Saga - PT Into The Archives: RotS AU (Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme) Updated 02/20/16

I just lost over three hours of my day reading this all the way through in one sitting and I have no regrets. What an amazing story you've crafted here. Even though the story diverged significantly from the canon ROTS, I still like the occasional throwbacks to it, including the vision of the canonical Temple attack and the throwback in the latest chapter with how they escaped the base. You have excellent characterization and wonderful dialogue. I look forward to seeing how this all ends.

 

Thanks! And thank you for reading. It was definitely a fun conversation to write.

Glad you liked it Yes, Anakin definitely lucked out in this universe in terms of leaving Mustafar with all limbs intact

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll try not to keep you waiting too long with the next update

 

The Anakin/Obi-Wan scene when Anakin lost it was bawling material. I love how he finally broke down and admitted reading the Plagueis info. What a nice twist it was that Anakin was created as a counter-reaction to Plags wanting to control the Force (Somewhat spooky how Obi-Wan avoids telling Anakin his own opinion regarding the matter...what does Obi actually suspects hmm? hmm?). Anakin's revelation about being broken was absolutely heart-wrenching. Obi-Wan's reactions to Anakin's brokenness too. Looking forward to many more emotional angst from our favorite Jedi brothers I am so impatient to see Anakin making a decision about the Order, and Padmé's birth-can we hope that a certain ginger Jedi will be a Godfather/honorary uncle?

 

Empress Shatterpoint: Glad you liked it! Anakin will be making a decision about the Order quite soon, but regardless of what he chooses, you can rest assured Obi-Wan will be an honorary uncle.

Okay. I feel kind of bad about not updating this fic in like three months, and I dunno when I'm going to finish the next chapter, so in the meantime I'm going to post a couple of "deleted scenes"/alternate POVs that I wrote for various prompts on Tumblr.


Obi-Wan’s POV of the scene in Chapter 7 when he discovers Anakin breaking into the Sith vault.

Obi-Wan stared at the commlink in his hand, unsettled for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate by the conversation he’d just had with the Supreme Chancellor. Perhaps it was the reminder of the trust lost between Anakin and the Council; perhaps it was unease that Palpatine had wanted to speak to him privately when before he’d been (to his gratitude) ignored in favor of Anakin, or perhaps it was something else entirely.

Shaking his head, Obi-Wan left the study room and re-opened the door to the Holocron Vault, punching in the proper combination to turn off the lasers. His mind turned to the situation at hand - if they could just find some information about visions, even a way to tell how likely it was the dreams would come true—

The door to the inside of the Vault slid open. Obi-Wan glanced around, blinking in confusion when he realized that Anakin wasn’t in sight.

And then his heart stopped cold. Where one set of shelves should have been, the wall had swung away to reveal a small, dark entrance gaping against the wall. Obi-Wan had never seen the door opened, but he knew what lay beyond it.

Time froze. Oh, Anakin. Oh no. Mentally berating himself for having left Anakin alone in the room in the first place, he stepped quickly over to the opening and looked in, hoping against hope to find his friend standing just inside, looking around in confusion, perhaps, ready to ask him about this weird door that just sort of opened, Master.

But that wasn’t what he saw.

The image which burn itself into his mind, haunting him, was this:

Anakin, on his knees in the middle of the room, arms braced on the floor in front of him. His head was tipped back and his eyes were wild; around him, the Force swirled in a vortex of power and darkness. He didn’t appear to notice Obi-Wan’s entrance

And he was smiling.

“Anakin!” The cry was torn from Obi-Wan’s throat. “Anakin, what are you doing?!” Without hesitation, he stepped into the room, pushing through the invisible pressure that seemed to be trying to buffet him away. Anakin didn’t even look up; if anything, his eyes glazed over even further as the darkness roared around him. Not bothering to be gentle, Obi-Wan grabbed him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet, no thought in his mind but to get Anakin out of there.

And Anakin screamed: the awful, high-pitched shriek of a wounded animal. Immediately he began trying to wrench himself out of Obi-Wan’s grasp, body twisting and legs kicking frantically as Obi-Wan dragged him towards the door.

“Come on, Anakin, come on, Padawan.” I can’t do this if you keep fighting me, but Anakin didn’t even seem aware of whom he was fighting. Grabbing Anakin’s other flailing arm, Obi-Wan forced himself to ignore the way his friend reacted to his touch as though it were a red-hot iron and yanked—

The moment they crossed the threshold back into the bright artificial light of the main Vault, Anakin collapsed. Obi-Wan stumbled backwards at the sudden dead weight, then sat down heavily on the floor with the younger man still clasped firmly in his arms. Anakin was gasping for breath, his whole body trembling, but now there was recognition on his face as he clutched at Obi-Wan’s robes and looked at him with wide, disoriented eyes.

Now that Anakin didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, Obi-Wan couldn’t stop the flood of anguished words from pouring out of his mouth. “Why? Why, Anakin? I trusted you. How could you?” Had this whole situation been a set up? Obi-Wan merely a tool to get Anakin into the Holocron Vault? “You almost - you almost…gods, how could you?” Breaking into the Vault itself had been one thing - reckless, yes, but not dangerous. But going after the Sith artifacts was entirely another, a betrayal of everything Obi-Wan had ever tried to teach the young man.

And Anakin had almost been lost to the dark.

Obi-Wan listened to Anakin’s sobbed apologies, allowing his friend to rock back and forth in his arms. “Don’t do it again,” he commanded hoarsely. “Don’t—don’t come in here, don’t scare me like that, don’t lie to me, don’t go near any holocrons, I won’t let you within fifty feet of here again, just don’t—” He wasn’t even certain that Anakin was listening, but the words themselves hardly mattered.

And when Anakin’s crying and shaking finally subsided, he wiped his own face dry and rose to his feet. There simply wasn’t anything else he could think to say.

Leading Anakin out of the Archives, he vowed to himself that he would never let his friend near such danger again.

And he hoped that it would be enough.


Anakin's POV of part of Chapter 11.

"I’m sorry," Anakin whispered, and he was. It had never been his intention to hurt Obi-Wan, to disappoint him. But now, it seemed he had no choice. No way to please both of his mentors, no way to both save Padmé and be the person that Obi-Wan thought he was.

He turned to Palpatine. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he declared. “Just…save her. Don’t kill him. I’ll do what you want.” It was almost a relief to say it, despite the burning guilt ignited by Obi-Wan’s anguished voice crying out from behind him. After so many years fighting the darkness within, hiding it and pretending it didn’t exist even to himself, to finally just say yes. This is who I am.

A sense of calm descended on him as he knelt at Palpatine’s feet, head bowed to the floor. Whether it was the right decision, he no longer cared. It was, at least, a decision. A decision that could possibly lead him out of this situation with himself and the three people he cared about most still alive. For just one moment, he surrendered himself entirely and was at peace, an empty vessel, waiting for instruction.

When the door opened and Padmé’s voice called his name, the shock jarred him to his core and he was startled into falling backwards onto his hands. Peace shattered, he listened in increasing desperation as the argument started up again and his soul was yanked in three different directions.

A devil on one shoulder; an angel on the other, but which was which?

Truly, honestly, he didn’t know.


Missing scene from after Chapter 16

It was nearing midnight when Padme was finally able to leave the Senate, and the Temple’s halls were practically deserted as she made her way to her husband’s quarters. Turning a corner, it took her a moment to register who the brown-cloaked figure passing her in the opposite direction was. “Obi-Wan!”

He startled, coming to a halt. “Padme.” It was the first time they’d been alone together since their discussion about Anakin an eternity—or about thirty-six hours—before, she realized. Before the galaxy had been thrown into chaos. “You’re certainly out late.”

"You’re one to talk," she replied—he sounded incredibly tired."Did the rest of Anakin’s trial go well?" She couldn’t imagine it could have gotten worse after the revelation of Anakin’s massacre of the Tuskens, but it was worth asking.

"As well as could be hoped. We’ll make a decision tomorrow." He rubbed his eyes. "Thank you for coming along to support him. I know it meant a lot."

Said the man who had pulled Anakin out of the meeting when it had gotten to be too overwhelming, who had taken the initiative to calm Anakin down mere moments after learning that he’d commited mass-murder. “Oh no, Obi-Wan,” she said. “Thank you." She stepped forward and hugged him. "I don’t know where he would be without you." If Obi-Wan hadn’t been around for the situation in Palpatine’s office…she didn’t want to think about it.

"Likewise," he whispered hoarsely, and for a moment she felt they were perfectly united in their exhaustion and in their love for the young man with so much power and so little idea of what to do with it.

And then the moment was passed. Padme let go, stepping away. “Good night, Obi-Wan,” she said, nodding to him.

He bowed in return. “Good night, Senator Amidala.”

And they went their separate ways.

 

Interesting perspectives.

