"Mistress Padmé," said See Threepio, gold chrome arms waving, "Jedi Master Mace Windu is just outside with a complement of troops! They are ordering that the premises be searched! Oh, my!"
"Calm down, Threepio, I'm sure it's all right," said Padmé, and went to the door.
"Master Windu, good evening," she said, with a small genuflection of her head.
"My lady," said Windu with a hasty bow. "I doubt you've heard this, because the Council and the Chancellor have demanded the utmost secrecy. But we are once again on the trail of Darth Sidious. A hyperwave transceiver was located in the Senate Office Building earlier today, and we're ordering a scan of all those who work in that vicinity - premises and personal effects. As a security measure, of course."
"This is highly irregular - not to mention inconvenient," Padmé said. "I've only just gotten in from a day out."
"It is necessary, my lady," said Windu. "Everyone who works in that area is being searched."
Padmé frowned. "Well, considering who we're looking for, it seems reasonable," she said, and started to let him through.
Then she held up her hand. "Wait!" she said.
Windu stopped.
"Before any of you cross the threshold, you must scan yourselves first. Yourselves, and all of your equipment."
Anakin piloted a small speeder aimlessly through the air traffic lanes around the Capitol. Finis Valorum sat stiffly at his right. Anakin would have preferred a larger speeder so that the former Chancellor might busy himself in the back, but events had rushed forward in a tumult and he had been forced to grab the first speeder he could get.
He glanced aside, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence. "So...who was coming over to Padmé's on such short notice?" he said.
"Some Senate business," said Finis vaguely. Anakin, who had always read him well, felt an uneasy stir at that - plus, since when did Finis Valorum, who did nothing these days but monitor the news and study historical and political texts, not know precisely what was going on?
"You know more than that," said Anakin.
"I'm sure that Padmé will tell us more about it," said Finis, "when we get back." An answer that failed to satisfy Anakin; but before he could press further, Finis said, "I notice my wife has suddenly seen fit to dye her hair. You haven't...observed any further improprieties, by any chance?"
Anakin swallowed back a rush of bile. "I expect no better from Palpatine. But why do the two of you insist on repeatedly putting me in this position?"
Valorum said nothing. Anakin glanced over to find him staring stonily ahead at Republic Plaza.
"I see," he said at last, with a little nod.
Silence grew between them; Anakin began to feel very sorry for him, watching the man's face.
"Do you think you'll end up getting a divorce?" he said finally.
"I don't know. Most likely." Finis looked down to make some needless adjustment to his sleeve. "If Padmé suddenly became obsessed with him, could you stay with her?"
Anakin held back a smile at the unlikely mental picture. "I don't think that's correct, exactly," he said.
"You don't. Kissing him like a lover, changing her hair...it's as if she's trying to turn the clock back twenty years. I don't care what weapons you bring her to wear about her neck. I'm surprised she hasn't engineered the fall of the Republic already."
"I think..." said Anakin slowly, suddenly realizing that he wanted to get involved, "I think you're selling your wife short. Sereine and I know each other only because of Palpatine; we've spent hours and hours together over five months trying to save Palpatine. She is obsessed with saving him; but that's not the same thing as being obsessed with him."
"She said herself that she loves him. Right in front of the two of you."
"Trying to help and heal and protect an exceptional person you know is ill and suffering, is love," said Anakin, and then something clicked. "She loves you in exactly the same way."
For answer he got a bark of bitter laughter.
"No, really," said Anakin earnestly. "I confronted Palpatine about what's going on. I asked him."
"You're taking notes on love from Palpatine now? That must have been interesting."
"One thing I'm coming to appreciate," said Anakin, discovering this in himself even as he spoke the words, "is that while Sith can be brutal and destructive, they can also be very wise. Palpatine can be very wise. And this is what he said..."
Padmé bustled to meet Sereine at the door.
"All right, I've done what you asked. Windu and his team have been and gone; I've commed Bail and no more are coming. They've got three more senators and two staff still to search; I doubt Palpatine knows anything yet. I've paged you and you're here first. Now what?"
"They didn't find anything here?"
"Of course they didn't. Finis has it in his greatcoat pocket."
Anakin parked the speeder at the edge of Padme's balcony. Finis struggled into Anakin's old Jedi robe and put the hood up.
