FicWad

Already, there is a divide growing between what has been foreseen of the future and what is instead now coming about, and the epicenter and eye of this brewing storm of storms - only partially directed eddies and whirlwinds of time, now, but already gaining in both power and purpose - is centered about the now fully conscious and functional team of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. The blazing presence of the mind and soul of one who, quite recently, was clothed in flesh and answered to the name of Count Dooku as well as to that of Darth Tyranus stares in awed silence upon the stunning spectacle that is this brewing storm, all but gaping at the sight as these uneasy disturbances within the directionality and the very essence of the wind that is time coalesces into a sudden brief gale. There is a light of increasing strength and brightness, already almost as luminous as the heart of a star - actually, two lights, so close together that their brilliant coronas overlap and form one lone incandescent flame - burning within the heart of that whirling dervish. The light of that twinned-star, although it is expanding, especially around one of its two binary hearts, is, for the moment, growing so slowly still that it appears to be maintaining a fairly steady level of power. However, it is obvious that this will not remain the case for much longer, as evidenced by the way the outer edges of that twinned light seem to leap, like flames fanned by a strong gust of wind to sudden blazing heights.

His power is finally growing beyond the bounds of even his wards, his own ability to control. His shields are no longer sufficient to kept his energies pent. Soon, more and larger pieces of him will begin breaking free. Soon, he will not only be occasionally and accidentally reading these storied winds, he will be redirecting them, purposely bending and binding them to his will. I can see it, quite clearly, in the shape of this building storm. Force, Qui! He is so very bright! How have we missed this? How did we not see him, before? How could we not have known that this is the One?

I always said that this boy was special, Master. Even when I tried to turn away from him, I could not deny his potential. I had my suspicions, especially when he was a child, but he grew to hold so tightly to his restraint that I never dreamed he could be so powerful. Even with the bond, I never could see to the core of him. His heart, yes, and sometimes his thoughts, even to the edges of his subconscious, but never the power at the center of his being. He had too many shields and they were too strong for me to breach. He loved me and trusted me enough to allow me in, but never far enough to sound his depths. The Soul Healers' initial prognosis was far more correct than I suspect anyone ever realized: he never recovered from what those animals - may the Force turn its face far from them and all of their kind forever! - did to him.

You need not snarl at me, Qui-Gon. You know my opinion on such rabble. Calm yourself. Those who were caught received justice. If the Force has not dealt with the rest, then we shall see to it ourselves - granted we are still here and able to see to anything - when this is all over with. After all, justice delayed is justice accrued. Agreed?

Done and done!

Good. Come along then, old Padawan of mine. It's obvious that they are going to survive this confrontation. We can do no more, here. We need to test our limits now, while we have the time, if we truly wish to be of help to them, later. There is still much that must be done, to build this storm to the strength necessary to topple Sidious from his dark throne.

I agree. We need to test our limits. And we should trace the changes, as they spread. We may even be able to speed them along, if we time our tests accordingly . . .

Silently, the two Force spirits, so recently awoken to their new natures that they have essentially no practical knowledge of their abilities or the limits of their powers, turn away from the roiling billow of the building storm and the burgeoning binary star blazing at its core, and determinedly plot a course that follows the leading edge of rising that storm.

***

When a sheet of shimmering energy suddenly flares to life in front of them, blocking the corridor on the far side of the intersection they are trotting across, Obi-Wan stops so short that Anakin almost slams into his back, stopping so awkwardly that his hand skims briefly across his former Master's back before catching on his shoulder, lingering there long enough for Anakin to recapture his balance and keep from tumbling them both down into a heap. Recovering, he releases his hold and then reaches over to catch Palpatine by the arm. "Careful, Sir," he warns, voice low. "Better not touch it till we know what it is."

Obi-Wan unclips his lightsaber, activates it, and cautiously extends its tip to touch the energy field. An explosive burst of power flares sparks and streaks in all directions, nearly knocking the weapon from his hands. "Ray shield," he says, shrugging, speaking more to himself than to the others. "We'll have to find a way around - "

But even as he speaks another sheet shimmers into existence across the mouth of the corridor they've just left while two more sizzle into place to seal the corridors to either side, leaving them boxed in.

Caged.

Obi-Wan stands there for a second or two, blinking, then looks at Anakin and shakes his head in disbelief. "I thought we were smarter than this."

"Apparently not. The oldest trap in the book, and we walked right into it." Anakin feels at least as embarrassed as Obi-Wan looks. "Well, you walked right into it. I was just trying to keep up."

"Oh, so now this is my fault?"

Anakin gives him a slightly wicked smile. "Hey, you're the Master here. I'm just the hero, remember?"

"Joke some other time," Obi-Wan grumbles. "It's the Dark Side - the shadow on the Force. Our instincts still can't be trusted. Don't you feel it?"

The Dark Side of the Force is the absolute last thing Anakin wants to think about right now, considering present company and what little he can actually clearly recall of his fight against Dooku. "Or, you know, it could be that knock on the head," he offers helpfully.

Unfortunately, Anakin's alternative explanation doesn't seem to sit well with Obi-Wan, who dismisses it out of hand, his expression unremittingly grim. "No. All our choices keep going awry. How could they even locate us so precisely? Something is definitely wrong, here. Dooku's death should have lifted the shadow - "

"If you've a taste for mysteries, Master Kenobi," Palpatine interrupts pointedly, "perhaps you could solve the mystery of how we're going to /escape/."

Obi-Wan nods, scowling darkly at the ray shield box as though seeing it for the first time; after a moment, he takes out his lightsaber again, ignites it, and sinks its tip into the deck at his feet. The blade burns through the durasteel plate almost without resistance - until suddenly flaring and bucking and spitting lightning as it strikes a shield in place in a gap below the plate, almost managing to throw Obi-Wan into the annihilating energy of the ray shield behind him. "No doubt in the ceiling as well." He looks at the others and sighs. "Ideas? I'm open to suggestions."

"Perhaps," the Chancellor offers thoughtfully, as though the idea has only just occurred to him, "we should simply surrender to General Grievous. With the death of Count Dooku, I'm sure that the two of you can . . . " Palpatine casts a significant sidelong glance at Anakin. " . . . negotiate our release."