Of course, when I saw the email, I was excited for a new chapter. Sometime soon, pretty please?

 

I'm already about 4500 words into the next chapter, so hopefully it'll be done sometime in the reasonably near future!

 

Excelent new perspectives, poignant and heart-wrenching. You can really feel the turmoil and desperation of the situations.

 

I just read all of this story in less than 24 hours and it's all kinds of awesome. I can most definitely see why it would have been nominated for the "best all-around" and "best epic" awards, but above all I can see why it was nominated for best AU. The characters are perfectly in character, the setting is the precise setting we know from RotS, there are entire sentences and even entire scenes that are exactly what we saw in the film and its novelisation, and yet it's a wholly different story, and a riveting one at that. I watched the thread and I'll be waiting for that 4500+ word update as patiently as I can (Oh, and congrats on your nominations by the way!)

 

Thanks! I'm glad those emotions came across the way I was intending.

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it . Word count on the next update is now 5800, with one more scene to go...hopefully it won't be too much longer now that midsems are over!

 

Afternoon turned into evening on Coruscant. Padmé waited in the main hangar bay of the Jedi Temple, arms folded across her chest, only the self-control she'd gained after a lifetime as a queen and a senator preventing her from tapping her foot impatiently. The Jedi on either side of her, Masters Yoda and Windu and a few others from the Council, were themselves composed and impassive.

They'd brought a team of healers, just in case. Easy for the Jedi to be expressionless: it wasn't their husband and two of their dearest friends currently inbound from a mission that had gone somehow horribly, dreadfully wrong. The transmission from the Jedi the Council had sent as backup—Padmé hadn't recognized the name, Vos or Vas or something along those lines—had been short and cryptic, stating only that he'd found them and they were about to make the jump to hyperspace. No word on what had gone wrong, if anyone had been injured.

The lack of elaboration could probably be explained by the laserfire in the background of the message, and the intermittent swearing from the Jedi in question that had gone along with it.

That had been a few hours ago. Just a few minutes before, they'd received another message, this one a notice that the group had made it into the system and were inbound heading for the Temple. A confirmation, at least, that they'd survived whatever fight they'd landed themselves in and managed to make it home. Padmé hadn't bothered to hide her relief, and she could have sworn that even Mace Windu had looked less grim than usual as he'd invited her along with the rest of the Council members involved in coordinating the rescue down to the landing pad.

The roar of engines interrupted the silence, and Padmé looked up to see three ships entering the hangar bay. One she recognized as Bail's—it flew in, making a deft turn into the space between two Jedi ships that were sitting on the ground, then settled to the floor. Following it into the bay were a pair of Jedi starfighters.

Padmé didn't wait to watch the two fighters land. Hurrying over to the larger ship, she was only about twenty feet away when the ramp descended. Bail emerged and walked down it, followed shortly after by Obi-Wan.

And behind him, Anakin. No need, this time, to wait in the shadows, to delay their reunion until no one else was watching. She caught his eye and he flew forward, down the ramp and into her arms. Their lips met, briefly, and then she pulled back to look at him.

In some ways, he looked worse for the wear. His robes were singed and dirty, his face streaked with what looked like ash. More worrisome still, there were clean tracks down the dirt on his face that looked like they might have been from tears. And yet…

And yet his warm smile was more genuine than she'd seen it in days. And even if his eyes weren't as bright and shining as they had been before three years of war, when she'd first married him, at least his face no longer wore the haunted expression of exhaustion and anxiety that had persisted after Palpatine's death and her clearance by the healers. "I missed you," he said, running a hand down from her cheek to rest gently on the curve of her stomach, and the open emotion in his voice made a sharp contrast to the inexplicable withdrawn and tense demeanor that had been intensifying ever since the Jedi had first come to her about Damask.

Something had changed, in the time he'd been away. Something had changed for the better.

"You were gone for less than a day," she pointed out, unable to keep a note of teasing from entering her voice.

"I miss you every moment we're apart," he told her, which was veering slightly closer to that sweet-yet-borderline-unhealthy territory she'd recently started paying more attention to than she was entirely comfortable with.

Not that she hadn't missed him, too. Especially once she'd realized he'd managed to get into trouble. She knew he could handle himself, of course, and the fact that Obi-Wan was with him had allayed the worst of her fears. Not to mention that she'd been the one to suggest he go on the mission in the first place.

But it was good to have him home.

Before she could respond, she heard footsteps from behind and turned to see the other Jedi—including two new faces, a dark-skinned human-looking man with a yellow stripe across his face and a blue-skinned Twi'lek woman—coming up to them as Obi-Wan and Bail finished their unhurried descents down the ramp and onto the hangar bay floor. Anakin let go of her, moving back a few steps to be level with Obi-Wan and drawing close to the older man's side.

"Master Kenobi," said Windu. "Knight Skywalker, Senator Organa. I'm glad to see you unharmed. What happened? I take it the negotiations didn't go as planned."

"You could say that," Obi-Wan replied dryly. "Poggle the Lesser betrayed us and the rest of the Separatist Council. We were ambushed by clones a few hours in."

Padmé's eyes widened. Over to her left, she saw Windu and Yoda exchanging a glance.

"What happened?" Windu repeated.

"The negotiations were going…slowly," Obi-Wan explained; from her own personal experience, Padmé suspected he was being overly kind. "Anakin tried to send a comm message to Coruscant," he nodded in Padmé's direction "but he couldn't get through. Once we realized we were being jammed, we began trying to root out the source—"

"—but the gunships were already landing by the time we figured out it was Poggle," Anakin finished. "It was too late to stop him, so we got the rest of the Seps to leave. Senator Organa was getting the ship, only we had to get off the base without the clones shooting us 'cause it was starting to collapse into the lava."

Padmé wondered if it was, maybe, a good thing that she didn't hear this many details about most of Anakin's missions. Not that she hadn't faced her own fair share of danger in the past, but to hear Anakin talk about it so casually…

"Anyway, we got out," Anakin continued. "Poggle, um." He paused, shifting his weight a little from side to side, fingers playing with the edges of his sleeves. He shot a look at Obi-Wan.

"Poggle didn't make it out of the base before it collapsed," Obi-Wan said after a moment's hesitation, and Anakin looked away quickly and stared at the floor. Padmé made a mental note to ask one or the other of them what that was all about. "Anakin and I managed to reach solid ground without, ah, too much trouble, and we…waited for Senator Organa." Once again, he and Anakin shared an unreadable look, and Anakin shifted closer towards him. "The clones found us again, but with Quin and Aayla's assistance we were able to get away. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Thank Senator Amidala," Windu said, jerking his head in her direction. "She was the one who noticed we couldn't get through to you."

Obi-Wan nodded at her, and Anakin shot her a grin.

"And we got a prisoner," Anakin added, though the smile had dropped off his face. "One of the clones. Rex. He's sedated, should be out of it for the next few hours." He gestured in the general direction of the ship.

Windu raised an eyebrow. "Well done," he said, and waved forward one of the healers—an older woman with a slightly severe expression. "Make sure he's not going to wake up any time soon and take him to a containment cell," he told her. The woman nodded and hurried up the ramp, followed closely by the rest of the healers, who were carrying a stretcher. "You four." Windu pointed at Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the two Jedi who'd arrived with them. "If none of you are injured," he paused, and waited until all four shook their heads to continue, "I think it would be best if you came immediately to give a full report in front of the rest of the Council."

"And I should get back to the Senate if you have no further need of me," Bail added. "The Security Committee needs to hear what happened, and the rest of the Senate. Hells, we need to see if we can get back into contact with Gunray and the rest, find out if they're still open to a cease-fire."

Yoda inclined his head. "Go, you should," he said.

Bail started for the ramp of his ship, then paused and looked over his shoulder. "Padmé?"

Padmé hesitated. Part of her wanted to stay behind, reunite properly with Anakin, find out what had really happened—

But Bail was right. If the negotiations had gone as disastrously as it sounded, the Senate would need to respond as soon as possible. To prepare for the possibility of a renewed threat from the Separatists, if they decided to blame the Jedi for bringing danger down on the meeting, not to mention the near-certainty of panic over the clones now that non-Jedi had gotten involved in their attacks for the first time since the day Palpatine had died.

Right now, she was needed there more than she was needed here.

She made eye-contact with Anakin and smiled apologetically. His face fell, and she paused in front of him as she made her way to follow Bail, catching one of his hands in her own and giving it a quick squeeze. "I'll see you later tonight," she said, keeping her voice quiet.

He nodded, bringing his hands up to cup her face. She leaned forward to give him a quick peck on the lips, and the downcast look in his eyes dissipated slightly. "Thanks for the save earlier," he murmured, the corners of his mouth quirking upward just a little.

"Try not to get into trouble while I'm gone, this time," she instructed him, trying to inject as much sternness into her voice as possible while keeping a straight face. "That goes for both of you."

