Over the next few weeks, Anakin undertook many assignments, special assignments at the personal behest of the Supreme Chancellor. He became even more famous and beloved working at Palpatine's side than he had been working under the Jedi at Obi-Wan's. He mopped up several rogue cells of Separatist resistance. An acklay ran amok in an underground plant on Ylesia, killing ten workers, and Palpatine sent him there. Several planets suffered natural disasters, and Palpatine sent him there. A terrorist situation occurred on Cato Nemoidia with twenty-two beings taken hostage, and Palpatine sent him there. Each assignment was bloodier than the last, each more taxing, each more difficult. Not that Anakin hadn't handled situations like this, and worse, before, but...
He arrived home from Nemoidia feeling strangely tired, drained. Afraid. Alone, in some way he had never felt. It was an awful mood that gripped him, and he didn't know what it was about.
Sereine heard of his imminent arrival before even Padmé, owing to where she worked. She came to Padmé's on the evening of his latest arrival home to find him sitting moodily at Padmé's kitchen table, turning a broken speeder transmission component over and over in his hands.
"Hi," she said quietly.
"Hi."
She pulled a chair out and sat. Waited.
Finis came in, alerted that she had arrived, and sought her attention with his eyes.
"Hi, darling," she said, with a meaningful look at Anakin. Finis pulled out a chair and sat.
"Remember when you used to ask me all those questions, about what I'd do if I wasn't a Jedi?"
"Yes."
"I think...I remember that when I was little, before I even thought about becoming a Jedi, I wanted to race pods. I think...if I had never been a Jedi, I'd have found some way to get away from Watto, and I'd have owned and raced my own pods. When I was six...that was what I wanted. I'm so far away from any of that now..."
Padmé came in, her baby daughter in her arms. "You two look serious," she said.
Anakin told her what he'd been withholding since the night she gave birth.
Padme's eyes went wide. "Anakin, how could you do this? How could you swear an oath to him? How could you willingly turn to the dark side!"
"I haven't 'turned to the dark side,' Padmé. I'm just enduring it," Anakin sulked. "I promised - and he did save you, Padmé, he did. The way you were hemorrhaging - would you even have lived for any other help to arrive? I don't think so."
"But..." His wife's eyes swam with tears. "But you did this - and you didn't even consult me! You never even asked - "
"How could I?" Anakin shouted. "I knew what you'd say! Padmé, you know what's going to happen. The Jedi are going to want Luke and Leia. They're going to - "
Padmé shook her head wordlessly, tears spilling down her cheeks.
"They're going to take them away from us. They're going to break up our family. Listen to me, Padmé."
"No, they won't," Padmé scoffed. "But Palpatine's going to take someone. He's going to take you!"
Anakin reached across the table to her. "I'm not going to let that happen - because of you. I love you too much for that."
Padmé shushed the baby, wiping away her own tears. Finis cleared his throat.
"Anakin," he said, "how are you, really? Do you think you are affected by the dark side?"
"Please!" Padmé spat. "I've been wondering what you were so down about. I thought I was supposed to have the postpartum depression."
"Anakin," prompted Finis, holding Anakin's gaze. "Be honest."
Anakin mopped his brow, considering. "I feel so...I don't know...isolated, from everything," he told them. "So...bleak. Afraid."
Padmé rocked her daughter in her arms. "Is it the dark side?" she asked.
"Partly. I think I know what Palpatine is trying to do...and it scares me."
His wife's eyes asked the question.
"I think...I think he's trying to make me into another Depa Billaba."
"What?" said Padmé.
Finis and Sereine told her the story of Master Windu's old padawan, who in the course of dealing with the atrocities of the war, was overcome by darkness, and even now floated in a bacta tank in the Healer's wing, lost in the dark side.
"But he doesn't want me to retreat. He wants me to ... to do what I did on Tatooine. To do what I did on the Invisible Hand. He's pushing me ..."
Sereine knew about the sand people by now. But no one ... no one but Palpatine knew about Dooku.
It would make a painful confession, a painful confession indeed.
"It seems so mild, for Palpatine," said Padme. "He beats you to your knees, and then he does this? After starting a war that killed millions."
Sereine turned to her intently. Anakin got the impression of a cat pouncing. "Padme," she said, gripping her hands. "You've been connected to his head, literally connected to his mind. I wondered if you remembered anything about it. Something about it might help us."