The two of them crossed the veranda. As they did so, Dormé slipped unobtrusively from the shadows and wandered over to gaze at the night traffic.
That part at least went well, thought Finis, although he noticed that Anakin, ever aware, glanced behind them at the handmaiden. Jedi senses never rest, he thought.
He himself felt lightheaded, hollow, as if he were walking on wet sponges through fog. Part of it was probably low blood sugar from not having eaten since noon - not that he could eat now, with such a terrible night before them - and part of it, he knew, lay in what Anakin had just told him. Revelations that turned his whole world around, and set the comfort of a bedrock assumption on which he had based the entire last decade squarely on its end.
He hoped Padmé had had the sense to send her relatives and that bothersome droid elsewhere for tonight. Knowing her, she had. The former Queen was a sensible young lady, rock-solid, and as courageous and altruistic a politician as he had ever seen. She had certainly put him to shame on both those fronts.
Padmé stood across the living room in a long purple velvet overrobe; Sereine sat on a couch in the same simple grey dress he had seen her in earlier, red hair in its usual working style - a long, thick braid down her back. Both women stirred at their approach, Padmé whirling to face them, ratcheting up the tension in the room. Finis's stomach clenched. At this rate, Anakin was sure to walk in on guard - not good, not good at all.
Anakin stopped. "You're both here," he said. "What's going on?"
Padmé went over for a stiff hug and kiss. "Thank you for coming to get Finis on such short notice, Anakin," she said, and when she drew back she had his lightsaber in her hand.
"Padmé. Give that back."
"I need to hold it for a minute, Anakin, please," she said.
The former Jedi glanced quickly around at their three faces, his own face and body stiffening with tension. Ever since that first night, Finis had always thought of him as a prize racing dragonmount, spirited, gleaming, and beautiful to look at, but nervous, dangerous, and always ready to bolt.
Padmé's eyes locked squarely on his own, and Finis knew what she wanted. He fished it out of his pocket, walked over, and handed it to her.
Her eyes met Sereine's, then returned to his. "Can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn't vaporize this?" she said. Finis couldn't, and Sereine said nothing.
Padmé walked out onto the balcony and, producing a blaster, tossed the hyperwave transceiver into the air and shot it to a tiny fireball with unerring aim - with Anakin's lightsaber still in her throwing hand. A capable young lady, indeed.
She turned around and came back in.
"What was that?" demanded Anakin. "What's going on?"
Sereine stood up then, crossing her arms in front of her. "You might as well make yourself comfortable, Anakin," she said sadly. "I - we - have something to tell you about."
Anakin Skywalker had finally traveled beyond disbelief, beyond hurt, beyond missing the Palpatine he had loved for thirteen years and hoping to get him back. Anakin Skywalker had finally rached anger, and it pulsated thoughout the room.
His face went red; his hands clenched into fists. "I'm going to kill him!" he roared. "I'll kill him!"
His tiny wife stood before him; Finis, watching her carefully, saw her sleeve quiver. Anakin jumped to his feet.
"No, you won't, Anakin," Padmé said flatly. "You can't."
"What is this?" The boy's scream hurt Finis's ears from several feet away; Padmé flinched. "When we found out about this you wanted him dead! You all wanted him dead! Now he does this and I can't kill him?"
He advanced on Padmé, towering over her. "Give me my lightsaber, Padmé." Murder sharpened his voice to a steel edge.
Padmé glanced across the balcony, where Dormé was already boarding the speeder. The engine started and she took off. Anakin whipped about at the sound.
"You think that's going to stop me?" he shouted, and Padmé flinched again and backed up a few steps. "I'll have his head for this!"
Finis wet his lips and tried. "You can't do that, Anakin. It's exactly what he wants. You told us yourself. Remember what you said about Depa Billaba?"
"I can defeat Palpatine! I can kill Palpatine! I am more powerful than I've ever been!"
"Anakin, please, you aren't able to kill him," said Padmé, her hands out in front of her as if in prayer, folded around his lightsaber. "You haven't even come close!"
"I haven't tried," Anakin snarled. "But I should have! Give me my lightsaber. Give it to me!"