Obi-Wan, who had turned to face the other direction—whether to give them a modicum of privacy, or if because Jedi just weren't comfortable with public displays of affection, she wasn't entirely sure—turned back slightly. "Of course, Senator," he said, his faux-offended expression only belied by the amusement in his voice.

"As you wish, milady," Anakin added, his voice low, a teasing light dancing in his eyes.

Padmé rolled her eyes as she let go of his hand, but didn't bother to hide her smile. If there was anyone who was capable of finding trouble in the middle of the Jedi Temple, it would have to be her husband.

Even so, she felt more assured than she had in a while that he wasn't about to pull another stunt like breaking into that restricted vault, or anything that had come after. He seemed…not calmer, exactly, but more centered. Farther away from the edge.

She was definitely going to have to ask him about whatever it was he and Obi-Wan had been skirting around during the debriefing, she decided as she hurried to catch up with Bail. She slowed momentarily as the team of healers passed her going the opposite direction on the ramp carrying a stretcher; between them, she got a glimpse of the distinctive clone armor and the brown-skinned face made all-too-familiar by the war, made unusual only by the dyed blond hair that framed it.

Rex. She'd met him once on Naboo while trying to stop the release of a deadly virus, but even if she hadn't she'd know who he was: Anakin's captain for most of the war. Though she remembered now Anakin mentioning he'd remained behind on whatever Outer Rim planet they'd been fighting for when Anakin and Obi-Wan had been recalled suddenly back to Coruscant to rescue the Chancellor. The plan had been for the rest of Anakin's forces to disengage as soon as possible, which was the only reason he'd brought it up to her, that evening after the clones' initial betrayal. He hadn't been certain if Rex and his other officers had been on Coruscant when Order 66 was issued, if the clones he knew personally had been involved in the attack on the Temple.

She wondered if it was a coincidence that this was the one clone that had been taken alive.

Probably not.

One more thing to ask Anakin about this evening, but for now, she followed Bail into the cockpit of his ship. Pushing her thoughts to the back of her mind, she prepared for the inevitable chaos they were about to cause in the Senate.




*

It wasn't the longest debriefing Anakin had ever been involved in, but for a mission that had taken less than a day, it was definitely up there. The Council had wanted every detail of their negotiations with the Separatists, every detail of their interactions with the clones.

And they'd given every detail but one. Obi-Wan had done most of the talking, and for once, Anakin was willing to let him. He'd wondered if Obi-Wan's obfuscation earlier had been due to Senator Organa's presence, and all the healers and other Jedi in the hangar bay that might have overheard. But even in front of just the Council, Obi-Wan had covered for him. Again.

"You didn't have to lie for me, you know," Anakin said quietly as they made their way down the corridor. "I mean, I—I would understand if you wanted to tell the Council the truth about what happened with Poggle."

"I did tell the truth," said Obi-Wan serenely, "from a certain point of view. Poggle didn't make it out of the base before it collapsed."

"Obi-Wan."

"I am a member of the Council. And we resolved the matter to my satisfaction." He glanced at Anakin. "For now. We'll talk more about it later; I know we were interrupted. Unless you wanted me to tell the rest of the Council?"

"No, of course not," Anakin said quickly, then lapsed into silence as they passed another group of Jedi heading the other direction. It was odd, the Temple being so full. Even with the losses from the war—a full third of the adult members of the Order killed in combat since Geonosis, and over a third of the remainder killed by clones during Order 66, at last count—there hadn't been this many Jedi in the Temple for over three years, back when he'd been just a Padawan. Aside from the stranded Jedi and the few like Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura who had been sent to help them, every survivor had been recalled to Coruscant. Less than half of the number there'd been before the war, but that was still more people than had remained near to the end, when every Jedi old enough to wield a lightsaber had been sent off to fight.

The newly busy halls were just one inescapable reminder of how much had changed. Another was the Temple itself, hallways scorched and scarred by blaster bolts and the lightsabers of defending Jedi.

And then there were the echoes in the Force where Jedi had fallen. Invisible patches that reeked of death, or where the air was heavy enough with phantom pain that they were difficult to walk through. They would fade with time, mostly, but Anakin had taken to learning where they were so he could avoid them. It wasn't a night he wanted to be reminded of.

They emerged into another hallway, this one empty, but Anakin didn't resume the conversation. He followed Obi-Wan in silence through the corridors to the residential wing of the Temple, and then to the door of Obi-Wan's quarters. Then he stopped, shifting hesitantly on his feet as Obi-Wan palmed open the door.

Obi-Wan glanced back at him, jerking his head towards the inside of the room, and Anakin accepted the silent invitation gratefully. Going back to his quarters alone to sit and stew over the events of the day while Padmé was away didn't sound appealing in the slightest.

"Tea first," said Obi-Wan, leading him inside. "Then we'll talk."

Anakin swallowed, then nodded. He settled down on the couch, fingers playing with the hems of his sleeves while Obi-Wan went into the kitchen. Here in the warm, familiar quarters that he'd lived in for over a decade before being Knighted, he could almost relax for the first time since they'd landed on Mustafar—no need to be on the lookout for attack, lies, or betrayal.

But that didn't make it any easier to face the fact that he was going to need to finish explaining something he didn't really have an explanation for. Opening up to Obi-Wan on Mustafar had been the right thing, he knew, but without the mindless, gut-twisting desperation that had driven his confession, Anakin wasn't sure he could keep putting his emotions into coherent thoughts, let alone words.

By the time Obi-Wan returned carrying two steaming cups, Anakin still hadn't decided what to say. Accepting the hot beverage with a grateful nod, he leaned back into the couch as Obi-Wan settled down beside him. For a few minutes they drank in companionable silence, and then Obi-Wan set down his cup and turned to face Anakin more fully.

"All right," he said. "Let's talk." And then he lapsed back into silence, and Anakin remembered that Obi-Wan wasn't actually much better than he was about this whole talking about emotions thing outside of life-threating situations.

"About Poggle?" he asked, hesitant. "Or about…the stuff I said?" He wasn't sure which was preferable. Bad enough that Obi-Wan had witnessed him killing an unarmed enemy; even the thought of reliving it now, in front of him, was enough to cause his cheeks to heat in shame. But the things he'd admitted, afterward—he didn't regret telling Obi-Wan, and not just because the older man deserved to know the truth about him. Having the weight of so many secrets off his chest was enough to make him feel better than he had in days, maybe in years.

But he'd also laid himself bare and open and vulnerable, and even though he trusted Obi-Wan with everything, he wasn't sure he had the energy to do it twice in one day.
At least not without drinking something stronger than tea first.

"Either," Obi-Wan responded. When Anakin bit his lip, unsure, Obi-Wan continued, "When we were interrupted—we were talking about whether you wanted to stay a Jedi. You were about to say something about the…difficulties you've had with life in the Order."

Anakin nodded, relieved the conversation had turned to slightly safer territory than he'd been expecting. "I mean, you probably already know most of it," he said. "The whole 'no attachment' thing; that just isn't me."

"You don't say," said Obi-Wan drily, and Anakin let out a short huff of laughter.

After a moment, he sobered. "I did—I did try, Master. To act like I was supposed to, to pretend I was like other Jedi."

"I know you did." Obi-Wan's tone was gentle. He caught Anakin's eye, giving him a small smile. "But you've never been much good at pretending."

Anakin nodded. He looked away from Obi-Wan, gaze dropping to the floor. "It was hard," he admitted, forcing the honest words out of his mouth before he could overthink them. "Not just keeping the secret about Padmé, but all of it. Like I was always playing catch-up when I first came here, because everyone else already knew how to be a Jedi and I didn't, and at some point I just started to fake it and hoped it would become real." Covering the fact that the Code just didn't mean anything to him by pulling off one successful mission, impossible feat, or prodigious show of skill after another.

Obi-Wan looked away. "I'm sorry," he said, voice quiet.

Anakin shook his head. "It's not your fault. It wasn't anybody's fault." In hindsight, he wondered how strange it must have been for Obi-Wan to have to take care of someone not Temple-raised, if he'd seemed as odd to Obi-Wan as Obi-Wan and the other Jedi had initially seemed to him. "And I guess it doesn't matter so much anymore."

Because there was no more hiding, now. Not even if he wanted to. The Council had watched him break down in the Holocron Vault, had seen the recording of his desperate oath to Palpatine, knew of his marriage and devotion to Padmé. All the pretenses he'd built up over the past decade had come tumbling down, and trying to act like nothing had changed would be an exercise in futility.

"I suppose it doesn't," Obi-Wan said, sipping at his tea. "Do you think that'll make things easier if you decide to stay?"