Padme shook her head, then she pulled her hands back and rubbed her forehead. "You know, Anakin asked me the same thing the night the twins were born and I couldn't even talk about it. What happened … it was so overwhelming I couldn't even process it. It was why I screamed at him when I woke up."
She stared down into her mug of tea. "I knew he saved me. I knew what happened, that all that warmth flowing into me and all that relief of pain, and that energy somehow, came from him. But I had all his thoughts and all his feelings at the same time and it was just so overwhelming, it was like it just … seared my brain. It was too much at one time, and my body felt better but my mind just burned, and I still knew all he'd done and he was too close to me."
She raised hollow eyes to Anakin, and asked him the question. "Do you know what I mean? He was too close to me."
Anakin nodded. "Sort of. I mean, it's never happened to me, but you and I—"
Padme leaned toward him intently. "It was different than that." She glanced around the table to take in Sereine and Finis and tried to explain, gesturing with her hands. "Anakin and I are telepathic sometimes." She looked at him. "And I'll feel a feeling from you, or I'll catch some words. As if you're there, talking in my ear."
Anakin nodded. "And I get that from her, too, she knows I do." He glanced around, explaining it to the table.
"But that day, when Luke and Leia were born, it was—it was not like that. It was like this flickering picture book, bangbangbangbangbang!" She held her hands up, opening and closing her fingers like firecrackers.
"And I had all these understandings with each picture all at once. It was everything he was thinking and feeling in the moment, and everything I was thinking and feeling in the moment, and he was aware of all mine and I had all his, and I knew it was him and I knew I hated him. Hated him!" She pounded the table with a palm.
Anakin watched his wife drop back into memory. She didn't talk like this normally, words and sentences and ideas tripping and falling over one another. Her sense in the force felt jangled, but even without that, her speech conveyed the tumble of her mind back in time.
"And I was so angry. And he was angry at me, because I'd stopped him, we all stopped him before, and he was angry at me because I wouldn't work with him. I wouldn't let him in then. Because he'd promised you, and there was some reason he couldn't ask you to speak to me for him, even though you were right there. And I felt you and I saw you right there, but it was like you were behind ice, or glass." She reached across the table and grasped Anakin's hand. "And the molecules would go wrong if you touched us, the ice would get thicker, and you were trying to help and he was saying, No, No …"
She held her palms out in front of her, gripping. "And he was holding my arms like this and he kept telling me Stop, Stop, and I couldn't figure out why. And at the same time I knew that he couldn't talk to me. That too much was happening and all he could say was Stop, Stop, and he kept pushing these pictures at me, because it was too hard to talk."
Sereine nodded. "He said that, while he was … working with you. All he said was, Stop."
Understanding lit Padme's face, and she whirled to look at her. "Exactly, because he couldn't talk. He had to speak to Anakin, and something just fell when he did it. I felt myself just fall. And he panicked and he didn't catch me himself, but it's like he sent something to catch me. And it caught me and I just felt … supported. And I didn't know why he was doing it because I know he hates me. And I just kicked and punched at him … in my mind, that's what I was doing."
"That's what he said," said Anakin. "He said you fought him, before you woke up. He said you were stronger in the Force than any of us knew, and you fought him hard."
"And he kept trying to get me to stop," said Padme, "and all he could show me were pictures. I saw myself bleeding on the bed, and he showed me this picture of me withering up like a leaf. He had this picture in his mind of Luke and Leia in your arms and you were raising them alone, and I said, Why do you care? And he showed me a picture of meetings we had when the war was about to start, when we had these conversations and I thought he really cared, about me. That I was almost assassinated. And I said, Why? You would have been happy. How do I know you're not trying to kill me now?"
Sereine put her hand over her mouth. Her russet eyes narrowed and she leaned toward Padme, every muscle at attention.
Unbidden, Anakin thought to himself, She's jealous. He glanced at Finis, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
Finis leaned toward Padme, too, his hands motionless on his cup. "Padme, that's fascinating," he said. "I've often wondered what it must be to have the abilities of the Jedi. And you've had the window … Did you get any sense that he was lying to you?"
Padme shook her head. "I really didn't. It was … so much effort, that it was like the clouds were blown away and I saw things that maybe he didn't intend or want to show me. But I just felt they were true."