He's persistent, I'll give him that, Anakin thinks. He catches himself smiling as he recalls discussing "aggressive negotiation" with Padmé on Naboo, before the war, and comes back to the present when he realizes that undertaking "aggressive negotiations" could prove embarrassing under his current lightsaber-challenged circumstances. "I say . . . " he offers slowly, "patience."

"Patience?" Obi-Wan lifts one eyebrow. "That's a plan?"

"You know what Master Yoda says: Patience you must have until the mud settles and the water becomes clear. So let's wait."

Obi-Wan looks skeptical. "Wait."

"For the security patrol. A couple of droids will be along in a moment or two; they'll have to drop the ray shield to take us into custody."

"And then?"

Anakin shrugs cheerfully. "And then we'll wipe them out," he grins, laying an arm easily across Obi-Wan's shoulder.

"Brilliant as usual," Obi-Wan dryly observes, uneasily shrugging away from Anakin's reassuring touch, oddly discomforted by Palpatine's quietly watchful eyes. "What if they turn out to be destroyer droids? Or something worse?"

"Oh, come on, Master!" Anakin scowls and manfully resists rolling his eyes. "Worse than destroyers? Besides, security patrols are always those skinny useless little battle droids."

At that precise moment, four of those skinny useless battle droids come marching toward them, one along each corridor, clanking along with blaster rifles leveled. One of them triggers one of its preprogrammed security commands: "Hand over your weapons!" The other three chime in with enthusiastic barks of "Roger, roger!" and a round of spastic head-bobbing.

"See?" Anakin grins. "No problem."

Before Obi-Wan can reply, concealed doors in the corridor walls zip suddenly aside. Through them rolls the massive bronzium wheels of destroyer droids, two into each corridor. The eight destroyers unroll themselves behind the battle droids, haloed by sparkling energy shields, twin blaster cannons targeting the two Jedi's chests. Obi-Wan sighs. "You were saying""

"Okay, fine! It's the Dark Side. Or something." Anakin gives in to temptation and rolls his eyes. "I guess you're off the hook for the ray shield trap." Through those same doorways march sixteen super battle droids to back up the destroyers, their arm cannons raised to fire over the destroyers' shields. Behind the super battle droids come two droids of a type Anakin has never even seen before, although he has an idea what they are. And he is not happy about it.

Obi-Wan scowls at them as they approach. "You're the expert, Anakin. What are those things?"

"Remember what you were saying about /worse than destroyers/?" Anakin asks grimly. "I think we're looking at them."

They walk side by side, their gait easy and straightforward, almost as smooth as a human's. In fact, they almost could have been human - humans who were two meters tall and made out of metal. They wear long swirling cloaks that had apparently once been white but which now are stained with smoke and what Anakin strongly suspects is blood. They walk with their cloaks thrown back over one shoulder, to clear their left arms, where they each hold some unfamiliar staff-like weapon about two meters long - something like the force-pike of a Senate Guard, but shorter, and with an odd-looking discharge blade at each end. They walk like they have been made to fight, and they have just as clearly seen some battle already. The chest plate of one bears a round shallow crater surrounded by a corona of scorch, a direct blaster hit that hadn't even come close to penetrating; the other bears a scar from its cranial dome down through one dead photoreceptor - a scar that looks like it might have come from a lightsaber. This droid looks like it has fought a Jedi and survived. The Jedi, he's guessing, hadn't. These two droids thread between the super battle droids and destroyers and casually shove aside one battle droid, hard enough that it slams into the wall and collapses into a sparking heap of metal. The one with the damaged photoreceptor points its staff at them, and the ray shields around them drop. "He /said/, hand over your /weapons/, Jedi!"

This definitely isn't a preprogrammed security command, and Anakin quietly remarks, "I saw an Intel report on this; I think those are Grievous' personal bodyguard droids. Prototypes built to his specifications." He looks from Obi-Wan to Palpatine and back again. "To fight Jedi."

"Ah," Obi-Wan says. "Then, under the circumstances, I suppose we need a Plan B."

Anakin nods at Palpatine. "The Chancellor's idea is sounding pretty good right now."

Obi-Wan nods thoughtfully.

When the Jedi Master turns away to offer his lightsaber to the bodyguard droid, Anakin leans close to the Supreme Chancellor and murmurs, "So you get your way, after all."

Palpatine answers with a slight, unreadable smile. "I frequently do."

As super battle droids come forward with electrobinders for their wrists and a restraining bolt for R2-D2, Obi-Wan casts one frowning look back over his shoulder. "Oh, Anakin," he begins, with the sort of quiet, pained resignation that would be recognized instantly by any parent exhausted by a trouble-prone child. It is certainly recognized by Anakin, who immediately begins to flush embarrassedly. "Where is your /lightsaber/?"

Anakin can't look at him. "It's not lost, if that's what you're thinking." This is the truth: Anakin can feel it in the Force, and he knows exactly where it is.

"No?"

"No."

"Then where is it?"

"Can we talk about this later?"

"Without your lightsaber, you may not have a 'later.'"

"I don't need a lecture, okay? How many times have we had this talk?"

"Apparently, one time less than we needed to. Anakin, you even promised me you would not lose it this time!"

Anakin sighs. Obi-Wan can still make him feel about nine years old. He gives a sullen nod toward one of the droid bodyguards. "He's got it."

"He does? And how did this happen?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Anakin - "

"Hey, he's got yours, too!"

"That's different - "

"This weapon is your life/, Obi-Wan!" Anakin manages a credible-enough Kenobi impression that Palpatine has to smother a snort. "You must take /care of it!"

"Perhaps," Obi-Wan admits, as the droids click the binders onto their wrists and lead them all away, "we should talk about this later."

Anakin only intones severely, "Without your lightsaber/, you may not /have a - "

"All right, all right." The Jedi Master surrenders with a rueful smile. "You win."

Anakin just grins at him. "I'm sorry? What was that?" He can't remember the last time he's won an actual argument with Obi-Wan. "Could you speak up a little?"

"It's not very Jedi to gloat, Anakin."