"I don't know," Anakin said. Even with the Council trying to meet him halfway, giving him the concessions about his relationship with Padmé that he wouldn't have thought even worth dreaming of before this ordeal began, he doubted that trying to balance his lives with the Jedi and with his family would ever be anything but difficult. Most likely more difficult than before, in some ways; openly having even a Council-sanctioned marriage and family would set him farther apart from the other Jedi than ever before. "I don't—what if I take the Council up on their offer and it doesn't work out? Even with the compromises about Padmé."

"You can always decide to leave the Order later," Obi-Wan pointed out.

On some level, Anakin knew that was true. But to make a commitment to stay, with support from Obi-Wan and Padmé and all the exceptions from the Council he could possibly have expected under the circumstances, and then to leave anyway—

It would feel like defeat.

"I don't know," he repeated helplessly. "I don't know what I want, Obi-Wan."

"Then perhaps you should think about it." Obi-Wan stood up from the couch, setting down his cup. "Why don't you come meditate with me?"

Anakin considered the offer for a moment, rejection on the tip of his tongue. Meditation had never really appealed to him. When he'd first come to the Temple, it had been a constant frustration: he'd been placed in groups with children half his age, and watched them slip into meditation as easily as breathing while he'd been unable even to sit still long enough to fake meditating for the same period of time. Even as he'd gotten older and learned how to open himself up to the Force, it had never quite come naturally to him. Sparring or flying or fixing broken droids, keeping his hands and feet and mind occupied, those were the sorts of activities he usually turned to when he was feeling overwhelmed.

Opening his mind to the Force, on the other hand, just didn't bring the calm it was supposed to. Sometimes Anakin wondered if this was just one more way he was different, experiencing something other Jedi didn't. He couldn't imagine how the rest of them really found peace by doing what to him was the equivalent of looking into a supernova. It was different, though, to meditate with Obi-Wan, or even with Ahsoka back when that had been a possibility. To have another person to focus on. He didn't usually volunteer for it, but he'd stopped resisting the idea of joint pre-battle or post-mission meditation some years ago.

He nodded at Obi-Wan, and got up to follow him. Even if he didn't actually meditate, the chance to sit down and actually think about what he wanted now that the fears he'd been carrying since he saw Plagueis's journal were no longer weighing on his mind so acutely was one he knew he shouldn't pass up. Obi-Wan sat down on the mat, cross-legged. Anakin walked around him and settled to the floor, his back resting against Obi-Wan's.

He closed his eyes. To reach out with the Force—to sense for danger, or push away an oncoming battle droid, or draw on extra reserves on energy when he was exhausted—was instinctual. But right now he wasn't reaching for anything; he needed to let the Force guide him rather than the other way around, and that had always been more difficult. He allowed his senses to extend outward, opening himself up and throwing his connection to the Force wide.

It was like staring into the sun. It was always like that, though, and he'd long ago gotten used to it. He pushed past the instinctive recoil, extending his mind beyond the limits of his body, allowing the Force to flow into him. The last time he'd done this had been the night after he'd listened to Rivan's holocron, less than twelve hours before everything had gone to hell in Palpatine's office. Then, he'd been caught in a constricting web of darkness, the Force around him a whirlwind of hot, tempting power just within reach.

Today, the Force was different. Clearer. Lighter and less suffocating than it had been in a long time, maybe as long as he could remember. An aftereffect of Palpatine's death, Anakin suspected, the reversal of the dark-side clouding of the Force that had been going on for years.

But the clouds weren't entirely gone. Currents of the Force writhed beneath his skin, taunting him with fleeting images, memories—Padmé as she'd looked in his nightmares, Palpatine standing over him as he knelt and submitted, Obi-Wan watching in disappointment as Anakin threatened him with a lightsaber on the shores of Mustafar.

Anakin's breath caught, and he fought the urge to break his trance. He could feel himself gasping, falling back into his body, retreating from the onslaught of memories. And then he felt a pulse of calmness that sure as space hadn't come from him, and a mild mental tug that carried a hint of admonishment; recognizing the source without hesitation, Anakin reached back along the bond that linked him to Obi-Wan and opened himself up to it. For all that Obi-Wan burned bright in the Force when he wanted to, right now the older man was projecting nothing more nor less than a simple sense of peace, of stability. Anakin took a deep breath and immersed himself in the feeling, anchoring his mind against the torrent of memories and emotions.

Focusing on Obi-Wan—on his presence in the Force and the solid feeling of his back aligned with Anakin's—Anakin forced himself to let the tumult wash over him. His breathing evened, and he allowed his emotions to settle.

And then, when the images were no longer flashing across the backs of his eyelids and the tightness in his chest dissipated, he opened himself up to the Force once again.
This time, it was like falling. For a brief moment, his consciousness expanded out past his body to the infinite galaxy beyond, and he could feel everything—

And then he was surrounded by darkness. It wasn't an oppressive darkness, or a frightening one, simply an utter absence of light that stretched out forever in all directions. Anakin closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, a light behind him caught the corner of his eye. It wasn't clear where the light was emanating from, but there was no doubt what it was intended to illuminate: a full-size mirror in a simple frame stood about ten meters from Anakin, washed in the soft golden glow.

Anakin walked over to it. This time, he wasn't surprised by the version of himself he saw in the reflection. His doppelgänger, again cloaked in black fabric and with eyes that burned yellow.

And this time, his double wasted no time talking before stepping through the glass.

For a moment they stood in front of each other silently, less than a meter apart. Then the other Anakin raised a hand, and Anakin had to force himself not to flinch. But though his double's face was twisting into a cruel smirk, he wasn't attacking. Instead he simply brought his hand in between them, level with their eyes, and snapped his fingers.

Anakin blinked against the sudden onslaught of heat, the sulfuric smell, and the fiery light that suddenly assaulted his senses. No longer was he standing in an infinite plane of darkness.

Instead, he was on Mustafar. His doppelgänger stood several meters away from him, the river of lava flowing behind him. In Anakin's fingers was his lightsaber, ignited.
He flicked it off and, deciding he wasn't in the mood to play the Force's games, turned away from his double and the inferno.


He didn't even make it a single step. Lying at his feet was Obi-Wan Kenobi, a small, blackened hole seared through his chest.

Anakin flinched, dropping his lightsaber to the ground, then closed his eyes. "That isn't real," he said aloud. "I know this is a vision." And, unless he was somehow going to get cloned anytime soon, not even a prophetic one—just the nightmare he'd had after finding out about Plagueis, transferred to a different setting. "It didn't happen like that," he continued carefully, his eyes squeezed closed. "I know I didn't kill him."

"But you could have," said his own voice, louder and closer than he'd expected. Anakin's eyes blinked open to reveal his double standing over Obi-Wan's body. "I did, and I live inside of you. Why else would you have drawn your weapon?"

Anakin flashed back to that moment, to the all-consuming rage and the solid, tempting weight of the lightsaber hilt in his hand as he brandished it at the man standing above him. "I wouldn't have done it."

"Like you would never choose to turn to the dark side? Like you would never agree to betray the Jedi?" The double smiled with a kindness that didn't reach his eyes and placed a hand on Anakin's shoulder, his grip tight enough to be painful.

"I know better, now," said Anakin. "I'll never turn. If I did, I'd lose Obi-Wan and Padmé. I know that now." He moved closer to his doppelgänger, trying his hardest to ignore the body lying between them and staring his double in the eye. "And I won't."

For a moment, his double looked slightly taken aback. But then he began to cackle, and Anakin flinched away, taking several steps back until he was out of arm's reach. "Is that what you call morality?" The other Anakin stepped forward, reaching out. "You won't embrace the dark side because you don't want them to be angry at you? Nothing practical, nothing ethical—just pure selfishness."

"That's not what I meant," breathed Anakin, retreating until the river of lava behind his feet forced him to stop.

"Isn't it?" His counterpart sneered. "You're no better than I am." Anakin didn't see him move—one moment he was several feet away and the next his face was inches away from Anakin's. "You would have fallen. You still might. Deny it all you want, but I am a part of you."

Anakin stepped away again, sideways this time, along the lava bank. His vision-self's words were close enough to what he had been saying earlier that day, and he scrambled to remember Obi-Wan's counterarguments. "I didn't—Palpatine tricked me, he lied, otherwise I wouldn't have—"

"And when you killed the Tusken raiders? Their children? Who tricked you then?" Anakin didn't say anything, had nothing to say. The doppelgänger made a noise of disgust, then shoved him hard, and he stumbled to the side and fell to the ground just inches from the lava. He caught himself on his hands and sat up, but before he could stand his doppelgänger was leaning over him, pressing a hand to his chest and keeping him where he was. "Nobody did, and you know it. It. Was. All. You. It's always been all you—your choice to kill, your choice to lie, your choice to betray. Would Palpatine's lies have worked so well on any other Jedi?"

Anakin looked away. "No," he said, "but—Palpatine was my friend, that's why, it's not because I'm—" He wasn't certain enough of the truth in his words to finish.

