Palpatine and Anakin

“Anakin, in all the years we have been friends, have I ever asked you to do anything even the slightest bit against your conscience?”

“Well – “

“And I never will. I am very proud of your accomplishments as a Jedi, Anakin. You have won many battles the Jedi council insisted to me were already lost – and you saved my LIFE. It’s frankly appalling that they still keep you off the council.”

“My time ... will come ... when I am older. And, I suppose, wiser.” He didn’t want to get into this with Palpatine; talking with the chancellor like this – seriously, man-to-man – made him feel good, feel strong, despite Obi-wan’s warning. He certainly didn’t want to start whining about being passed over for mastery like some preadolescent Padawan who hadn’t been chosen for a scramball team.

“Nonsense. Age is no measure of wisdom. They keep you off the council because it is the last hold they have on you, Anakin; it is how they control you. Once you’re a master, as you deserve, how will they make you do their bidding?”

“Well…” Anakin gave him a half sheepish smile. “They can’t exactly MAKE me, even now.”

“I know, my boy, I know. That is precisely the point. You are not like them. You are younger. Stronger. BETTER. If they cannot control you now, what will happen once you are a master in your own right? How will they keep your toes on their political line? You may become more powerful than all of them together. That is why they keep you down. They fear your power. They fear you.?

Anakin looked down. This had struck a little close to the bone. “I have sensed … something like that.”

“I have asked you here today, Anakin, because I have fears of my own.” He turned, waiting, until Anakin met his eye, and on Palpatine’s face was something approaching bleak despair. “I am coming to fear the Jedi themselves.”

“Oh, chancellor – “ Anakin broke in to a smile of disbelief. “There is no one more loyal than the Jedi, sir – surely, after all this time – “

But Palpatine had already turned away. He lowered himself into the chair behind his desk and kept his head down as though he was ashamed to say this directly to Anakin’s face. “The council keeps pushing for more control. More autonomy. They have lost all respect for the rule of law. They have become more concerned with avoiding the oversight of the senate than with winning the war.”

“With respect sir, many on the council would say the same of YOU.” He thought of Obi-wan, and he had to stop himself from wincing, had he betrayed a confidence just now?”

Or had Obi-wan been doing the council’s bidding after all? … Be wary of Palpatine, he’d said, and be careful about your feelings …

Were these honest warnings, out of concern for him? Or had they been calculated: seeds of doubt planted to hedge Anakin away from the one man who really understood him?

The one man he could really trust …

“Oh, I have no doubt of it,” Palpatine was saying. “Many of the Jedi on your council would prefer I was out of office altogether- because they know I’m on to them, now. They’re shrouded in secrecy, obsessed with covert action against mysteriously faceless enemies-“

“Well, the Sith are hardly faceless, are they? I mean, Dooku himself -“

“Was he truly a lord of the Sith? Or was he just another in your string of fallen Jedi, posturing with a red lightsaber to intimidate you?”

“I… “ Anakin frowned. How could he be sure? “But Sidious …”

“Ah,yes. The mysterious Lord Sidious. ‘The Sith infiltrator in the highest levels of government.’ Doesn’t that sound a little overly familiar to you, Anakin? A little overly convenient? How do you know he is not a fiction, a fiction created by the Jedi Council, to give them excuse to harass their political enemies?”

“The Jedi are not political -“

“In democracy, EVERYTHING is political, Anakin. And everyone. This imaginary Sith lord of theirs – even if he does exist, is he anyone to be feared? To be hunted down and exterminated without trial?”

“The Sith are the definition of evil- “

“Or so you have been trained to believe. I have been reading about the history of the Sith for some years now, Anakin. Ever since the Council saw fit to finally reveal to me their ... assertion … that these millennium-dead sorcerers had supposedly sprung back to life. Not every tale about them is sequestered in our conveniently secret temple archives. From what I have read, they were not so different from jedi; seeking power, to be sure, but so does your council.”

“The dark side-“

“Oh, yes, yes, certainly, the dark side. Listen to me: if this ‘Darth Sidious’ of yours were to walk through THAT door right NOW - and I could somehow stop you from killing him on the spot- do you know what I would do?”

Palpatine rose, and his voice rose with him. “I would ask him to sit down, and I would ask him if he has any power he could use to end this war!”

“You would – you would – “Anakin couldn’t quite make himself believe what he was hearing.

“And if he said he did, I’d bloody well offer him a brandy and talk it out!”

“You – chancellor, you can’t be serious – “

“It’s only an example, Anakin. I would do anything to return peace to the galaxy, do you understand?”

