concept as "hire somebody else to fix your door, I have more important shit to deal with," was beyond his comprehension. Anakin squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, "I guess. It depends on where I am in the galaxy at the moment, considering there is a war."

"Oh, it need not be the same day. Just whenever you can."

At no point in Anakin Skywalker's life had he so seriously considered cutting someone's head off. Really, Obi-Wan should have been there to witness Anakin's supreme display of patience. "I'll leave you to tell Master Mundi to figure out the sourcing for the new door." Most of the Masters had left shortly after the Sith Lord's apparently second screaming match with them in under an hour, none admitted it was due to fear of a third. Among the ones who definitely were not fleeing, they just had other things to do, were Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ki-Adi Mundi. Anakin decided now was the best time to prevent Oppo's sudden disappearance, and followed suit, evacuating from the Council tower before the insufferable snake came up with more mindless drivel to berate him with or assign more pointless chores that he could do himself or at the very least get somebody else to do. Of course, Master Rancisis didn't even bother offering a "Thank you," but that was just another annoyance to just ignore.

Upon arriving in the dormitory, he looked over at the small couch and saw the snippy young Togruta he shared the dorm with, curled up in a blanket, caf cup in hand, reading something on a datapad. He smiled. "Hey Snips."

"Anakin!" she beamed, "What happened with the Council? Do you know if Kalifa's alright?"

"Kalifa was the girl, right?"

She rolled her eyes, still holding a half-smile, "Yes, Kalifa was the girl."

"I don't know, but apparently the Council managed to piss off that Sith Luminara and Barriss brought here. I wasn't there for the first time he came up-"

"Wait, he went to the Council Chambers?! And he went up there more than once?!"

"And wrecked the door. When I went up there, they had apparently gotten locked in because he crushed the control panel, and the second time he just blew the door off its hinges and started screaming about ice cream and how somebody didn't know what it was."

"Huh, so that's what you were doing."

"Yes, and I have a newfound respect for Master Windu."

Ahsoka's eyes went wide, and she shed her blanket cocoon, standing in front of him, "Master, I need you to smile for me. Now."

"Okay?" he smiled as she demanded.

"Hold your arms out like this," she ordered, demonstrating by holding both arms out in front of her.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to see if you're having a stroke."

"I'm not having a stroke."

"Say 'koja nut butter.'"

"Koja nut butter," he repeated, holding his arms out in front of him, to demonstrate he was not, in fact, suffering a stroke, then threw his hands to the sides, "Happy?"

"Oh Force, it must be the End of Days," she continued, in feigned terror. "Let's see, I know Riyo's a doomsday prepper, Lux has guerilla experience," she listed, "Rex is a decent hunter, Kix and Barriss for medical issues. Yeah, we could probably run off to her in-case-of-revolution bunker and wait it out. You're not welcome though, Mr. Herald of the Apocalypse."

Anakin was less than amused. His commlink buzzed again. "Hold on, Padmé been blowing my commlink up. She's definitely going to be yelling at me. Mind if I go take this in my quarters?"

Ahsoka's face quickly distorted between realization, horror, disgust, and traumatized flashbacks, "Sure, go for it."

"Odd reaction," he thought, but he needed to handle whatever his Angel needed and ducked into his bedchamber. He could swear he heard Ahsoka dry heave as he shut the door behind him. He could have sworn the healers told him that Togruta didn't have a gag reflex when he first took her on as a Padawan, so they warned him she was especially prone to choking and being poisoned. He would have to look back into it later, as he answered the comm.

As to be expected, Padmé was not happy. "Before you say anything," he defended himself, "I know I should have answered earlier, and I wanted to, but I was in front of the Council. Although you'll be happy to know I prevented a murder."

"By leaving?" she asked.

"By leaving," he confirmed with a nod.

She normally would have laughed. Instead, she just huffed, "Anakin. I met with the Sith I'm evidently related to."

His eyes went wide, "What did he do to you?!" he shouted. If that Sith terrorized the Jedi Council then ran off to the Senate, and the Council not only sat back and did nothing but forced him to fix their force-damned door-

"He asked for my help regarding adoption flimsiwork."

"What?" he immediately snapped out of his thought on how he was going to make Rancisis's scaled skin into wallets.

"Ani," she began, her eyes hardening again. Force, she was beautiful when she was angry, although he generally preferred it to not be directed at him. "I am going to ask you this once. Why the kriff would the Jedi leave a traumatized, Jedi orphan, who just spent a decade being hunted down by savages, who doesn't even know how to read, and has G-d knows how many parasites and diseases, alone to die on the streets of Coruscant."

Anakin blinked once, twice, thrice. "Angel," he replied in as calming a manner as he could muster, "I swear, I have no idea what you are talking about.

"Does the name 'Kalifa' sound familiar?"

He nodded, "Yeah, Ahsoka was just asking about her. She was one of the younglings that came back to the Temple with her."

Padmé closed her eyes and breathed, silently counting to calm down, "I remember you messaging me that she was back, and that you were going to give me details later. I didn't realize it was that bad."

"Wait, where does the Sith, adoption flimsis?"

