It took Anakin what seemed like an eternity to calm down - he had used every single technique he had learnt under the direction of the impatient Jedi Masters who'd worked tirelessly to make him sit still and meditate, using everything from patient cajoling to angry demands and even threats to make him meditate, but Anakin had always struggled because he was truly frightened by the enormous amounts of power that dwelt within his Force connection - and try to think about what he had done.

He was tired. Anakin wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, to try to persuade himself what he'd just endured was nothing more than a hideous dream…but he knew it wasn't.

Anakin checked the door, shocked that nobody had burst in yet, and he was left wondering why none of the other Jedi who were either asleep themselves or deep in meditation through the night; they must have felt his horror and shock by now, but he didn't know why they hadn't been disturbed.

Finally, after running around the room again and immersing himself back into the Force, Anakin finally calmed down and he began to think about what he had just seen. Anakin was not sure if what he had seen was a possible future or the probable one, but now he was starting to understand why so many Jedi in the Order said trying to see the future was dangerous.

Jogging around the room, Anakin focused on the Force, knowing what his Master would say. So Anakin thought.

He had turned to the Dark Side of the Force, he had sacrificed Mace Windu to the Sith Lord, who then blasted him with enough lightning to likely power a house for a month. Anakin had spent so long trying to make the Jedi Masters trust him, and while Windu was largely neutral of him, Anakin knew the man barely trusted him. Now he wondered if Windu had sensed a shatterpoint, one he couldn't understand, where he died, and subconsciously knew it was because of Anakin himself.

Maybe, the Force did move in mysterious ways.

And for what?

He had done it all to save Padme, just because he had seen visions of her dying in childbirth, while Obi-Wan was standing over her. He had seen his future self be driven to the point of madness, barely able to get any sleep before he turned to the Dark Side. He knew he wouldn't have chosen the path so easily, likely because he had believed he had no alternative but to turn, to save her.

To save their children.

Anakin didn't care about the things people had told him he would be doing, such as bringing balance to the Force; he didn't even believe in the prophecy, primarily because there was so little information about how he would bring balance to the Force anyway, and over the years he had just pushed it out of his mind.

But there were other considerations.

Anakin continued to meditate, remembering what he, as Vader, became; a cyborg who had lost everything but had only the Dark Side of the Force, and slaughtered every single Jedi he could find, only to discover the Sith Emperor, his Master, had lied. He had children, and one of them believed he had the Light, whereas the other was too blinded by loathing to see it. Anakin could not blame her, he would have felt the same way.

Thinking about Padme only served to sadden Anakin; she had died because of him, but he had seen that she had been unhappy with him, despite doing her best to make things work. And what did he do; he had seen the fights between them, how she had ignored what he had told her during those snippets of the war that was on the horizon, and because of his duties as a Jedi, he was on the frontline more than he was with her. Was it any wonder he and Padme shared a taut relationship at times?

The way he had beaten that corrupt senator who'd tried to kiss her and how she had reacted afterwards was a clue they simply would never work. The thought saddened him, and the part of Anakin who wanted to make something work with his long-time crush. Some people might say Anakin was a whining, self-serving egotist, but he wasn't, the more mature part of him could see that truly he didn't know Padme that well. When they had first met, there had been an age gap between them, and Anakin had barely spent that much time with her despite falling in love, but had he ever been in love, or was it just a crush?

Anakin had never been in love before, and truthfully…he didn't know if it was true love or not, but even if their relationship did become toxic, Anakin would never do that to her. He didn't want to see her hurt.

But what was he going to do?

There was a part of him that felt like leaving the Jedi Order for good, or at least until he had seen other possibilities within the galaxy. But would that really help? When he was younger, Anakin had wanted to be either a pod racing champion or a bounty hunter or even a pirate if he couldn't become a Jedi.

Anything to stop being a slave on Tatooine for the rest of his life.

Could he do that, abandon the Jedi, find a professional bounty hunter willing to help him learn how bounty hunting worked, and avoid the greater politics of the galaxy?

The idea was tempting. It could help save Padme, but what about the Togruta girl who would be slated to become his apprentice and who was shamefully accused of a crime she didn't even commit (okay, granted, he didn't know exactly what happened, but from what he had seen and what he could understand from the visions, Anakin could see she had been so badly treated she had walked away from the Jedi Order herself), would he be saving her?

Or was he condemning her?

But Anakin didn't know if just leaving would help or not. What if he merely turned in some way? Damnit, it was no wonder the Jedi forbade this type of thinking. He was going crazy, just trying to think about ways of dealing with this mess. A part of him was tempted to visit Yoda, certain the wise Jedi Master would have some kind of insight or knowledge that would help him, but he was just as afraid Yoda would tell him to forget about it.

Just because Anakin tended to diss the Jedi Master behind his back, didn't mean Anakin did not respect him deep down, but he was unsure how the Jedi Master would react when he revealed so much about a potential future.

Would Yoda order his expulsion for taking a wife, for violating the code on multiple counts, for using the Force in such a reckless and dangerous way?

Would Yoda lead some kind of charge to see him…dealt with for turning to the Dark Side, betraying the Jedi Order, and personally leading a mass genocide that saw the deaths of the younglings in the temple? The very thought conjured up the memories of him, his hood up and cowled to cover his face, meeting those children in the council chamber, how that brave little boy asked him what they were gonna do…

No!

Anakin clamped his eyes shut, biting his tongue to stop himself from yelling in torment as the panicked screams of the children he personally killed echoed in his ears, all for a cause that never worked. And for what? To spend 20 years of his life in a miserable existence, barely clinging to life in a cybernetic body suit, his lungs destroyed and hanging on by threads, serving a tyrannical monster who had destroyed his life.

But who was the Emperor in the first place? That was what he couldn't work out, why would he join someone he didn't know-.

And then it clicked, and Anakin sat up, heart pounding in his chest.

What if he did know the Sith Master? Anakin had only interacted fully with a small number of people, in all the time he had lived on Coruscant; he had largely kept himself to himself. It was mostly his own choice. The younglings hated him, the padawans were jealous of him and despised him, and the masters barely looked at him with anything other than dislike. The only people he spent any of his time with were Obi-Wan, when he was around, and…Palpatine.

The man had taken a special liking to him, taking him out on excursions into the city, and….Anakin closed his eyes. Palpatine had been telling him the Jedi did not trust him, and that he should start being himself. Anakin had followed through with the advice, but now he wished….he wished Obi-Wan had encouraged him not to visit the old politician.

Okay, granted, he didn't have any proof Palpatine was Force-sensitive, never mind a dangerous and evil Sith Lord.

But it made sense, and now he had the idea in his head, Anakin could see the logic, and everything inside him, his feelings, told him it was the truth. Palpatine was the Sith Lord, but he couldn't prove it, not right now, and feelings were not proof. He would have to find some real hard evidence to find out if Palpatine was the Sith, but he knew that he would have only turned if it had been at the behest of someone he was close to, as he was loyal to people, and expected the same kind of loyalty in return. He didn't care about ideologies, like the democracy the Republic spouted even if it was a lie at times, and the Jedi were hypocrites anyway, not dissimilar from the elite.

So what was he going to do about the news Palpatine was a Sith, how could he prove it?

He wasn't in any position to do it, not just yet. Anakin had been trying to work out in his mind exactly how the Emperor had even seized power without seemingly any effort. Maybe he didn't need to, not if he had the power base already. Palpatine was the chancellor of the Republic, it would not be difficult for him to reorganise both offices to transform it into the evil Galactic Empire with him as Emperor that Anakin had seen, the same empire he had helped create.