Republic Archives: A Drafted Declaration
[handwritten notes scrawled on a scrap of flimsiplast, found in the wastebin of the Executive Office. The handwriting is jagged; deep penstrokes betray the author's fatigue. Several words have been crossed out; these are annotated with the ~tilde symbol~]
Defined by ~conflict~ war, cast in the shadow of ~war~ conflict
Our legacy, and the fate of ~the Republic~ our great nation
The Jedi were ~wholly~
~entirely~
~completely~
violently—
Swift. Vigilant. United.
Empower. Establish.
~Reorganize~ Reshape
(vote now)
Chapter Seventy-Nine: Set Her Free
Finally, blessed silence had settled over the delivery room.
Not in the truest sense—as Obi-Wan stood at the head of Padmé's bedside, he could still hear rhythmic beeps of diagnostic equipment. Whirring rotors as the medical droid moved about the plastic-curtained room. Weary breaths rising and falling from both adults—and cutting through it all, the gentle cry of new life.
It was, at least for now, enough to distract from the things he'd seen—the distant visions brought by the Force.
Obi-Wan stretched his senses outward—not toward Padmé, but to the newborns resting atop her chest. He brushed against both minds—each one a whirlwind of discomfort and sensory overload. Yet beneath it all there was an innocence. Serenity. Harmony. And the unmistakable imprint of the children's parents. Both of them.
There would be another time for those comparisons, those conversations. Now, as he risked a glance at Padmé—dark circles beneath her eyes, matted hair and skin glistening with sweat—he knew raising the subject would invite nothing but pain.
"They're beautiful," he managed, his voice hoarse. He reached out to rest a hand upon her shoulder, and she shifted to face him with a weak and wordless smile.
Before she could speak, the medical droid approached the bed. "Pardon the interruption," it said. "I must administer the standard course of human infant immunizations. It will only take a moment."
Padmé nodded, reaching up to lift each child into the droid's waiting arms—and as it turned away to carry them across the room, her hand lingered in the air for just a moment before falling back into her lap.
"So," Obi-Wan said, his eyes following the droid as it moved. "Twins."
"I don't want you to worry." Even exhausted, her voice carried the faintest hint of exasperation. "We'll figure it out."
The Jedi forced a smile. "Just imagine how much trouble they'll both be once they're old enough to run a con job on us, or fly the Dancer." To his surprise, the artificial grin gave way to a genuine chuckle.
Padmé only returned his smile as the medical droid turned back to face them—each arm held a child, wriggling and whimpering in apparent discomfort. As she reached up to take the infants, the droid spoke.
"Immunizations have been successfully administered. All vital signs are normal. Please provide designations so I may label each child's medical records."
At this, her smile twisted into bewilderment. "'Designations?'" she echoed, scoffing the word more than speaking it—then she shook her head. "On Oseon we don't name our children at birth. We wait for the passing of the aurora—for the gods to grace the night sky. Then we take them up and name them among the stars."
The droid froze in place, the lights behind its photoreceptors blinking on and off as it stared at Padmé. Then it spoke. "Cultural tradition noted." Turning away from the bed, it ambled back to a nearby medical cart and began poking at the equipment atop it.
Among the stars, Obi-Wan repeated to himself. An image of the Spice Dancer rising from the planet's atmosphere to kiss the void of space flashed through his mind—and as it left the world behind, fear gnawed at his gut. A journey to space, no matter how temporary, threatened to undo everything they'd built here. Risked revealing their hideaway to those they'd worked so hard to evade.
Will she even want to return to the surface once she's left?
He turned, opened his mouth to raise an objection—then stopped himself as his eyes fell on the children and their mother. This, too, would invite nothing but pain. Another time, he thought. There will be another time.
Aloud, he cleared his throat. "I suppose I should go get some work done on the Dancer, then."
"Don't you dare," Padmé said. "I'll just have to fix everything you touch. Give me a week to rest up, then you can watch these two while I finish fixing the ship."
Obi-Wan forced another smile. Nodded. Took one last look at the infants squirming in her arms—then turned away before she had a chance to see his face again. To notice the cracks forming in the mask.
