FicWad

On the bridge, a blast shield has closed over the destroyed transparisteel window, and every last surviving combat-model droid has been cut to pieces even before the atmosphere has had a chance to stabilize.

But there is a more serious problem.

The bucking of the ship has become continuous. White-hot sparks outside the ship stream backwards past the view wall windows. Those sparks, according to the three different kinds of alarms that are all screaming through the bridge at once, are what's left of the ablative shielding on the nose of the disabled cruiser.

Anakin stares grimly down at a console readout. "All the escape pods are gone. Not one left on the whole ship. Doubtlessly a parting gift from Grievous." He looks over at Obi-Wan - whose luminescence has, thankfully, already resided to the merest hint of a glimmer and has not, apparently, been noticed by the Supreme Chancellor, in all the confusion - seeking both reassurance and to stress the gravity of their situation. "We're trapped here."

Obi-Wan appears more interested than actually concerned. "Well. Here's a chance to display your legendary piloting skills, my young friend. You can fly this cruiser, can't you?"

"Flying's no problem. The trick is landing/, which, ah . . . " Anakin gives a slightly shaky laugh, attempting to use Obi-Wan's calm to settle his jangling nerves. "Which, you know, this cruiser is not exactly designed to do. Even when it's in /one piece."

Reassuringly, Obi-Wan looks singularly unimpressed. "And so?"

Anakin unsnaps the crash webbing that holds the pilot's corpse and pulls the body from its chair. "And so you'd better strap in," he shrugs, settling into the chair, his fingers sliding over the unfamiliar controls. The cruiser bounces even harder then, and its attitude begins to skew as a new klaxon joins the blare of the other alarms.

"What was that?" Obi-Wan asks, his voice still only conversationally curious.

Palpatine is caught off-guard though, and staggers heavily, grabbing wildly for the nearest console to save himself from falling, and it rattles Anakin. "That wasn't me!" Anakin jerks his hands away from the board as if he's been bitten. "I haven't even done anything yet!"

"It certainly wasn't." Palpatine's voice is unnaturally calm, though white shows at his knuckles, he is grasping the console so tightly. "It seems that someone is shooting at us."

"Wonderful," Anakin mutters. "Could this day get any better?"

"Perhaps we can talk with them." Obi-Wan moves helpfully over to the comm station and begins working the screen. "Let them know we've captured the ship."

"All right, take the comm," Anakin agrees. He points at the copilot's station. "Artoo: second chair. Chancellor?"

"Yes?"

"Strap in. Now. We're going in hot." Anakin grimaces at the scraps of burning hull flashing past the view wall. "In more ways than one."

"Anakin?" Obi-Wan's voice is still very carefully calm, his manner seeming all but unconcerned with receiving an answer to his question, but Anakin knows it is an act, one being put on for the Chancellor's sake as well as his own. There is a touch of concern in Obi-Wan's eyes that calms him like the touch of a hand, warms him almost as much as a physical embrace.

With a deep breath, Anakin takes hold of himself and turns all of his attention, all of his energy, to the task at hand - keeping enough of this wreck of a ship in one piece to land without killing them all in the crash. "No worries, Master. It's not a problem. I'm a leaf in the wind, Obi-Wan, remember?" Anakin flashes a smile that is not quite a snarl. "Watch me /soar/."

***

The vast space battle that has ripped and battered Coruscant and nearby space for the past three interminably long days is finally beginning to flicker out.

The shimmering canopy of ion trails and turbolaser bursts is fading into streaks of ships achieving jump as the remnants of the Separatist strike force falls back to protect those already fleeing in full retreat. The light of Coruscant's distant star splinters through iridescent clouds of gas crystals that are the remains of starfighters, and of pilots. Damaged cruisers limp towards spaceyards, passing shattered hulks that hang dead in the infinite day that is interplanetary space. Prize crews take command of surrendered ships, imprisoning the living among their crews and affixing restraining bolts to the droids. The dayside surface of the capital planet is shrouded in smoke from a million fires touched off by the meteorite impacts of ship fragments. Far too many have fallen to be tracked and destroyed by the planet's surface-defense umbrella. The nightside's sheet of artificial lights fades behind the red-white glow from craters of burning steel, each impact having left a caldera of unimaginable death. In the skies of Coruscant now, the important vessels are no longer warships, but are instead the fire-suppression and rescue craft that currently crisscross the planet.