"I'm not gloating, Master," he says with a swiftly gauging sidelong glance at Palpatine. "I'm just . . . savoring the moment."

As the various droids all fall in around them to lead them away, the Supreme Chancellor returns Anakin's quick conspiratorial look with a hint of smile and a sliver of an approving nod, and the acknowledgment of his tiny, trivial, comradely victory sparks a warmth and ease that relaxes the dragon-grip of dread that has been scrabbling wildly against Anakin's heart since the moment Obi-Wan mentioned the Dark Side. In that calmly contented glow, it is surprisingly easy to dismiss and even forget any number of things. After all, what does it really matter that they've been captured? Anakin and Obi-Wan have been captured before, and Palpatine is a very smart, very resilient man. All the Chancellor needs to do is continue to trust in them and go along for the ride, and Anakin is sure that everything will eventually turn out right, in the end. Never mind the increasingly obviously deteriorating ship and the Jedi-killing droids; he and Obi-Wan have surely faced far worse before - even if Anakin can't quite immediately remember when or where or under what circumstances. And forget General Grievous, too. What is he compared with Dooku? After all, the General can't even use the Force. Forget, too, the curious fog surrounding those last memories of Dooku and the completely inexplicable nature of his disappearance in the moment that he should have died. And while the going's good, forget, too, the oddly disjointed and out of focus memory of Palpatine's troublesome words, both after Dooku's demise, in the General's Quarters, and in the turbolift, while Obi-Wan was still unconscious. After all, these things are all in the past, and Jedi are not supposed to try to hold on to the past but instead are expected to always live fully in the moment.

Thus, for Anakin Skywalker, as they are being led, weaponless and restrained by binders, across the extremely badly damaged and most likely unsalvageable Invisible Hand towards what their captors most likely fully expect to be the Jedi and the Republic's certain doom at the hand of the rightfully infamous Separatist Supreme Commander, the situation comes down to this: he is walking between the two best friends he has ever had, with his precious droid friend faithfully whirring after his heels. And he is on his way to win the Clone Wars. For good. Anakin is quite sure of that, regardless of the fact that they are currently prisoners and he has no idea how they are going to get lose. The details of how don't matter nearly as much as the certainty of what is going to happen. Perhaps more importantly, though, what he has done to get to this point - just what precisely happened in the General's Quarters and, most importantly of all, why it happened - is utterly unimportant. In fact, it is all burning away in Coruscant's atmosphere along with Dooku's empty clothes. Already it seems as if it happened to someone else, as if Anakin were someone else when he caused it to happen, and it seems as if that man - the dragon-haunted man with a furnace for a heart and a mind as cold as the surface of that dead star - had really only been an image reflected in Dooku's desperately staring eyes. In any case, by the time what's left of that conning spire crashes into the kilometers-thick crust of city that covers the entire surface of Coruscant, those empty clothes will have burned away, and the dragon will burn with them. And Anakin, for the first time in his life, will truly be free.

And that is why Anakin Skywalker treads lightly, with a spring in his step and calmness in his mind and heart, as he walks shoulder to shoulder with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Chancellor Palpatine. Anakin is absolutely certain that he and his former Master are about to win the Clone Wars, with the Supreme Chancellor himself there as their witness, and his joy is such that, for the moment, nothing else matters to him at all.

For now.

***

They have been captives for less than a minute and are being herded briskly along when, with frightful suddenness, Obi-Wan's awareness spills out of himself, falling out away from his body and physical surroundings with the unexpected abruptness of a man striding out into a dark stairwell and finding only empty space instead of the stone tread that has, always before, been there to meet his questing feet. Only, instead of plummeting downwards, he is falling up, up and out, into the sky. The strangeness of the sensation grips him so strongly, so thoroughly, that he doesn't even have time to think of resisting before he is unraveling, dissolving into and through the rising wind that seems to slide off of the field of battle. As he rushes wildly upward through the crazed and twisting ropes of light-shot space, vision blurred, soaring above the battle that still rages beyond the blind confines of this ship in a star-streaked headlong flight higher than time, a vision opens, and Obi-Wan sees the years spread out before him like a writhing, living tapestry. Prescience has never been a gift he has possessed strongly, at least not nearly so strongly as Anakin possesses it, and Qui-Gon had always discouraged reliance on or even trust in the vagaries of foresight, so Obi-Wan is so completely astonished that he hardly knows what to do. The winds of time surge and eddy, and what is revealed oftentimes falls away into darkness, never to appear again. Time is blind. No prophecy is forbidden - and none is certain, he tries telling himself, repeating an oft-repeated opinion of Qui-Gon's, but it does not help.

To his expanded and captivated attention, time suddenly shines radiantly all around him, dancing like the luminous shadows inside a surging fire. These brilliantly tinted variegated flames spurt whole swatches of history - especially human history - and each fluttering color illuminates a lineage, flares of generation, each individual hue carrying a life, shading scenes and experiences from that life and the many lives enclosing it, the whole of the resplendent vista writhing and swirling like veils of fiery oil on water. It is extremely beautiful, and exceedingly strange. All of time seems to seethe before him. Past and future. He sees across twenty-five millennia or more, all the way from the original founding of the Galactic Republic up until the war that has almost been its ending. His flight peaks, then, and, as he falls back down through layers of time and space towards the smudged outlines of his body, the weird dimensions narrow beyond the confines of memory, taking away all the lives in their billions that have blazed before them. Stunned, Obi-Wan strives desperately to hold on to what he can, suddenly inexplicably sure that the Force has meant this vision as a gift, or a warning, of some kind, one of immense importance, and so he concentrates fiercely on paying greatest heed to the combusting images nearest his own small and surely insignificant life.

