FicWad

There is an echoing disturbance within the Force, a laughing, sobbing cry that coincides with the jerking movement of Anakin's hands and the meeting of the two lightsaber blades and sounds remarkably like the voice of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, and it rejoices with a lingering sigh of Master Dooku! At last! You have decided to return! I have so much to show you, so much to share with you, about the Force!

And then Dooku's empty clothes are billowing into a pile on the floor, a completely and utterly empty puddle into which Anakin Skywalker stares blindly, mind fuzzy and shocky.

Did I cause this?

Anakin Skywalker blinks, once again at a complete and utter loss.

Who am/ I?/

Is he the slave boy from a desert planet, valued for his astonishing gift with machines? Is he the legendary Podracer, the only human ever to survive that deadly sport? Is he the unruly, high-spirited, trouble-prone student of a deeply beloved great Jedi Master? The star pilot? The hero? The secret lover and husband? The Jedi? Could he possibly be all of these things - and, more importantly, could he still be any of these things - and yet still apparently do what he has just done? Or has he really even done what he thinks he just has, could he really have actually caused - well, not Dooku's death, no, but his disintegration into the Force? Can Sith - no, Dooku was no Sith there at the end - can Jedi truly dissolve bodily into the Force, so utterly that not even their cut-off limbs will remain?

Then the deck bucks madly as the cruiser absorbs yet another new barrage of torpedoes and turbolaser fire. The sudden motion slews the floor so suddenly beneath Anakin's feet that he staggers, and Anakin wakes up again.

"What the - ?"

He's been having a dream. He's been flying, and fighting, and fighting again, and somehow, in the dream, he could do whatever he wanted. In the dream, whatever he did was the right thing to do simply because he wanted to do it. In the dream, there were no rules, there was only power, and all of the power was his. And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet, at the end of the dream, his power all melted away and he was stripped naked before the yielding acceptance of a figure who, though kneeling at his feet, somehow managed to undo Anakin completely and then melt away from him as if Anakin were - for all of his power, for all of his desire - nothing at all.

And now Anakin is standing over a puddle of clothing that he can't quite bear to look at straight on even though he also can't quite make himself look away from it either, and he knows that it somehow hasn't been a dream at all, that he really has somehow caused this, has done something that has resulted in this empty pile of clothes and the scent of singed and sizzling meat still lingering in a miasmic cloud around him, the hilt of one lightsaber blade still snugged into the sure grip of either hand, though the lightsaber of the vanished man is tumbling from his loosening fingers almost before his brain has time to register that this red blade has, like the empty clothes, remained inexplicably behind.

"I - I don't know what happened - how this happened! I - I couldn't stop myself . . . "

Even before the words leave his lips he can hear how hollow they are, how obviously only half true, though he cannot, for the life of him, figure out where precisely the truth ends and where the exactly the lie begins.

"You did well, Anakin." Palpatine's voice is warm as an arm around Anakin's shoulders. "You did not only well, but right. He was much too dangerous to leave alive."

From the Chancellor this sounds true, and yet when Anakin repeats it inside his head he knows that Palpatine's truth is one that he will never be able to make himself believe. A tremor that begins between his shoulder blades threatens to expand into a full case of the shakes. "But he - he was an unarmed prisoner and I - I - I don't even know if he's really dead! His body's just /gone/!"

This, now - the one simple unbearable fact followed by the one simply inexplicable reality - that is the entire truth. Though it burns him like his own lightsaber, truth is something that Anakin knows he can hang on to. And somehow it makes him feel a little bit better, a little bit stronger, even though his head feels as if it's been packed about with cotton and he really has no idea what happened in those final few moments that led up to Dooku suddenly vanishing bodily out of his clothes.

Anakin tries out another truth, just to help speed up the process and hopefully blow away some of the cobwebs clouding his mind. It's not so much that he couldn't have stopped himself before Dooku, body and soul, had so suddenly blazed with the glory of a full Jedi Master, but rather - "I shouldn't have done that," he corrects himself, and now his voice came out solid, and simple, and final. Now he can look down at the empty clothing at his feet. He can look at that pile and recognize the clothes for what they truly represent.

A crime.

He has become a war criminal.

Or at least he would have become a war criminal, if Dooku had not done . . . whatever it was that he had done, and so disappeared from out of his clothes, even the already severed ones.

Guilt hits him like a fist. He feels it like a punch to his heart, and it smacks the breath from his lungs and buckles his knees. It hangs on his shoulders like a yoke of collapsium: an invisible weight beyond his mortal strength, crushing his life. There are no words in him for this. All Anakin can say is, "It was wrong. I was wrong. I should not have let it come to this."

And that is the sum of it, right there.

It was wrong.

"Nonsense! The man had to be dealt with. Disarming him was nothing, my boy! Dooku had powers beyond your imagination. Surely this - this vanishing trick, or whatever is was - surely this proves that! The deviousness of this final trick, this disappearing in order to make us doubt what we know must be true - that no being could survive such a blow - does it not simply prove how irredeemably evil and corrupt Dooku had become, that even in the final moments of his life he would knowingly choose to try to manipulate us, to make us doubt the very nature of our reality? And if Dooku could indeed make his body invisible, then imagine how impossible it would have been to keep track the man, even if he could have been safely captured - something that I do not for a moment believe could have been safely accomplished! Anakin, think! Imagine trying to hold a man of Dooku's power long enough to bring him to trial, long enough for your Jedi Masters to attempt a reconditioning that likely would not have even taken. It simply could not have been done, my boy! He would have escaped and wrecked unimaginable havoc among the innocent of Coruscant. That would have been entirely unacceptable! Trading more innocent lives for the chance to bring a man to trial when any sentient being in the Republic could already tell you the outcome of such a trail? The risk would not have been worth it. He would have been sentenced to death for his crimes, a punishment that he has already more than earned. Anakin, listen to me! You have safeguarded the lives of countless individuals by killing him, here and now. Dooku deserved to die, for all that he has done. The man was evil. It is a just punishment that you have given him. You made the right decision, Anakin. Dooku would not surrender and he never would have stopped. He left you no other choice. This was the better way. This was the only way." Palpatine's voice is just as firmly convinced and powerfully persuasive as it has ever been, but in spite of the Chancellor's apparently unshakable faith, for once his powerful voice cannot sway Anakin. They are fine words, and Palpatine obviously believes them, but Anakin knows that they are not true words, not for him.

Anakin shakes his head again, sorrowfully. "That doesn't matter. It's not the Jedi way."

The ship shudders again, and the lights flicker out.

"Have you never noticed that the Jedi way," Palpatine immediately counters, invisible now within the stark shadow of the General's Chair, his voice seeming to somehow gain in power, in resonance, in that darkness, "is not always the right way?"

