"You're sure?" Obi-Wan asked. "Why couldn't this go through normal channels?"

"It's more urgent than that," Agent Alone shrugged. "This is the kind of thing where a delay of days, of hours, could see millions die. It's important. It matters."

Her conviction was deep and sincere, and Obi-Wan was impressed. Still… he wasn't sure what to think.

"This sounds like the kind of thing a spy would say."

"Oh, I'm a spy," the woman replied. "Well, I was. I'm not at this moment. But I was a deep cover agent – that's how I got some of this information. And you can rest assured that I'm not on the side of Count Dooku – or the CIS. My only loyalty is to the Republic."

Obi-Wan frowned, because that slight twinge of dishonesty in her words was the first time she'd said something that didn't resonate with truth in the Force.

It was merely the kind of technically-a-lie that people told all the time. A simplification. Like saying that you had to get upstairs quickly, when really it would just be good for you to get upstairs quickly.

"Your only loyalty?" he asked, pressing slightly.

"Well, there's my family," Alone told him. "But – well, keeping them safe is why I'm going under a codename, for example. Right now, everything I'm doing is for the good of the Republic."

The ring of truth was back, and Obi-Wan paused.

"All right," he decided. "But I'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Of course," Agent Alone replied. "I understand how things are done."

"Ah, Master Kenobi," Chancellor Palpatine said. "What an unexpected pleasure to see you. And-"

Agent Alone shot him in the forehead.

"...what?" Obi-Wan asked, as the Chancellor of the Republic slowly fell over backwards with a faintly surprised expression. "...how did you… I didn't even know you were armed!"

"I apologize for any falsity you may have taken from my words," Alone replied, then shot one of the statues in the Chancellor's rather gauche art display.

A lightsaber fell out, and Obi-Wan did a double-take.

"What?" he repeated.

"Okay, so the guards are going to arrive in about… thirty seconds," Alone went on. "So, let's go through the highlights. Hello, my birth name is Leia Skywalker, I am from the future. Palpatine was a Sith Lord, emphasis on was, and he was playing you all for fools. I was a deep cover agent in the empire he set up and went undiscovered for decades despite personal interrogation by his best agent; I am very, very good at concealing my force signature, intentions and everything else. And I have never trusted a lightsaber when a blaster would do the job more easily."

She smiled. "Thank you for the help, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You were my only hope."

Then the guards entered, and things got a bit more complicated.

"So… again," Mace Windu requested. "You came back in time? Why?"

"If I hadn't, within the week almost the entire Jedi Order would have been dead," Leia answered, raising a finger. "There's a chip in the head of each clone with a hundred and fifty general orders, and one of them – number sixty-six, don't say it out loud – was an order to execute all Jedi for treason."

She raised a second finger. "Now having the only effective military force in the galaxy – with the local defence forces ineffective, the Republic Army and Navy largely staffed with clones, the Jedi eliminated and the droid armies of the great financial institutions wiped out by the ending of the war – Palpatine would make use of his emergency powers to convert the Republic into an Empire under his control. The process of gradually reducing the Senate to irrelevance would take another two decades, during which time I was a member, but ultimately the Emperor elected to use pure military might to keep systems in line instead of any remaining pretence at democracy."

A third finger. "Those two reasons are good enough, but I also really don't like him."

"Hatred is the path to the Dark Side," Yoda noted.

"Yes," Leia agreed. "But I don't hate him. Hatred would mean that he occupied my thoughts, that I made mistakes because of how much I disliked him, that I would become consumed by the need to destroy him in every way that matters."

"...in fairness," Obi-Wan began. "You did literally just shoot him within two seconds of walking into his office."

"And it was the correct thing to do, for the galaxy as a whole," Leia replied. "No, if I'd acted out of hatred, he'd still be alive – I wouldn't be nearly finished with him yet."

The various Jedi Masters exchanged glances.

"Scared, I am," Yoda decided. "Watch out for the Dark Side myself, I should."

He nodded to himself. "Therapy, we all need."

AN:

Why Don't You Just Shoot Him

I did Luke in the past, now it's Leia's turn.