"I'm getting to that," she snipped, "After all of that, the Jedi just left this adorable little girl to fend for herself, again when they failed to keep her safe the first time?! I can't believe this!"

Anakin remembered back nearly twelve years ago.

"Your thoughts dwell on your mother," Master Mundi observed.

"I miss her," Anakin replied.

"Afraid to lose her, I think, hmm?" Yoda had continued.

"What has that got to do with anything?" Anakin had asked.

"Everything," Yoda declared, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate… leads to suffering." He paused and looked the boy over. "I sense much fear in you."

Later that evening, the Council had summoned them back to the Council Chambers. Qui-Gon stood behind the young boy, just freed from slavery a few days prior, with nowhere else to go. Ki-Adi Mundi commented, "The Force is strong with him."

"He is to be trained then?" he heard Qui-Gon's voice ask from behind him, hands on his shoulders.

Windu looked all three, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon, "No."

"No?"

"He is too old," Windu had stated bluntly, as if that explained everything.

"He is the Chosen One, you must see it!"

Yoda closed his eyes, peering into the Force, "Clouded this boy's future is."

Over a decade later, Anakin set his jaw at the bitter memory. "I can believe it." After all, they had done the same thing to him, or at least tried to. Qui-Gon's death was probably the only thing that made them change their minds, as much as the thought of that sickened him.

"So, from what they were saying, the Jedi Guards literally picked her up and threw her out of the Temple. He found her, then ran up to the Council Chambers to give them a piece of his mind. I can't even say I blame him, I'm half-tempted to do the same thing!"

"That explains the ice cream tangent."

"What?"

He waved it off, "Later." Then he remembered, "So, what about flimsi?"

"He decided to adopt the kid and now I have a new… I don't know how the generations work but he found out my name and said I was her niece now."

"I… I need to talk about so much with Obi-Wan later," he resigned himself, "So you drew up flimsiwork for him?"

"No, Anakin, I studied criminal law, you know this," she sighed. "I sent him over to Chuchi. She trained in family law. That's how I learned the poor baby was illiterate. I'm already looking into tutors for her."

"I was thinking there was a bit more overlap."

"When criminal and family law overlaps, something has gone horrifically wrong. Although it could be possible to press child endangerment charges on the Council members who voted to get rid of her."

"Wait, tutors?! Tell em you aren't still in contact with him!"

She narrowed her eyes, and placed her hands on her hips in defiance, "Well I am not going to leave a child to fend for herself, and he is hardly dangerous."

"He wrecked the Temple! TWICE! Once today and once at the head of an army! He's a warlord, and a Sith! He's extremely dangerous!"

"Ani, he just wants to do what's right."

"I don't want you to keep talking to him."

"Well then, you're going to have to tell him that. And who exactly do you think you are to order me about who I can and can't talk to?"

"I'M NOT-" he stopped to breathe, before he started shouting at her, that would not help matters at all, "I'm not ordering you to do anything. I'm simply trying to tell you that this is a very bad idea."

"That's funny, I don't recall you saying that breaking the Jedi Code, getting into a very ethically questionable relationship with someone who is technically your superior, and marrying me was a bad idea."

"That's different, Padmé, and you know it."

Padmé sighed, and changed the subject, "We'll discuss this later. How's Ahsoka holding up?"

"She seems fine, I only just got back to talk to her a bit since the Council wanted me to fix something your relative broke."

"How'd that go?"

"I have a newfound respect for Master Windu."

Padmé's eyes widened in horror. "Anakin, this is extremely important. I need you to hold out your arms like this-"

"I'M NOT HAVING A STROKE!" he screamed, feeling intensely guilty when she flinched at his outburst. "Sorry, I'm really sorry. Ahsoka did the same thing a second ago, and Master Rancisis in particular was very trying on my patience today." He chuckled, "It made me think of what Obi-Wan and Windu must go through with me. I should probably get them something as an apology."

Padmé chuckled and her lips formed a half-smile, "I have some nice, aged wine in my cabinet I'm never going to drink."

"That's what I was thinking… wait, now that I think about it, I don't know if Mace drinks or not."

"I'm sure you made him start," Padmé teased. Anakin laughed.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Kalifa had just gone to bed roughly an hour ago, and Roto stood in the doorframe connecting the two rooms as she was curled under the blankets in her new pajamas, her slow, steady breathing making the blankets gently rise and fall. Her old clothes were trashed, completely unsalvageable, and were left in the garbage for the hotel staff to dispose of when next they came. How long had it been since she even had the luxury of a blanket at night? He looked down to his watch, 2231. He looked back up to his daughter's sleeping form and, reasonably certain nothing would come to steal her away in the night, slowly closed the door and made his way to the table in his room. Placing the commlink on the table, he sent out a call which was quickly answered.

Projected from the comm was a hologram of a humanoid man in a familiar dark cloak. "Darth Flayseno, Lord of the Ancient Sith," the smooth, grandfatherly voice dripping with power greeted.

"I see thou knowest of me," the Sith replied, "yet thine own identity is hidden. Who art thou?"

From beneath the hood, the dry, cracked lips formed a smile. "You shall know me as Darth Sidious."