Anakin looks toward that shadow, his face crumpling with anguish at what he knows he has come all too close to doing, to becoming - a cold-blooded murderer, no better than Count Dooku on his darkest days - in spite of his vow before Obi-Wan, to be careful of just such a trap, and despite all of his promises to himself, to remain true to the Jedi way. Of all his failures, of all his failings, this is a wrong that he cannot forgive himself, even if he cannot quite understand how it came about. The mere fact that Anakin has failed to remain true to the Jedi way, failed Obi-Wan/, burns him like acid. Obi-Wan had been so incredibly /proud of him, so sure of him, as they stood before the doors to the General's Quarters, had smiled at him lovingly, eyes full of faith, and Anakin has failed him, has betrayed his trust, so utterly that he cannot bring himself to even imagine how much the knowledge of what he has done, what he has caused, will disappoint and hurt his former Master. "You don't understand. You're not a Jedi. You can't understand. He even warned me. Obi-Wan told me this was a trap, for us, and I still fell right into it. I've failed, Chancellor. I've failed him. This was not the right way. I should never have let it come to this, and that's the truth."

"Those who believe in 'truth' are invariably disappointed, Anakin."

"You don't understand! I promised Obi-Wan - "

"Anakin, listen to me! How many lives have you just saved with the simple meeting of these lightsabers? Can you count them?"

"But - "

"It wasn't /wrong/, Anakin. It may be /not the Jedi way/, but it was /right/. What's more, it was perfectly natural! He took your hand; you wanted revenge. And your revenge was /justice/."

"Revenge is never just. It can't be - "

"Don't be childish, Anakin! Revenge is the foundation of justice. Justice began with revenge, and revenge is still the only justice some beings can ever hope for. And after all, this is hardly your first time, is it? Did Dooku deserve mercy more than did the Sand People who tortured your mother to death?"

"That was /different/!"

In the Tusken camp, Anakin Skywalker had lost his mind; he had become a force of nature, indiscriminate, killing with no more thought or intention than a sand gale. The Tuskens had been killed, slaughtered, massacred, yes, of course they had, but it had been beyond his control, and now it seemed to him as if it had been done by someone else, as if it were a story he had heard once that had little to do with him at all. But Dooku -

Dooku had almost been murdered/. By /him. Not by accident. On purpose.

Here in the General's Quarters, Anakin Skywalker has looked into the eyes of a living being and coldly decided to end that life. He could have chosen the right way. He could have chosen the Jedi way. But instead -

Anakin stares down at Dooku's empty clothes. He can never unchoose this choice. He can never take it back. As Master Windu is so fond of saying, there is no such thing as a second chance. Worst of all, he isn't even sure that he wants one. He cannot let himself think about this. Just as he never allowed himself to think about the dead on Tatooine. He raises his remaining living hand to his eyes, trying to rub away the memory, his mind somehow even more confused than before. He feels thick-headed, his thoughts slow and strange, as though they are not quite his own, not quite the product of his own thinking, his own free will. "You promised we would never talk about that again."

"And we won't. Just as we need never speak of what has happened here today, my dear boy." It is almost as though the shadow itself is speaking to him kindly, reassuringly. "I have always kept your secrets, have I not? And in any case, my boy, I am the Supreme Chancellor, the final voice of authority for the Galactic Republic, and I did order you to kill Dooku, a traitor to and enemy of the Republic, did I not?"

"Yes - yes, of course, you do, Chancellor, and yes, you did, but - " Anakin just wants to crawl away into a corner somewhere. He knows that he's missing something in the Chancellor's argument and feels sure that if things would just stop for a while - that he could figure it out, puzzle out what he's missing and make all of this make sense, so that he can pull himself together and find a way to keep moving forward. He has to keep moving forward. Moving forward is all he can do. Especially when his mind can't make any sense out of what's behind him and his soul can't stand to look back on it.

"Anakin, please/. Are we not past the point of playing childish games with one another? I am your friend. In the time that I have known you, I have kept many of your secrets. There is nothing about you which you I do not know, which I do not accept. Do you not yet understand this? Anakin, there is nothing about you that is a secret to me. Even your relationship with the lovely young Senator Amidala. I have /always known of your love for her, Anakin, and I have kept silent on the subject, even after I learned of your marriage, to ensure the safety of you both. I have even pretended ignorance of it, if only to spare you discomfort."

"What - ?" The room seems to grow even darker around him. "What do you mean? What - what do you know?"

"Anakin, Padmé Amidala was my Queen; I was her ambassador to the Senate. Naboo is my home/. You of all people know how I value loyalty and friendship; do you think that I have no friends among the civil clergy in Theed? Your secret ceremony has never /been secret. Not from me, at any rate. I have always been very happy for you both."

"You - " Words whirl through Anakin's mind, and none of them make any sense. None of this makes any sense! "But what - ?"

"/That/, my boy," the shadow that is Palpatine quietly interrupts, "is entirely up to /you/."

The fog inside Anakin's head seems to solidify into a long, dark tunnel. The point of light at the end is Palpatine's face, a tiny glimmer of white in that darkness. "I don't - I don't understand . . . Why are you - ?"

"Oh, yes, that's very clear." The Chancellor's voice seems to be coming from very far away, much further away than the distance between Anakin and the chair that holds Palpatine. "Anakin, I am trying to tell you that we must stop pretending - both to each other and to ourselves. The final crisis is approaching, and our only hope to survive it is to be completely, absolutely, ruthlessly honest with each other. And with ourselves. You must understand that what is at stake here is nothing less than the fate of the entire galaxy."

"I don't know what you - " Anakin tries to protest, his heart feeling numb within him.

"Don't be afraid, Anakin," the shadow interrupts, voice familiar and warm. "What is said between us here need never pass beyond these walls. Anakin, think/: think how hard it has been to hold all your secrets inside for so long. I have kept silent - I have guarded you with my silence - because I am your friend, Anakin. Have you ever needed to keep a secret from /me/? My dear boy, I have kept the secret of your marriage all these years. The slaughter at the Tusken camp, you shared with me. And now I have seen you execute Count Dooku - /on my own order - and I know where you got the power to defeat him. Only you and I will ever know of these things. You see? You have never needed to pretend with me, the way you must with your Jedi comrades. Do you understand that you need never hide anything from me, my boy? That I accept you exactly as you are?" The shadow's words are so entrancing that Anakin finds he is leaning towards the darkness, as if physically drawn towards the shadow. "Share with me the truth. Your absolute truth. Let yourself /out/, Anakin."