He reached out one hand and tried to Force-pull it from her. But she had slipped the ring around her finger, and he yanked it so hard it caught. Padmé squealed in pain and, bending, cradled her left hand.
"Are you all right?" said Sereine, and rushed forward to examine her hand. From the back hallway a baby began to cry.
Anakin stalked the women. "Now give it here," he grated. Fully expecting to be knocked to the floor, Finis came forward, ready to take a blow for Padme if necessary.
Sereine looked up. "I can't let you have it, Anakin."
Tears of pain glistened in Padmé's eyes. "Anakin, don't you see?" she pleaded. "He is making you angry, he is making you use the dark side!"
A wild hate burned in Anakin's eyes. "And it will give me the power to kill him!" he rumbled. "Now give me my lightsaber!"
Padmé had not slipped the ring off of her finger. Now she closed her fist around it. "Break my hand, then, Anakin!" she challenged.
The next instant Anakin was on her, shoving Sereine almost to the floor, jerking Padmé roughly by the arm and trying to open her fist. Padmé cried out.
Recalling his policeman days, Finis dove between them and hauled at Anakin's arm. "You will not put your hands on her, Anakin! Not in front of me!" He used his best Senate Rotunda shout; probably the neighbors on the next level heard him. Anakin let go of Padmé and wheeled on him, drawing his arm back for a punch.
Finis stepped back, his own arms up. It had been a long time and the enraged dragonmount would probably kill him, but if he had to fight him, he would.
"Jedi Skywalker!" shouted Sereine. Anakin glanced at her. "Do you realize that you are about to hit the former Supreme Chancellor of this Republic in the face?"
Anakin's blue eyes lit with an evil cunning. He turned on Padmé and directed a laser gaze at her fist. "Drop it, Padmé!" he ordered. "Drop it!"
She stubbornly balled her hand and stared him down. "You're going to have to break my hand, Anakin," she repeated.
"No, I won't." With a metallic ping, the metal ring snapped and the lightsaber fell to the floor. Padmé dove for it, but it flew through the air and into Anakin's hand. He hooked it to his belt and strode for the door.
"No!" they all yelled. "Anakin, no!" shouted Finis and Sereine.
Padmé palmed her blaster again, dropped to one knee, and aimed very carefully at her husband.
"Padmé, what are you doing?" Sereine gasped. But before the words were even out of her mouth, a perfectly aimed blaster bolt zinged right past Anakin and burned a hole in the wall, singeing his pants -
- and cutting his lightsaber neatly in two.
Anakin jumped in surprise, saw the end of his ruined lightsaber bounce to the floor, and started back towards them again.
Finis thought fast. "What are you going to do, Anakin?" he challenged. "You can't build another lightsaber tonight. I don't think the Jedi will lend you one. You think Palpatine has a spare, perhaps?"
Anakin paused, then swung around again. "I'll go to the Jedi Temple," he said. "I and the entire Council will kill him - together!"
"You can't do that!" Sereine called out. "If you do that, Palpatine gets what he wants! What happens when he discredits the entire Jedi Order? Think about that, Anakin!" She chased him to the door. "Palpatine tries to kill your wife, and you reward him by letting him kill all the Jedi? Do you want to do that?"
They disappeared into Padmé's foyer, and Finis bolted for the door, Padmé close at his heels.
They found Anakin leaning with both palms on the wall, his head down, Sereine by his side. She reached out as if she wanted to touch him, but didn't dare to.
As Padmé and Finis approached, he raised his head and looked over at them. His eyes narrowed with a feral gleam; his voice thickened in a gutteral growl. He looked like a trapped animal. "You think this will stop me?" he rumbled. "You can't stop me. Tomorrow I'll have another weapon and I will kill him!"
Sereine burst out with a forced exhalation of air, threw up her hands, and clattered away from them down the hall. While Padmé inched closer to her husband, Finis stepped closer to his wife, who turned and pounded the wall in frustration.
She leaned her forehead against the wall for a moment. Finis was on the point of asking her if she was all right, when she roused herself and came back to them.
"You sound so angry, Anakin," she said.
Anakin turned on her as if he would eat her alive. "You're kriffing right I'm angry!" he roared. "He said he'd never forbid me Padmé! He said I could have her! He said that Sith never deny themselves - that I could have anything I want! And now he's trying to kill her! He lied! He lied!"