"I said stop lying to yourself! If one of Obi-Wan's friends had asked him to join the Sith, would he have listened?" The double sat down beside him on the lava bank, leaning over to speak into Anakin's ear, his hand still fisted in the front of Anakin's tunic. "Here's the truth: the dark side is fun, and it's powerful, and you'll never stop wanting it. It's like a drug: you've tasted it, and now you won't be able to give it up. And even before you tasted it, you were the sort of person who put your selfish desires above the things you claimed to believe in."

Anakin couldn't help but remember the terrifying moment when he'd asked himself what he would do to keep Padmé safe and come up with anything, anything at all, no matter the price, let the galaxy burn as long as she lives. He swallowed, throat dry in the parched Mustafar air, and looked at the ashy shore without saying anything. How could he deny it, when it was no more than what he'd been telling Obi-Wan earlier that day?

"You fear me, because you fear what you might still become," said his double quietly, letting go of Anakin's tunic and smoothing the folds where it had been bunched in his hands. "And you should. Because the dark side always wins. You can keep running from me, always second-guessing yourself, wondering if you can be trusted, wondering if you're just going to fail again and hurt the people you love even more." He cupped Anakin's chin, forcing his face up until their eyes met. "Or you can submit."

And for a moment, it sounded so easy. But he could also remember Obi-Wan's words from earlier that day, through his mind. "Choose and choose again," Anakin said quietly, more to himself than to his doppelgänger, then pulled away from the other's grasp and rose to his feet. He raised his voice. "I don't choose to be you now. I won't choose to be you tomorrow. You keep saying we're the same person, that you live inside of me. But the opposite has to be true, too, right?"

Because his double was right. It was fear, as always, that kept bringing his mind back to the lure of the dark side. Fear that he'd be powerless without it, fear that Palpatine had corrupted him so absolutely that trying to reject it now was only delaying the inevitable, fear that he wasn't a good enough person to deserve Padmé and Obi-Wan, dark side or not.

And now that he could recognize it for what it was, Anakin could feel his doubts vanishing. Because even if the HoloNet reporters were wrong to call him the Hero with No Fear, even if he had never and probably would never would be able to vanquish the terror that gripped him when he thought about losing Obi-Wan, or Padmé, or the babies, he knew one thing for certain:

He didn't have to let it control him. And with everything and everything he loved at stake, he wouldn't.

Years ago on Tatooine, his mother had once told him that real courage wasn't the absence of fear but the strength to do the right thing even when it was frightening. And okay, maybe the past few weeks had shown that he didn't always have that strength. Anakin wished he could believe that his decision in Palpatine's office had been borne out of a temporary fit of insanity, but he couldn't lie to himself, not anymore. He'd have agreed to anything if it had meant not losing Padmé.

But next time, he'd do better. And if he wasn't sure what was better, he could ask Obi-Wan or Padmé. "Maybe you should fear me," he told the doppelgänger. "You're what I could become? Fine. Maybe that's true." He had little doubt that it was. "But if I don't become you, then you're nothing. And I win."

He closed his eyes, though not before catching a glimpse of the snarl of fury that twisted his doppelgänger's face. You have no power over me, he thought, willing more than knowing it to be true, and felt the heat around him dissipate.

Anakin's eyes snapped open. He blinked, momentarily disoriented as he found himself back in Obi-Wan's quarters. His legs were stiff beneath him, and the sky he could see through the windows was darker than it had been when he'd first entered the apartment.

He turned his head. Obi-Wan was no longer sitting on the mat behind him, but was back on the couch, watching him. Now that he was moving, the older man stood up and walked over.

"How long was I in the trance?" Anakin asked.

"Not too long," Obi-Wan told him. "A bit over an hour."

Anakin nodded. It wasn't the most time he'd ever lost doing such a thing, which was one of the other reasons he avoided meditation. Other Jedi sometimes spent hours in meditation, sure, but they usually did it on purpose.

And, as far as he knew, though admittedly he'd done no research on the subject, they didn't usually get pushed around by evil, overly-handsy doppelgängers of themselves.

"I hate my subconscious," Anakin said. Obi-Wan arched an eyebrow at him, but he didn't elaborate.
Obi-Wan sat down next to him. "Did you come to any conclusions?"

Anakin nodded. Taking a deep breath, he looked Obi-Wan in the eyes. "I—I've decided I want to stay a Jedi. At least for now."

Obi-Wan settled back against his heels, his eyebrows raised. Though Obi-Wan's expression remained carefully neutral, Anakin could feel relief leaking off him in the Force. "May I ask what led you to make up your mind?"

Anakin considered how best to explain it. "You were right," he said eventually.

Obi-Wan quirked his lips. "Of course I was. About what?"

Rolling his eyes, Anakin reached out to swat the older man's arm. "That I can always leave later if it doesn't work out." He paused, lowering his eyes to the floor. "It'd be one thing to go because I didn't want to be a Jedi, or because I could do more good outside the Order. But that's not true, and leaving because I know it's going to be hard or because I'm afraid I might not succeed…" Anakin shook his head. "I'm not sure I'd be able to look myself in the mirror."

At that, Obi-Wan looked at him thoughtfully, reaching forward with one hand to clasp Anakin lightly on the shoulder. "You've thought this through, then." He hesitated, and then added after a moment: "I am proud of you, Anakin."

Obi-Wan removed his hand, but Anakin reached forward before he could draw away entirely and pulled the older man into a hug. It wasn't the desperate sort of clinging he'd engaged in on Mustafar, when Obi-Wan's arms around him had felt like his only link to sanity; this time, he just drew Obi-Wan closer and rested his head on the crook of his friend's neck. "Thank you, Master," he said, and hoped Obi-Wan knew he was referring to more than just the compliment.

Obi-Wan slipped an arm around his shoulders. "You're very welcome," he said, and Anakin closed his eyes and smiled.


*
In a small room in the depths of the Temple, two Jedi Masters sat across from one another. Prior to the commotion caused by the return of Kenobi and Skywalker from Mustafar, the Council had reached a decision regarding the notes left by Darth Plagueis, and the time had come to put that decision into action.

The papers had been separated. Some, like the notes on immortality and resurrection or the use of midichlorian manipulation as a weapon, had been brought down to the Sith Vault where they would remain unstudied and untouched. Others, which referenced flow-walking and other techniques already known to the Jedi, were placed into the Masters-only section of the Temple Archives, attached to a note of warning about their origins for anyone who decided to use them in their research.

But one of Plagueis's techniques had been more difficult to categorize: neither familiar enough to be cautiously made available, nor flagrantly dark enough to be locked away for good. Some on the Council argued that any midichlorian-based healing methods would inevitably lead to the dark side, and to the nature-defying extremes such as resurrection practiced by Plagueis himself. Others believed that the basic method could be adapted for use safely, arguing that to avoid any Force-technique anyone had ever fueled by the dark side would be to cut themselves off from the Force altogether. Even Sith could meditate, after all.

In the end, a compromise had been reached. Yoda, and Yoda alone, would study the methods described by Plagueis and attempt to reach out with the Force to sense and manipulate individual midichlorians. If such a thing was within the realm of possibility for a Jedi without tapping into the dark side, the Council had reasoned, the Grand Master had the greatest chance of pulling it off. If and when it was determined to be possible, then other Jedi Masters and healers would be allowed to make their own efforts to master the technique.

And if such a thing was not possible, it went unspoken, Yoda was the one best-trusted not to succumb to temptation should the dark side prove the only avenue to success. No Council member doubted any other's commitment to the light, but then again, no one had ever doubted Dooku, or Sora Bulq, or Depa, or even Barriss Offee. And even the well-intentioned could become vulnerable to the dark side, once exposed to it. As there was no urgency to make a determination about the techniques, proceeding with caution was the order of the day—and that meant leaving the exploration of potentially dark techniques to the oldest, most experienced, and (according to general opinion) wisest member of the Jedi Order.

Yoda himself had been one of the Council members willing to allow the papers to be locked away, this secret to remain forever buried in the Temple Vaults. Jedi healing techniques had functioned for centuries, and he saw little reason to improve upon a system that worked. Yet on the chance that this discovery had been willed by the Force, he offered no opposition to the rest of the Council's decision.

"Sure that you want to do this, are you?" he questioned his companion. "Too late it is not to choose a different test subject. Perhaps an animal, hmm?"

Mace Windu shook his head. "We both know there's little enough chance of this working as it is. Using a non-sentient with a low midichlorian count would only handicap us further. Go ahead."

According to Plagueis's notes, it had taken him decades for his visions of midichlorian-manipulation to become a reality. Though the Council was hopeful that between their use of his writings as a starting place and the fact that they were focusing on healing rather than immortality—surely the less unnatural of the two, and so perhaps the easier to accomplish—it would take them far less time than it had the Sith Lord, none had any illusions that it would be an easy task.

