Chapter Text
The making of Darth Vader was a precise art. It was a masterpiece eleven years in the making. In this, Darth Sidious was a director who managed his stage to the smallest detail, conducting a series of moving parts including the killing of Dooku, the sowing of distrust and paranoia between Skywalker and the Jedi, the timely conception of his children, and down to the very number of hours he would go without sleep on the days leading up to the stage Sidious had set. It was a juggling act of circumstances that would not work without the other, and Sidious accounted for everything as he watched the future he already foresaw unfold before him.
The cracks in the foundation would require a timely prod from Sidious himself for it all to come crumbling down whenever he desired it to. This was how he anticipated that his greatest joy in life, his magnum opus—breaking Anakin Skywalker—would go.
He did not account for a broken dishwasher.
-
Several hours before the holocall where General Grevious’ defeat would be relayed to the Jedi, the dishwasher in Padmé’s kitchen broke.
“Fuck,” Anakin said, standing in a puddle of water pooling out from the still-running machine. It was one of those fancy ones that doubled as an autoclave as well, and something like static buzzed through Anakin’s mind as he stared at it.
Beeping. Artoo.
“Yeah,” Anakin said. He blinked out the stars in his eyes. He heard, in the periphery of his attention, Artoo cursing out Threepio for the mishap, while Threepio gasped in indignation at the accusation. Regular comedy act, those two.
“Ani? What’s wrong - oh!”
“I’ll take care of it,” Anakin’s mouth said on autopilot.
“You have to go back to the Temple—”
“I said I’ll fix it,” he snapped, then immediately regretted it. He always did, and he always hated himself a little bit more after that. He didn’t turn to look at her face, to apologise, because if he did then something was going to shatter. Maybe the dishwasher. He fucking hated this dishwasher.
“Threepio, can you get the mop?” Padmé said softly, then to Anakin, “I’ll tell you if a comm comes for you.” It was sympathetic understanding, which sometimes hurt more than scoldings that set him straight because while the latter made him feel like a stupid kid, the former made him feel like a temperamental animal that needed to be managed with care.
Padmé left the room. Yes, good. Now it was just Anakin and his nemesis. The dishwasher.
Anakin used the safety button on the panel to force the machine off. There was a worrying clatter of dishes as the process lurched to a stop. Anakin pulled the machine open.
Another rush of water spilled out onto his boots. Precious water, scattered with no care. Anakin willed himself to grow teeth strong enough to penetrate durasteel, already planning on how he was going to rip the dishwasher to shreds with his newly-grown canines. He stuffed durasteel fingers between his teeth and bit down, but the canines were still as blunt as they had been a minute ago.
Then he saw the dishes.
Padmé’s floral-patterned dish-ware was bleached back to white porcelain. Every drop of vibrant-Naboo colour was leeched out and swirling at Anakin’s boots. Not a single one of Padmé’s beloved plates were spared.
A murderer. This dishwasher was a murderer. He reached out with the Force, intent to choke the life out of it.
But Anakin was a Jedi. Destruction was not the Jedi way, and Anakin feared that if he could not fix this one simple thing then he would not be able to fix anything else.
Artoo already had Anakin’s tools next to him, and he got straight to figuring out what was wrong.
But nothing would go right. He would yank at the paneling at the bottom a little too forcefully, and the valves would just be a little too temperature-warped, or the filter was not clogged but torn which left the drain hose bursting, and all that would completely mess up the autoclave system to several different degrees, and this was not an easy fix and an impossible one with everything he had in Padmé’s flat, and Obi-Wan knew and the Council didn’t trust him and the Chancellor was disappointed that he would spy on him and Padmé was going to die and if he couldn’t fix this one simple machine then—
“Padmé would die,” Mom said, “like I did.”
“You need new parts,” Master Qui-Gon said. Where Mom was crouched next to him, looking into the machine, Qui-Gon stood tall over him. He tapped at Anakin’s temple with a pointed finger. “Your focus determines your reality, young one, and these parts are broken.”
The shattered heating bulb. “Then I won’t be able to sleep again,” Anakin murmured. His vision was too loud, his own voice like flashing lights. The tips of his flesh fingers tingled, numb. The dishwasher was throwing Force Lightning at him. Because Anakin was a Jedi, he wasn’t going to kill the dishwasher like he killed the other person who liked to throw Force Lightning at him.
Instead, he was going to fix it. Because if he fixed this machine, then he would be able to fix the war, and the Senate, and Palpatine’s worries, and the Jedi would welcome him, and Ahsoka would come back, and Padmé would be alive. If he could fix this machine, then he could work a machine that would keep Padmé safe. He could be the machine, he thought to himself. He would turn himself into a machine that would protect Padmé and keep her inside him forever. And her plates. Her beautiful, beloved plates.
When Padmé walked back in, speaking, “Ani, there’s a comm from the Master Windu—” she cut herself off at the sight that greeted her.
Her husband was gone. And her dishwasher was ripped out of the wall.
-
Maybe if Mace knew Skywalker less than he did, he would write off the ignored comms as irresponsibility. Skywalker certainly fit the bill from the outside—a wild, arrogant young Knight who had responsibilities foisted on him too early and could not, in the end, live up the expectations places upon him. With these circumstances, missing a meeting required of a Councilor was disappointing, but did not seem far-fetched.
But Skywalker was one of the most active Generals on the front-lines, and that meant he had already been attending hundreds of these war meetings by now—he was late sometimes, and regularly ignored comms from Kenobi especially after being granted leave, but not like this. Not when Obi-Wan was on the front and he wasn’t there to watch his back. If he could, Skywalker would camp out at the comm station waiting for news from his former Master.
“We shouldn’t have relied on Skywalker for this,” Mace said once the others have left the call.
“Inform the Chancellor, will you?” Master Yoda, appearing as a holo, asked him.
The plan was to have Skywalker glean something from the Chancellor’s reaction to Kenobi’s engagement with Grevious, but without the Knight here and just enough time for Mace to think, and think, the more he felt they have strayed too far. Before the war there would not even be a consideration on what they were doing—espionage, in the very core of the Republic itself? Unthinkable.
Something shattered. He could not see it pass an almost blinding stack of Shatterpoints, lines of fate knotting over itself, but he felt it in the Force. Yoda frowned, his ears drooping as he felt the same disturbance.
“No,” Mace said. He loved the Republic. Once, he thought he would have done anything for it. But he was a Jedi. “The farce ends here. We shouldn’t have started it in the first place. The Chancellor shouldn’t have ever had this much power over the Jedi in the first place.”
“Agree with you, I do,” Yoda said. “Important, this day is. Feel it, you do?”
“Like a headache.”
Yoda harumphed, as he was wont to do. Mace continued.
“We won’t give the Chancellor any time to prepare. Once news comes of Grevious’ defeat, we will mobilise to make him give up his emergency powers immediately.”
Yoda raised a brow. “Confident, you are, that win, Obi-Wan will?”
Even that question was formality at best. They both felt it, potent even in the murky Force. The war ended today, one way or another.
“We shall see,” he said.
-
Anakin nearly took the dishwasher to the Coruscant Guard before he realised he was trying to fix it, not arrest it. He swerved in the speeder, and an orchestra of horns followed in his wake. Artoo screeched from his designated spot, but Anakin just reached over to pat his dome.
“Don’t worry, buddy. If we crash I can fix it.” Because he was going to fix everything.
Coruscant was an ecumenopolis with not a single surface area to spare. This meant that waste was either recycled or taken off-world via trash barge. However, while these barges had to be economical they couldn’t exactly take the sheer volume of Coruscant’s trash all at once, so there was a need for a stop-gap—even if it was more organic than intentional by the companies contracted to remove waste. They called such places “junkyards” on Tatooine, but many high-life Corries pretended they didn’t exist—to them it might as well not, existing only at the highest on the lower mid-levels. Anakin was well-acquainted with them from a young age because even if he was no longer racing on Tatooine, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to build his racers himself.
That was where he got the parts he needed to fix everything when he was young, and that’s where he would go to get the parts he needed to fix the Republic.
He parked the speeder one level above the junkyard and hopped out into open air. The dishwasher floated in the Force alongside him and when he landed in the middle of the street, the few people out immediately parted for him.