Unsurprisingly, horribly bloody and vastly destructive battles rage in every direction. Abruptly, then, from out of the blood-frothed and fire-scourged chaos, there looms an ominous figure in black, a powerful figure entirely enveloped in the cloaking folds of a voluminous robe, and every point of this mysterious figure's body sparks, crackling with thorny circles of darkly negative fire that pours over his black-swathed form in a wavery swarm of rapidly crawling fiery worms. The evil that emanates from this figure is so overpowering that Obi-Wan feels saturated with darkness, with malice so absolute, so jealous of life and so hateful of light, of the Light, that it is a madness - the kind of unreasoning envy and hatred that combines to form insanity, actual psychosis. This evil creature, who revels in the darkness, in the Dark, does so only because he is certain that he has been offered insult by the Light, been abandoned and rejected and denied the wholeness and perfection of unity with that Light, and so been dealt with unfairly by life. And so he rages. He hates the cold and the dark, he hates the meagerness of it all, the enormous vacuity into which he has so callously been cast. Most of all, he hates the emptiness - the ghostliness of atoms shot through the void. The outrageous impudence of atoms at daring to reach across space to form molecules! Really, they are nothing but the most fragile chimera of substance, specters of shape consisting mostly of nothing, the purity of energy chilled by space and solidifying over time into artificial and limited constructs of weak, airy, wholly imperfect matter.

He despises matter as well as form of any kind, because he believes it all to be a flimsy joke, a bad pun, a horrible travesty of the real wholeness and perfection of power and ability and mutability and knowledge that is possible only when the physical has been successfully cast off and put aside in favor of union with the greater power that is the Force. He does whatever he can to disrupt such imperfect - and therefore pointless - unions: of atoms into molecules, molecules into proteins, proteins into self-replicating automata. He tries his utmost to break up the linkages of those mindless automata. Horrified, he works hard to stop them from forming the monstrously complex and diversifying ugliness that is called life. Whenever possible, whenever he finds the chaos that is life, he snuffs it out, liberating its energies and absorbing them into himself in an effort to conserve power and bring both it, and himself, one step closer to the time when he will have become so powerful that nothing, not even the Force and all of its pathetic creatures of Light, will be able to stop him from becoming as pure energy - and then devouring the radiant light and life of the entire galaxy, and perhaps even the whole cosmos, into himself. Then, there will be order. Then, there will be perfection. In his madness, he is as certain of this as he is sure that it is the disdain of the Light, its pride and its ignorance and, hence, its flaw, its weakness, that will have brought all of this about, made his revenge upon it, and life, possible.

Obi-Wan is so shocked by the vileness of these thoughts, by the insidiously creeping darkness of those certainties, the writhing insanity of the rage and hatred and jealousy that fuels and supports that murderous fury and hunger for power, for the order that comes only from the destruction of life, that he feels sickened and befouled, as though coated with a clinging layer of oily darkness, from coming into contact with them, with the figure who has spawned them. The young Jedi Master wrenches himself away, nauseated and distraught, so violently that he is once again falling. As he plummets back towards himself, Obi-Wan catches a fleeting glimpse of a perilously beautiful radiant being, an entity filled nigh unto overflowing with so much life, so much love, so much Light, that he flares white with power, so much of it that he is far more a being of energy than he is a material creature of physical flesh. The vision holds for only an instant, and then his sight blurs until there is not one being but two, tattered in a corona of unquenchable fire and staring calmly back at him with huge luminous blue unblinking eyes. And then there is not two but four, one with eyes so darkly radiant they almost appear blind, almost appear made up of the same star-strung blackness as the void. And then, as that fourth form trembles upon the verge of doubling - perhaps even upon the verge of trebling, so that there are not four forms, in two pairs, but instead six beings, in pairs - Obi-Wan tumbles, with a bone-jarring thump, back into himself, back into the confines of his body. He stumbles a little then, so overwhelmed by the blinding brilliance of those serenely staring eyes that he cannot see past them, cannot clearly recall aught but a crazed, jumbled-up mess of snatches of impressions - of time opening up until the bottom fell out of reality; of the flow of time from the birth of the Republic to what could be its end; of an evil so monstrous, so malevolent, so mad, that he could not bear to even look upon its face; and, most of all, of Light, bright and blindingly /white /Light.

There is a moment of confusion, then, as Obi-Wan struggles to make sense out of these strange scraps of impressions, which his conscious mind - unable to hold onto the vastness of the depths and breadth and infinitely shifting possibilities of time - cannot account for. And then Anakin's hand curls briefly, concernedly, about his elbow, offering support and reassurance, and he calms instantly, so much so that all that remains is the peaceful tranquility of acceptance and the warmly reflected glow of the Light, flowing unchecked into him and gathering within to a slowly building crescendo of blazing certainty . . . and terrible love.

***

Anakin's buoyant calm and almost joyous certainty that not only is all going to be well, but that he and Obi-Wan are about to end and win the Clone Wars, once and for all, lasts up until the moment when Obi-Wan inexplicably stumbles upon nothing. Startled out of his serenity, he automatically catches his former Master by the elbow, his warm hand steadying Obi-Wan and wordlessly offering support and concern. Obi-Wan allows this touch, which is not too surprising, but he does not attempt to pull away afterwards, which is unusual, so much so that Anakin frowns and turns until he can look over at Obi-Wan, unobtrusively trying to see whatever it is that is wrong. What he sees shocks him so much that he automatically reaches out along the old pathway of the Master-Padawan bond, worriedly offering a querying, Master? Are you all right?

All is well, O partner-of-mine, is Obi-Wan's all but effervescent response, his gently teasing reference to his old nickname and pet title for Anakin, Padawan-mine, almost as shocking as the sense of building power, of increasing energy, in the Force all around and throughout Obi-Wan, like a charge gathering around a electrical rod. Peace, Anakin. We are where we are meant to be, going where we are needed so that we may accomplish what we are supposed to do. Patience. Calm. Trust in the Force. Trust in us - in me and in yourself. The Force will provide.