Windu placed his left hand on the table between himself and the other Master. Nodding at Yoda, he removed the utility knife from his belt and drew the edge carefully across the back of his hand, leaving behind a small, shallow cut which quickly welled with blood.

Yoda closed his eyes, reaching out so that his hand hovered over Windu's. To a Force-null observer, it would have appeared that nothing was happening, yet the wizened old Master's eyes were closed in concentration, his lips pressed closely together.

The two remained in that position for several long minutes. Finally, Yoda shook his head and withdrew his hand.

Windu glanced at the unchanged cut on his hand, expression neutral. The result, or lack thereof, was no more nor less than he'd expected for their first attempt. "Could you at least sense my individual midichlorians?"

Tilting his head to the side, Yoda made a noncommittal sound. "Sensed something, I did. But able to manipulate the midichlorians directly, I was not."

"Very well." Windu sighed, lifting his hand off the table to stretch his arms, then placing it back down. "Let's try again."

And they did.

***

A/N: Some things in this story - such as references to the fate of Depa Billaba - have been Jossed (i.e. made no longer canon) by the reboot of the EU and the other new Star Wars material. While I enjoy the new stories that are coming out, this fic will continue to primarily reference the Legends EU for the sake of remaining consistent with the first twenty or so chapters.

 

FINALLY!

Great meditation scene. Yoda's attempt to manipulate the midi-chlorians (as much as I hate their existence ) is very intriguing, and I look forward to seeing what comes of it. And Rex is a prisoner now; what will they do with him? I wonder how he would react to being interrogated by his former general.

 

Fantastic A/P and indescribably marvelous Anakin/Obi-Wan. You really detail their friendship superbly!

 

Well, that was one big fat update! The Anakin/Obi-Wan interaction was very interesting throughout this chapter, with Obi-Wan seemingly realising that Anakin needs to process some things for himself without the constraint of the Jedi rules and doing what it takes to facilitate it. The meditation scene with Anakin talking to and defeating his Dark self was brilliant emotionally but also intellectually -- very Cartesian, in fact

I'm curious what conclusions Yoda and Mace Windu will reach once they start achieving something with the midi-chlorian manipulation, because I'm pretty sure that this will lead this story somewhere. Also curious to see what will happen with Rex, who could well turn out to be the key to dealing with the Clone issue. So of course, I'll be here and waiting for the next update!

 

I'm glad you liked it! Yep, we'll definitely be seeing more of Rex in the upcoming chapters.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy how I write them.

Anakin and Obi-Wan both are definitely coming to some important realizations. Thanks for reading and commenting!

 

Keep it up!

 

Agreed. While I have not commented yet - which I'm ashamed of, this is a remarkable masterpiece in so many ways!

 

Thanks to you both! I'm glad you like it. The next chapter is still in progress - more slowly now that the semester's started, but it's coming along.

 

Obi-Wan walked briskly down the corridor towards Anakin's quarters. It had been two days since the disastrous trip to Mustafar, and thanks to the high-profile Jedi involvement in the mission, he and the rest of the Council had been buried in political fallout amongst all the other issues they were dealing with. Whatever Padmé had commed him about, he hoped it would be an interesting distraction.

But not too interesting. She hadn't sounded concerned enough to make him think Anakin had gotten involved in something dangerous again, but with the way his life had been going lately, he wasn't going to rule out an entirely new and probably horrifying type of trouble.

Thankfully, when he walked into the apartment, it was to see the pair of them sprawled out on Anakin's couch. Anakin waved him in and Padmé, who had a datapad in one hand, looked up at him with a satisfied expression that made him discount any of the worst possibilities. "I've found something," she announced.

Obi-Wan dropped into an armchair. "Oh?"

"About Damask," Padmé told him. She stood up, walking over to him and handing him the datapad she'd been holding. "Aside from looking at every issue he ever publicly allied with Palpatine on, I've been chasing down his money trails all over the place. While you were gone I discovered a large transaction he'd made about thirteen years ago into a corporation that never existed."

"Thirteen years…" Obi-Wan repeated, leaning forward in his seat. "Around the time of the blockade of Naboo?"

Padmé nodded. "Before, but the timing was enough to make me suspicious. And when I dug a little further, I found similar transactions going back decades, and all of them lead to the same place." She sat back down next to Anakin, who flashed her a proud smile.

"All right, you have me curious," Obi-Wan admitted, tapping his fingers on the arms of his chair. "Where? Somewhere I've heard of, I take it."

This time, it was Anakin who answered him. "Not just heard of, Master. You've been there." His expression grew serious. "Kamino."

Well. They'd known from the moment the clones turned that the Kaminoans must have been hiding something. The Council had, for the time being, decided against sending someone to investigate—if the Kaminoans were actively complicit in the plot to destroy the Jedi, they'd have the thousands of clones in various stages of development on their planet to attack anyone who came, and simply bombing the place from orbit wouldn't garner them any answers. Moreover, all the Order's resources had been tied up trying to retrieve stranded Jedi before the clones could get to them.

Still, it was an interesting development. And a timely one: even before Padmé had called him, he'd been on his way towards Anakin's quarters. Now, it seemed that the task the Council had assigned the pair of them had taken on a new intriguing dimension. "Our prisoner finally woke up earlier today," he told Anakin. "I think it's time we ask him a few questions."

*

Obi-Wan at his side, Anakin headed down the twisted passageways through the depths of the Jedi Temple. Here, far below the main floors of the building, below even the storage room full of Palpatine's possessions he'd visited a few days before, was located a part of the Temple that he'd only been to rarely.

Prison cells. It had been centuries since more than one or two had been used a time, and more often than not, none at all had been occupied. The Jedi had long since agreed to allow the Republic's criminal justice system to take precedent, and the government had its own prisons. Generally speaking, only dangerous Force-users were to be held captive here, and before the re-emergence of the Sith, those had been few and far-between.

The captive they were visiting today was not a Force-sensitive. A pawn of the Sith, and currently an enemy of the Jedi, yes, but certainly not an actual dark-sider. Two weeks ago, he might have been taken to a Republic military prison.

Times had changed since then. For starters, the military prisons weren't operating at the moment, since the clones in charge of them were dead or AWOL thanks to Order 66. But then, if it weren't for Order 66, this man would never have been a prisoner.

The pair presented themselves to the Temple guards keeping watch outside the cell and were waved through. Anakin paused outside the ray-shield door and took a moment to look at the man sitting inside.

Physically, Captain Rex looked much as he had the last time Anakin had seen him before Mustafar, when he and Obi-Wan had handed over command of the mission they'd been forced to abandon when the call came through about the Separatist attack on Coruscant. Dressed only in black fatigues, he was standing in the middle of his cell in a parade rest and apparently had been since before they'd arrived. Though he was staring straight ahead, he didn't make eye contact or give any indication that he'd noticed their arrival.

It was his eyes that had changed, Anakin thought. They'd never looked that flat before. That and his Force-signature: despite their identical DNA, each clone's presence had its own individual flavor to it for anyone who bothered to look for it. And Anakin had always made a point of looking. Even if Rex had been standing in a lineup with a dozen other clones, his Force-presence would have made him as easy to pick out as his blonde-dyed hair.

Right now, though, there was something off about what Anakin was sensing. Rex's presence was muted. The change was subtle—Anakin wasn't sure he'd have noticed it if he hadn't been looking. Rex didn't feel dark, or angry, or malicious, or anything else that would mark him as an enemy if it wasn't for the fact that he'd tried to kill Anakin two days before. Nothing was there for Anakin to sense that hadn't been there for as long as they'd been working together.

But something was missing. He couldn't quite put his finger on what.

"Hello, Rex," Anakin said quietly. Though he hadn't been there for it, he'd heard that the clone had woken briefly while being transported here and attacked the Jedi guarding him. Nobody had been seriously injured, but it was the sedative the medics had given Rex after that incident which had forced them to push back questioning the clone until today.

Rex still didn't acknowledge him.

Anakin shared a glance with Obi-Wan, who shrugged at him and then stepped forward until he was immediately in front of the door. "Captain Rex," Obi-Wan snapped in an authoritative voice that Anakin had heard from him a number of times, both before his Knighting and after, usually when he'd done something Obi-Wan considered not just disobedient or reckless but also spectacularly stupid, "you are under arrest for treason and the attempted murder of your superior officers. Report!"

That wasn't technically true—Rex wasn't being formally charged with anything—but it appeared to have an effect. Rex lifted his chin and met Obi-Wan's eyes.

Apparently encouraged by this small response, Obi-Wan tried again. "CT-7567, explain your actions!"

"Good soldiers follow orders," Rex said, and nothing more.