"I - " Anakin shakes his head, appalled and confused by the sudden and terrifying change of subject matter and yet terribly, horribly tempted. No, not just tempted. Wanting to give in to temptation. How many times has he dreamed of not having to pretend to be the perfect Jedi? But what else could he be, if not a Jedi? What would he do, what would the Order, the galaxy, /Obi-Wan/, do without him, as a Jedi? He couldn't just leave Obi-Wan! "I wouldn't even know how to begin."

"It's quite simple, in the end: just tell me what you want."

Anakin shakes his head blindly, even more confused. "I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. You've been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you're supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That's why they take their students - their victims - at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time an individual is old enough to choose/, that Padawan has already been so indoctrinated - so /brainwashed - that he or she is incapable of even considering the question. But you're /different/, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies that the Jedi have pumped into your brain. And so I ask you again, my young friend: what do you want? Allow me to show you that my generosity is as powerful as my loyalty, Anakin."

"I still don't understand. What has this to do with - ?"

"I am offering you . . . anything," the shadow insists. "Ask, and it is yours. Anything that you want, Anakin Skywalker, I can give to you. I and I /alone/. Do you understand me?"

"But what - what - ?" The concept of suddenly simply being given whatever he might desire leaves him so breathless and confused that Anakin cannot remember what he has been intending to ask. What, Dooku/? What has what happened with /Dooku got to do with anything Palpatine is talking about? Why should the one necessarily have an impact on the other? Why should he let the one impact how he is reacting to Palpatine now? Does trying to cultivate the good opinion of a Jedi Order that has - except for Obi-Wan - largely proven itself entirely unappreciative of him really mean so much to him that Anakin is willing to allow it to destroy what could be his best and brightest hope for future happiness? "How - " Anakin cannot quite seem to catch his breath and his heart is pounding thunderously in his ears, but the resulting lightheadedness is almost . . . pleasurable, in an odd way. "How can you do that?"

"Right now, we are only discussing what. How is a different issue; we'll come to that presently, my dear boy. For the moment, I just want you to understand how grateful I am."

"Grateful? But - " Oh, if only his head would stop spinning! Why does Palpatine have to start all of this just now/? This would all be easier to comprehend if the /wrongness of what he's done weren't still screaming inside his head! "And in exchange?" he finally asks, all in a rush, daring greatly. "You must want something. They always want something. What do I have to do?"

"I am not the Jedi High Council, Anakin," the shadow snaps disapprovingly. "You only have to do what you want to do."

"What I want?"

"Yes, Anakin. Yes/," the shadow lingers almost lovingly, almost gloatingly, over the word, laughing sibilantly. "/Exactly that. Only that. Do the one thing that the Jedi and their dictatorial High Council fear most: make up your own mind. Follow your own conscience/. Do what /you think is right. I know that you have been longing for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. Commit to that life. I know that you burn for greater power than any Jedi can wield; give yourself permission to gain that power, and allow yourself license to truly use it. You have dreamed of leaving the Jedi Order, of having a family of your own - one that is based on love/, not on enforced rules of self-denial - so /do it, my boy, do it /now/!"

"I - can't . . . I can't just . . . leave . . . " Obi-Wan . . . I could /never leave Obi-Wan!/

"But you can/. You /could/, easily. I will /gladly help you do it, Anakin!"

Anakin can't breathe. He can't even blink, much less stop to think about what is truly happening or why. He stands frozen, staring into the darkness. Even the memory of what he has done - his terrible failing with Dooku and more broken promises added to the already far too long string of broken promises to Obi-Wan - no longer has the power to hold him in thrall.

"You can have every one of your dreams. Turn aside from the lies of the Jedi, and follow the truth of yourself. Leave them. Join me on the path of true power. Be my friend, Anakin. Be my student. My apprentice. Allow me to thank you for the loyalty you've shown me!"

"No. No! I'm sorry, but I can't. Really, I want to, but I - I - Sir, I'm sorry, but - but as much as I want those things - as much as I've thought about those things and dreamed about them and wanted more than Obi-Wan and the Order have given me, as much as I care for you, Sir, I - I can't. I just can't. Not yet. No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" Anakin is babbling, and he cannot help himself, cannot keep himself from repeating the same things and shaking his head, wildly, as if to throw off some tangible pall that has fallen over him and is clouding his already all too confused thoughts. His head feels like a sieve: his thoughts all flow away from him like water.

"I know what you truly want," the shadow only insists. "I have only been waiting for you to admit it to yourself." The voice is warm and familiar, heavy with compassion. "Anakin, the Jedi don't own you. You owe them nothing! What is holding you back? Don't you think I can keep you and your Padmé safe from any retribution the Jedi might want to take against you?"

"No! No. It's not that! Please, Sir, you don't understand - "

"I understand all too well, my boy. I understand that I can give you your every hope, your every dream, your every desire, and that you are refusing to allow me to help you, because of Jedi/," the shadow spits the word out contemptuously, "/brainwashing/! Oh, Anakin, don't you see? The /Jedi way is not only not the only way, it is not the right way!"

Anakin's vision tunnels again, but this time there is no light at the far end. He raises a trembling hand, the one hand of flesh that remains his own, and covers his face. "No . . . " he moans softly, despairingly, realizing suddenly that he has somehow tumbled headfirst into a trap but unable to gather the wits enough to understand what it is, or how to get out of it again.

The view wall behind the General's Chair blossoms suddenly with looping ion spirals of inbound missiles. The shuddering of the ship builds itself into a continuous quake, gathering magnitude with each hit.

"Anakin, my restraints, please," the shadow quietly orders. "It appears we've run out of time. I'm afraid this ship is breaking up. I don't think we should be aboard while it does."

In the Force, the field-signatures of the magnetic locks on the Chancellor's shackles are as clear as text saying UNLOCK ME LIKE THIS. A simple twist of Anakin's mind - even as fogged as it is with the confused miasma of Palpatine's dark suggestions - is enough to pop them open. Thereafter, that shadow grows a head, then shoulders, then undergoes a sudden mitosis that leaves the General's Chair standing behind and turns its other half into the Supreme Chancellor. Freed, Palpatine picks his way through the debris that litters the gloom-shrouded room, moving surprisingly quickly toward the stairs.

"Come along, Anakin. We can talk more about this later. There is very little time now."

The view wall flares white with the missiles' impacts, and one of them must have damaged the gravity generators, because the ship suddenly seems to heel violently over, forcing Palpatine to clutch desperately at the banister and sending Anakin skidding down a floor that has suddenly become a forty-five-degree ramp. The sudden shock of the fall shatters the spell, violently ripping away the paralyzing cloud of confusion, causing Anakin's mind to clear and his focus to return so abruptly that he would have staggered, if he had still been standing. Instead, Anakin rolls hard into a pile of rubble, most of it shattered permacrete, hydrofoamed to reduce weight. "Obi-Wan - !"