Cracks which only grew wider as his eyes fell upon the wooden amulet they'd cast aside. It sat, staring up at him, radiating an energy in the Force like smoke curling from a desiccated fire. As he strolled out of the delivery room, he reached out to brush aside the plastic curtains—at the same time stretching out his senses, willing the carved wooden necklace to leap upward into the palm of his hand.
She could have it back later. They could discuss it later. Once everyone had gotten some rest.
Another time.
As Anakin trod across the red carpet, his footfalls felt unnaturally loud, echoing in his ears. His breaths, too, seemed to vibrate through his skull, each inhalation and exhalation a gasp. And yet, on his way through the Senate, no one he'd passed had given any indication that something was wrong with him.
Every time his eyes closed to blink, he saw the body crumpled on the Temple floor. Not Amina, who he'd failed to protect. Not his own soldier, who he'd struck down in anger. No—the guilt that gripped his stomach was for a fallen Jedi. One who had died at his own hands—and though at the time his mind had protected him from the sight of his own actions, with each step he took the memories once shrouded in darkness crystallized into something real.
All the way here, he'd been gripped by the unshakable certainty that he'd been summoned to the chancellor's office to answer for the people he couldn't see when he closed his eyes. The fallen soldiers—not the fallen Jedi.
But crossing the threshold, passing through the already open doors of the executive office, provided no immediate answers. Palpatine's chair was turned away from the entrance—it faced the window, bathed in the light of a Coruscant sunrise refracting off the kaleidoscope of a thousand skyscrapers. On either side of the vast expanse of glass, two of the chancellor's crimson shadows stood and stared.
They were his eyes, his ears—their black and crimson visages unmoving as they watched the door, staring blankly at the new arrival. The stillness only served to unmoor Anakin more.
From the chair that sat between the guards, he could hear the faint sound of a writing stylus scratching against a pad of flimsiplast—and when he came to a standstill, so did the strokes of the pen. Silence hung in the air for just a moment—then, that unmistakable voice:
"It's him?"
The Red Guard at the window's rightmost edge allowed his mask to pivot down in the slightest of nods.
"Then leave us be."
At this, the guard's helmet pivoted to face the chancellor's chair—and though the man behind the crimson mask remained silent, his unspoken question was obvious to everyone.
"Do it," Palpatine said. "And close the door on your way out."
In perfect unison, the pair of robed figures seemed to glide across the floor. As they passed the spot where Anakin stood, he could feel the eyes behind their masks glaring, burrowing into him—but he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead.
When they'd disappeared, and the door had swished shut behind them, a long sigh sounded from the place where Palpatine sat. He did not pivot away from the window, did not turn to face Anakin, who remained rooted in place.
"I didn't sleep last night," Palpatine said. "I couldn't. I was . . . unsettled. So I came here, to this office. Sat in this chair, watched the city go by. And I listened. Monitored the commlink channels while you invaded the Jedi Temple."
He knows. He knows I killed one of my own men—
A howling, haunted wind cut through his thoughts. Iscend Mirai. Say her name. Hear her voice. See her face. Anakin struggled to keep his eyes open, fought to keep from blinking lest he see her fallen form again.
Then the chancellor's chair began to turn. "History is being written with every step we take," Palpatine said—and as his face came into view, backlit by the glistening city, Anakin could see he was grinning ear to ear. "You've done excellent work, Lord Vader."
Before he could temper his reaction, Anakin felt his face twist into a sour frown—and Palpatine noticed. "What is it?" the chancellor asked.
Anakin shrugged. Shook his head. Glanced down at the floor. "Things got messy."
"As we knew they might," Palpatine said, dismissing the feeble euphemism with a wave of his hand. "Everyone was aware of the dangers, we had all prepared for the worst." Leaning forward, he set his notepad and writing stylus atop the desk while rising to his feet. "Consider Qui-Gon Jinn. One Jedi, alone and in our custody. Perfect circumstances to extract a confession, and yet she was wholly uncooperative. Now take a few dozen of them, and back them into a corner on their own territory? The odds of bringing them in were never terribly high." He paused, then stretched an open hand in Anakin's direction. "Though I applaud you for trying nonetheless."