/Of course, Master. If you say so . . . /Anakin hesitantly agrees, oddly rattled by both Obi-Wan's sudden serenity and the increasing sense of strength, of Force energy, radiating from him. Obi-Wan's quiet happiness should be reassuring, should be making him even happier than he already is, should be strengthening Anakin's own conviction that they are once again about to pull off the impossible. Yet, instead, it's simply making him nervous. Inexplicably so, yes, but even more so undeniably and irrepressibly skittish. Unsettled, Anakin begins to cast quick and hopefully undetectable glances over at Obi-Wan, trying to keep an eye on him in case something really is wrong enough to account for the sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. It is on his fourth or fifth glance that he notices something - something that almost makes his groan aloud in dismay, almost makes him stop in his tracks and perform the most powerful mind-suggestion that he can manage to cast, so that the Chancellor cannot possibly notice or remember what Anakin has just seen. Because Obi-Wan is glowing with the Force. Not very brightly, no, at least not yet, but nonetheless quite visibly so - and just as obviously quite increasingly so. Obi-Wan is becoming luminous with the Light of the Force, so much so that, at the rate the brilliant corona surrounding him seems to be growing in strength, he should be quite easily visibly radiating light by the time they are brought before the General.

Anakin's heart sinks within him at that realization, and he immediately begins to ponder his options. Perhaps - just perhaps - if, after this is all over, he can snatch a moment alone with the Chancellor, just long enough to let him know how important it is that he never speak to anyone of Obi-Wan's unusual ability to mimic a rising sun, so that the Jedi High Council won't have to hear anything about it . . . Of course, this means that they will have to kill Grievous. No possible malicious witnesses can be left alive, or functional, to carry stories about Obi-Wan to ears that do not need to hear anything else that might be taken as an excuse . . .

Determined, Anakin's hand tightens on Obi-Wan's arm, as he silently vows to take care of everything - no matter what.

***

By the time they reach the level that holds the bridge, Obi-Wan Kenobi is walking so fully within the Light that his flesh has, entirely unknown to him, taken on a softly, quietly luminous glow.

As he is prodded onto the bridge along with Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine, Obi-Wan has no need to look around to see the banks of control consoles tended by terrified Neimoidians. He doesn't have to turn his head to count the droidekas and super battle droids, or to gauge the positions of the brutal droid bodyguards. He doesn't bother to raise his eyes to meet the cold yellow stare fixed on him through a skull-mask of armorplast. He doesn't even need to reach out into the Force. He has already let the Force reach into him. The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; since he has opened himself utterly to that sparkling stream, it streams into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Kenobi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours. There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scuff mark on R2-D2's dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine's robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that still battle beyond it. Because this is all part of the Force.

Somehow, mysteriously, the cloud that has darkened the Force for near to a decade and a half has lightened around him now, and he finds within himself the limpid clarity he recalls from his earliest memories, his schooldays at the Jedi Temple, in the crèche, when the Force was pure, and clean, and perfect. Obi-Wan does not have time to dwell upon or wonder over it now, but later he will remember it, remember the absolute purity of the Force, and he will remember a scene from his childhood, from a time he usually does not dwell upon because he normally is not able to consciously recall the particulars of anything that happened during that stretch of time, since it is the time when he was very little indeed, and so new to the Temple that he had not yet lost Qui-Gon Jinn's love to the pain of Xanatos' fall. Yet, because of the strength of the memory of the purity of the Force, he will remember.

He will remember spatters of rain on the dust. Trees whispering and nodding and giving up leaves, twigs being sent flying. Smell of stone, smell of bruised leaves, smell of lightnings and rain-washed air. Taste of water. Chill of wind. Flash of lightning that hurt the eyes. Boom of thunder that shook heart and bone. All new, all wondrous, all beautiful and terrible to partake of, through knowing. And it is like too much heat. Like too much cold. Like too much to eat and too much to drink. Everything is patterns, shapes, sounds, light, dark, soft and yielding, rigid and hard, rough, smooth, stone-cold, life-warm, and all too much to own and hold at once. He could hardly move, sometimes, the flood of the world seems so much and so quick. But at that moment he has no need to move, because he is standing on a stone parapet, at the outermost edge of a large, fanciful garden, watching the lightning flashes fade both lawn and sky and watching the trees below the wall bow their heads down, as if against the stone, seemingly in some vain attempt at supplication against being touched by the power of the storm.

In this memory, thunder rumbles and rain sweeps in silvery-gray curtains against the distant walls of a tower that is a part of the park-grounds of the garden, spattering the surface of the puddles and cascading in streams off the slate of the roof. He laughs and breathes the rain-drenched wind, amazed, raising hands and face to catch the pelting drops. They sting his palms and eyelids, so he dares not look at them. Rain courses, a cold and strange sensation, over his naked body, finding hollows and new courses, all to the shape of him. And it is delight. He looks at his bare feet, wiggles his toes in puddles that build in the low places of the stonework and make channels between the stones in the high places. Water makes all the dusty gray stonework new and shiny and bright as polished pearl. Rain makes slanting veils across the straight fall off the eaves and plays music beneath the thunder-rumble. He spins on the slick stones and slips slightly, recovering himself against the low wall of the parapet and laughing in surprise at what he sees, below him, where the gutters make a veritable flood of brown water, though the rain is gray. A green leaf is stuck to the pale stone, and he wonders curiously why it stays there.

"Obi-Wan!"

He straightens from his headlong dangle then, arm lingering to brace himself on the stone edge as he looks towards Qui-Gon's startled voice. He blinks water from his eyes and sees Qui-Gon's familiar towering brown-robed figure. His clothes are soaked through, his long brown hair and clipped beard streaming water, and his eyes beneath his dripping brows are blazingly pale blue and enormous with surprise as Qui-Gon comes and sweeps him up in his strong arms, flying him so high that he knows all is well, despite Qui-Gon's shock. As he's swung high, Qui-Gon's chest rumbles with deep laughter, and high, ringing peals of giggles escape from behind his own lips, it is such pure pleasure, to be flown about and then clasped lovingly, securely, to a broad chest and carried away, back indoors, to light and warmth and a soft, sweetly scented towel for being rubbed dry again. Emotion swells in him, contentment and trust and love as powerful and vast and unstoppable and natural as a swelling ocean tide.

It is the purity of feeling, the glow of absolute faith, utter surrender, unbounded love, that makes up the core of the memory, and that is the reason why he will recall it, why he will be moved to remember that particular small and seemingly unimportant sequence of events, when he is recalling the sensation of being immersed in the purity of the Force's embrace. Truly, it is as if the darkness has completely withdrawn, has coiled back so far upon itself that it is no longer present around him, allowing him this one moment of clarity, to return to him the full power of the light, if only for the moment; he does not know why, but in that timeless instant of harmony he is incapable of even wondering. In the Force, Obi-Wan is beyond questions. Why is meaningless; it is an echo of the past, or a whisper from the future. All that matters, for this infinite /now/, is /what/, and /where/, and /who/.