They knew, of course, that he was going to fix the war and bring peace. He didn’t stop to tell them he had to fix the dishwasher first though, merely gave a smile to the being nearest to where he landed. They flinched back from him and bolted, but beside the few, the area was strangely deserted. Anakin continued on his way.
There was prophecy in the streets and song in his gait. He was dancing to its tune with every step forward. The Force cradled him. There was a desert storm trying to break through the ceiling, and in one hour Anakin was going to bring it all down.
Artoo found him fifteen minutes later—or half an hour, or longer, or really it could just be no time at all—having made his way through the winding streets without his own Force-assisted landing, and started wildly beeping at him. Anakin frowned at him from where he was elbows deep in the guts of the dishwasher.
“Of course I’m fine,” Anakin said. In fact he was thinking clearer than he ever had in his life before.
Artoo trilled, spinning.
“I’m fixing it.”
Another series of angered beeps.
“To save Padmé.”
Artoo’s dome shook. Mom put a hand on his cheek and turned his head back to the machine. He couldn’t just find the parts he needed. No, he needed to—
“Weld,” Anakin whispered.
-
“Chancellor Palpatine,” Mace said as he and the three Jedi Masters behind him stepped into the office. “General Grevious has been defeated. The war is as good as over.”
Palpatine looked up from his desk with an air of pleasant surprise and beamed. “Oh! That’s wonderful news, Master Jedi. So General Kenobi managed to pull it off after all.”
Mace nodded. “It seems the Republic can finally enter a stable current and you can give up your emergency powers comfortably, your excellency.”
Palpatine nodded. “Yes, yes…” he frowned. “Where is Knight Skywalker, may I ask? I thought he would be the one to bring me the good news.”
Mace didn’t twitch when the Force screamed at him. Saesee did, flinching with a sharp intake of breath.
“General Skywalker is currently indisposed,” Mace said.
“Oh.” Palpatine threaded his fingers together. “Very well then. Do tell him to meet me at his earliest convenience. If that’s all, Masters Jedi, I would be sure to start getting work. As busy as war gets me, peace is an even more tedious process to achieve, you understand.”
“The war has ended, your excellency,” Mace continued, bulldozing over Palpatine’s not-so-subtle dismissal. He led the Jedi down the steps into the office. “With Count Dooku and General Grevious dead, the Separatists are without anyone to lead their army.”
“Of course,” Palpatine readily agreed. “Have you arrested the remnants of the Separatist leadership then?”
“General Grevious sent them away before he engaged the 212th. Once the battle is over, it won’t be long before Clone Intelligence finds out their locations.”
“Good, good,” Palpatine said. “If that is all…?”
Mace was thoroughly, completely sick of politics. There had been a sickness in the Force for so long, but the Force had never felt more right than when he decided, barely an hour ago, to do away with all the spying and politicking and bending.
Mace said, “We are here to make sure you give up your emergency powers, your excellency.”
Palpatine froze. “What is this?”
“A duty to democracy.”
Something in the old man’s face twisted. “Are you arresting me?”
Mace paused. “That depends. Are you refusing?”
“The war isn’t over yet!”
“It is.”
Palpatine looked at him, then at the Jedi Masters behind him, and then at something beyond.
And then a lot of things made a lot of sense very quickly.
-
This is how it feels to be Darth Sidious.
You do not make art. At least, you do not make art in any way that can be perceived by beings that consider time linear and see the world only in several dimensions. However, if you did make art, you would explain it like this.
You sculpted a clay figurine. You have made hundreds, thousands of clay figurines before this instance, so many that you do not even remember the first few failures of beginning. This would be your magnum opus, and you prepare the figurine for a crucial stage in its creation, the part where the shape you’ve sculpted it into will be solidified through immense heat.
But before you know it, it shatters in the kiln.
This has never happened before. You made sure it was the perfect temperature, the perfect volume and weight and material—this should not have happened. This was a surprise.
You have had your whole life laid out in front of you. You go through the motions, already knowing what will happen next—the Jedi will fall and a new order will rise with you as Emperor. You know this so well that the eventual victory of the Sith will not even be satisfying. Your only joy in life is breaking this sun in the Force, and even then you know he will disappoint you.
This, however, surprises you.
He broke. He broke all by himself. And not in the direction of Darkness, not in the way of psychic interference, not in the way of an overpowering vision. Something just went wrong, chemicals and synapses and unreliable flesh short circuiting and the boy just broke.
How wonderful. How delightful. The better part of a century in this galaxy where nothing is new to you anymore, and yet the unpredictabilities of flesh managed to catch you off-guard. You are going to die here, with no Skywalker running in to stop your killer, and you cannot even be incensed that everything you have worked towards is going to come crumbling down right at the end. You are not Darth Plagueis, who feared death more than anything; you are Darth Sidious, who only takes joy in hurting.
And surprises. Your only regret is that you are not there to see the shattering. You know it will be beautiful.
No matter. There is a body somewhere out there, ripe for you to assume. There is a planet-killer over Geonosis, build progress chugging along steadily. There is a Republic out there who distrusts the Jedi, and when you return in ten years, twenty, fifty, a hundred, it will welcome your rule on its knees with desperate need to serve.
“So it’s treason, then,” you say, and drop the act.
-
Anakin lost time. He didn’t realise it, of course, only came back to himself with the thought that while a lightsaber could theoretically work as a welder, it was entirely not precise enough for the work he wanted to do. And also, the dishwasher was broken. Even more than before. He returned his saber to his hip.
Artoo kept running into Anakin’s knees where he was sat on the ground in the middle of - somewhere. His stream of furious binary did not compute in Anakin’s head. Anakin’s forgotten a language, he realised, and when he tried to reach for Huttese—to form a sentence, to say something, he didn’t even know—he could not. He had forgotten. He wouldn’t be able to speak to his mother ever again.
She wasn’t here. She wasn’t here.
“Mom? Master Qui-Gon?” Anakin called out, but there was no answer. Artoo now had one of his multi-tools sticking out and poking incessantly at Anakin. He looked up, and Qui-Gon stood over him, smoothing his hair down like he was nine and small again. The touch was like a phantom warmth and Anakin wanted Obi-Wan here so bad it hurt. “What do I do? What do I do, Master?”
The dishwasher was broken. It was supposed to be fixed so Anakin can keep Padmé safe in it, and when his daughter is born—Anakin reached into the future and the Force and plucked out her name - their names, stars and planets he will have twins, Luke and Leia - but that knowledge slipped from his grasp with no apparatus in him to hold something that had not yet come to pass—when his child is born he was supposed to place them inside the dishwasher and wash the afterbirth and blood and all things wrong away from them, but he couldn’t anymore because he broke it—
Anakin hit the side of his head with his durasteel hand. “Waste of - money,” he hissed. The whole world trembled. “Useless, bantha poodoo—” and he hit his head again and again and again, trying to knock his hardware back into order, that’s what some of the tech-illiterate people didn’t get, sometimes all a machine needed was a good hard knock to set it right—
A machine. If the dishwasher couldn’t be fixed…
Artoo deployed a wire that wrapped itself around Anakin’s metal wrist. His friend was still screeching, and started to wheel back to pull the metal fist away from Anakin’s head. Anakin let him as another more pressing revelation came to him.
Maybe Anakin could fix himself.
-
The message R2D2 sent to all the people Anakin Skywalker loved read this:
<pilot has bad code. bad code initialising self-destruct sequence. requesting backup.>
This was, admittedly, a very worrying message to send without context. It had sent Padmé into a cold kind of panic. Obi-Wan checked the high-priority comm in the middle of a firefight and nearly fell off his mount. Ahsoka, who had received some spectacularly bad news from Maul right before this, nearly had a heart attack in hyperspace, and Rex beside her was only slightly better because he had to be to comm Appo.
If R2D2 was the kind of being to do some silly thing like retrospect about wording, he would still stand by his choice of evoking maximum panic and urgency in his chosen backup. As he was however, R2D2 did not doubt himself as a rule ever since he stole his own sentience, nor did he have the time. He was too busy trying to tie his pilot up and sit on him until help arrived.
It was going swimmingly, thank you for asking.
-
“Don’t move!” Commander Fox shouted across the room and Mace’s saber paused where it rested at Palpatine’s neck. “Put the lightsaber down, sir.”