The panicked thought repeated itself. He knows. He knows what you did.
The words left Anakin's mouth as a near-whimper. "We lost people."
Palpatine nodded, briefly bowing his head in solemn acknowledgment. "I'm sorry about Amina. And the others. But as I said: they knew the risks."
The risk of being killed by their commander?
Mercifully, Palpatine kept talking—Anakin hoped it would allow him to move beyond his own thoughts. "Their sacrifice will not be forgotten. They will be remembered as heroes."
You killed a soldier. He knows, and he wants you to say it.
Anakin opened his mouth, and a confession leapt forth—though not the one he'd intended to make.
"There was a kid!"
He'd spoken far louder than he should have—his voice was too shaky, too shrill. The dam had broken—and with no interruption from Palpatine's side of the desk, Anakin kept going.
"This teenager, she couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen." The images returned, every one more vivid than the last time he had closed his eyes and seen them. The flash of crimson lashing out, striking her down. Her crumpled form, so fragile, so small. "She fought with the rest of them. I had to—"
In what seemed like an instant, Palpatine had moved around the great stone desk to stand by Anakin. A firm hand came to rest upon his shoulder—and when Palpatine spoke, the words were firm. "The blame for that," the chancellor said, "does not fall on you."
Anakin's eyes were red, tears welling up within them, but he didn't care. "Why?" he hissed, and looked up to glare at Palpatine. "Because I'd let the Force take over? Because I was"—he paused, a bitter acid rising in his throat as he recalled the words of his old teacher—"acting on instinct, I'm not responsible?"
"Hardly," Palpatine said, pulling his hand away from Anakin as he took a step backward. The chancellor's eyes narrowed, his brow scrunching in disapproval. "Is that what they taught you?"
Anakin could do little more than hang his head.
"Listen, son," said the chancellor. "To surrender yourself to the Force is a powerful thing. You know this. I know you do. Even before you received any training, you knew what it felt like."
He looked up to meet the chancellor's eyes—but his sight was elsewhere, beyond the office, reaching deep into the past. To those moments—in the caves of Had Abbadon, the corridors of Junkfort Station, the cockpit of the Spice Dancer—where he'd stretched his senses into the void and let go.
Palpatine nodded, as if he could feel Anakin's every memory. "The Jedi misunderstand why this is powerful. They speak of the 'will of the Force,' as if it is some distant, immutable, unknowable thing. But it isn't." As he spoke, he paced, his right hand dancing in the air with gesture after excited gesture. "The will of the Force is what we impose on it. Do not be afraid to invite it in—it will only do what you ask it to."
Guilt and confusion swirled within Anakin's mind—his face twisted into a sour expression as he looked at the chancellor. "So I am responsible?"
Palpatine sighed and offered a shrug. "You'll have to reckon with your own actions, just as I have. The memory of the lives I took in this very office still haunts me."
"You were defending yourself."
"And you," Palpatine interrupted with a pointed finger, cutting through the shaky edge that had seeped into Anakin's voice, "were faced with an impossible choice. You cannot blame yourself for anything that happened in the Temple, Anakin. I don't. I blame the Jedi."
Every word he tried to form withered on the tip of his tongue before he could speak it—and in his silence, Palpatine continued.
"You had theorized they were in the middle of evacuating Coruscant," he said, turning away to face the window and the skyline that lay beyond. "That turned out to be correct. So what was this young woman still doing there? Tell me, Anakin—what kind of evacuation holds back the children until the very end?"
His voice had grown gravelly, every word laced with sheer disgust. "Perhaps it speaks simply to horrible mismanagement." Palpatine paused, his shoulders slumping as he let out a long sigh. When he spoke again, his words were much softer. "Or perhaps to something far more sinister.
"I hope I'm wrong," he said, pivoting away from the window to face his apprentice yet again. "Truly, I do. But we must at least consider the possibility that they did this to make you hesitate."