In the eternal flow of the now, Obi-Wan Kenobi is all sixteen of the super battle droids, gleaming in laser-reflective chrome, arms loaded with heavy blasters. He is those blasters and he is their targets. He is all eight destroyer droids waiting with electronic patience within their energy shields, and both bodyguards, and every single one of the few remaining live and shivering Neimoidians. He is their clothes, their boots, even each drop of reptile-scented moisture that rolls off them from the misting sprays they use to keep their internal temperatures down. He is the binders that cuff his hands, and he is the electrostaff in the hands of the bodyguard at his back. He is both of the lightsabers that the other droid bodyguard marches forward to offer to General Grievous.

And he is the General himself.

Obi-Wan is the General's duranium ribs. He is the beating of Grievous' alien heart, and is the silent pulse of oxygen pumped through his alien veins. He is the weight of four lightsabers at the General's belt, and is the greedy anticipation that the captured weapons spark behind the General's eyes. He is even the plan for his own execution simmering within the General's brain.

He is all these things, but most importantly, he is still Obi-Wan Kenobi.

This is why he can simply stand. Why he can simply wait. He has no need to attack, or to defend. There will be battle here, but Obi-Wan is perfectly at ease, perfectly content to let the battle start when it will start, and let it end when it will end.

Just as he will let himself live, or let himself die.

This is how a great Jedi makes war.

General Grievous lifts the two lightsabers, one in each duranium hand, to admire them by the light of the turbolaser blasts outside, and gloatingly remarks, "Rare trophies, these: the weapon of Anakin Skywalker, and the weapon of General Kenobi. I look forward to adding them to my collection."

"That will not happen. I am in control here." The reply comes through Obi-Wan's lips, but it is not truly Obi-Wan who speaks. Obi-Wan is not in control; he has no need for control. He has the Force.

It is the Force that speaks through him. Grievous stalks forward. Obi-Wan sees death in the cold yellow stare through the skull-mask's eye holes, and it means nothing to him at all. There is no death. There is only the Force. He doesn't have to tell Anakin to subtly nudge Chancellor Palpatine out of the line of fire; part of him is Anakin, and is doing this already. He doesn't have to tell R2-D2 to access its combat subprograms and divert power to its booster rockets, claw-arm, and cable-gun; the part of him that is the little astromech has seen to all these things before they have even entered the bridge.

Grievous towers over him. "So confident you are, little Kenobi."

"Not confident, merely calm."

Even as he speaks, Obi-Wan can feel Anakin bristling with intent. "Little?! You are speaking to a Jedi Master, Grievous. There is nothing small or trivial about this man."

Grievous merely turns his head slightly to the side. "Anakin Skywalker, of course," he nods once, flatly. "I was expecting someone with your reputation to be a little older."

"Yeah, well, for the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies, Grievous, you're smaller than I expected."

The Force automatically reaches out through him to soothe his former Padawan's ruffled feathers. "Gently, Anakin. Try not to upset him. We still have a job to do." Although Anakin is still scowling, his affront subsides. Obi-Wan can feel it receding, like a tide, draining away through the Force, and his attention refocuses solely on Grievous. From so close, he can see the hairline cracks and pitting in the bone-pale mask and can feel the uneven resonance of the General's electrosonic voice humming in his chest - a condition aggravated by the dented plates covering Grievous' internal organ sac. He remembers the Question of Master Jrul: What is the good, if not the teacher of the bad? What is the bad, if not the task of the good? He then says, "We can resolve this situation without further violence. I am willing to accept your surrender."

"Ah, yes, I'm sure you are, now that your rescue has so utterly failed. The great General Kenobi, Kenobi the Negotiator," Grievous laughs so hard that a harsh cough wracks his frame.

"That would depend entirely on your point of view," is the wholly serene response.

The skull-mask tilts inquisitively. "And does this preposterous I-will-accept-your-surrender line of yours ever actually /work/?"

"Sometimes. When it doesn't, people get hurt. Sometimes they die." Obi-Wan's eyes, so coolly calm that they are steeled to blue-gray, squarely meet the yellow eyes behind that mask. "By people/, in this case, you should understand that I mean /you."

"I understand enough. I understand that I will kill you, Jedi scum." Grievous throws back his cloak and ignites both lightsabers. "Here. Now. With your own blade."

The Force replies through Obi-Wan's lips, "I don't think so."

The electrodrivers that powers Grievous' limbs can move them faster than the human eye can see. Whenever he swung his arm, it and his fist and the lightsaber within it would literally vanish, wiped from existence by sheer mind-numbing speed, an imitation quantum event. No human being could possibly ever move remotely as fast as Grievous, not even Obi-Wan - but he doesn't have to.

In the Force, a part of him is also Grievous' intent to slaughter, and the surge from intent to action translates to Obi-Wan's response without thought. He has no need for a plan, no use for tactics.

He has the Force.

That sparkling waterfall courses through him, washing away any thought of danger, or safety, of winning or losing. The Force, like water, takes on the shape of its container without effort, without thought. The water that is Obi-Wan pours itself into the container that is Grievous' attack, and while some materials might be water-tight, Obi-Wan has yet to encounter any that are entirely, as it were, Force-tight . . .

While the intent to swing is still forming in Grievous' mind, the part of the Force that is Obi-Wan is also the part of the Force that is R2-D2, as well as an internal fusion-welder Anakin has retrofitted into R2-D2's primary grappling arm, and so there is no need for actual communication between them; it is only Obi-Wan's personal sense of style that brings his customary gentle smile to his face and his customary gentle murmur to his lips. "Artoo?"

Even as he opens his mouth, a panel is sliding aside in the little droid's fuselage; by the time the droid's nickname has left his lips, the fusion-welder has deployed and fired a blinding spray of sparks hot enough to melt duranium, and in the quarter of a second while even Grievous' electronically enhanced reflexes have him startled and distracted, the part of the Force that is Obi-Wan tries a little trick, a secret one that it has been saving up for just such an occasion as this.