"What did he say to you, Padme? About those meetings, when he showed you that?" Sereine stared intently at her, and Anakin knew what she was thinking: Was anything good Palpatine did ever sincere?
Because her heart would break if it weren't.
Yeah. Anakin wanted to know that, too.
"He didn't say anything," Padme said, and shook her head. "He couldn't. I talked to him and these pictures of his thoughts came back to me. Sometimes they felt intentional, and sometimes I had this feeling like, I have to let her see this, and sometimes it was something in the room that happened and he just had the sensation of it and he didn't think about it."
She looked into Sereine's eyes. "You were there. All of a sudden you were there, and he felt you put your arm around him. I saw you, in his mind. I felt your arm around his waist, and I saw this picture of you in his thoughts."
Finis looked at Sereine, and Anakin did not like the look.
"He was … This feeling just flowed out, that he was impressed with you," said Padme.
"Really? How?"
"That you did better than you could have known. That the way you touched him was just right, that it didn't distract him, and that you knew you could do that."
"And I didn't," said Anakin.
"Yeah." Padme paused and took a sip of tea. "He sort of laughed at you. I saw this picture he had of you, and he shook his head at you and said, Clumsy."
"I wondered why he said that, after," Sereine said.
"When he thanked you?" said Anakin.
"Right. I thought maybe he was being flip, or that he resented me holding him. Even though he leaned on me. Like, maybe he was embarrassed that he did that. Or, after he said you were fighting him, that maybe he said it to you." She directed this at Padme.
Padme shrugged. "I don't know about that," she said. "I don't remember anything about that. But I know when you touched him, I felt this …" she trailed off, looking down into her mug of tea. "He respected you. And he respected me, too."
She looked up, and her eyes met everyone's in turn. "That was what was there, when he remembered those meetings we had, and I got this sort of exasperated despair sort of feeling. Like, I guess I have to show her this. That he didn't hate me, that he liked me well enough, and he did respect my abilities, and that I am a worthy opponent—I heard that, a worthy opponent—and that he didn't hurt me just to hurt me. It was that other things were more important, and that was all it was. That he wouldn't do anything against me that he didn't have to do. And that it was well to save me, because he held this worthiness toward me. It was just this feeling, if it makes any sense. And there was this other feeling, this sort of, Five moons, will you please just stop and let me help you, I'm trying to help you."
Anakin had to laugh at that.
"And there were all these other ideas, about what he was doing in the moment. That you would have moved the Force with love, but that he had to be very neutral about it, and just direct the energy without emotion. And that it felt awkward, because he wasn't used to it and he had to think about every little thing he was doing. I kept seeing pictures of my blood vessels and my bone marrow and my cells and my kidneys, and feeling his consciousness there with this minute attention, while he was thinking at the same time about reading about doing this. But it was him, and I thought he wanted to kill me! It was so scary and surreal!" Padme's eyes were dark and huge. "I thought he'd found a way to poison my cells, somehow! You couldn't have a nightmare this real."
"And that's scary to remember. And it wasn't powerful enough to catch me. And he was angry at me, but I got this picture of him holding himself separate from it, but I was angry at him, and that made him angry because he was trying to help me, and he had to separate that from what he was doing, and it was distracting.
She looked at Anakin. "And then you came into it and that was really distracting, and then he felt me fall and that distracted him even more. And I'm feeling myself fall at the same time. And I thought he was doing it on purpose and that he was trying to kill me! And then I hit him with anger, I was punching him and kicking him and he sort of held me away from him but he had to catch me at the same time, but I was pushing and he had to direct the energy around me—" she ran her hands in the air around an imaginary sphere.
"I heard him think one thing. I felt this flash of panic, and I heard him say, Large and small. I have to think large and small at the same time.
"And he had to hold anger away from me and not use it, because he was afraid it would hurt me, and I was pushing against him, and he was losing me and how hard it was. That's another thought I got, how hard it was."
Padme ran her finger around the inside rim of her mug. "And it's taken this long to parse all this out and make sense of all of it. Or even remember all of it. Because it was so fast, fast and intense. And I woke up, and it was all jumbled, for days. I'm trying to learn how to nurse the babies and I'm feeling like, I should be here with my baby, and I'm back there, caught in this madness with Palpatine, of all people."