Anakin swore. They'd expected that, yeah. And it wasn't that he wanted for Rex to have tried to kill them entirely of his own volition: he'd had enough of betrayal lately. Still, convincing Rex to give them information about the other clones would have been a hell of a lot easier if it had just been a matter of persuasion. This made things trickier—there were medical complications for starters, and it was entirely possible there were redundant forms of programming beyond the one they knew about.

"And what are your orders, Rex?" Obi-Wan asked softly, the imperiousness gone from his voice.

Rex stepped forward until he was standing just inches in front of the ray shield. His military posture was impeccable, his head held high as he stated, "The Jedi are traitors. Kill the Jedi."

*

"He sounded just like Tup did," Anakin told the Council a few hours later. "Same phrases, same look in his eyes, same everything."

Standing beside him, Obi-Wan nodded his assent. "I think his behavior can lay to rest any doubts that we had. The chips that we became aware of earlier this year are responsible for the clones' fanatical execution of Palpatine's orders."

Obi-Wan had told Anakin earlier that the Council had suspected as much from the beginning. Fives's claims of a plot to destroy the Jedi using the clones had sounded ridiculous when he'd first made them. But it was even less likely that the entire army, to a man, would go rogue against the orders of the new Acting Chancellor and try to kill the Jedi they had once fought side-by-side with.

Now, they had proof that Fives had been right. Anakin couldn't help but think that maybe, if he'd been willing to listen to the clone when he'd still been alive, he might have been able to prevent this. All of it. Some of it. Any of it.

It had been Fives's assertion that the Chancellor had been the one behind the plot that had been the final straw against him in Anakin's mind. He'd been unwilling to hear a single bad word against Palpatine, and now thousands of Jedi had paid the price.

He'd been so blind.

And he hadn't told the Council about the accusation against Palpatine. Mostly because he'd taken it for the ravings of a madman, but partly because he'd known there were Masters on the Council—Obi-Wan among them—who didn't trust Palpatine, and he hadn't wanted to create more unwarranted suspicion. Leaving that detail out of his report had seemed an obvious way both to protect his friend and to serve the Republic by not driving a wedge between two of its highest authorities in a time of crisis and war.

An easy decision, at the time. Deceptively easy for a choice that had turned out to have the fate of the Jedi Order—and the galaxy—hanging in the balance. And even though Anakin knew that probably nothing would have come of it even if he'd chosen differently, because Palpatine had been too smart to leave evidence around to confirm anybody's suspicions, he couldn't help but wonder. Even a slim chance that the Jedi could have been ready for Order 66 was still a chance.

He also couldn't help but wonder how the hell Fives had discovered the truth about Palpatine. Maybe Palpatine had just told him, wielding honesty about his true nature as a weapon just as he had with Anakin. It had been Fives's attack on the Chancellor that had led to him being hunted and killed, after all.

They had all been pawns. Puppets dancing on the ends of Sidious's strings.

Anakin tuned back in to the conversation going on around him.

"I see no choice but to contact the Kaminoans," Windu was saying. "If they're willing to help us stop the clones, we could use their knowledge. If they're not, then they're working with the clones, and we definitely need to know whatever they're hiding."

"We don't have the military strength to force them to give us anything," Tholme pointed out. "If they refuse to cooperate…"

A heavy silence fell. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," said Obi-Wan eventually. "First we need to determine if they'll even talk to us."

*

The good news, Obi-Wan reflected twenty minutes later, was that the Kaminoans had been willing to answer their call, and the Council had soon found itself in the communications center speaking to the holographic forms of Lama Su and Taun We.

The bad news, of course, was that despite the Kaminoans' assurances, they had no guarantee that hundreds of clones weren't lurking just out of sight of the projector, and also that Taun We was categorically refusing to give them any information about how the chips worked, let alone how to disable them.

"You must understand, Master Jedi, if we went around giving out the scientific advances we made in the course of our experiments, we would soon be out of business." She paused. "Surely you wouldn't wish for us to give the secrets of this technology to anybody who asked for it?"

Obi-Wan shuddered.

"We're the one the clones are trying to kill," Mace said. "We aren't just anybody." He shared a glance with Yoda. "But I'd prefer if we didn't have to make this an issue of your legal liability. I'm sure you agree. Just name a reasonable price, and we'll transfer you the credits."

"Very good," said Taun We, inclining her head in his direction. "But you misunderstand me, Master Jedi. The science behind our programming is more complicated than I can simply explain to you. We must meet, in person, if I am to give you the information."

Mace leaned forward. "Why not just send it to us?" he demanded.

Lama Su shook his head. "The data we collected is valuable," he said. "Too valuable to transmit over a holo-connection, even a secured one. You must collect and pay for it in person."

Well. That sounded like an invitation to walk into a trap if Obi-Wan had ever heard one. "With all due respect, Prime Minister," he said carefully, "you've deceived us before, and if there are clones at your disposal then you could ambush any number of Jedi we sent to meet with you."

Lama Su swiveled his long, graceful neck so that his head was turned in Obi-Wan's direction. "We have no reason to betray you, Master Kenobi. We did nothing but fulfill our contract to Sifo-Dyas and Tyranus, and now that they are dead, only the Republic remains for us to work with. Making an enemy of the Jedi simply wouldn't be profitable."

What was it Dex had told him when he'd first asked if the Kaminoans were friendly? It depends on how good your manners are…and how big your pocketbook is. Dead men didn't have pocketbooks, which meant there was a chance Lama Su was telling the truth.

It wasn't a chance Obi-Wan would have liked to stake his life on. Looking around, he could sense that the other Masters were similarly suspicious. Beside him, Anakin had his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and his lips were pressed together in a thin line—no Force-use was necessary to tell Obi-Wan how he felt.

One part of Lama Su's response stuck out to him. "Your contract with Sifo-Dyas and Tyranus," Obi-Wan repeated. "Tell me, were you aware that Tyranus was Count Dooku?"

"Was he?" said Lama Su. Neither Kaminoan appeared surprised at the revelation. But then, their tranquil expressions held no trace of guilt or alarm at the Jedi's knowledge either, Obi-Wan noted, and the Force wasn't giving him any hints.

"I'm afraid we had no idea," Taun We added.

Obi-Wan exchanged a glance with Anakin. "Of course you didn't."

"We'll discuss the matter and be in contact," said Mace shortly. He cut the connection then stepped back from the projector, a frown on his face.

There was silence. "I don't see that we have any choice but to meet with them," said Tholme after a moment. "We need that information."

"And if we had any assurance that whoever we sent wouldn't be ambushed and killed on the spot," added Luminara drily, "it might even be a good plan."

Stass Allie, newly returned from Saleucami, folded her arms. "We could send a non-Jedi. The clones so far haven't been aggressive towards civilians."

Mace rubbed his eyes. "The clones who shot up the Senate weren't trying to avoid collateral damage. If it meant keeping information from us, I doubt they'd hesitate to kill anybody." He paused, considering. "And that's assuming they wouldn't blast the ship into pieces first and ask questions later."

"Besides," cut in Coleman Kcaj. "If they're lying to us, then they won't be bringing the information, and it won't matter who we send."

"So a question of trust, this matter becomes." Yoda shook his head. "Believe, do we, that the Prime Minister is telling the truth? Or not?" Another silence fell, this one uneasy. Yoda had reduced the problem to its heart, but, Obi-Wan knew, that didn't make it any easier to solve. The Kaminoans had never been easy to read, and that was doubly true now that they knew the cloners had been withholding important information.

Which didn't mean it wasn't a risk worth taking. "My impression of the Kaminoans is that they wouldn't stay loyal to a dead employer if it meant taking a financial hit," Obi-Wan said finally. "They're self-serving, not malicious. But we should still take precautions. If nothing else, the clones themselves have the military might to strong-arm the Kaminoans into acting on their behalf."

Anakin spoke up for the first time in several minutes. "So we play it smart," he said. "We can't meet them at Kamino, and I don't think they'll send anyone to Coruscant, but we could set up a meeting on the outskirts of some other system. Give the location only at the last minute so there wouldn't be time for clones to set up an ambush, and so that whichever of us goes can be there already, ready to jump if they bring in more than one ship."

Obi-Wan nodded. "We'd have to convince them to transfer over to our ship for the negotiations," he added. "If they're unwilling, that could be a sign that the situation is a trap."

Not that he was always opposed to walking into traps, but there was a fine line between purposefully allowing the enemy to play their hand and committing strategically unnecessary suicide. Walking onto the Kaminoans' ship and trusting they wouldn't immediately jump back to the middle of a clone-controlled fleet would definitely be closer to the latter.

Mace let out a sigh. "All right," he said. "Let's break for now. Yoda and I will choose a system for the rendezvous; everyone else, try to think of any additional precautions we should put in place for the meeting. We'll reconvene in a few hours."

The group dissolved, and Obi-Wan was unsurprised when Anakin fell into step beside him as he walked toward the door. "Master Windu talked about stopping the clones," Anakin said quietly as they emerged into the hallway. "If it's really only the chips making them act this way—we're going to try to undo it, right? Fix them, not kill them?"