Because all there on the bridge are one in the Force, from the gross structure of the ship itself to the quantum dance of the electron shells of individual atoms - and because, after all, the nerves and muscles of the bio-droid general are creations of electronics and duranium, not living tissue with will of its own - it is just barely possible that with exactly the right twist of his mind, in that one vulnerable quarter of a second while Grievous is distracted, flinching backward from a spray of flame hot enough to burn even his armored body, Obi-Wan might be able to temporarily reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in the General's mechanical hands.

Which is exactly what he does.

Durasteel fingers spring open, and two lightsabers fall free.

Obi-Wan reaches through the Force and the Force reaches through him; his blade flares fully to life while still in the air; it flips gracefully toward him; and, as he lifts his hands to meet it, its blue flame flashes neatly between his wrists, effortlessly severing the binders before the handgrip smacks solidly into his palm.

Obi-Wan is so deep in the Force that he isn't even surprised it has worked.

He makes a quarter turn to face Anakin, who is already in the air, having leapt simultaneously with Obi-Wan's gentle murmur because Obi-Wan and Anakin are, after all, two parts of the same whole; Anakin's flip carries him over Obi-Wan's head at the perfect range for Obi-Wan's blade to flick out and burn through his partner's binders, and while Grievous is still flinching away from the fountain of fusion fire, Anakin lands with his own hand extended; Obi-Wan feels a liquid surge in the waterfall that he is, and Anakin's lightsaber sings through the air so that Anakin catches it; and, thus, only a single second after Grievous has begun to summon the intent to swing at the bound and weaponless Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker stand back-to-back in the center of the bridge, expressionlessly staring past the snarling blue energy of their lightsabers.

Obi-Wan regards the General without emotion. "Perhaps you should reconsider my offer. This time, you will not escape."

Grievous braces himself against a control console, its durasteel housing buckling under his grip. "This is my answer!" He rips the console wholly into the air, right out from under the hands of the astonished Neimoidian operator, raises it over his head, and hurls it at the Jedi. They split, rolling out of the console's way as it crashes to the deck, spitting smoke and sparks. "Open fire! Kill them!" Grievous shakes his fists as though each were holding a Jedi's neck. "Crush them utterly! Kill them all! Republic scum!"

For one more second there is only the scuttle of priming levers on dozens of blasters.

One second after that, the bridge explodes into a firestorm.

***

Grievous hangs back, crouching, watching for a moment as his two MagnaGuards wade into the Jedi, electrostaffs whirling through the blinding hail of blasterfire that ricochets around the bridge. Grievous has fought Jedi before, sometimes even in open battle, and he has found that fighting any one Jedi is much like fighting any other. Kenobi, though -

The ease with which young Kenobi has taken command of the situation is disconcerting to the point of being . . . well, not frightening, of course, but certainly intimidating. (Are human normal Jedi supposed to be able to luminesce like Kenobi increasingly obviously is?)

More disturbing is the fact that, of the two, Skywalker, who incredibly is much younger than even Kenobi, is reportedly the greater warrior. And even their unprepossessing R2 unit can fight: the little astromech droid has some kind of aftermarket cable-gun it has used to entangle the legs of a super droid and yank it off its feet, and now is jerking the droid this way and that so that its arm cannons are blasting chunks off its squadmates instead of the Jedi. So Grievous is already starting to think less about winning this particular encounter and more about surviving it. Why not let his MagnaGuards fight the Jedi? That is what they were designed for - and they are doing their jobs well. IG-101 has pressed Kenobi back against a console, lightning blazing from his electrostaff's energy shield where it pushes on Kenobi's blade and distracting attention away from the increasing radiance of the corona surrounding and apparently emanating from the Jedi Master; the Jedi General might have died then and there, except that one of the simple-minded super battle droids has managed to turn both arm cannons on his back, giving Kenobi the chance to duck and allow the hammering blaster bolts to slam 101 stumbling backward. Skywalker has stashed the Chancellor somewhere - that sniveling coward Palpatine is probably trembling under one of the control consoles - and has managed to sever both of 102's legs below the knee, which for some reason he apparently expects to end the fight; he seems completely astonished when 102 whirls nimbly on one end of his electrostaff and uses the stumps of his legs to thump Skywalker so soundly that the Jedi goes down, skidding halfway across the bridge, back towards the hallway.

On the other hand, Grievous notes, this might be salvageable after all.

He taps his internal comlink's jaw sensor to the general droid command frequency. "The Chancellor is hiding under one of the consoles. Squad Sixteen, find him, and deliver him to my escape pod immediately. Squad Eight, stay on mission. Kill the Jedi. And bring their lightsabers for my collection!"

No sooner has the command been issued than the ship bucks, though, sharper than it ever has before, while the view wall panels white out as radiation-scatter sleets through the bridge. Alarm klaxons blare. The nav console flare sparks into the face of a Neimoidian pilot, setting his uniform on fire and adding his screams to the din, and then another console explodes, ripping the newly promoted senior gunnery officer into a pile of shredded meat. Ah, Grievous thinks, understanding following surprise so rapidly that there is no perceptible lag time between the two reactions. Of course, in all the excitement, he has entirely forgotten about the Republic ships still functional enough to engage his own ship, particularly that one annoyingly persistent light cruiser, the /Integrity/, the one with the Lieutenant Commander who could see far too well for Grievous' comfort. The other pilot - the one who isn't shrieking and slapping at the flames on his uniform until his own hands catch on fire - leans as far away from his screaming partner as his crash webbing will allow and shouts, "General, that shot destroyed the last of the aft control cells! The ship is /deorbiting/! We're going to burn!"