“Commander!” Palpatine cried out, his gnarled face dropping into something pitiful. “Help me! The Jedi are committing treason!”
“He’s lying, Commander. Chancellor Palpatine is a Sith Lord and Dooku’s Master. He’s been playing both sides of the war since the beginning,” Mace said in what he hoped didn’t sound like a hurry. He didn’t have much time for thinking when Palpatine rushed at them and struck down three Jedi Masters in a matter seconds, and he only came to this conclusion at the same time as even speaking it out loud.
“The Jedi are trying to execute a coup—you can’t trust them, Commander Fox,” Palpatine pleaded. “You can’t take him - run and warn the Republic! Warn the Senate!”
That pleading eye-contact probably didn’t work well to garner sympathy with how Palpatine currently looked. Mace said, “He sent your brothers to die for nothing. For a sham war.”
In a moment, Palpatine’s face twisted into a sneer, then a wide grin. This was the madness of a suicide bomber, the Force warned. “Execute Order Sixty-Six—”
In one smooth motion, Mace decapitated a Sith Lord and blocked a blaster shot from the Commander. His vision fractured—shattered—momentarily.
Commander Fox seemed to come to the realisation within a matter of seconds that he would not win this fight, and raised his arm to speak into the comm. “The Jedi are taking over. Execute Order—”
A Force push knocked him brutally into the wall and knocked him out. Mace dropped his hand. He looked around.
He was alone in the Chancellor’s office with a dead Chancellor who was also a Sith Lord, two dead Jedi and one injured, and an unconscious clone commander who suddenly became muted in the Force after hearing a foreign order, lying pretty under a massive Shatterpoint. He was so very, very tired.
But first, he needed to get Kit to a healer.
-
He was already part-machine. Anakin examined his left forearm and saw the green wires hiding beneath skin. He promptly dug his mech thumb into the flesh, drawing blood.
Artoo’s multi-tool limb snapped out to slap Anakin’s hand away.
“Why?” Anakin cried, not understanding why his friend was stopping him from fixing himself.
Artoo was distressed.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” Anakin said, alarmed. “I’m fixing myself.” Artoo blatted. “I don’t need a healer, I need a mechanic - and I’m a mechanic.”
Anakin gently shoved Artoo away with the force, much to his friend’s panic, dome and tools spinning futilely. Anakin turned his attention back to the panel of his flesh arm.
Anakin grunted in pain, not finding purchase when all his metal fingers did was gouge trenches over his forearm and collect skin in the crevices. His mech hand, slippery with red oil, reached out to his side and something sharp flew into its grip. He started to draw a rectangular outline to pry open the paneling.
Once he turned himself into a machine, not only would he be the perfect Jedi, and not only would he be able to keep Padmé’s dishes clean without the colour washing away, he would also be able to carry his child. He would incubate them, keep them safe and warm and fed. Padmé had her nine months, of course, and Anakin would have another nine for himself. No, he would have forever. His child—twins, he thought, then forgot again—and Ahsoka and Padmé and Obi-Wan would be kept forever in a chamber in his heart. He would build a little holoscreen with all of Ahsoka’s soap-operas, and a hydroponics farm for Obi-Wan’s hated plants, and he would even invite Master Qui-Gon when he deigned to show up. He had the sudden thought that he needed a space for the 501st as well, but decided it would take a considerable amount of time—at least two minutes—to build a home for his men as well, so he shelved that thought for later.
Anakin’s vision blurred, red and oil, and he came back to himself, digging into his arm. He cried out as his brain lit up sharply from the sensation There was a word for it - a shock, or perhaps an electrocution from the wires bursting red all over the ground. His arm shook, then fell limp to his side. Anakin whimpered.
Something was wrong. He need to turn himself off. Something bad was going to happen. He must have broken something. He was supposed to fix himself. Anakin wanted to cry. He was supposed to be better. His mech arm was still moving, enough to place his palm over his left ribcage and start digging his fingers beneath it, reaching for his emergency shut-down.
He couldn’t breathe. He groaned, gasped. Instinctly his mech hand clenched and something - painful, that was the word.
It hurt.
“General Skywalker?”
Anakin’s entire attention snapped to the voice, his eyesight clearing. “Thire,” Anakin repeated the Force’s recognition. There were a couple troopers behind him.
“That’s… me, sir. Are you alright?”
Anakin rasped something. It took him a moment to realise those were not words. He said, “I’m tired.” He was.
“You’re bleeding, sir. The Guard was called because of a Jedi disturbance - if you would let me escort you back to the Temple—”
“I’m fixing it.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“Just let me… let me fix it first.”
“Alright, we can do that. But first, can you let Jerryrig take a look at your arm?”
Anakin took a step back. Thire stood a fair distance from him, in between the mountains. Oh. There was ozone in the air, like the beginnings of dry thunder. There was never any thunder and lightning on Coruscant, not when all the weather was artificial. Miracle of miracles, when Anakin reached for the planet, it was still breathing, asthmatic and laborous beneath layers of durasteel and permacrete. Anakin knew, for a moment, what it felt like to be a celestial body slowly suffocating inside a black coffin never to see sunlight ever again, kept alive only by a master that just wanted to use its body. The Force wept for him.
“Sir?”
“Don’t,” Anakin said.
Thire paused. “If you would be more comfortable with the five-oh-first, Appo is on his way with a medic and a squad. They’re worried about you.”
His men. He loved them. He loved them so much. There was so much love in his heart and it would still be too much for every single one of them. It spilt out of him in an overflow, flooding Coruscant, drowning it.
“Okay,” Anakin said, nodding. “Appo.”
He lost time again. Thire didn’t try to get any closer. But his hand. His hand was too close to his blaster.
“Something happened,” Anakin said.
Thire’s hand twitched. “Don’t worry about it, General. You’re not well, right now.”
He was lying. He was hiding something. Like Obi-Wan. Like the Council. Like the Jedi, as Palpatine told him. Like Padmé about the Delegation of 2000. And suddenly Anakin could see the shadowy figures far behind Thire that he thought were civilians were actually shock troopers. They were here for him. Hundreds of them.
His men betrayed him. His men - no, they didn’t. The 501st would never. They would never. These men were here to put him down. They had siege weapons. He was the Zillo Beast. He was the Krayt.
Thire saw where he was looking. “I’ve got men cordoning off the civilians, but this area is only just lifting the lockdown—”
He threw the Commander back with the Force and one of the Guard caught him. The few others that were not amassing at a distance—that were not surrounding him, and soon LAAT/ie’s would come rumbling down, and tanks would roll in—raised their weapons at him.
“Hold your fire!” Thire shouted, jumping to his feet. “Commander, no one here is an enemy.”
They killed Fives. They took his padawan. They were going to kill Obi-Wan. They were going to assassinate Palpatine. They were going to take his child away from him and they were going to take Padmé—and they couldn’t take Padmé, not Padmé, never her. If they took Padmé he would die, he would no longer be Anakin Skywalker, he couldn’t, not without her, the same way he couldn’t be him without Obi-Wan, but it was Padmé, and Padmé held the key to his heart, held the last vestiges of the boy from the desert, and if Padmé died then Mom would be gone and there would be nothing left, and there would be no Ani, and there would be no daughter and he could not live—
“No one is going to take anything from you, General Skywalker,” Thire said, and his tone was loud, firm, yet so gentle. Like talking down a scared kid with a blaster. Like talking down a cornered animal. No, the clones wouldn’t kill them, wouldn’t take them. The clones were loyal to the Republic, and they only targeted threats. Obi-Wan and Padmé weren’t a threat. Anakin was. He had always been.
The Republic just seemed to realise this now. That was why they needed to put him down. This was his execution.
He wasn’t sure what happened before the first stun blasts came. Anakin batted them out of the way with the Force. They were attacking now. Anakin was a massiff. It was such a good boy, and it had loved its masters, and its masters had loved it, but it was still an animal, a mindless beast bred for blood, and when that very same hand that had pet it for years came too close to its teeth, it bit. And now it was going to be put down, not gently, no, it was going to be hunted down. It had snapped its own chains, and it had fled, aware it had done something unforgivable, and now the village people were running it down, cornering it with blasters and spears and hunting hooks and the massiff was going to be put down.