“You ... probably shouldn’t use that ... example … in front of the Jedi council.”

“Oh,yes.” Palpatine chuckled. “Yes, quite right. They might take it as an excuse to accuse me.”

”I’m sure they’d never do THAT – “

“I am not. I am no longer sure they’ll stop at anything, Anakin. That’s actually the reason I asked you here today.” He leaned forward intently, resting his elbows on the desk. “The Jedi claim to be absolutely dedicated to the core values of the republic, but their action will speak more loudly than their words; as long as someone keeps an eye on them.” You may have heard this afternoon, the senate will call upon this office to assume direct control of the Jedi council. This office will be the single authority to direct the prosecution of the war, and we’ll bring a quick end to things. And I am asking you - as a personal favor to me, in respect for our long friendship, to accept a post as my personal representative on the Jedi council.”

Anakin blinked. “Me?”

“Who else?” Palpatine spread his hands in a melancholy shrug. “You are the only Jedi I know, truly know, that I can trust. I trust you.I trust you. I trust you. I need you, my boy. There is no one else who can do this job: to be the eyes and ears – and the voice – of the Republic on the Jedi Council.

“On the Council …,” Anakin murmured.

He could see himself seated in one of the low, curving chairs, opposite Mace Windu. Opposite Yoda. He might sit next to Ki-Adi-Mundi, or Plo Koon – or even beside Obi-wan! And he could not quite ignore the quiet whisper, from down within the furnace doors that sealed his heart, that he was about to become the youngest Master in the twenty-five-thousand –year history of the Jedi Order …

But none of that really mattered.

Palpatine had somehow seen into his secret heart, and had chosen to offer him the one thing he most desired in all the galaxy. He didn’t care about the council, not really – that was a childish dream. He didn’t need the council. He didn’t need recognition, and he didn’t need respect. What he needed was the rank itself.

All that nattered was Mastery.

All that mattered was Padme.

This was a gift beyond gifts: as a master, he could access those forbidden holocrons in the restricted vault.

He could find a way to save her from his dream …

Chancellor Palpatine

“We can be certain that Palpatine is not to be trusted. Not anymore. This draft resolution is no the product of some overzealous senator; we may be sure Palpatine wrote it himself and passed it along to someone he controls – to make it look like the senate is once more ‘forcing him to reluctantly accept extra powers in the name of security.’ We are afraid that they will continue to do so until one day he’s forces to 'reluctantly accept’ dictatorship for LIFE.”

– Obi-wan

“Legal authority over the Jedi.. the Chancellor’s goal in this – unclear to me it is,” Yoda said slowly. “Answer to the Republic, the Jedi does. Not to a Chancellor.”

– Yoda

“You don’t know what it’s been like, dealing with the petty squabbles and special interest and greedy, grasping fools in the senate, and Palpatine’s constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power – he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at his planet, obi-wan! We have given up so much freedom – how secure do we LOOK?”

– Mace Windu

“Be wary of palpatine, Anakin.”

– Obi-wan.

The Dark Is Generous

The dark is generous.

Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truths of others.

The dark protect us from what we dare not know.

Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night’s embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in day’s harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it is day that is temporary.

Day is the illusion

Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings forth from the center of its own self.

With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins.

Steps Into the Dark

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.

Count Dooku

This is Count Dooku:

He called upon the force, gathering it to himself and wrapping himself with it. He breathed it in and held it whirling inside his heart, clenching down upon it until he could feel the spin of the galaxy around him.

Until he became the axis of the universe.

This was the real power of the dark side, the power he had suspected even as a boy, had sought through his long life until Darth Sidious had shown him that it had been his all along. The dark side didn’t bring him to the center of the universe. It MADE him the center.

He drew power into his innermost being until the force itself existed only to serve his will.

Now the scene below subtly altered, though to the physical eye there was no change. Powered by the dark side, Dooku’s perception took the measure of those below him with exhilarating precision.

Kenobi was luminous, a transparent being, a window onto a sunlit meadow of the force.

Skywalker was a storm cloud, flickering with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatens a tornado.

And then there was Palpatine, of course: he was beyond power. He showed nothing of what might be within. Though seen with the eyes of the dark side itself, Palpatine was an event horizon. Beneath his entirely ordinary surface was absolute, perfect nothingness. Darkness beyond darkness,

A black hole of the force.

Obi-wan and Anakin

This, then, is Obi-wan and Anakin:

They are closer then friends. Closer than brothers, though Obi-wan is sixteen standard years Anakin’s elder, they have become men together. Neither can imagine life without the other, the war has forged their two lives into one.