Anakin springs to his feet immediately, desperately waving away the tangle of debris that earlier buried the limp body of his friend. Obi-Wan lays entirely still, eyes closed, dust-caked blood matting his hair where his scalp has been split. But as bad as Obi-Wan looks, Anakin has stood over the bodies of too many friends on too many battlefields to panic now just because of a little bit of blood. One swift touch to Obi-Wan's throat confirms the strength of his pulse, and that touch also lets Anakin's Force-perception flow through the entire body of his friend. Obi-Wan's breathing is strong and regular, none of his bones are broken, and his internal organs and nervous system all seem relatively fine. Indeed, he appears to be suffering from a concussion and nothing more. Apparently, Obi-Wan's head is somewhat harder than the cruiser's interior walls.

"Leave him, Anakin. There is no time." Palpatine is half hanging from the banister, both arms wrapped around a stanchion. "This whole spire may be about to break free - "

"Then we'll all be adrift together." When Anakin glances up at the Supreme Chancellor, in that one instant he doesn't like the man at all, but then he reminds himself that, as brave as Palpatine is, his is the courage of conviction. The man is no soldier. He has no way of truly comprehending what he is asking Anakin to do. "His fate," he adds, in case Palpatine has not understood him, "will be the same as ours."

With Obi-Wan unconscious and hurt - however likely mild a concussion - and a clearly confused and frightened Palpatine waiting for him above, responsibility for the lives of his two closest friends rests squarely upon Anakin. With that realization, all remaining traces of the paralyzing uncertainty and self-doubt that has been clouding his mind subsides, and Anakin finds that he has entirely recovered his inner balance. Under pressure, in crisis, with no one to call upon for help, he can focus again. He has to. This is what he's been born for: saving people.

The Force brings Obi-Wan's lightsaber to his hand and he clips it to his friend's belt before hoisting Obi-Wan's limp body up over his shoulder and allowing the Force to help him run lightly up the steeply canted floor to Palpatine's side.

"Impressive. Most impressive," Palpatine acknowledges with a faint smile, although he immediately casts a significant gaze up the staircase, which the vector of the artificial gravity had made into a vertical cliff. "But what now?"

Before Anakin can answer him, the erratic gravity swings like a pendulum so that, while they both cling to the railing, the room seems to roll around them. All the broken chairs and table fragments and hunks of rubble from the earlier fighting between Obi-Wan and the droids and Dooku and Anakin slides toward the opposite side of the room, and now instead of a cliff the staircase has become merely a corrugated stretch of floor.

"People say" - Anakin nods toward the door to the turbolift lobby - "that when the Force closes a hatch, it opens a viewport. After you?"

***

"Sir?" The wary voice of the comm officer, thin with fear, interrupts Grievous' restless pacing. "We are being hailed by /Integrity/, sir. They propose a cease-fire."

Dark yellow eyes squint through the skull-mask at the tactical displays, considering the amount of damage to the ship and deliberating over his options. A pause in the combat would allow Invisible Hand's turbolaser batteries to cool and provide a respite that would give the engineers a chance to get the gravity generators under control.

"Acknowledge receipt of transmission. Stand by to cease fire."

"Standing by, sir." The gunnery officer - whose promotion is at least an hour old - is still shaking.

"Cease fire."

The lances of continuously streaming energy that have joined the Hand to the Open Circle Armada's Home Fleet Strike Force melt away.

"Further transmission, sir. It's Integrity's commander."

Grievous nods at the comm officer. "Initiate."

A ghostly image builds itself above the bridge's ship-to-ship hologenerator: an extremely young human male of distinctly average height and build and apparently fair coloration, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant commander. The only thing distinctive about his otherwise rather bland features is the calm confidence in his eyes.

"General Grievous," the young man briskly announces, "I am Lieutenant Commander Lorth Needa of RSS /Integrity. At my request, my superiors have consented to offer you the chance to surrender your ship, sir."/

"Surrender?" Grievous' vocabulator manages to produce a very credible reproduction of a snort. "Preposterous."

"Please give this offer careful deliberation, General, as it will not be repeated. Consider the lives of your crew."

Grievous casts an icy glance around his bridge full of craven Neimoidians before turning his attention back to the ghostly Lieutenant Commander. "Why should I?"

The young man does not look surprised, though his expression does betray a trace of sadness. "Is this your final reply, then?"

"Not at all." Grievous draws himself up; by straightening the angles of his levered joints, he can add half a meter to his already imposing height. "I have a counteroffer. Maintain your cease-fire, move that hulk Indomitable out of my way, and withdraw to a minimum range of fifty kilometers until this ship achieves hyperspace jump."

"If I may use your word, sir: preposterous."

"Tell these superiors of yours that if my demands are not met within fifteen minutes, I will personally disembowel Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, live on the HoloNet. Am I understood?"

The young officer takes this without a blink. "Ah. So the Chancellor /is aboard your ship, then."/

"He is. Your pathetic Jedi so-called heroes have failed. They are dead, and Palpatine remains in my hands."

"Ah," the young officer merely repeats. "Of course. So you will, I assume, allow me to speak with him. To, ah, reassure my superiors that you are not simply - well, to put it charitably - bluffing?"

"I would not lower myself to lie to the likes of you." Grievous turns to the comm officer. "Patch in Count Dooku."

The comm officer strokes his screen, then shakes his head. "He's not responding, sir."

Grievous shakes his head disgustedly. "Just show the Chancellor, then. Bring up my quarters on the security screen."

The security officer strokes his own screen, the sight of which causes him to issue a startled choking sound. "Hrm, sir?"

"What are you waiting for? Bring it up!"

The comm officer has turned an even more unhealthily vivid shade of pink than the gunner. "Perhaps you should have a look /first/, sir?"

The plain urgency in his tone brings Grievous to his side without another word. The General bends over the screen that shows the view inside his quarters and finds himself looking at jumbled piles of energy-sheared wreckage surrounding the empty, overturned shape of the General's Chair. There is something off in the corner - almost off of the screen - that looks as if it might possibly be the edge of a deactivated and dropped lightsaber . . . a distinctly curved lightsaber hilt, near the draped edge of a cape of armorweave.

Grievous turns back towards the intership holocomm. "The Chancellor is - indisposed."

"Ah. I see."

Grievous suspects that the young officer sees entirely too well. "I assure you - "

"I do not require your assurance, General. You have the same amount of time you have offered us. Fifteen minutes from now, I will have either your surrender, or confirmation that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is alive, unharmed - and present - aboard your ship, or else /Invisible Hand will be destroyed."/

"Wait - you can't simply - "

"Fifteen minutes, General. Needa out."