He swung away from the door and charged back through the living room like a crazy person. They followed, Padmé pulling at their sleeves.
"The veranda," she murmured. "Don't let him get out on the veranda."
"Surely he wouldn't jump!" Finis murmured back.
"Oh, yes, he will," said Padmé. "I saw Obi-Wan do it once. If a speeder passes too closely, it's all over!"
Anakin stalked toward the balcony.
"You're angry at Palpatine because he lied to you!" Sereine challenged. "What else?"
Anakin turned. "What, are you stupid? He knows how much Padmé means to me! He knows I can't live without her! He's trying to hurt me! He's trying to rip our family apart!"
Sereine folded her hands, furrowed her brow, and made a soft, understanding murmur.
Anakin paced back into the room. "I loved him! I loved Palpatine for thirteen years! I loved him like a father, or a grandfather! I loved him more than Obi-Wan! And in return he - " He ran his fingers through his hair once, heaving. The veins stood out on his neck.
"I hate him!" he screamed. He turned and gripped a lamp and hurled it to the floor with a crash. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!"
Several more lamps shattered. Overhead, the Force cracked several light fixtures in a shower of sparks. Padmé jumped and opened her mouth; Sereine put out her arms and pressed her back. "He'll stop," she whispered. "Eventually he'll stop."
She turned back to Anakin and stepped carefully closer. "What else?" she said. "What else?"
"I feel so used!" Anakin shouted. At last his voice began to quiet somewhat. "All that time - all that flattery from 'the great man.' He was just using me! He never cared about me at all!"
At last Anakin dropped onto a couch. "He never cared about anything at all! I feel like such a fool! Such an idiot!"
Sereine stepped closer. "That has to hurt," she said quietly.
Anakin's eyes roved desperately around the room. Finis, stepping closer, thought he saw a hint of tears.
"And to kill Padmé!" he said hoarsely. "My sweet, beautiful Padmé, who never hurt anyone, to leave two beautiful babies motherless - !" His jaw knotted and his fists clenched again. "He's a monster!" he growled, but there were tears in the growl. "A monster! I hate him!"
By now both babies were crying. Padmé took a step toward the back hallway. "I'll be right back," she whispered, and sprinted.
Sereine apparently felt safe enough now to close the rest of the distance beween herself and Anakin. She crunched carefully over the broken glass and stood in front of him, her arms crossed, and he looked up at her and snarled, "He'll never be human! He's hopeless! We have to kill him, or he'll destroy everything!" Trembling, he got up again and began to pace.
Sereine maneuvered herself between him and the veranda. "What do you want to do?" she asked quietly.
"I have to face him," he said. Emotion heated his face; his eyes glistened.
"Anakin," Finis tried again, "you're powerful, but you're insufficiently trained. If you do this, he'll leave your babies without a father. Just like he almost left my sons without one last year."
"This isn't the same thing!" the boy argued. "I can go to the Jedi - I can go to Obi-Wan! I don't have to tell the Council! If I can kill Dooku alone, Obi-Wan and I can kill Palpatine! I'll explain to him! He'll help me! He won't tell!" He looked at Sereine. "I have to do what I should have done the night we met!"
Sereine drew close and caught his hands in hers, drawing him to a halt. "But the night we met," she said gently, "you had made a different decision."
Anakin threw his arms out in frustration and screamed in her face. "It was the wrong one! How stupid do you have to be?"
Padmé walked back into the living room with one baby in a sling around her neck and the other cradled in one arm. At Anakin's shout, the baby in her arms began to cry again. She stopped and shushed it gently, her wide eyes tracking her husband over the child's head.
"Anakin," she pleaded, "look at us! Look at Luke and Leia and me. We're all here. We're safe. We're safe, Anakin! Palpatine can't get me any more. I had the evidence and I just blasted it right out there on the porch! You saw me!" she said desperately. "This isn't about protecting anyone - all you want is revenge!"
Anakin wheeled about, hands clenched into fists. "This is about protecting you! Protecting everyone! From him!"
He turned to Finis. "You! You've been pressing for this all along! Was it revenge when you told us to do it?"