Finis laid one finger across his top lip, his chin resting in his palm. "You don't think after this, that he runs on anger, that he runs on hate."
"It's strange," Padme said. "He does but he doesn't. That's the way that he pushes the Force. Well, not always anger and hate, but pride. Pride and self-interest, and … command." She sat up straight. "That's it! He felt like he'd lost his sense of command, and instead there was this feeling that he had to push into my body and my cells and think very cleanly about what he was doing instead of this command in this big sweep!" She swung her arm for emphasis. "But then he had to sweep anyway, to catch me, and still think tiny at the same time."
Then she put her head in her hand. "I think I've just learned more about what it is to be a Jedi than I've had any idea of in all these years we've been together, Anakin. You've tried to explain it to me a million times, and only now do I think that I know it."
Anakin nodded, glad within himself that his wife had received this inadvertent look into his heart. "That's exactly right," he said. "You've got it. I ought to try to train you and see what you can do now."
"This is his way of breaking you kindly," Sereine said to him. "He's trying not to do any more to break you than it takes. He expects it to be easy, and it's not." She put her hand on Anakin's arm. "To your credit, Anakin ... it's not."
"He'll keep pushing you, you know," Finis said. "He'll push you until you snap. And if you don't snap ..."
As they separated, all on their way to bed, Sereine caught Padme in the babies' room and made sure the doors closed behind them.
"I know you're going to tell Anakin, but I have to ask this anyway."
Padme picked up Leia to check her diaper. "What?" she said, although she knew what was coming.
Sereine looked into her eyes. "Does he love me, Padme?"
Padme's spirit quailed inside her at the question. To be Sereine's age and in love with someone for years, and still be asking that question. Truly, she thanked the Force for Anakin every day.
She had to be honest. "I don't know, Sereine. It just … wasn't there at that moment. He was too worried about whether he was going to lose me or not. And I know part of that was selfish, because of Anakin … but there was this sense that I was a being of magnificence, too, and something important would be lost if he lost me, even if I was in his way. I felt that. You just weren't in his thoughts at the time, in that way. We were struggling, and he was balancing me, and that was what he was thinking about."
She saw Sereine exhale, trying to muffle her disappointment.
Padme thought for a bit. "But, you know … that was there for you, too. He esteems you, that I can say. And there was warmth, when he felt you beside him and he realized why you were there. But love … I can't answer that question for you, Sereine." Padme held Leia close and shook her head. "I'm sorry."
Sereine lowered her head, then pulled her chin back up.
"Thank you," she said, "for telling me."
Anakin, weary and apprehensive, looked up from one knee.
"Lord Vader," Palpatine croaked. "You will go to Serenno...to the burial place of Lord Tyranus. You will take him to his final resting place in the Sith Temple on Korriban."
"How am I to do this?" said Anakin. "It will arouse suspicion for the Chancellor's personal emissary to move the body of Count Dooku."
"Not his body," Palpatine hissed. "Although eventually that will follow. His essence, Lord Vader...his soul."
When a Sith dies, the soul stays with the body, whispered a memory.
"He was my apprentice, and he predeceased me," croaked Palpatine. "He must rest with the Fallen Masters. Technically it is my responsibility, but circumstances prevent me from carrying out my last duty to Lord Tyranus personally. Lord Tyranus had no apprentice to construct his throne in the Temple. I lay this duty on you."
Anakin saw that baleful gleam in Palpatine's eye and knew what his master wanted. He bowed his head, chafing under the enforced servility. They had clashed over this several more times, however, and Anakin was no closer to beating him. And Sith lightning, he had discovered, was exquisitely painful.
"Yes, my master."
"That was quick," croaked Palpatine with a note of sarcasm. "When I constructed Lord Plagueis's throne, that alone took me an entire day."
"I was unable to complete my mission, master," said Anakin.
"What?"
"Lord Tyranus refused to accompany me."
"What?!" Palpatine rose, peering down at him, and Anakin felt him probing his thoughts.
"I am not lying to you. He wouldn't come with me."
"Because you killed him," surmised Palpatine. Anakin heard a strange note in his voice, which was rising slowly out of the low croak of Sidious and into the cultured vibrato of the Supreme Chancellor. He looked up. The master's face looked - not stricken, but alarmed, yes. Anakin found himself intrigued by that, curious. That same face had twisted in hate: "Kill him. Kill him now!"