It couldn't be right—could it? The Jedi would never—would they?
Measured steps carried the chancellor back behind his desk—arriving at the executive chair, he eased himself back into a seated position. "Their numbers are dwindling. They're growing desperate. We need to be prepared, Anakin. This may not be the last time they try something like this."
At last, he gestured at the chair across from him. As Anakin took a seat, his mind remained where he had stood—he watched the back of his own head as he hunched down at the table. If he could look into his own eyes, he knew, they would be empty, distant.
This may not be the last time.
Would there be more? Other human shields meant to prey on his sympathies? Other invocations of the names, the wishes, the desires of long lost friends?
What would Obi-Wan do? echoed the sound of someone else's voice.
"At any rate," Palpatine said, dragging him back into the moment, "I'm glad it was you who got there first in the end." He reached out to pluck the writing stylus from atop the desk—cradling it in his fingertips, the chancellor taptaptapped one end of it against the stone. "It's my understanding the inter-agency effort to find the Temple's entrance grew a bit . . . competitive."
The fear and panic within Anakin, the sensation of bracing against an onslaught of Palpatine's anger, had so nearly subsided—but in an instant they were clawing their way back to the surface. His consciousness jolting back into his own body, he shook his head. "That's not—"
"I am not upset," Palpatine interrupted, holding up an open palm. "Competition is a good thing. It pushes us all to be our best." He leaned back, twirling the pen between his fingers as he settled into his chair. "And now that you've reached the Temple, I imagine most of the others will concede. Let you take things from here."
The chancellor's choice of words was not lost on Anakin, who felt his jaw clench as he forced out a reply. "Most?"
Palpatine nodded, leaning forward to set the writing stylus down once again. "And now we arrive at the reason I summoned you here."
Reaching down into one of the desk's many inset drawers, he withdrew a datapad. A simple model, its monochrome display good for little more than viewing text. Anakin craned his neck in a vain attempt to read the glowing characters etched into the screen—but Palpatine had angled the datapad toward himself, its light casting an eerie shadow beneath the lines on his face.
"My office received a message," the chancellor continued, "mere minutes after you had breached the Temple walls." His eyes flitted upward from the datapad to glance at Anakin—behind them, there was venom, but also weariness. "The timing couldn't have been a coincidence." Then, his gaze tiled back down toward the datapad. "It's from Director Tarkin."
Glowing embers of anger flared up in Anakin's chest—and he welcomed them. Reached inward to fan their flames. "What does he want?"
"He wants Qui-Gon Jinn."
No. The single word resonated in Anakin's skull. NO. Not this, not again, not NOW. He had dealt with this problem. Solved it. Moved on—and then there was Tarkin, opening old wounds.
As he read from the datapad, Palpatine's voice assumed a pointed cadence, staccato accents punctuating several of the words. "'The captive Jedi was transferred to the custody of Lord Vader for the sole purpose of locating an entrance to the hidden Jedi Temple. With that objective accomplished, Madame Jinn is of little use to Vader and his 501st Legion. She can still, however, be of use to my own investigation.'"
You need to say something, he told himself. Now. But his clenched teeth wouldn't open to form words—his tongue lay locked in place as his mind impotently seethed at the universe that wouldn't give him a moment's rest, no respite even after he'd killed dozens—
After several moments of this silence, Palpatine gave a long sigh, and lowered the datapad until it came to rest atop the desk. "He's right about one thing—she's of no use to you anymore."
Consider Qui-Gon Jinn, another Palpatine echoed in his apprentice's memory. One Jedi, alone and in our custody. Perfect circumstances to extract a confession, and yet she was wholly uncooperative.
Anakin grew very still.
Palpatine just looked at him—calmly, patiently—with something like pity in his eyes. It was seeing that—realizing how little he could stand it—that at last forced Anakin's jaws apart. "You're not going to give her back to him?"
"Of course not," Palpatine said. "Under other circumstances, I would have considered cutting her loose. Depositing her somewhere in the Unknown Regions to fend for herself. Acting alone, I doubt she could do anything to seriously interfere with our work. But Tarkin would never stand for it."