Now one last fragmentary ship screams into the atmosphere, coming in far too fast, far too steep, pieces breaking off to spread apart and stream their own contrails of superheated vapor. Banks of turbolasers on the surface-defense towers isolate their individual signatures, and starfighters whip out onto interception courses to thin out whatever fragments the SD towers might miss while, far above, beyond the atmosphere, on the bridge of RSS /Integrity/, Commander Lorth Needa speaks urgently to a knee-high blue ghost scanned into existence by the phased-array lasers in a holocomm - an ancient little alien in Jedi robes, with bulging eyes set in a wrinkled face and long, pointed, oddly flexible ears.

"You have to stand down the surface-defense system, sir! It's General Kenobi!" Needa insists, his normally crisp, even voice ragged at the edges with stress and strain. "His code verifies, Skywalker is with him - and /they have Chancellor Palpatine/!"

"Heard and understood this is," the Jedi responds calmly. "Tell me what they require."

Needa glances down at the boil of hull plating that is burning off the falling cruiser and, even as he looks, the ship breaks in half at the hangar deck. The rear half tumbles, exploding in sections, but whoever is flying the front half must be one of the greatest pilots Needa has ever even heard of: although the front half wobbles and slews, it still somehow manages to right itself with nothing more than a bank of thrusters and its atmospheric drag fins. "First, a flight of fireships," Needa finally says, now somewhat calmer. "If they don't get the burnoff under control, there won't be enough hull left to make the surface. And a hardened docking platform, the strongest available; they won't be able to set it down. This won't be a landing: it will be a controlled crash. Repeat: a controlled crash."

"Heard and understood this is," the hologrammic Jedi repeats. "Crossload their transponder signature." When this is done, the Jedi nods grave approval. "Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. Valiant service for the Republic you have done today - and the gratitude of the Jedi Order you have earned. Yoda out."

On the bridge of Integrity/, Lorth Needa - a shockingly young human male of distinctly average build and height, rather blandly regular features, and fair coloration, with unblemished pale skin, sandy blond hair, and indistinctly colored eyes that might be blue or might be gray-green, overall distinctive only because of the crisp uniform of a lieutenant commander and the sorrow in his eyes - can now only stand and watch, hands clasped properly behind his back. Military discipline keeps him expressionless, but pale bands begin at his knuckles and spread unnatural whiteness nearly to his wrists. Every bone in his body aches with self-recrimination and helplessness. He knows that this fragment of a ship is a death trap and he is perfectly aware of the fact that he is largely to blame for its brokenness, having succeeded far too well in his order to locate and then target the /Integrity to this particular vessel and having then persistently pursued an unremittingly brutal barrage of General Grievous' already damaged ship. Lieutenant Commander Lorth Needa is positive that no one could ever possibly land such a badly battered and broken hulk, not even the wunderkind himself, Anakin Skywalker, and it is his fault that the Invisible Hand is so badly damaged that it is literally breaking to pieces. Each second that passes before its final breakup and burn is a miracle in itself, a testament to the gifts of a pilot who is justly legendary, but when each second is a miracle, how many of them can be strung together in a row? Lorth Needa is not religious, nor is he a philosopher or metaphysician; his assignment to the Integrity is so recent that he knows of the Force only by reputation and the impossible stories about Kenobi and Skywalker that continually go the rounds among the ranks of the Open Circle Armada. Yet, he nonetheless now finds himself asking the Force, in his heart, that when the fiery end comes for the men in that deathtrap scrap of a ship it might as least come quickly.

The young lieutenant commander's eyes sting. The irony of this burns the back of his throat. The Home Fleet and every other fleet within range and able to come have all fought brilliantly, and the Jedi have done their superhuman part. Against all odds, the Republic has won the day.

Yet, this battle has been fought to save Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

They may have won the battle, but now, as Needa stands watching helplessly - wanting to cry out at the injustice of what he is watching, wanting to rail and scream against the cruelty of the galaxy - he can't help feeling that they are nevertheless about to lose the war.

***

Without a doubt, this is, to date, Anakin Skywalker's greatest masterpiece.

Many people say that the young Jedi Knight is the best star pilot in the galaxy, but that's mostly just talk, born of the constant HoloNet references to his unmatched string of kills in starfighter combat. The simple truth of the matter, though, is that blowing up vulture droids and tri-fighters is mostly a matter of superior reflexes and trust in the Force, and Anakin has spent so many hours in the cockpit that he wears a Jedi starfighter like clothes. When he flies, the ship becomes as his own body to him, with thrusters for legs and cannons for fists.