"Very well," Grievous calmly orders. "Stay on course." Now it no longer matters whether his bodyguards can overpower the Jedi or not: they will all burn together. He taps his jaw sensor to the control frequency for the escape pods; one coded order ensures that his personal pod will be waiting for him with engines hot and systems checks complete. When he looks back to the fight, all he can see of IG-102 is one arm, the saber-cut joint still white hot. Skywalker is pursuing two super battle droids that have Palpatine by the arms. While Skywalker dismantles the droids with swift cuts, Kenobi is in the process of doing the same to IG-101 - though the MagnaGuard is hopping after him on its one remaining leg, whirling its electrostaff with its one remaining arm and screeching some improbable threat regarding its staff and Kenobi's body cavities. Even after Kenobi has cut off the arm, 101 continues to hop after the Jedi Master, still screeching. The droid actually manages to land one glancing kick before the Jedi casually severs its other leg, after which 101's limbless torso continues to writhe on the deck, howling. With both MagnaGuards down, all eight destroyers open up, dual cannons erupting gouts of galvanized particle beams.

The two Jedi leap together to screen the Chancellor, and before Grievous can command the destroyers to cease fire, the Jedi have deflected enough of the bolts to blow apart three-quarters of the remaining super battle droids and send the survivors scurrying for cover beside what is left of the cringing Neimoidians. The destroyers begin to close in then, hosing down the Jedi with heavy fire, advancing step by step, cannons against lightsabers. The Jedi catch every blast and send them back against the destroyers' shields, which flare in spherical haloes as they absorb the reflected bolts. The destroyers might very well have prevailed over the Jedi, except for one unexpected difficulty: Gravity shear. All eight of the remaining destroyers suddenly seem, inexplicably, to leap into the air, followed by Skywalker, and Palpatine, and then chairs and pieces of MagnaGuards and everything else on the bridge that is not bolted to the deck, except for the now almost painfully incandescent Kenobi, who manages to grab a control console and thereafter hangs by one hand, upside down, still effortlessly deflecting blaster bolts. The surviving Neimoidian pilot is screaming orders for the droids to magnetize, but he soon begins to howl that the ship is breaking up, and finally he manages to make so much annoying noise that Grievous lashes out, smashing his skull out of simple irritation. Afterwards, when he looks around, Grievous realizes that he's just killed the last of his crew: all the bridge crew he hasn't slain personally at some point during this cursed battle has sucked up the bulk of the random blaster ricochets. Grievous shakes the pilot's brains off his fist. Disgusting creatures, Neimoidians. The invisible plane of altered gravity passes over the bio-droid general without effect - his talons of magnetized duranium keep him right where he is - and as one of the MagnaGuards' electrostaffs falls past him, his invisibly fast hand snatches it from the air.

When another plane of gravity shear sweeps through the bridge, droids, Chancellor, and Jedi all fall back to the floor. Although the droideka, also known as the destroyer droid, is the most powerful infantry combat droid in general production, it has one major design flaw. The energy shield that is so effective in stopping blasters, slugs, shrapnel, and even lightsabers is precisely tuned to englobe the droid in a standing position; if the droid is no longer standing - say, if it is knocked down, or thrown into a wall - that droideka's shield generator cannot distinguish a floor or a wall from a weapon and will, therefore, keep ramping up power to disintegrate this perceived threat until the generator finally shorts itself out. Between falling to the ceiling, bouncing off it, and falling back to the floor, the sum total output of all the shield generators of Squad Eight is, currently, one large cloud of black smoke. It is impossible to say which one of the destroyer droids opened fire on the Jedi first, but then again, it doesn't really matter, either. Inside of two seconds, eight droidekas have become eight piles of smoking scrap, and two Jedi, entirely unscathed, walk out of the smoke side by side. Without a word, they part to bracket the General.

Grievous clicks the electrostaffs power setting to overload; it spits lightning around him as he lifts it to combat ready. "I am sorry I don't have time to fight you - it would have been an interesting match - but I have an appointment with an escape pod. And you . . . " He points at the transparisteel view wall and triggers his own concealed cable-gun, not unlike the one that fancy astromech of theirs has; the cable shoots out and its grappling claw buries itself in one of the panel supports. "You," he gloats, "have appointments with death." The two Jedi leap, and Grievous hurls the overloading electrostaff - but not at the Jedi, who are already almost upon him. He throws it at a window. One of the transparisteel panels of the view wall has cracked under a glancing hit from a starfighter's cannon; when the sparking electrostaff hits it squarely and explodes like a proton grenade, the whole panel blows out into space. A hurricane roars to life, raging through the bridge, seizing Neimoidian corpses and pieces of droids and wreckage and hurling them out through the gap along with a white fountain of flash-frozen air. Grievous springs straight up into this instant hurricane, narrowly avoiding the two Jedi, whose leaps have become frantic tumbles as they try to avoid being sucked through along with him. Grievous, though, has no need to breathe, nor has he any fear of his bodily fluids boiling in the vacuum - the pressurized synthflesh that encloses the living parts within his droid exoskeleton sees to that - so he simply rides the storm out into space until he reaches the cable's end and it snaps tight, swinging him whipping back towards Invisible Hand's hull. He then casts off the cable. His hands and feet of magnetized duranium let him scramble along the hull without difficulty, the light-spidered curve of Coruscant's nightside whirling around him. Soon he is clambering over to the external locks of the bridge escape pods, punching in a command code. Looking back over his shoulder, he experiences a certain chilly satisfaction as he watches empty escape pods blast free of the Invisible Hand's bridge and streak away.

All of them.

Well: all but one.

No trick of the Force will be able to spring Kenobi and Skywalker out of this one. It is a shame he doesn't have a spy probe handy to leave on the bridge; he would have liked to see Kenobi's light go out, would have enjoyed watching the Republic's greatest heroes burn.

The ion streaks of Invisible Hand's escape pods spiral through the battle that still flashes and flares silently in the void, already being pursued by starfighters and armed retrieval ships. Grievous nods to himself; that should occupy them long enough for his command pod to make the run to his escape ship.

As he enters his customized pod, he reflects that he is, for the first time in his career, violating orders: though he is under strict orders to leave the Chancellor unharmed, Palpatine is about to die alongside his precious Jedi, immolating in the atmosphere of the planet from which he normally rules a sizeable portion of the galaxy.

Then Grievous shrugs, and sighs. What more could he have done? There is a war on, after all.

He is sure Lord Sidious will forgive him.

***