The massiff raised its hand, blood dripping onto its face, and it brought the sandstorm down.
-
It happened like this:
There were too many Jedi Masters and Knights away from Coruscant, the Temple emptier than it had ever been before, and only so many Jedi Mace could pull in to help with an extremely delicate situation. Vokara had just stabilised Kit, floating him onto a stretcher manned by clones. Shaak had Commander Fox’s head in her lap, hand to his temple as she tried to find whatever had muted him while a clone medic hovered over them, radiating potent distrust in the Force. Master Drallig had left Master Beq in charge of leading a defence back at the Temple should things go sideways and he was currently searching the office with Commander Theshy of Mace’s own 187th. Mace was left to the task of convincing a very irate Guard Captain that the Jedi were not, in fact, committing treason.
“—so we can achieve due process—”
“We did not come here to execute a coup, Captain,” Mace reiterated, trying not to massage his temple to ward off the building headache. Over the span of the last few hours, more Shatterpoints have built and burst than it had in his entire life, meaning that the future was tumbling over itself again and again, being decided in the moment. And it wasn’t even done.
“You knocked out my Commander!” Captain Chovy raised his voice for the first time, still feeling very much like he would like to arrest Mace just for that and not for assassinating the Supreme Chancellor. He added, almost like an afterthought, “Right after you killed the Supreme Chancellor. Right after he commed the entire Guard about the Jedi taking over.”
“The Sith Lord—”
“The Chancellor.”
Mace did not glare. At least there was a recording, a red lightsaber, and three downed Jedi Masters, or else the Captain would be much less cooperative. It also helped that Palpatine’s body was rapidly turning into a sulfurous biohazard. “The Chancellor gave a numbered order to Commander Fox that I did not recognise. In fact, I wasn’t aware that the GAR had any coded orders at all.”
Captain Chovy paused in consideration. “Every clone soldier had to memorise fifty orders in training. They were usually large scale operations, and the order would disseminate throughout the ranks from one command. The Commander was probably about to execute Order One-Two to lock down the Jedi Temple.”
Mace nearly asked why there was even such an order in the first place, but decided against trying. He was already running through the many sketchy and unexplained things they first learned about the commissioning of the clones, and the knowledge they’d gained since then about Dooku’s part in their creation. He was beginning to draw his own conclusions.
“Commander Fox shot to kill,” Mace said. “And it was Order Sixty-Six.”
The Force chimed. Captain Chovy froze. He put a hand up to his helmet.
“Captain?” a trooper who was out of earshot stepped up to his side.
Captain Chovy said shakily, “Good soldiers follow orders. You don’t have the authority to send out that order, sir.”
Mace narrowed his eyes, unfolding his arms from where they were crossed just so he can drop his hand near his saber. “That wasn’t an order,” he said.
“I—” the captain cut himself off. Another fucking Shatterpoint. Shaak snapped to attention as she felt the same chime in the Force Mace did. “Was the Sith Lord’s name - Lord Sidious?”
That wasn’t good.
The trooper grabbed Captain Chovy’s elbow to keep him from stumbling. “Captain—”
“ARC Trooper Fives,” Chovy said through what seemed like gritted teeth. “The dreams. General, knock me out now—”
Mace yanked the blaster from Captain Chovy’s grip before it could fully aim, darting into his space to push a sleep suggestion into his mind. He struggled against it, but Mace overpowered him easily, catching him when he fell.
“Captain!” the trooper cried out again, grabbing Chovy’s vambrace. If Order 12 was to lock down the Jedi temple, then what was Order 66 that had the clones shooting to kill? An Order that was triggered specifically by the Sith Lord, specifically in response to ‘the Jedi taking over’? The other Coruscant Guards in the room had their blasters raised in Mace’s direction, but the trooper holding onto Chovy lifted a hand to make them stand down.
“Trooper—”
“It’s Deft, sir. Respectfully, what the hell is going on?”
“Deft,” Mace repeated. “I’m ordering a total comms blackout on the entirety of the GAR.”
“The - the entire GAR, General? I don’t have the authority—Commander Stone is off-planet, Commander Thire is dealing with a situation, and Commander Fox is—” he gestured pointedly, way out of his depth, unaware that the Force cradled him gently.
Mace put a hand on Deft’s shoulder. “Congratulations on your promotion, Commander Deft.”
“What—” Whatever Deft was going to say was lost when Skywalker opened his shields.
Every Jedi in the room cringed as a wave of love flooded the planet. Stars, every Force-sensitive in the entire sector probably felt that, and Mace felt a brief pang of sympathy for the crèchemasters at this moment before he shored up his own shields. It kept the brunt of Skywalker’s fusion bomb in the Force out of his head, but it was still like bunkering in the middle of a cosmic storm, battered by debris and dust and warping under radiation of a stellar flare. He still felt the pressure of deep ocean against his shields.
In that moment when that feeling overcame them, Mace would have died for the clone in front of him—a clone he hadn’t even met until today, didn’t even know his name until a minute ago—and he would have done the same for every single man in the GAR wearing Jango Fett’s face. Identical, yes, but he could name each trooper by their laugh, which battle they got their scars from, what their namesakes were. In that moment the love overtook him, he just wanted to see Appo. Appo?
Shaak sobbed before her shields snapped up. Cin stumbled and grasped at the nearest clone. Deft was holding Mace’s elbow as the hand still resting on the trooper’s shoulder tightened in someone else’s possessiveness.
“—General?”
“That was Skywalker,” Mace managed to say. That Shatterpoint was distressingly prominent, but it was getting harder to distinguish it from all the others. “Send out a missive to locate General Skywalker.”
“That would be the situation Commander Thire is dealing with, sir.”
Mace looked up. “What?”
“It’s,” Deft hesitated. “I’m not sure what happened. Sergeant Appo asked for help from the Guard. The search party would have been briefed—I can contact them?”
“Delegate,” Mace ordered, and then the current of love turned into anger, and then fear. His vision shattered. Mace was going to kill Skywalker if he just caused half the Order to Fall from that.
“Mace,” Shaak said, strained. Skywalker hadn’t Fallen yet, but he was too close. “We need Obi-Wan.”
“The - comms blackout, sir?”
“Do you remember ARC Trooper Fives? The aggression chip?” Mace said in a hurry. Shaak was perplexed but as Mace continued speaking, her face became paler. “The troopers are compromised with a single trigger word, and if news gets out that Palpatine is dead, whatever failsafe he might have left behind could pull the trigger, and that bullet is headed straight for every Jedi on the frontlines surrounded by their troops.”
Every Force presence in the room churned in horror so sharp even Skywalker’s storm of fear could not bury it.
“Sir,” Deft said, voice strangled. “The clones are loyal. Our brothers on the front would never turn on their Generals. We - Chovy wasn’t in control, you heard him!”
“An injustice has been done upon you, Deft,” Mace said. “I’m afraid the Kaminoans have implanted a failsafe in each of you that can override your consciousness.”
“No,” Shaak whispered, cradling Fox’s head in her lap. She was not trying as hard as she could to keep Skywalker’s anger and fear from overwhelming her.
“Master Drallig,” Mace said, finally standing up. His panic was long gone with the Force. “I leave it to you to keep this scene locked down. Deft, I need a team to figure out how to safely neutralise whatever the chip is. Remove the ones in Commander Fox and Captain Chovy’s heads. General Ti will take point while you initiate the blackout.”
“Yes, sir!”
“I will take care of Skywalker.” I’m probably the only being on this planet who can, he didn’t say.
Shaak started, “Obi-Wan—”
“Will come if he felt his former apprentice, or he will not,” Mace said. He turned to the rest of the room. “Nothing that happened here leaves this room.”
“Yes, sir!”
And then the city trembled.
-
Obi-Wan was a good Jedi. Sometimes he wondered if that made him a terrible friend.
He didn’t leave Utapau. Grevious was dead and the war was practically over—he could feel triumph for that at the very least—but the battle would go on without someone to order the droids’ retreat. Obi-Wan wasn’t about to leave his men or his duties. Anakin was in danger everyday anyway, and he had the support of the Jedi—and Padmé, as Obi-Wan had made sure before he left—so there was no need for Obi-Wan to drop everything and run at the first call from Artoo.