What he is doing right now transcends mere flying in the same way that Jedi combat surpasses a schoolyard scuffle.

Anakin sits in a blood-spattered, blaster-chopped chair behind a console he's never seen before, a console with controls designed for alien fingers. The ship he's in is not only bucking like a maddened dewback through brutal coils of clear-air turbulence, it's on fire and breaking up like a comet ripping apart as it crashes into a gas giant. He has only seconds to learn how to maneuver an alien craft that not only has no aft control cells, it no longer has any aft at all. This is, put simply, impossible. It can't be done.

He's going to do it anyway.

He will do it because he is Anakin Skywalker, and he doesn't believe in /impossible/.

Thus, he extends his hands and, for one long, long moment, merely lightly strokes the controls, feeling their shape under his fingers, listening to the shivers his soft touch brings to each remaining control surface of the disintegrating ship, allowing their resonances to join inside his head until they resolve into harmony, like a Ferroan joy-harp virtuoso checking the tuning of his instrument. And at the same time, Anakin also draws power into himself from the Force. He gathers perception, and luck, and pulls into himself the instinctive, preconscious what-will-happen-in-the-next-ten-seconds intuition that has always been at the core of his talent. As he calls upon the Force for all of the power he has the strength to hold, Anakin feels Obi-Wan reach out to him, along their old training bond, offering him the mental equivalent of a steadying hand, a calming touch, a reassuring hug . . . and unlimited access to the Jedi Master's own energy, his personal power within the Force, much as Obi-Wan has done a number of times before - since they first accidentally discovered that it was possible, in the aftermath of the battle for Muunilist - though never under quite so dire a set of circumstances. The amount of Force energy that Anakin can not only safely handle but accurately channel more than doubles when Obi-Wan links with him like this, and Anakin's potential for raw power within the Force is already so great that it is not something that they would normally undertake lightly. But the need, in this situation, is very great, and so Obi-Wan automatically silently offers himself, and Anakin just as silently automatically accepts. And then he begins.

On the downbeat, atmospheric drag fins deploy; as Anakin tweaks their angles and cycles them in and out to slow the ship's descent without burning them off altogether, their contrabass roar takes on a punctuated rhythm like a heart that skips an occasional beat. The forward attitude thrusters, damaged in the ship-to-ship battle, now fire in random directions, but Anakin can feel where they're raking him and he strokes them in sequence, making their song the theme of his impromptu concerto. And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw needed to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away.

Only one minor discordant note dares to enter into this masterfully balanced symphony. By the time Anakin brings the remnant of the ship down into the outermost edges of Coruscant's atmosphere, the remains of the heat shielding - the outer layers of the ship's hull - is boiling off so rapidly that the whole of the remaining ship shivers constantly with the noise of a complete set of percussion instruments being sounded, the rattling and ringing of the smallest zils rising and giving way first to the rolling thunder of leather-skinned drums and then simultaneously deepening and building up towards the booming thundering of the deepest steel-headed drums. This drumming roll builds and builds towards a crashing finale of a crescendo until finally, at last, the tension breaks -

- and with it, so, too, does the ship.

There is a tremendous shivering jolt as the battered hulk of a ship abruptly gives way under the strain, the back half of the craft breaking away, spinning off from them to plummet swiftly and steeply down towards the surface of the planet. Yet, although the remaining front half of the craft vibrates and sighs like a woodwind pipe, Anakin keeps it steady, pinned by his will and by Obi-Wan's strength to the path he has plotted out for it, the melody he has written. The loss of the back half of the craft is simply a brief descant he allows to fall away from them.

Sunk so far within the Force that Palpatine's startled cry, Artoo's rapid, alarmed beeping, and Obi-Wan's reassuring murmur of, "Steady, now, steady. We lost something, I know, but not to worry, Chancellor. We are still flying half the ship," barely register, Anakin guides the ship forward, leveling it out and slowing their pace, allowing the fireships approaching from both sides to flank them, incorporating their accompaniment into his opus.

It is the Force that makes this possible, and more than the Force. Anakin Skywalker has no interest in serene acceptance of what the Force will bring. Not here. Not now. Not with the lives of Palpatine and Obi-Wan at stake. It's just the opposite: he seizes upon the Force with a stark refusal to fail, guiding the ship out of the stark and powerless plummet that it wants to fall into, deftly coaxing it into and sustaining it within the path of a barely controlled glide down to the planet, forcing it to hold together around him, around his friends, through sheer will and the power of the Force alone.
He will land this ship.