"No." Anakin shook his head. "No, master."
Palpatine swept menacingly around the desk. "What, then?"
"I couldn't...I couldn't discern any thoughts but the refusal. The rest was...just emotions. Echoes of emotions. I couldn't sense any more than that."
Palpatine stopped in his tracks. Backed up a few steps, his hand on the polished desk top, supporting his weight. He glared, but not really at Anakin. "What emotions, then? Tell me."
"I'm not sure, master." Anakin watched Palpatine carefully. Any emotion from him other than scorn was a novelty, these days. He searched his heart, trying to put a name to the feelings. He felt regret at killing Dooku now, and he had sensed a recognition of that. A resonance there.
He shouldn't tell Palpatine that.
He sent himself back, into whatever else was there.
"Regret. Hesitancy. Fear. Shame..."
Palpatine backed slowly around the desk. Slowly sat down. "He would never come with you? You are certain of it?"
"Very certain, master. Yes." The honorific came easily this time. Palpatine did look stricken now. Anakin felt drawn to the look, and curious.
Palpatine stared at the desktop. Anakin watched the color actually drain from his face.
"Master?"
Palpatine appeared to shake himself from his thoughts. He looked up at Anakin with gravity. "We haven't reached this point in your training, Lord Vader," he said finally, and placed the palms of both hands flat on the desk.
"Know that while the Sith seek eternal life, so do they also have it," he said. "But if not in the body, it is..." He shook his head. "The Universe is a dark place, Lord Vader. That is why we seek command of the darkness."
Anakin studied his face, which looked as old as the night he had told him and Sereine about the death of Darth Plagueis.
"We don't know what becomes of the souls of the non-Force sensitive, nor of the Jedi," said Palpatine. "But, as the two Sith currently with the body, we have the best of it. Once we leave the body, we join with the dark side of the Force. We are lost in the dark side...lost to terror and chaos."
"But the Fallen Masters - "
"The Korriban Temple lies at a vergence in the Force that allows our souls to remain earthbound in that particular location," said Palpatine. "But we must not move from there. Perhaps there are other vergences such as that one. None known to me, however. Lord Bane wished all the masters of the modern Sith Order, as well as the First Emperor, to be in one location, and so it is. To remain apart from the Temple, even with the shell that housed one...dangerous. Dangerous." His voice dropped to an anguished whisper. "Why would Lord Tyranus - he, of all Sith, deserves peace."
Ice blue eyes met Anakin's. "Not that imprisonment in the Korriban Temple is peace. Not that we seek peace. But that peace that comes from what we earn, Lord Vader, our place of total choice...that is what all Sith seek. Lord Tyranus deserves as close to that as we can afford him. Why should he refuse?"
Suddenly Palpatine got up. "Lord Vader. Allow me to probe your thoughts."
He came around the desk and laid a pale hand on Anakin's brow. Unlike the same gesture at his naming ceremony, there was no burning, no tingling...no strange rush of heady power. There was just Palpatine's hand, corpse-cold, and his presence, listening.
"Bring your mind back there," commanded Palpatine.
Anakin did. And, mingled among the regret, the hesitancy, the fear, the shame, sadness, pain, guilt...a realization grew.
Dooku was having second thoughts. Questioning his decision to leave the Jedi. Questioning his decision to follow Palpatine. Questioning...everything. And there was a pull, a pull he questioned whether to follow...
Palpatine jerked his hand away as if Anakin's skin had burned it. Anakin looked up. The Sith's eyes flashed yellow, his lined visage twisted in hate. His voice plummeted to a low croak.
"Perhaps I've been hasty in my assessment of Count Dooku," he spat. "He will get what he deserves, Lord Vader, never fear that. Darkness waits for all, of that I have little doubt." He retreated and then spun to face his pupil. "In the meantime, you have a pilgrimage to complete, whether you have the usual reason or not. You will go to our Temple on Korriban, and you will bring me back something from inside it."
Anakin blinked. "What shall I bring you, master?"
"I don't care. Anything. Your mission is to steal something. And do not think you can cheat me. As soon as I lay hands on it, I will know whether it came from the Temple or not. Bring me a souvenir, Lord Vader."
"Yes, my master."