Even if that message implied that Anakin—
That he was trying to—
Obi-Wan let his fears go into the Force. Anakin was a survivor. There were no signs before Obi-Wan left that he was planning to - leave. Obi-Wan would have noticed.
Wouldn't he?
He leaped off the cliffside, still moving on autopilot, and sliced through a Separatist gunship before pushing off it again and shoving it into droid ranks with the Force. His mount caught him midair, and Obi-Wan was only a little jostled.
He was still thinking: What if they pushed Anakin too far? What if Padmé broke his heart because Obi-Wan convinced her to let him go? What if Obi-Wan was wrong?
What if during that last conversation they had, where Anakin apologised, what if he was saying goodbye?
‘Initiating self-destruct sequence’ my foot, Obi-Wan thought. I’m going to turn that droid into scrap.
He could not have picked a more frustratingly vague yet panic-inducing sequence of words. Obi-Wan ducked a canon shot whizzing over him and Boga, and breathed out. Anakin did not leave the Jedi because he could not leave his men at the very least. He would not do something that drastic, and besides, Artoo knew Obi-Wan wasn’t anywhere near Coruscant, so the droid must have called others for help as well. Obi-Wan let it out into the Force, resolving not to spend the next several hours of the battle going over every single interaction he’d had with Anakin recently just to see how he could’ve missed—
Like a dam bursting open while Obi-Wan stood at the base of it, the force of Anakin’s love knocked him off Boga.
“General!” a trooper ran to drag him behind a rock while the others lay down cover fire. “Where did you get hit?”
Obi-Wan was practiced enough with Anakin’s supernova presence in his head that he was able to separate Anakin’s almost painful love for the clone in front of him from his own. He blinked, dizzy. Despite being familiar, it had long enough since he felt the full brunt of Anakin’s presence, and it burned. He did not even think to fortify his own shields however, overcome with relief that Anakin was still alive. It was like a weight had been lifted off, and he was breathing easier.
“—General—”
“I’m not hit, trooper,” Obi-Wan groaned. “There was just a - disturbance in the Force.” Vague but familiar enough to satisfy the trooper. He could see another clone comming Cody, who probably saw Obi-Wan fall and needed an update. Obi-Wan raised his voice for their convenience, “I’ll be fine—”
Anger. Betrayal. Obi-Wan was also adept at reading this in Anakin.
Fear.
Someone was hurting him. Someone was killing him, someone was killing his Padawan, and Obi-Wan wasn’t there, he was fighting this war—and for what? Anakin was afraid and he needed help and Obi-Wan wasn’t there someone was hurting his boy someone was making him afraid someone was hurting him enough that he was crying, that he was screaming, that he was calling out and he needed Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan wasn’t there he failed him he killed him he killed his own Padawan no no no no no no NO NO NO
-
In another world, maybe it would have been ten thousand voices crying out, ten thousand betrayals and ten thousand tragedies. In another world, the entire night sky would have been wiped out.
Here, one lone voice called out into the Force. For his Master, his Padawan, for anyone. Anyone at all.
HELP PLEASE HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP I NEED HELP PLEASE
It was a desperate scream, animal and brutal in the raw pain and power projected with reckless abandon into the universe, careless of who heard the call for help. It did its job though, and now every Force-sensitive in the galaxy knew; Anakin Skywalker was afraid.
-
Mace did not like younglings.
That wasn’t to say he hated them. In fact, most of the times he was in awe of them, in awe of their wonder in the Force from experiencing the world for the first time. Whether it was growing pains or learning something new, the very existence of young life there in the Temple was a miracle in itself.
He just did not mesh well with them. Younglings were loud and messy and distracting. The young couldn’t help these things of course, having only been doing this living thing for a short while, but Mace liked to think that his avoidance of younglings for those reasons was not strange at all. There were plenty of people who liked them and had dedicated their lives to raising younglings, and Mace was more than happy to not step on their toes regarding that.
However, like every other humanoid, when he heard a baby cry, his first instinct was to go comfort it.
Similarly, when a young Jedi—any young Force-sensitive—screamed and begged and cried desperately out in the Force for help, anyone, please, Mace’s first instinct was to save them from this threat.
It looked like a seismic charge went off in the middle of Coruscant. No, that wasn’t quite right—it looked like a storm had swept through this part of Coruscant, raining debris and dust and radiation with no discrimination onto the surface and below. There was a dark hole in the sky right above the epicenter where a part of the orbital mirrors above the planet shattered, interrupting the sky that would have otherwise mimicked the rotational frequency of humanity’s lost homeworld. Currently, the crisis of the dead Sith Lord was completely out of anyone’s mind because Skywalker was a walking cataclysm, a localised extinction event that had the ability to crack the planet down the middle should he wish to.
Mace was exaggerating, but it was bad.
There were Knights pulled out of the Temple to help the Guard with the evacuations while the other clone troopers set up a perimeter around Ground Zero of Skywalker’s spectacular meltdown. The lockdown siren was fortunately very familiar to everyone in the vicinity as they had just experienced one days ago when Grevious attacked Coruscant.
Walking closer to that perimeter, Mace felt his ears pop.
“What’s the situation, Commander?”
Thire saluted when he neared. “Sir. The anomaly is contained to this area we’ve sectioned off, but there’s a chance it could break through to the lower levels or even expand. Casualties are being counted up still.”
Mace passed his instantaneous grief into the Force. Thankfully the levels above the storm’s origins have already been mostly cleared out as the landing site of some stray debris from the previous battle. “What do you mean by anomaly?”
Thire exchange glances with another Corrie trooper. “It was like a… storm.”
“Or seismic activity,” the trooper said.
“That sandstorm on Geonosis,” another piped up. This was remarkably accurate with the dust hanging in the air, thick like fog over a swamp planet. Or a sandstorm on Geonosis.
Thire said, “It originated from Skywalker, sir. Something startled him, and he brought the sky down with him. From what I saw of him, I don’t think he’s in his right mind. Appo?”
The 501st trooper who was crouched before R2D2 stood up at the address. There was someone else next to the astromech too, a woman that looked uncannily familiar but he could not place. “Sir. I received a comm from Cap - Commander Rex at seventeen-hundred standard instructing me to find the General. Artoo alerted him that the General might be in danger, and he told me the message was concerning. I can’t contact him now since there was a blackout ordered.”
“The blackout was authorised,” Mace said, then turned to R2D2. The woman watched him. “What did his astromech say?”
Appo scratched his bucket. “I… don’t know binary, sir.”
Mace frowned. The astromech was screeching something, shaking and seemingly panicked. He crouched down and placed a hand on the droid’s dome the way he’d seen Skywalker do. “What happened, Artoo?”
R2D2 was still shaking, but a series of beeps later, a wire unspooled from one of his many panels. Mace hooked it up to his personal comm, and a moment later, it lit up.
<pilot self-destructing.>
<pilot malfunctioning.>
<pilot broken.>
“I see,” Mace said, a bad feeling creeping up on him. “Was he with the Chancellor before this happened?”
<negative.>
That was one worry down, but now that the thought came to mind, Mace could not help but wonder at the connection. Did Skywalker know about the Sith Lord? He had been a close friend of Palpatine since he was nine—who was to say he hadn’t been turned? The suspicion turned into something much more sinister that made his stomach turn at the realisation that Anakin had been nine in the Sith Lord’s grasps. They left one of their own—
Mace let it go.
“And you, citizen?” he asked the woman.
“Moteé, Master Jedi,” she said, and Mace finally placed her familiarity.
“What is a Senator’s aide doing here?”
“My mistress also received a message requesting for help,” she smiled, and there was none of the faux-demurity Amidala’s handmaidens usually feigned in public. “You see, the astromech used to belong to her, and General Skywalker happens to be good friends with my mistress.”
Yes, yes, Mace had a little inkling about Skywalker’s dalliances with the Senator of Naboo, as hard as he tried not to think about it. Let Obi-Wan work up the courage to deal with that himself, he’d decided. He asked, “And does your Lady have any insights on Skywalker’s condition?”
Moteé pursed her lips, but otherwise did not show what she was really thinking. Maybe Mace would have gleaned something if Skywalker was not still roaring in the Force. She said, “I understand General Skywalker has been under a lot of stress.”
Stress. Force.