When Grievous turns to the bridge security officer, his mask is as blankly expressionless as ever, but he more than makes up for it with the open murder in his voice. "Dooku is dead and the Jedi are loose. They have the Chancellor. Find them and bring them to me." His armorplast fingers curl into a fist that crashes down on the security console so hard that the entire thing collapsed into a sparking, smoking ruin. "Find them!"

***

White-hot sparks zip and crackle through the smoke that billows across the turbolift lobby. Over Anakin's shoulder, the unconscious Jedi Master wheezes faintly. Beside his other shoulder, Palpatine coughs harshly into the sleeve of his robe, held over his face for protection from the caustic combustion of products from the overloading circuitry.

"Artoo?" Anakin shakes his comlink sharply. The blasted link has been on the blink ever since Obi-Wan stepped on it earlier, during one of the turbolift fights on their way to Palpatine. "Artoo, do you copy? I need you to activate - " the smoke is so thick that he can barely make out the numerals on the code " - elevator three-two-two-four. /Three-two-two-four/, do you copy?"

The comlink emits a fading fwheep that might have been meant as an acknowledgment, and the doors slide apart, but before Anakin can carry Obi-Wan through, the turbolift pod shoots upward and the artificial gravity vector shifts again, throwing him and his partner into a heap next to Palpatine in the lobby's opposite corner.

Palpatine is struggling to rise, still coughing, sounding weak. Anakin lets the Force lift Obi-Wan securely back up to his shoulder before he picks himself up. "Perhaps you should stay down, Sir," he half suggests and half orders the trembling Chancellor. "The gravity swings are getting worse."

Palpatine nods, his face extremely white. "But, Anakin - "

Anakin is busy looking up, though. The turbolift doors are still staying open. "Wait here, Sir." He opens himself more fully to the Force, his mind placing himself and Obi-Wan balanced upon the edge of the open doorway above. Holding this image, he leaps, and the Force makes his intention into reality: his leap carries him and the unconscious Jedi Master precisely to the rim. The altered gravitic vector has remade the turbolift shaft into a horizontal hallway of unlit durasteel, laser-straight, shrinking away into darkness. Anakin is familiar with specs for Trade Federation command cruisers, so he knows that the angled conning spire is some three hundred meters long. As it stands, they can walk it in two or three minutes. But if the wrong gravity shift were to catch them inside the shaft . . . If it were only him, he could always find a way to catch himself, somehow, but with Obi-Wan unconscious and Palpatine's safety therefore dependent on Anakin alone . . . He sighs and shakes his head, grimly calculating the odds. "We'll have to be fast." He glances back over his shoulder, down at Palpatine, who is still huddled below him. "Are you all right, Chancellor? Are you well enough to run?"

The Supreme Chancellor finally rises, patting his robes in a futile attempt to dust them off. "I haven't run since I was a boy on Naboo."

"It's never too late to start getting into shape." Anakin reaches through the Force to give Palpatine a little help in clambering up to the open doorway. "There are light shuttles on the hangar deck. We can be there in five minutes." Once Palpatine is safely within the shaft-hall, Anakin nods, saying, "Follow me," as he turns to go, but the Chancellor stops him with a hand on his arm.

"Anakin, wait. We need to get to the bridge."

Through an entire ship full of combat droids? Not likely. "The hangar deck's right below - well, beside us, now. It's our best chance."

"But the bridge - Grievous is there." Now Anakin does stop. Grievous. The most prolific slaughterer of Jedi since Durge. In all the excitement, Anakin has entirely forgotten that the bio-droid general is aboard this ship. "You've defeated Dooku," Palpatine continues. "Capture Grievous and you will have dealt a wound from which the Separatists may never recover."

Anakin thinks blankly: I could do it.

He has dreamed of capturing Grievous ever since Muunilinst - and now General Grievous is close, so close Anakin that can practically smell him . . . and despite everything that has happened, Anakin has never felt so powerful. The Force is with him today in ways more potent than he has ever before experienced.

"Think of it, Anakin." Palpatine is standing close by his shoulder, opposite to Obi-Wan, so close that he need only to whisper. "You've already destroyed their political head. Take their military commander, and you will have practically won the war. Single-handedly. Who else could do that, Anakin? Yoda? Mace Windu? They couldn't even capture Dooku! Who would have a chance against General Grievous, if not Anakin Skywalker? The Jedi have never faced a crisis like the Clone Wars, but they have also never had a hero like you. You can save them. You can save /everyone/."

Anakin jerks, startled. He turns a sharp glance toward Palpatine. The way the Chancellor just said that . . . It's like a voice out of one of his dreams. "That's - " Anakin tries to laugh, but it comes out a little bit shaky, more like a moan. "That's not what Obi-Wan keeps telling me."

"Forget Obi-Wan," is Palpatine's immediate response. "He has no idea how powerful you truly are. Use your power, Anakin. Save the Republic."

Enthralled by the lure of Palpatine's voice and the desires of his own heart that somehow still manage to be selfish even when Anakin has only the best of intentions, Anakin can all but see it, as vivid as a HoloNet feature: arriving at the Senate with Grievous in electrobonds; standing modestly aside as Palpatine announces the end of the war; returning to the Jedi Temple, to the Council Chamber, where finally, after all this time, there is a chair waiting, just for him, because the High Council could hardly continue to refuse him Mastership if he has essentially just won the entire war for them . . . But then Obi-Wan shifts slightly on his shoulder, moaning faintly, and Anakin snaps back to reality, remembering Obi-Wan's gentle warning in front of the General's Quarters and the promises he had made the Jedi Master. "No," he says, shaking his head. "Sorry, Chancellor. My orders are clear. This is a rescue mission; your safety is my only priority. Now that I've got you secured, I must see you safely off of this ship."

"I will never be safe while Grievous lives," is Palpatine's prompt counter. "Master Kenobi will recover at any moment. Leave him here with me; he can see me safely to the hangar deck. Go for General Grievous yourself."

"I - I would like to, Sir, but - "

"I can make it an order, Anakin."

Anakin flinches as though he's been slapped. "With respect, Sir: no. You can't. My orders come from the Jedi High Council, and the Council's orders come from the Senate. Now that Obi-Wan and I have freed you from Dooku, it falls to me - since Obi-Wan is unconscious - to fulfill the remainder of my mandate and get you safely off of this ship. You have no direct authority over me, Sir, not in this."

The Chancellor's face darkens, mouth turning down angrily. "That may soon change."

Anakin nods, shrugging. "And perhaps it should, Sir. But until it does, we'll do things my way. Come on. Let's go."

Anakin is counting paces as he trots along the turbolift shaft, Obi-Wan over his shoulder and Palpatine at his side. He's just reached 102 - only a third of the way along the conning spire - when he feels the gravity begin to shift, and exactly the wrong way, changing the rest of the long, long shaft from ahead to /down/. His free arm automatically reaches out to stop the Chancellor. "This is a problem. Find something to hang on to while I get us out of here."

