The first overhand chop of Skywalker’s blade slid off Dooku’s instinctive guard. The second bent Dooku’s wrist. The third flash of blue forced Dooku’s scarlet blade so far to the inside that his own lightsaber scorched his shoulder, and Dooku was forced to give ground.
Dooku felt himself blanch. Where had this come from?
Skywalker came on, mechanically inexorable, impossibly powerful, a destroyer droid with a lightsaber: each step a blow and each blow a step. Dooku backed away as fast as he dared; Skywalker stayed right on top of him. Dooku’s breath went short and hard. He no longer tried to block Skywalker’s strikes but only to guide them slanting away; he could not meet Skywalker strength-to-strength – not only did the boy wield tremendous reserves of force energy, but his sheer physical power was astonishing –
And only then did Dooku understand that he’d been suckered.
Skywalker’s Shien ready-stance had been a ruse, as had his Ataro gymnastics; the boy was a Djem So stylist, and as fine a one as Dooku has ever seen. His own elegant Makashi simply did not generate the kinetic power to meet Djem So head to head. Especially not while also defending against a second attacker.
Especially not while Kenobi’s Ataro and Shii-Cho had been ploys as well. That blinding defensive velocity – Kenobi had become a master of Soresu.
Dooku found himself having a sudden, unexpected, overpowering, and entirely distressing bad feeling about this: this pair of Jedi fools had somehow managed to become entirely dangerous. These clowns might - just possibly - actually be able to beat him.
The shining blue lightsaber whirled and spat and every overhand chop crashed against Dooku’s defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike; the Sith lord spent lavishly of his reserve of the force merely to meet these attacks without being cut in half, and Skywalker –
Skywalker was getting stronger.
Each parry cost Dooku more power then he’d used to throw Kenobi across the room; each block aged him a decade.
Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room.
Dooku felt a new twist in the currents of the force between them, and he finally understood.
He understood how Skywalker was getting stronger. Why he no longer spoke. How he had become a machine of battle. He understood why Sidious had been so interested in him for so long.
Skywalker was a natural.
This boy had the gift of fury. But he was holding them back. As a Jedi would.
And Sidious, for some reason – decided to intervene.
“Don’t fear what you’re feeling, Anakin, USE it !” he barked in Palpatine’s voice. “Call upon your fury. Focus it, and he cannot stand against you. RAGE us your weapon. Strike now! STRIKE! KILL him!”
Dooku thought blankly, kill me?
Whose side was he on, anyway?
And through the cross of their blades he saw in Skywalker’s eyes the promise of hell, and he felt a sickening presentiment that he already knew the answer to that question.
Treachery is the way of the Sith.
The play is still on; the comedy of lightsabers flashes and snaps and hisses. Dooku and Skywalker, one-time only performance, Jedi and Sith, spinning, whirling, crashing together, slashing and chopping, parrying, binding, slipping and whipping and ripping the air around them with snarls of power.
The play goes on, but the suspense is over.
Dooku’s decades of combat experience are irrelevant. His mastery of swordplay is useless, even his knowledge of the force has become a joke. All his pursuits and points of pride of which he has devoted so much of his long, long years of life now hung upon his spirit like chains, bending his neck before the ax.
Rage is your weapon.
Palpatine’s words have given Anakin permission. Permission to unseal the shielding around his furnace heart, and all his fears and doubts shrivel in flame.
Anakin felt his firewalls open so that the terror and rage are out there, in the fight instead of in his head, and his mind is clear as a crystal bell. In that pristine clarity, there is only one thing he must do.Decide.
So he does.
He decides to win.
He decides that Dooku should lose the same hand he took. Decision is reality, here: his blade moves simultaneously with his will and blue fire vaporizes black Corellian nanosilk and disintegrates flesh and shears bone, and away falls a Sith lord’s lightsaber hand, trailing smoke that tastes of charred meat and burned hair.
The hand falls with a bar of scarlet blaze still extending from its spastic death grip, and Anakin’s heart sings for the fall of that red blade.
He reaches out and the force catches it for him.
And then Anakin takes Dooku’s other hand as well.
Dooku crumples to his knees, face blank, mouth slack.
“Good, Anakin! Good! I knew you could do it!”
“Kill him,” Palpatine says. “Kill him now.”
“Finish him.”
Years of Jedi training make Anakin hesitate; he looks down upon Dooku and sees not a lord of the Sith but a beaten, broken, cringing old man.
“I shouldn’t – “
But when Palpatine barks, “Do it! Now!” Anakin realizes that this isn’t actually an order. That it is, in fact, nothing more than what he’s been waiting for his whole life.
Permission.
The blades crossed at Dooku’s throat uncross like scissors.
Snip.
And all that was Dooku – his whole life, all his victories, all his struggles, all his heritage, all his principles and his sacrifices, everything he’s done, everything he owns, everything he’s been, all his dreams and grand vision for the future empire and the army of the Sith
– becomes nothing at all.
“You did well, Anakin.”
Palpatine’s voice was warm as an arm around Anakin’s shoulders.
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