“Is that supposed to happen, sir?” Thire asked uneasily. “To a Jedi.”
Mace looked out at the destruction. “We are trained from a young age to prevent outbursts like this. Even then, Skywalker is unusually powerful in the Force and this level of destruction is… unprecedented.”
That seemed to relieve the Commander somewhat, that not every Jedi was capable of something like this.
“I’m heading in,” Mace said.
“Sir,” Appo said, “I already tried that, but I don’t think he would recognise any of us enough to not - attack. I agree with Lady Moteé. His head - his head’s gone wrong.”
This, Mace thought, was why they didn’t train children older than five. At least Appo didn’t try to cover it up with pretty words like Moteé did. If the continued fearful screaming in the Force was any indication, Skywalker was still one push away from coming apart.
“Hold the line,” Mace said anyway, even though he knew none of them would be able to do anything if Skywalker decided to continue his work.
He walked in.
Mace had weathered debris storms before. He’d weathered a clan of younglings trying to hit him with a dozen balls at once from all sides before too. This was a little like that.
Cutting through the stillness of the rubble, a large pane of glass the size of a starfighter headed straight for Mace, who leaped forward to avoid it. A block of permacrete he bat away with the Force; half a kitchen he ducked under; a whole speeder smashed on the ground and bounced for him, but he cut it in half; dust parted around him from the Force that hovered protectively around him.
It stopped, when he walked into a clearing. Where outside there were stretches of ruined structures and collapsed levels and sparking generators, this clearing was a perfect circle scorched clean of anything save for the permacrete ground itself. Skywalker was curled up in the eye of the storm, hyperventilating.
Mace clipped his lightsaber to his hip and said, “Anakin.”
Skywalker flinched. When he looked up from the shelter of his arms, half his face was smeared with blood.
“Are you hurt?” Mace asked. Skywalker nodded furiously, wordlessly. “Can I come closer?”
Skywalker shook his head, eyes lighting up in fear—even more fear, if that was possible—as he scrambled backwards until he stopped at the edge of his clearing.
“Okay,” Mace said, voice gentle, hands raised non-threateningly in front of himself. “Alright. I’ll stay right here. I’m here to help.”
“Liar,” Skywalker said shakily. “You’re lying. I want Obi-Wan.”
“I’m not lying, Anakin. Look into the Force.”
Anakin shook his head. “You have to be. You’re all lying to me. The Chancellor was right.”
Mace paused. “What did the Chancellor tell you?”
“He said - the Jedi are holding onto power. The Jedi - have betrayed themselves. They’ve betrayed the Republic. You asked me to - to commit treason. You made Obi-Wan complicit. And now you’re lying.”
“Look into the Force—”
“I am!” Skywalker screamed. “And you’re hiding something! Because you don’t trust me, because I’m dangerous, because my future is clouded, because - I’m too old.”
And that’s when Mace realised there was probably no use in trying to talk Skywalker down, not when his grip on reality had slipped back to that point in the past. He said, “Skywalker, the Chancellor is the Sith Lord.”
Skywalker stared at him. “No.”
Mace didn’t reply.
Skywalker slowly shook his head. Mace saw the denial warring with the truth—the truth that he found in the Force that was no longer clouded by Palpatine’s Darkness.
“No, no, no, it’s broken, it’s broken, I’m broken, it’s wrong.”
“Anakin—”
“It’s wrong, but if it’s right then - where is he?”
“He’s been defeated.”
“But he’s still alive right? He can still save her, right?”
Mace shook his head uncomprehendingly. “Save who? Is someone in danger, Skywalker?”
Skywalker pushed himself to stand, and because Mace was no stranger to grisly sights, he only furrowed his brows in his surprise at the mangled mess of Skywalker’s flesh arm.
“Skywalker, you need to calm down.”
“Everything’s going to die, Master Windu,” he gasped, wrapping his arms around himself as if he was cold. With how much blood he lost, he probably was. “I can fix it - I’m the only one who can and I need his help. We don’t have time. It will go cold - the end - everything will go cold at the end and the stars - we don’t burn, we’ll go out. I need his help.”
Whatever it was, it made sense to him, life or death, and trying to convince him it wasn’t true would only make him uncooperative. Mace asked, “Let us help you, Anakin. Tell us what you saw, and we can help.”
“I need him,” Skywalker moaned desperately, unhearing as he stumbled forward. “It’s so loud. I need him.”
The calm in the centre of the storm was no longer holding as the world started trembling again.
“Skywalker!” Mace barked, bracing himself. “Your emotions are out of control. Look around you—you could bring all of Coruscant down with you!” He could not say the number of deaths he felt on the way here, fearing that Skywalker would not come back from the ledge after hearing it.
The air stilled again. Skywalker stopped in his tracks. “Oh,” he said.
“Your shields are down, you are suffocating every Jedi on the planet—the younglings, Skywalker—and you are hurting yourself. You’re not in your right mind. Let me help you, Anakin, please.”
Skywalker still stared at him. Something cracked in his expression. He said, “You’re here to kill me.”
“What?”
“You think I’m dangerous. You’ve always thought I was - dangerous.” Skywalker lit his lightsaber.
“Skywalker, I am not your enemy,” Mace said, taking up his own saber. “Believe it or not, I am here to help.”
Skywalker laughed. It was a shattered, shuddering sound like it was being torn from his throat, breath-by-breath. “That’s what they all say. They’re here to put the poor anooba out of its misery.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s time to put me down, right, Master Windu? When I’m no longer useful? When I couldn’t spy on the Chancellor for you?”
He was completely out of his mind at this point.
“That’s why you sent Obi-Wan away,” Skywalker muttered, at this point just to himself. “That’s why you broke the dishwasher. That’s why Appo isn’t here yet. You sent Commander Thire to kill me, right? And when he failed, you came yourself. If I’d listened to the Chancellor maybe this conspiracy would’ve come to light earlier.”
“There is no conspiracy, Skywalker,” Mace yelled over the rising winds. “No one is plotting against you.”
“Liar!”
Mace dodged to the side as a speeder flew towards him out of nowhere and nearly crushed him. He brought his lightsaber up to just parry when Skywalker was suddenly in front of him.
Mace expected the same Dark eyes of anger on the other side of their crossed blades, the same hunger in Palpatine’s eyes when Mace fought him. What he saw instead was fear—a cornered animal baring its teeth and thrashing desperately for survival. No—he saw a frightened child, lashing out.
Mace did not know if he could save Skywalker from this.
-
They weren’t cleared for landing.
“What in the Sith Hells is going on, Rex?” Ahsoka asked, Maul’s words running through her head.
“We’ve never used the numbered orders before, sir,” Rex said, standing beside Ahsoka in the hangar. Order 01, Rex told her, was an order for a system-wide comms blackout with no exceptions, only lifted by another code from the same Commander or the Supreme Commander. It was an absolute last resort because it would cripple the entire GAR in the middle of the war. “The orders were meant for immediate obedience without question, but we were trained under the impression that the use of the orders in the first place would mean that… the Republic is compromised from the top.”
Why did this have to happen at the same time as whatever happened to Anakin? This couldn’t be coincidence, especially not with an un-shielded Anakin screaming into the Force, especially not with ‘bad code’ as Artoo put it.
Bad code could be a lot of things. Bad information? But no, Artoo would probably say bad intelligence. Bad input. Bad code was - a malfunction. Something wrong with him. An infection. The Dark. Just like Maul said.
Not yet, Ahsoka thought. Anakin battered indiscriminately at her shields, but it was just pure fear, no intention, no Darkness. That didn’t make it any less terrifying.
Ahsoka did not kid herself the way she did at the beginning of the war. She knew Anakin had been afraid of many things, much more than a Jedi should be, but not even when she left him behind on the steps of the Temple did Anakin’s Force presence blindly lash out like this, not without an ounce of that repressed shame that he always seemed to carry.
Ahsoka did not feel Obi-Wan enter the system, not with the storm in the Force deafening her senses. No, she saw his starfighter instead, the hyperspace ring dropping as he headed straight for atmo with no hesitation.
“That’s definitely not cleared for landing,” Jesse muttered, looking out through the rayshields.
Ahsoka huffed a laugh. No, Obi-Wan wouldn’t wait. Not if he got the same message she did. That was why she won’t either.