Finis swallowed. Even he had to admit it. "No," he said, "but it is now. Anakin, we saw it in time. We stopped him. Padmé and the babies are all right. Palpatine is no better off now than he was yesterday."
"But he tried to kill my wife!" Anakin's voice rang with pain. "He tried to kill my wife!"
"And you're trying to punish him for it," said Sereine, her arms folded. "Padmé's right. All you want is revenge."
Padmé's eyes blazed with tears as she gently bounced her two crying infants. "I never thought that of you, Ani," she said. "Even when you killed the Sand People. I never thought my Anakin was capable of cold-hearted - bloodthirsty - vengeance!" The tears spilled down her face. "Anakin, please don't go out tonight. Stay here, with us. I'm frightened for you!"
And then she was crying as hard as the children, and sat, bending her dark head over theirs.
The sight of his family in such distress seemed to reach Anakin as if dimly through a thick fog. His shoulders dropped a little; the harsh lines lessened in his face.
Finis wracked his brain for something, anything. "Don't leave her, Anakin. She needs you!"
The boy jolted forward and stumbled across the broken glass to enfold his weeping wife in a clumsy embrace.
"Padmé...shhh...nothing is going to happen to me. I won't get hurt. I can't let this continue, you have to know that. I have to save the galaxy from that monster!"
Sereine walked up to him and he straightened, eyes blazing at her. "Anakin," she said, sounding very tired, "we've already saved the Republic from Palpatine. We already have. And you know how we did it. And you know why we did it. You saw it work."
She turned and threw her arms out at all of them. "You all saw it work! It's been working - better than anything else possibly ever could have! It's working again right now! Now all that's left is to save Palpatine."
Anakin's face twisted into an ugly grimace. "I don't want to save Palpatine," he snarled. "I hope he burns in a thousand hells - and I'm going to send him to each and every one!"
Sereine reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded plastic flimsy covered in handwriting. "That wasn't what you said to me the morning you brought me this letter."
Anakin stared at it as if it were radioactive.
Sereine's voice shook. "The morning you brought me this, you knew things Jedi have struggled for centuries to understand! You achieved something even the wisest members of the Council couldn't do! 'Destroy the Sith!' they said. Even Yoda said it!" Now Sereine was beginning to cry, too.
"But the morning you brought me this, you knew that it was wrong. And you knew why it was wrong. You saw Palpatine's heart, and you knew that you could never do what you've decided to do tonight."
Anakin stared at her, the pain in his eyes searing straight from his soul.
Finis realized with a jolt what his wife was trying to do, and he realized that she had a chance at it now. And he jumped in to help her. "Anakin," he said, "for years you've longed to be the greatest of the Jedi. And you were! You were then. That morning. Not now - then!"
Sereine threw him an amazed glance, then she held the flimsy out to Anakin and returned her attention to him. "Anakin, you and I are the only two people alive who've ever seen what we see. We're the only ones who know what we know. He'll never save himself, Anakin - " she shook her head. "He can't. He needs us. If you abandon him now - if you do this, tonight - if you snap in a fit of fury and forget everything you know, leave it all behind to punish him - you can save the Republic, maybe. If you don't fall to the dark side like Count Dooku. But you will never reach Palpatine again. No one ever will. This is his last chance, Anakin; this is it. If you do this tonight, he is gone forever! And we will never get him back!
"So I'm begging you. Please don't do this. Please, please, don't do this!"
Padmé reached around Leia to brush tears from the baby's cheek. "I don't understand," she said. "Why do you say that it's the last?'
Sereine sniffled and brushed tears from her own face. "Because of things that have gone before, trust and old betrayals and some things I've learned about punishment. Things Palpatine showed me. What punishment really does as opposed to what everyone thinks it does.
"Anakin. I know the mistake you're making, because I did it once, too. But I was lucky. I got a second chance. It's the last chance Palpatine is ever going to give anyone. If we throw it away now, it's all over."
Padmé's eyes asked the question. Finis looked at her expectantly. Even the babies were perfectly still.
"All right. I'll tell you the story, but Finis - " Sereine met her husband's eyes. "You know Palpatine and I were together for a while. Obviously, we were intimate. If you can listen, you can stay, but if you can't, leave now. I can't deal with a jealous temper fit tonight."
Finis stayed.