Obi-Wan sighed. The suggestion had been raised in a previous Council meeting, as soon as they'd connected the clones' behavior to the incident with ARC-Trooper Fives, and been shot down almost as quickly. "Fix them how, Anakin?" he asked. "Perform brain surgery on thousands of highly-trained soldiers who are determined to kill us or die trying? If it were that easy to capture them, we wouldn't be in this predicament!"

"Oh," Anakin frowned. "Right." Then he brightened, looking over at Obi-Wan hopefully. "We could do it with Rex, though, right? I mean, all we have to do is scan his head for his chip and take it out."

There was a pause. "We will certainly do that at some point," Obi-Wan said.

"At some point?" Anakin turned to face him. "Why not right now? Why not today?"

"Because we still don't know if removing the chip contributed to Fives's breakdown." Anakin started to protest, and Obi-Wan held up a hand. "I'm not saying we should leave it in his head forever. But the information we get from the Kaminoans may tell us how best to remove it safely, without causing any brain damage. There's no harm in waiting."

Anakin scowled at the floor. "I don't like it," he muttered. He looked up, meeting Obi-Wan's eyes. "I mean, I get it. But I don't like leaving him like, like that, with no control over his actions."

"I know," said Obi-Wan.

*

Three days later, Obi-Wan watched with no small amount of relief when a single ship—clearly nonmilitary—emerged from hyperspace into the uninhabited system that they had decided upon.

In the end, the Kaminoans had agreed to the terms with very little protest: one representative from the Jedi would meet one representative from Kamino in neutral territory. As Obi-Wan had suspected, the most difficult part was convincing Taun We to transfer over to his ship, something the Jedi hadn't brought up in negotiations so as to avoid potentially giving the enemy the chance to come up with a trap. He didn't blame her—had their situations been reversed, he would have been wary of being taken captive. But though the Jedi Order had been forced to make some difficult moral decisions over the course of the war, they certainly had not stooped to kidnapping scientists who, at the moment, didn't appear to be working against them. Still, he could understand her caution.

"Very well," Taun We said eventually. "However, Master Jedi, you should be aware that the datachip I am going to give you requires a passkey to be opened. Only once I am safely returned to my ship after our conversation will I transmit it to you."

Obi-Wan paused. The largest risk in the operation was the possibility of ambush, either before or after the negotiations had taken place. He was less concerned about what would happen while Taun We was onboard, since he doubted the Kaminoan would risk her own life if she thought his ship was going to be blown up in the near future.

But if she thought she would be able to get back to her own ship and then have time to transmit a message…

No. He didn't sense any deception, and this mission was too important to call off because of a chance that his life might be in danger. And if it turned out that he was wrong about her allegiance, he'd just have to trust in the Force to guide him to safety, or not, as it willed.

"Understood," he told her. "Prepare to dock." Slipping out of the pilot's chair, he made his way through the small ship to the docking area, one hand resting on his lightsaber. When the door slid back to reveal Taun We, alone and as far as he could tell unarmed, he relaxed only slightly.

"Master Jedi," she said, bowing gracefully. "A pleasure to see you again."

"I wish I could say the same." Obi-Wan stepped back, allowing her to enter. "Under the circumstances, I'm afraid I'm a little caught up in the fact that you've been deceiving us for years."

Taun We looked at him as if surprised, perhaps taken aback that he was cutting to the chase so quickly. "That is...a harsh way of putting it," she said, and Obi-Wan wondered if she was genuinely bewildered about why he was upset.

"You knew the clones were intended to kill Jedi," he said. "You knew about Order 66 and you lied to us about it."

Taun We met his eyes steadily. "We knew the purpose of the chips," she admitted. "We were told that it was to be a contingency, in case the Jedi ever became a danger to the Republic."

Obi-Wan crossed his arms. "And you didn't find that at all suspicious?"

"It is not my job to be suspicious of my employers," she said, voice icy. "I simply do as I am paid for."

Rubbing at his eyes, Obi-Wan sighed. Casting blame about wasn't what he'd come here for. "What can you tell us about how the programming works?"

At that, Taun We seemed to brighten. "Our behavioral programming is very thorough," she told him, with more enthusiasm than Obi-Wan felt the situation really called for. "First the units were genetically modified while in the fetal stage to be obedient. Though we couldn't strip them of their independent decision-making abilities entirely without losing the creativity that makes them superior to droids, they are more receptive to orders than their genetic source was."

Obi-Wan nodded. This part, at least, he'd heard before.

"All units were then given ten years of training," Taun We continued. "In addition to imparting fighting abilities and teaching them how to work together on the battlefield, we also conditioned them for a number of specific scenarios at Tyranus's request. Order 66 was one of the contingencies they were trained for, in case any Jedi ever went rogue."

"Order 66," Obi-Wan said flatly. "Killing Jedi."

For the first time, Taun We hesitated before answering. "Yes," she said. "If given the order by the Chancellor, they were to cease all other activities and eliminate the Jedi threat."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes briefly. "And the chips?"

"Given to us by Tyranus and implanted in the embryonic stage," she told him. "As part of the modifications to make the units more obedient. The chips were intended to suppress aggression, and also to ensure that the contingencies Tyranus gave us would be executed faithfully if it ever became necessary. We suspected the units might become more...independent...the longer they were away from our conditioning centers, and we didn't want to take the chance of disobedience."

Right. "But the clones didn't listen when the Acting Chancellor ordered them to stand down." Which made sense, unfortunately, though that hadn't stopped them from trying it: Palpatine had clearly planned for contingencies, wouldn't have allowed for his plan to be derailed so easily. "So the chips won't respond to anyone other than Palpatine?"

Again, Taun We hesitated. "Well," she said.

Obi-Wan stared at her, a flare of hope blooming in his chest. "Well?"

"There is the override transmitter," Taun We said. "Though, I'm not sure you'd want-"

"Override transmitter?" Obi-Wan cut her off. "There's an override transmitter?" Relief warring with anger, Obi-Wan resisted the urge to grab Taun We and demand to know why it had taken so long for her to mention it. Why hadn't the Kaminoans tried to sell the remote to them the moment Order 66 had been executed? Had they decided to purposefully wait to be contacted, allowing the situation to become more and more desperate to drive up the price? "In that case," he said, with a calm he didn't feel, "I'd like to buy it."

"No," she said. "That would be impossible."

Obi-Wan wondered if she didn't have it on her. It seemed improbable that she wouldn't have predicted the request, but perhaps she hadn't wanted to risk bringing such an important bargaining chip until she knew he could pay for it. "You should understand," he began, "the Jedi Order is prepared to pay for such a device. We will compensate you."

Taun We shook her head. "I'm afraid it's not a matter of money, Master Kenobi," she said, sounding genuinely regretful. "Like the chips, it was created by Tyranus, and as far as I know, he was the only one to ever have a copy."

***

A/N: Sorry for the long wait between updates, you guys. It's been a busy semester. Also, just to reiterate one more time - this story is going to continue using Legends canon, so don't be surprised if there are discrepancies between the fic and new canon (for example, Rex's fate as seen in Rebels). As always, thanks for reading!

 

Hi!!!!! Every time there's an update, it's worth the wait! Wonderfully plausible changes to the enacting of Order 66. A hard thing to solve about the transmitter and Rex's altered state. I hope they can remove the chip or reverse the Order 66 influenced programming. I agree that if Anakin had believed Fives' early assertion without the transmitter they couldn't have prevented what happened.

 

Thanks! I'm glad you thought it was worth the (admittedly long) wait. Yeah, Palpatine would have figured out a way to make his plans happen, one way or another.

 

It's nice to see this story back! For a moment I thought you'd given up on it, with college and all that.

Great, great update, as always, with revelation after revelation. I love how you integrate big and small details of the Legends continuity in this story despite the fact that it's an AU.

There's a lot I could comment on, because the plot thickened considerably in this chapter, but I want to note two elements that particularly stood out to me. The first one is the fact that Anakin is so concerned about saving the clones. That's very much in-character for him, and it shows nicely the contrast with the Jedi Council, who can be a lot colder and even ruthless at times. The second one is Padmé's investigation. Go Padmé! She understandably has a smaller, behind-the-scene role in the plot at this stage of the story, but it's great to see that she delivers.

I'll be here waiting for the next update, whenever it comes.

PS: Because you've been away for a while you may not know that we have a new tagging system in fanfic to account for the split between New Canon and Legends. Since you're sticking to the Legends continuity, you might want to change your story's tag to Saga - Legends (see here for details).

 

Glad you liked the chapter! I'm happy people are enjoying Padme's subplot, since she's one of my favorite characters to write.

Thanks for the tip about tagging! I'll go take a look at how that works.