The war that has done this is not the clone wars; Obi-wan and Anakin’s war began on Naboo, when Qui-gon Jinn died at the hands of a Sith Lord. Master and Padawan and Jedi knights together, they have fought this war for thirteen years. Their war is their life.

And their life is their weapon.

Say what you will about the wisdom of ancient Master Yoda, or the deadly skill of grim Mace Windu, the courage of Ki-Adi-Mundi, or the subtle wiles of Shaak Ti; the greatest of all these Jedi is unquestioned, but it pales next to the legend that has grown around Kenobi and Skywalker.

They stand alone.

Together, they are unstoppable. Unbeatable. They are the ultimate go-to guys of the Jedi order. When the good guys absolutely, positively have to win, the call goes out.

Obi-wan and Anakin always answer.

Whether Obi-wan’s legendary cleverness might beat Anakin’s raw power, straight up, no rules, is the subject of schoolyard fights. These struggles always end, somehow, with the combatants on both sides admitting that it doesn’t matter.

Anakin and obi-wan would never fight each other.

They couldn’t

They’re a team. They’re the team.

And both of them are sure they always will be.

"Why do I have this feeling that you'll be the death of me?"
- Obi-wan, exasperated over Anakin's fourth time loss of his lightsaber.

"Please don't say that, Master."
- Anakin.

Anakin Skywalker

Once a slave boy on Tatooine, Qui-gon Jinn has found Anakin to be very strong in the Force. He freed him from his slavery to be trained as a Jedi against the warnings of The Jedi Council.

The Council believed that Anakin was too old to be trained as a Jedi. He has already formed too much attachments to the world around him.

But Qui-gon believed that Anakin was the One in the prophecies. He believed that Anakin will be the one to bring balance back to the Force.

Anakin was indeed strong in the Force. In his short years of training he rose to be the best Jedi the Republic has ever seen. Some believed that he surpasses any other Jedi in the Council. Qui-gon believed. Palpatine believed. Anakin believed it too.

This is Anakin Skywalker:

The most powerful Jedi of his generation. Perhaps of any generation. The fastest. The strongest. An unbeatable pilot. An unstoppable warrior. On the ground, in the air or sea or space, there is no one even close. He has not just power, not just skill, but dash; that rare, invaluable combination of boldness and grace.

He is the best there is at what he does. The best there has ever been. And he knows it.

HoloNet features call him the hero with no fear. And why not? What should he be afraid of?

Except –

Fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away the firewalls around his heart.

Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that eats at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragon that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun dragons that are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from starships to podracers.

But Anakin’s fear is another kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind.

Not nearly dead enough.

Not long after he became Obi-wan’s Padawn, all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system: one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned to a frigid dwarf of hyper-compacted trace metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Anakin couldn’t even remember what the mission might have been, but he’d never forgotten that dead star.

It had scared him.

“Stars can die -?”

“It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the force,” obi-wan had told him. “Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. That is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something - or someone - beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it.”

That is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whisper all things die …

In bright day he can’t hear it; battle, mission, even reports before the Jedi council can make him forget it’s even there. But at night-

At night, the walls he has built sometimes start to frost over. Sometimes they start to crack. At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brains and chews at the inside of his skull. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose.

The dragon reminds him, every night, of how he held his dying mother in his arms, of how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come for me Anakin …

The dragon reminds him, every night, that someday he will lose Obi-wan. He will lose Padme. Or they will lose him.

But the man he flies to rescue is a closer friend then he’d ever hoped to have.

The Supreme chancellor has been family to Anakin: always there, always caring, always free with advice and unstinting aid. A sympathetic ear and a kindly, loving, unconditional acceptance Anakin could never get from other Jedi. Not even form obi-wan. He can tell Palpatine things he could never share with his master. He can tell Palpatine things he can’t even tell Padme.

Now the supreme Chancellor is in the worst kind of danger. And Anakin in on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That’s what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.

He looks the dragon in the eye and doesn’t even slow down. Locked away behind the walls of his heart, the dragon that is his fear coils and squirms and hisses.

Because his real fear, in a universe where even stars can die, is that being the best will never be quite good enough.

For all his powers, Anakin could not save his dying mother.
For all his powers, Anakin could not save everyone.
For all his powers, Anakin sometimes could not even save anyone.
For all his powers, Anakin will always feel that it is never quite good enough.
For all his powers, he could not change the fact that all things die -