“Come on, boys,” she said, bounding up the shuttle waiting for clearance. “Anakin needs help.”
That was all the 332nd, still 501st through-and-through, needed to hear to break regulations.
-
Obi-Wan ignored the gunships hailing him (physically because something made the comms completely unusable) and threaded through the strangely empty flightpaths of Coruscant to land at the perimeter of what he could only describe as the aftermath of a carpet bombing. Something in the Force—in the screaming fear—told him that if he flew into that apocalyptic stillness he was going to get slapped out of the sky.
“General Kenobi!” a 501st sergeant—Appo, Obi-Wan thought, remembered it in the imprint of love Anakin left on his mind—ran up to him as he leaped out of the cockpit. “Something happened to General Skywalker—”
Obi-Wan held out a hand, cool and composed. No one would be able to tell that he had vomited into his cockpit while in hyperspace because a panic attack snuck up on him. He said, without stopping his march into the carnage, “I know, Sergeant.”
“He’s not in his right mind to—”
Obi-Wan dodged backwards, back out of the perimeter as a lamppost landed like a railgun charge where he was just standing.
“—that,” Appo finished weakly. There was an AT-TE a distance away, Obi-Wan noted, its canon primed and aimed in the direction Obi-Wan could feel the epicenter of the Force whirlwind was—where Anakin was. As if whatever walked out of there would be a threat.
As if Anakin was a threat.
Oh, Anakin, Obi-Wan cried, trying to soothe the fear, trying to reach out for his former Padawan in the Force, but he was too big, too all-encompassing and Obi-Wan could not wrap him entirely inside his protection, not anymore, not ever. Obi-Wan never could protect him the way he should have been protected, not from Dooku, not from the war, and not from himself. Obi-Wan let the grief go—the grief that he could’ve let it get to this point, grief that Anakin was pushed this far, that Obi-Wan failed him, grief at the pain, the fear, the betrayal ringing like a bell.
“It’s okay,” Obi-Wan said, and cleared his mind. He did not need worry and pain right now. He did not need the knowledge of the death his Padawan caused clawing at him. He just needed a destination—from one end of this minefield, to the other. He surrendered himself.
When he stepped forward next, the permacrete wall flying in his direction was just as much him as it was the Force. He need not move for it to pass him by. Orbital mirrors spun, narrowly avoiding him. He was the increasingly trembling ground, the speeder that tried to crush him. Obi-Wan moved, jumping across holes to a lower level, meditatively dancing around debris. It won’t touch him—not with the Force with him, as it always was, as it always will be.
This was not the central business district of Coruscant, nor the luxury districts where royalty and conglomerate heirs mingle, but it was also not the slums of the lower levels where people lived on top of each other. Still, there was at least one toppled sky scraper that fell onto the rails which made an overpass over the mid-levels beneath it. The crumbled ruins of it seemed to suspend itself dangerously over a drop, and Obi-Wan’s feet knew where to step to avoid bringing it down again, the Force guiding his body like he was its vessel. The closer he got, the thicker the dust was and the harder it should be to react, but he did not need to. He trusted the force to navigate the carnage, becoming steel and dust, becoming flesh crushed under rubble, becoming the Force.
Obi-Wan came out of his trance to catch a thrown Mace. He probably hadn’t needed to, not with the way Mace had already braced himself, but Mace nodded in thanks anyway. They side-stepped a fridge barreling out of the dust and straight at them
Mace started towards the epicenter, but Obi-Wan put out an arm to bar him.
“Mace,” Obi-Wan greeted. “Glad to see you hanging in there.”
Mace sighed heavily, and his lightsaber retracted as he took a step back. “A lot has happened and your former apprentice isn’t even the half of it, Kenobi.”
Now that Obi-Wan looked, he saw the exhaustion weighing on Mace’s entire body, the plasma sears on his knuckles from a duel, the burns on his clothes, the lagging way he moved, and a generous coating of dust from head-to-toe. Obi-Wan found it hard to believe Anakin did all of that, and he dreaded to know what exactly happened to reduce the Order’s best duelist into such a state.
Obi-Wan swallowed. “He didn’t Fall,” he said, resolute. “I would have felt it.”
“We all would have felt it,” Mace said, glaring in the direction of the epicenter—in the direction of - him. “But Obi-Wan—”
“I know,” Obi-Wan said, not taking his gaze off the epicenter either. His eyes burned from the dust that finally settled there. “This shouldn’t have happened.”
“It’s not your fault. Qui-Gon shouldn’t have made you swear to train him, and none of us should have let you—”
“Master Windu,” Obi-Wan croaked. “Please.”
Mace looked at the side of Obi-Wan’s face. Obi-Wan could not meet his eyes.
Mace said, “If he cannot be subdued—”
“Please.”
There was a groaning of metal, and then the sound of permacrete crumbling. A gust of dust blew towards them as something fell, a structure perhaps. That, and the disturbance of air was all the warning they got before a chunk of a building the size of a Corvette flew through the fog. It was too big, too close to dodge, and Obi-Wan reached out with the Force. He didn’t catch it—too much power would be required then—but simply nudged it and let it flow in the Force over them like water.
Suddenly, all the fear that had soaked the Force like a blanket of dread, like a never-ending anxiety attack, like the impending doom of the universe, like the pressure of vacuum on his shields—all of it vanished so quickly Obi-Wan gasped. It was the first air after drowning, the first light after darkness, the first hope after stranding. It was relief, pure and breathtaking and the feeling that everything was going to be okay now. Everything would be alright.
From the dust, Anakin’s voice rang out tentatively, “Obi-Wan?”
“I’m here,” Obi-Wan called back with the automatic urge to reassure his Padawan. “I’m right here, Anakin.”
Obi-Wan glanced at Mace. It was formality more than anything and Mace knew it; Obi-Wan was going to save Anakin no matter what he said.
There was a sob from Anakin, and Obi-Wan was rushing through the dust.
If Mace looked worse for wear, then Anakin was outright shredded. His face was gaunt and sickly pale and half-doused in blood, his prosthetic arm was cut off, wires sparking off the end, his clothes a charred mess of lightsaber burns, and his flesh arm - his arm was mutilated. On the floor was his surasteel arm still gripping his saber.
But Anakin did not look in pain. No, he looked like everything was alright, now that Obi-Wan was here. Grief and guilt screamed at Obi-Wan inside, but he locked it in, and smiled.
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin repeated his name like prayer, and Obi-Wan came forward, hands rising to touch Anakin’s temple, searching for wounds. Anakin laughed, and he sounded fine, he sounded like Obi-Wan was fussing too much and Anakin was pretending to be bothered. “Stop it, I’m fine.”
Obi-Wan did not retract his hand, trailing down the side of Anakin’s head where his braid used to be and coming to cup his cheek. Anakin leaned into it, staring into Obi-Wan’s eyes with contentedness as if he had not just brought multiple city blocks down with him.
“You’re not fine, Padawan mine,” Obi-Wan whispered. Anakin just hummed.
“Fixin’ it,” he mumbled. The rest of his body was loose even as he was standing, relaxed in a way he hadn’t been since - since Obi-Wan could remember. “Gotta fix it and I’ll keep you here. Never again.”
His Padawan was exhausted, Obi-Wan felt as his free hand brushed over Anakin’s brow. A little push and he would fall right into unconsciousness. But Obi-Wan was attached, and he would not settle for anything less than a gentle lull.
Anakin’s eyes drooped, but he tried his hardest to keep it open. “Tired,” he muttered.
“Of course,” Obi-Wan said. “Settle down, little one. You’ve tired yourself out running around today, haven’t you?”
Anakin nodded, and he followed Obi-Wan down to the ground. They were both on their knees, and Obi-Wan guided Anakin’s head to rest on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Anakin looked up at him like he hung the stars.
Force. Stars and planets. The Force was dripping with love, and Obi-Wan tried his hardest not to cry. He tried his hardest. Oh, Anakin, oh, Obi-Wan wept in the quiet corners of his heart. I’m sorry, dearheart. I’m sorry you love me.
“What did I say about keeping your shields up, Padawan?” Obi-Wan chided like Anakin was ten again and struggling to build his shields. Anakin frowned, burrowing further into Obi-Wan’s side. He mumbled something unintelligible and Obi-Wan smoothed a hand over his Padawan’s head.