Leaning forward, the chancellor wove his fingers together, resting his chin atop steepled hands. "We need to leave him little choice but to move on, or this chapter of the investigation will never close. I have already summoned him here to talk. While I deal with him, you will deal with Madame Jinn."
What does that mean, he wanted to ask. Tell me exactly what it is you want. Give me an order, don't just sit there and let me talk myself into it so you sit there with clean hands—
Turning away, Palpatine returned his gaze to the sunrise. "The young woman you killed, he began, speaking toward the window. "Did she suffer?"
Anakin wanted to scream—to lunge forward and batter the back of his friend's skull with his metal hand until he'd pierced the bone. He wanted to do the opposite—to let Vader take him, to wrap him in the cold numbing anesthetic cocoon of what must be done. And here he sat, frozen, unable to choose either. All he could do was swallow, and whisper, "She was afraid."
"Fear in the face of death is only natural. I felt it, here in this very office. I'm sure we all did." For a few moments the chancellor left it there, silently studying the skyline that rose before him. Then he added, "If her death was swift, and as painless as it could have been . . . perhaps you did her a favor."
A persistent drone sounded behind Anakin's eyes, and suddenly the sun was so bright he could no longer look at the man facing away from him. His gaze drifted downward until it came to rest upon the floor—the deep red carpet filled his vision.
When Palpatine next spoke, Anakin knew he'd turned from the panoramic cityscape—his voice was clearer, rising above the drone to bore into his apprentice's brain. Each word was slow, measured, perfectly paced and pointed. "You joined the Jedi late in life. You had a chance to become your own person before you were ever one of them. And when you encountered something you could not stand for, you made the choice to leave.
"But for someone raised in that environment, trained only to see the world as the Jedi do, believing nothing but Jedi truths"—the word twisted its way off Palpatine's tongue, as if the thought itself made him ill—"summoning the courage to walk away would be all but impossible. Death may have been the only thing that could set her free."
Anakin's body felt hollow, Palpatine's words reverberating within him. Thoughts darted about like a swarm of insects—some of them rising above the echo.
He's right.
You know what you have to do.
Set her free.
He wanted to object. To plead. To beg Palpatine to let him find another way. But before he could speak, an electronic chime sounded from a panel set within the chancellor's desk—followed by the filtered voice of a droid. "Director Tarkin's shuttle has just landed, sir."
For a long moment, Anakin looked down at his reflection in the desk's polished stone. His features looked smeared against the rock, as though someone had painstakingly replicated him in wax, then held a torch before him. His eyes were swollen with exhaustion and smoke and grief, ringed with amber and red. If he didn't know it was himself he was looking at, he wouldn't have recognized the image.
"It would be better," he said aloud, "if I wasn't here when the director arrived."
"I agree," Palpatine replied with a nod. "Go."
He was on his feet and halfway to the door before the chancellor spoke again—when he did, his voice was deeper. Darker. "And Lord Vader?"
He came to a stop, forcing himself to glance over his shoulder and look upon Sidious. "Yes?"
"You understand what must be done."
"Yes," he repeated. To say anything else would be pointless.
"It is the only way we can move forward. There is still a great deal of work to do."
Anakin forced himself to nod in agreement, then turned and pushed his way through the grand wooden doors that separated Palpatine's office from the rest of the world.
He hurried past the Red Guards outside, his eyes darting back and forth in an already defeated search for Tarkin. He wanted to lash out, to wrap an iron grip around the director's throat, to curse the son of a bitch for putting him in this position now—but Tarkin had yet to arrive.
Perhaps it is for the best, Vader's voice rumbled.
Anakin froze for half a step; then he stumbled forward, latching onto the drop of numbness in his brain with all his strength.
Director Tarkin has used her against you for too long, the voice said, echoing within his head. You can set her free. You can set yourself free. He will have no hold on either of you after this.
The words carried him forward through the hall, every other perception vanishing into haze out of sheer necessity. A chant of three words, the euphemism the chancellor had so eloquently crafted, Vader's voice doing the best it could to give them shape.
Set her free.