One of the turbolift doors is nearby, seemingly lying on its side. Anakin's lightsaber finds his hand and its sizzling blade burns open the door controls, but before he can even move aside the sparking wires, the gravitic vector lurches toward vertical and he falls, skidding along the wall, free hand grabbing desperately at a loop of cable, catching it, hanging from it -

And the turbolift doors open.

Inviting. Safe. And mockingly out of reach: a meter above his outstretched arm -

And his other arm is the only thing holding Obi-Wan above a two-hundred-meter drop down which his lightsaber's handgrip is now clanking and clattering, fading towards infinity. For half a second Anakin is actually glad that Obi-Wan's unconscious because he just isn't in the mood for another lecture about hanging on to his lightsaber right now, but then that thought blows away and vanishes because something has grabbed on to his leg -

He looks down.

For an instant, Anakin's sight swims. As he looks down, he sees the figure of a man - or at least a humanoid of some kind, swathed in voluminous rich black robes and roughly the same size as the Chancellor, with even the same distinctive patrician nose, but bent as if with extreme age or some other infirmity and with deeply wrinkled, almost wattled, corpse-gray skin as coarse as rotten synthplast and glaring eyes that are even harder and more furiously golden-yellow than the animalistic eyes of General Grievous himself - hurling rapidly away from him down into the abyss of a seemingly bottomless black hole, spinning out of control all the while, bouncing wildly back and forth off the sides of that shaft even as he falls further and further down into the gaping chasm. Strangely, this man-shaped figure seems to be tumbling through fields of some sort of energy that flare into visibility only as he is falling through them, bolts of what looks like some kind of insanely twisted dark electricity or negative lightning flashing around his body continuously, like some kind of dark corona - though miraculously this strange power doesn't seem to be affecting his already diseased-looking and probably fragile flesh - as he tumbles ever more rapidly away from Anakin.

What the - ?

Anakin blinks, shocked, and when his eyes open, it's only Palpatine, after all.

The Chancellor is hugging Anakin's ankle with improbable strength, peering fearfully into the darkness below. "Anakin, do something! You have to do something!"

I'm open to suggestions, he thinks sourly, miffed by the previously quite calm's Chancellor's sudden attack of panic and for a moment wishing - however unkind and even unconscionable the thought may be, considering everything Anakin and Obi-Wan have done to secure Palpatine's freedom and safety from the Separatists - that Palpatine's grip could have failed and left Anakin alone in the turbolift shaft with just Obi-Wan to worry about. What he does, though, is firmly but calmly tell the clearly terrified man who is peering up at him so fearfully, "Don't panic! Just hang on."

"I don't think I can . . . " The Chancellor turns an anguished face upward imploringly. "Anakin, I'm slipping. Give me your hand - you have to give me your /hand/!"

And /drop Obi-Wan? Not in this millennium./

"Don't panic/," Anakin irritably snaps back, trying not to snarl and firmly resisting the insane urge to simply kick out and hasten the Chancellor in his journey down the shaft. After all, Palpatine has clearly lost his head if he thinks Anakin is actually capable of sacrificing Obi-Wan's /life in such a foolish gesture, and it's not fair to judge the man when he's in such a state of obvious distress. "I can get us out of this," he promises, trying to soothe the clearly distraught Chancellor. He wishes that he felt as confident as he sounds, though. He's been counting on the artificial gravity to continue to swing until the haft turned back into a hallway, but instead it seems to have stopped where it is.

This would be an especially lousy time for the generators to start working right.

He fixes a measuring glance on the open lift doorway above; perhaps the Force can give him enough of a boost to carry all three of them to safety.

But that is an exceedingly large perhaps.

Obi-Wan, old buddy, old pal, he thinks, this would be a really good time to wake up.

***

Obi-Wan Kenobi opens his eyes to find himself staring at what he strongly suspects is Anakin Skywalker's butt.

At least it looks like Anakin's butt - well, his somewhat distinctively dark brown almost to the point of being black pants, anyway - though it is thoroughly impossible for Obi-Wan to be certain, since he has never before had occasion to examine Anakin's butt upside down, which it currently appears to be, nor from this rather uncomfortably close range.

And how he might have arrived at this angle and this range is entirely baffling to him. The last thing he recalls is running to protect his fallen partner from those droid guards and . . .

Oh. Yes. Dooku.

Obi-Wan clears his throat and quietly asks, "Um, have I missed something?"

"Hang on," he hears Anakin say. "We're in a bit of a situation here."

So it is Anakin's butt after all. He supposes he might take a modicum of comfort from that, though it seems rather obvious that he has indeed missed something - quite possibly a few somethings, at that. Looking up, Obi-Wan discovers Anakin's powerfully muscled long legs and his snugly fitting, calf-sculpting boots - and then a somewhat astonishingly close-up view of the Supreme Chancellor, as Palpatine seemingly balances overhead, supported only by a white-knuckled death-grip on Anakin's ankle. "Oh, hello, Chancellor," he says, blinking mildly to cover his confusion and surprise. "Are you well?"

The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic casts an entirely distressed glance over his shoulder. "I hope so . . . "

Obi-Wan follows the direction of the Chancellor's gaze; above Palpatine rises a long, long vertical shaft -

Which is when he finally realizes that he isn't looking up at all.

This must be what Anakin had meant when he said /a bit of a situation/.

"Ah," Obi-Wan sighs. At least he is finally coming to understand where he stands. Well, lies. Hangs. Whatever. "And Count Dooku?"

Anakin hesitates for a few long moments before finally saying, "Dead. Well, gone, anyway . . ."

"Pity." Obi-Wan sighs. "Alive, he might have been a help to us."

"Obi-Wan - "

"Not in this particular situation, granted, but nonetheless - "

"Can we maybe discuss this /later/? The ship's breaking apart."

"Ah." A familiar electrosonic feroo-wheep comes thinly through someone's comlink. "Was that Artoo? What does he want?"

"I asked him to activate the elevator," Anakin sighs, sounding faintly aggravated.

From the distant darkness above comes a /clank/, and a /shirr/, and a /clonk/, all of which evoke in Obi-Wan's still somewhat mildly addled brain the image of turbolift brakes unlocking. The accuracy of his imagination is swiftly confirmed by a sudden downdraft that smells strongly of burning oil, followed closely by the sight of the bottom of a turbolift pod hurtling down the shaft like a meteorite down a well.

Obi-Wan exhales a quiet, "Oh."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time - "

"No need to get defensive."