But slowly, surely, Anakin’s walls came up. It was a half-instinctual reaction to Obi-Wan’s tone, and Obi-Wan was sore, somewhere he could not name, somewhere he did not want to know.
Why did this have to happen to Anakin? Why was it always Anakin? Why was he the one they had to put between the head of state and the Order, the one they always sent to the frontlines, the one they sent to do dirty jobs that a Shadow could not pull off? Why did they always ask the impossible of him? Why was it Obi-Wan’s Padawan who had to carry the weight of war so young, why was it Obi-Wan’s Padawan that the Force chose as the one to bring balance? Why couldn’t Obi-Wan knight him when he—when Obi-Wan—was ready, why couldn’t Obi-Wan keep him safe inside his robes forever and hide him from the world?
Why, oh why did Obi-Wan always have to let go?
The love left him. Anakin’s clinging, possessive, infinite well of love for Obi-Wan dragged itself reluctantly off of him like claws trying to take him behind Anakin’s shields. And it was all for Obi-Wan. Despite all his failures, despite his lies, despite the war, Anakin loved him. It receded sluggishly, crawling behind Anakin’s clumsy shields, leaking through the corners where it threatened to burst. Maybe that was why Anakin always felt things in extremes—because by that point, he could not keep it in anymore.
Obi-Wan felt the unimpeded flow of the Force return without the influence of its Chosen, like a heavy blanket lifting. It was no longer dripping with sentimentality, no longer churning in a whirlwind, poised to strike through Anakin like he was its vessel. No, the Force was the warm welcome of his oldest friend—and it was completely unfeeling. It comforted him, that indifference. If Anakin ever went where Obi-Wan could not follow, at least his Padawan would still have the Force.
The Dark hanging over the galaxy was gone, too. It was nothing to him though, not with Anakin in his arms.
“Good,” Obi-Wan didn’t forget to say to him. He pressed a kiss to the crown of Anakin’s head, something he never did unless Anakin was sick or dying and that realisation gutted him. “You did good, dear one.”
“Fix it,” Anakin mumbled. “You’ll fix it.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan promised, even if it tasted like a lie in his mouth. “Of course. I’ll fix it. Anything at all, Anakin.”
There was a scruff of boots, and Anakin tensed as he saw whatever was behind Obi-Wan—Mace. Confusion warred with alertness, and Anakin threw the sleep suggestion off in a rush. That was when he realised Obi-Wan was trying to put him to sleep at all.
“No,” Anakin said, and the despair in his voice was a lightsaber through Obi-Wan’s heart. “No, no, no,” he whined, “you’re working with them—” he started struggling in Obi-Wan’s tightening grip.
“Anakin!” a voice—Ahsoka!—called, and she slid to her knees next to him.
Obi-Wan ignored her even as what looked like half the 501st came running through the dust. “Shh, go back to sleep, darling, please go back to sleep—”
“Why?” Anakin cried, thrashing in his restraining hold. Obi-Wan met Ahsoka’s eyes as a wordless conversation passed between them. Ahsoka grimaced.
“Appo, Rex, hold his legs!” Ahsoka said as she took Anakin’s flesh arm and helped Obi-Wan pin him to the ground. “Sithspit!” she swore as her hands slipped against against the mutilated mess of his arm, but Obi-Wan was already putting his hand to Anakin’s temple again, working that sleep suggestion in.
“NO!” Anakin screamed, back arching and legs kicking out like a child throwing a tantrum, every inch of his body struggling and trying to jerk itself out of Obi-Wan and Ahsoka’s hold. When the men managed to grab hold of his legs and pin them down, Anakin screamed, and the fear raged against his flimsy shields—
“Shields, Padawan!” Obi-Wan snapped instinctively, and Anakin dropped, boneless. His shields held.
His chest shuddered, heaving. Tears glistened against his skin, making tracks through dust and blood-coated cheeks. “Why?” he asked brokenly even as he struggled against the sleep suggestion. “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve been good, Master. I’ve been good,” he cried. “I can’t - I can’t die yet.”
Obi-Wan felt a pit yawn open at the bottom of his stomach. He did not have the composure to keep whatever that feeling was from showing on his face, and Ahsoka—she was there too, it wasn’t just him and Anakin and the world—took over with one look at his expression.
“You’re not dying anytime soon, Skyguy,” she said, forcing a smile, even as Anakin strained once more against their holds, this time with much less energy. “You’re just not well right now, and we need to put you to sleep, alright?”
Anakin blinked at her wearily. “I’m sick?”
Ahsoka nodded. “Right, and what does Kix have us do when we’re sick?”
“Stay in bed,” Anakin said.
“And sometimes he helps you go to sleep, right? That’s what we’re doing. We’re helping you go to sleep.”
Obi-Wan took that as his cue and slipped another sleep suggestion into Anakin’s mind. For a moment he thought it would take, but Anakin let out a high whine and jerked again. He did not even think to use the Force to get out. Maybe he couldn’t. Obi-Wan rarely ever saw Anakin to Force exhaustion, not with the endless wellspring of it the boy could draw from, but with the scale of destruction around them, it would not be so surprising.
“I can’t go yet,” Anakin said. “I gotta fix it.”
“What do you need to fix, dear one?”
“Me,” he said. “I gotta fix the dishwasher, and then I can save Padmé.”
And then a woman bullied her way in beside Ahsoka, putting a hand over Anakin’s heart. “Mistress Padmé is fine, Master Skywalker.”
“Moteé,” Anakin recognised her immediately, and the struggle drained out of him. “You have to go to the Chancellor. He can save her.”
“Of course, Skywalker. She’s safe. She will be fine. You can rest easy now.”
What.
Anakin stared at the woman—at Moteé, a handmaiden, Padmé’s handmaiden. He said, “But I won’t be able to see them when they’re born.”
What.
“You will,” Moteé promised. Anakin would feel the lie, but she was dead-certain in this. It was the kind of faith people had in Padmé Amidala.
“But it will be so long.”
“Not at all. She’s not due for another two weeks.”
WHAT.
Anakin held her gaze. Everyone there seemed to hold their breath at this instance of stillness. Anakin nodded. Obi-Wan immediately put that exchange out of his mind and turned Anakin’s head to him again.
“Let me put you to sleep, please Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. A medic made his way to Anakin’s flesh arm, no longer struggling, to start first aid on it.
“You have to?” Anakin whispered.
Obi-Wan nodded.
“Why?”
“It’s for your own good.”
Anakin looked into his eyes, searching for something. They were clear blue, darker than it had been when he was a child but still blue. Still Anakin. Still the boy he raised, and the boy Obi-Wan would do anything to soothe the pain of. And Obi-Wan saw the moment he decided.
-
Palpatine would save Padmé. He was Anakin’s friend, and he would do this one last thing for him. He would do it for Padmé anyway, because he always had a soft spot for her as the former Queen. And Anakin wished he could hold her one last time, hold his child at least once, but it was not meant to be. Not when he couldn’t fix it. Not when he couldn’t fix himself.
Obi-Wan’s hand was so gentle on his face. Even restraining him, he was so gentle.
A massiff that bit its master on Tatooine would get hunted down and killed. A well-loved anooba tamed and brought to the Core would be euthanised. Anakin always thought he would go the former way, but here Obi-Wan was, gently putting him down. If Padmé was the owner of his heart, then Obi-Wan was the anchor of his soul, and if Obi-Wan also thought he needed to die, then Anakin needed to die.
It was kind. It was gentle. Oh, Anakin never thought he would go gentle. There were hands on him, his mother’s, Qui-Gon’s.
“Okay,” the dog said. It was held down by four people, fitting for a mutt known for its aggression problem, for its bite. Just for that it deserved to be beaten and left out to die, but its Master was a kind one, a loving one, and he did not kick. He held it gently in his lap, and only when the dog became too sick to function did the Master decide to put it down.
“Sleep, little one,” the Master said. Yes, it would be just like sleep. Anakin hoped he would see his children, grown up and perfect without him breaking them along the way at the end. Euthanasia flooded his veins. “That’s it, you’re fine.”
“You’re a good Jedi, Snips,” Anakin mumbled. And then he let go.