"Artoo!" Anakin merely shouts into the balky comm unit, shaking it. "Do you copy? Shut it down! Artoo, shut it down!"

"Is Artoo not - ?"

"No loose wire jokes, Master, please! He's doing the best he can. It's this blasted comm unit!" Anakin snarls.

Obi-Wan merely blinks mildly. "Did I say anything?"

"He's /trying/!" Anakin simply repeats.

"I didn't say anything!" Obi-Wan protests.

"Artoo!" Anakin shouts, shaking the comm again, violently. "Shut it down /now/!"

"No time for that," Obi-Wan counters. "Jump."

"Jump?" Palpatine demands with a shaky laugh. "Don't you mean, /fall/?"

"Um, actually, yes. Anakin - ?"

Anakin lets go.

They fall.

And fall. The sides of the turboshaft blur.

And they fall some more, until the gravitic vector finally eases a couple of degrees and they find themselves sliding along the side of the shaft, which is quickly turning into the bottom of the shaft, and of course the lift pod is still shrieking toward them faster than they could ever possibly run, but then Obi-Wan hears a familiar inquisitive electronic beeping as Anakin finally gets the damaged comlink working again and shouts, "Artoo, open the doors! All of them! All floors!" One door opens just as they skid onto it and all three of them tumble through. They land in a heap on a turbolift lobby's opposite wall as the pod shoots past overhead.

They gradually manage to untangle themselves after a few moments of fumbling about.

"Are . . . all of your rescues so . . . " Palpatine gasps breathlessly " . . . /entertaining/?"

Obi-Wan gives Anakin a thoughtful frown.

Anakin returns it with a shrug.

"Actually, now that you mention it," Obi-Wan smiles quietly, "yes."

***

Anakin Skywalker stares bleakly off into the tangled masses of wreckage that litters the hangar bay, trying to pick out anything that even remotely still resembles a ship. Although it had proven relatively easy to make it back to the bay, after Obi-Wan had regained consciousness and they had managed to get safely out of the turbolift shaft, it now looks as if they may have wasted their time. The place looks as if it has taken a direct hit; wind howls against his back through the open hatchway where Obi-Wan is standing with Chancellor Palpatine, and scraps of debris whirl into the air, blown toward space through gaps in the scorched and buckled blast doors.

"None of those ships will get us anywhere!" Palpatine shouts above the wind, and Anakin has to agree. "What are we going to do?"

Anakin shakes his head helplessly. He doesn't know, and the Force isn't offering any clues. "Obi-Wan?"

"How should I know?" Obi-Wan shrugs, bracing himself in the doorway, robe whipping in the wind. "You're the hero; I'm just a lowly Master!"

Past Obi-Wan's shoulder, Anakin sees a cadre of super battle droids marching around a corner into the corridor. "Master! Behind you!"

Obi-Wan whirls, lightsaber flaring to meet a barrage of blaster bolts. "Protect the Chancellor!" he snaps, suddenly completely serious.

And let you have all the fun? Anakin pulls the Chancellor into the hangar bay and presses him against the wall beside the hatch. "Stay under cover until we handle the droids!? He is about to jump out beside Obi-Wan when he remembers that he dropped his lightsaber down the blasted turboshaft, and that fighting super battle droids without it would be just a wee bit tricky. Not to mention the fact that Obi-Wan would never let him hear the end of it.

"Droids are not our only problem!" Palpatine points across the hangar bay. "Look!"

On the far side of the bay, masses of wreckage are shifting, sliding gradually but inexorably towards the wall that Anakin and Palpatine are currently standing against. Then debris closer to them begins to slide too, followed by piles closer still. An invisible wave-front is passing through the hangar bay, and, to make matters worse, behind it the gravitic vector is rotating a full ninety degrees.

Gravity shear. Of course.

Anakin's jaw clenches. Lovely. This just keeps getting better and better.

He unspools a length of his utility belt's safety cable and passes the end to Palpatine. The wind makes it sing. "Cinch this around your waist. Things are about to get a little wild!"

"What's /happening/?" Palpatine's raised voice once again sounds genuinely frightened, if not yet panicked, though Anakin would hardly blame him for panicking now.

"The gravity generators have desynchronized - they'll tear the ship apart!" Anakin grabs one of the zero-g handles beside the hatchway, securely anchoring himself with his mechanical hand, then leans out into the firestorm of blaster bolts and 'saber flares and touches Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Time to go!"

"What?"

Explanation is obviated as the shear-front moves past them and the wall becomes the floor. Anakin grabs the back of Obi-Wan's collar, but not to save him from falling. The torque of the gravity shear has buckled the blast doors - which are now overhead - and the hurricane of escaping air blasting from the corridor shaft blows the Jedi Master up through the hatch. Anakin drags Obi-Wan out of the gale just as pieces of super battle droids begin hurtling upward into the hangar bay like misfiring torpedoes. Of course, some of the super battle droids are still intact enough to open fire as they fly past.

"Hang on to my belt!" Obi-Wan shouts and spins his lightsaber through an intricate flurry to deflect bolt after bolt. Anakin can do nothing but snake his left arm about his former Master's slender waist, fingers curling about the leather of the belt binding the obi about that narrowness, and hold him braced against the gale; his grip on the zero-g handle is the only thing keeping him and Obi-Wan from being blown out into space and taking Palpatine with them.

"This is not the best plan we've ever had!" he shouts.

"This was a /plan/?" Palpatine sounds absolutely appalled.

"We'll make our way forward!" Obi-Wan shouts back. "There are only droids back here! Once we hit live-crew areas, there will be escape pods!"

Only droids back here echoes inside Anakin's head. "Obi-Wan, /wait/!" he cries. "Artoo's still here somewhere! We can't leave him!"

"He's probably been destroyed, or blown into space!" Obi-Wan twists lithely out to the outermost limit of Anakin's grasp - until his fingertips only just barely brush the outer curve of Obi-Wan's left hip and he can feel the strain of keeping both of his grips as an ache in the gears of his anchoring mechanical arm - to deflect blaster bursts from the last two gale-blown droids. They tumble up to the gap in the blast doors and vanish into the infinite void. Once the droids are safely gone, Obi-Wan puts his lightsaber away and fights his way back to a grip beside Anakin's, his hand radiating so much heat that Anakin feels scorched by the almost-touch, startling him so that he hurriedly, if slightly belatedly, lets go of his hold on Obi-Wan's belt. "We can't afford the time to search for him. I am sorry, Anakin. I truly am. I know how much he's meant to you."

Anakin desperately fishes out his comlink. "Artoo! Artoo, come in!" He shakes it, and then immediately shakes it again. Artoo can't have been destroyed. He just /can't/. "Artoo, do you copy? Where are you?"

"Anakin - " Obi-Wan's hand is on his arm, and the Jedi Master leans so close that his mouth nearly touches Anakin's ear, his low tone audible only to Anakin over the rising gale. "We must go. Being a Jedi means allowing things - even things we love - to pass out of our lives. I'm truly sorry."

Shivering slightly at the vaguely pleasurable puff of Obi-Wan's warm breath tickling his ear, Anakin turns slightly away, shaking the comlink again. "Artoo!" He knows that his voice is edging into the hysterical range, but he can't help it. He can't just leave him. He can't.

And he doesn't exactly have an explanation.

Well, not one he could ever give to Obi-Wan, anyway.

There are so few things a Jedi ever owns; even his lightsaber is less a possession than an expression of his identity. To be a Jedi is to renounce possessions. And Anakin has striven so very hard, tried for so long, to do just that, that all he literally has ever had of his own are some pretty rocks he collected during his first harrowing visit to Naboo. Thus, on their wedding day, Anakin had brought no devotion-gift to give to his new wife because (as far as he had known, at the time) he hadn't actually owned anything of any value.

But love had found a way.

In the end, he'd brought something like a gift to her apartments in Theed, the evening before he'd had to leave her behind and return to the Temple - to his life without her, as a Jedi, a much more dangerous and demanding life than ever, in a galaxy that had just been plunged into civil warfare - still a little shy with her, still overwhelmed from so recently finding the feelings in her he'd felt so long himself - feelings of connection, of belonging, of unfailing admiration and respect and want and need that were all so strong and so inexorably bound up together with the giddy warmth that just the thought or the sight of Padmé alone could inspire in him that Anakin could not believe them to be anything other than signs of his growing devotion and love for her - not knowing quite how to give her a gift that wasn't really a gift. Nor was it precisely his to give. But without anything of his own to give except for the pledge of his love, all he could bring her was a friend.

"I didn't have many friends when I was a kid," he'd finally explained, trying not to blush in front of her, "so I built one."

C-3P0 had shuffled in behind him then, gleaming as though he'd been plated with solid gold. And Padmé had lit up, her eyes gleaming, although she had at first tried to protest. "I can't accept him," she'd lamented. "I know how much he means to you."

Anakin had only laughed, though. After all, what real use is a protocol droid to a Jedi, even one as upgraded as Threepio - and Anakin certainly had packed his creation with so many extra circuits and subprograms and heuristic algorithms that the droid was practically human, if in a slightly . . . neurotic way. "I'm not giving him to you," he'd explained, smiling. "He's not even really mine to give; when I built him, I was a slave, and everything I did belonged to Watto. Cliegg Lars bought him along with my mother; Owen gave him back to me, but since I'm a Jedi, I've renounced possessions. I guess that means he's free now. So what I'm really doing is asking you to look after him for me."

"Look after him?"

"Yes. Maybe even give him a job. He's a little bit fussy," he'd admitted, his eyes silently pleading for her understanding, her acceptance, not only of his gift - of Threepio himself - but of the need that had driven Anakin to create Threepio in the first place, fussiness and all, "and maybe I shouldn't have given him quite so much self-consciousness - he's a worrier, Threepio is - but he's very smart, and he might be a real help to a big-time diplomat, like . . . say, a Senator from Naboo?"

At that, Padmé had smiled at him and promptly extended her hand to graciously invite C-3PO to join her full-time staff, since high-functioning droids such as Threepio are respected as thinking beings on Naboo. C-3PO had been so flustered at being treated like a sentient creature that, for once, he'd been barely able to speak, beyond muttering something about how he hoped he might make himself useful to her and her staff since he was, after all, "fluent in over six million forms of communication." Afterwards, she had turned to Anakin and laid her petal-soft little hand along his jawline to draw him down to kiss her, and that was all he had needed, all he had hoped for, and he had been utterly convinced that he would gladly give her everything that he had, everything he was -

And there had come another day, two years later, a day that had meant nearly as much to him as the day Master Qui-Gon had won Anakin's freedom and taken him from Tatooine, or the day Obi-Wan had officially been Knighted and then immediately taken Anakin as his Padawan learner, or the day that Anakin and Padmé had wed: the day he had finally passed his Trials. The day he had finally fulfilled his dream of becoming a Jedi Knight. As soon as circumstances allowed, he had slipped away, for the first time in his life completely on his own, with no Master standing by, either awaiting his return or shadowing his footsteps, looking over his shoulder and weighing his every action. With no one to monitor his comings and his goings, no one he would have to answer to for his actions, for those comings and goings, Anakin had easily been able to take himself to the vast Coruscant complex at 500 Republica where Naboo's senior Senator kept her spacious apartments. And he had then, finally, had a devotion-gift for her, two years late. He had in his hands the one thing he truly owned and had truly earned, the only thing he was not required to renounce. One gift he could give her to celebrate their love.

The culmination of the Ceremony of Jedi Knighthood is the severing of the new Jedi Knight's Padawan braid. And it was this that he had laid into Padmé's trembling hands. One long, thin braid of his glossy hair: such a little thing, of no real value at all. Such a little thing, that meant the galaxy to him. And she had kissed him then, and laid her soft cheek against his jaw, and she had whispered in his ear that she had something for him as well, and from out from her closet had whirred R2-D2.

Of course Anakin knew him; he had known him for years - the unprepossessing little droid was a decorated war hero himself, having saved Padmé's life back when she had still been Queen of Naboo, not to mention helping the then nine-year-old Anakin (he had not turned ten until the day before he left Naboo for Coruscant) destroy the Trade Federation's Droid Control Ship, breaking the blockade and saving the planet from the invading armies of droids. The Royal Engineers of Naboo's aftermarket wizardry make their modified R-units the most sought after in the galaxy; Anakin had tried to protest, but she had silenced him with no more than a soft finger against his lips, a gentle smile, and one amused whispered question, "After all, what does a politician need with an astromech?"

"But I'm a Jedi - "

"That's why I'm not giving him to you," Padmé had only said with a smile. "I'm asking you to look after him. He's not really a gift. He's a friend."

All of these things flash though Anakin's mind in the horrible stretching second before his comlink finally crackles to life with a familiar /fwee-wheoo/, and his heart finally unclenches. "Artoo, where are you? Come on, we have to get out of here!"

High above, on the wall that is supposed to be the floor, the lid of a battered durasteel storage locker shifts, pushed aside by a familiar dome of silver and blue. Then the lid swings fully open, allowing R2-D2 to right itself, and the little astromech deploys its booster rockets and floats out of the locker, heading for the far exit. Relieved almost beyond words, Anakin turns to give Obi-Wan a fierce grin.

Let someone he loves pass out of his life? Not likely. "What are we waiting for?" he almost laughs. "Let's go!"

***