He will save his friends.

Between his will and the will of the Force, there is, in this, absolutely no contest.

***

Jedi Master Mace Windu hangs on to the corrugated hatch grip beside the gunship's open troop bay with one hand, squinting into the wind that whips the cloaking folds of his outer robe out behind him. His other hand shades his eyes against the glare from one of the orbital mirrors that concentrates the diffuse light emitted by the capital planet's blue-white sun - dim with distance - into bright daylight. The mirror is only just now turning slowly about, dispersing the band of predawn twilight from around the gunship's destination; however, Mace Windu still feels all but sun-blinded, though it is not, in truth, the growing dazzle from the still faint light of Coruscant's mirrored sun that is bothering him. Rather, it is his sense of the Force - his ability to see (and therefore to manipulate) the bright flows of Force energy - that has been overwhelmed, blasted by a streaking wash of light and energy so pure, so radiant, that he is still recovering from having been rendered temporarily blind, his ability with and within Force essentially overpowered by the brilliant corona of Force power permeating and surrounding the object that is the gunship's true destination - the object that has just come blazing down from the battlefields in space, arcing across the sky in its drop into Coruscant's atmosphere.

In the Force, the incredible light of the power surrounding that object as it blazed its way down to earth was far more spectacular than the fiery tail of a comet, much more brilliant than the incendiary wake of a plummeting meteor. Mace Windu is not, by far, the only Jedi whose senses have been momentarily stripped by the vast wash of pure energy embodied by that swiftly falling object. A shooting star trailing a corona of incandescent fire, this object has, throughout the course of its descent, so violently and utterly disrupted the Force - bending its natural flows of power to pull them in so closely, so thickly, about itself that its streaking path has registered as a primal scream of purely refined white Force energy, blitzing across the face of Coruscant - in route to its current place of rest that even those beings who are not naturally sensitized to the flows of the Force seem aware of the miraculous nature of that blazing light, the incandescence of the Force mirrored by the flaming bright light surrounding the object's far too swift and far too hot entry into Coruscant's atmosphere. Though logically, it should have seemed inevitable that the object would simply crash, pulverizing itself upon impact, not even a single individual from amongst those watching - or even those trying to aid in guiding that object's fiery path more safely, more smoothly, to earth - has thought to voice so much as a single doubt as to the object's eventual successful grounding at its chosen destination.

That destination, a kilometer-thick landing platform in the planet's vast industrial zone, is currently marked with a steeply slanting tower of smoke and vapor that stretches from the planet's surface up into the uppermost reaches of its atmosphere, a tower that only now is beginning to spread and coil out from its tiny source point into a horizon-spanning smear across the stratospheric winds. The gunship roars over the bottomless canyons of permacrete and durasteel that practically forms all of the landscape of Coruscant, arrowing straight for the industrial zone without regard for the rigid traffic laws that govern flight on the planet; until martial law is officially lifted by the Senate, the still mostly dark skies of Coruscant will be traveled only by Republic military craft, Jedi transports, and emergency vehicles.

This gunship qualifies as all three.

Mace can see what remains of the /Invisible Hand/, resting on the scorched platform far ahead: a piece of a ship, a fragment less than a third of what had once been the Trade Federation flagship, still burning despite the gouts of fire-suppression foam raining down on it from five different ships and the emergency-support clone troops who surround it on the platform, the lingering wake of Force energy surrounding it shimmering like the waves of a heat mirage, all but visible even to senses currently unsupported by the Force.

Mace shakes his head. Skywalker again. The Chosen One.

Who else could have brought in this hulk? Who else could have even come close?

The gunship swings into a hot landing, repulsors howling; Mace hops out before it can settle, giving the pilot an open-palm gesture to signal him to wait. The pilot, faceless within his helmet, responds with a closed fist. The pilot, of course, isn't faceless at all. Under his armored helmet, the clone pilot has a face that Mace Windu remembers all too well. That face will always remind him that he had once held Dooku within his grasp, and had let him slip away.

The wave of Force energy rising off of that still burning hulk - flowing out from it and dissipating gradually, slowly, back into the natural weaves and flows of Force power threading Coruscant and the immediate envelope of space surrounding it - momentarily staggers the normally unflappable Jedi Master. The amount of sheer, undiluted energy, of raw ability in the Force, represented by that enormous outpouring of power is unthinkably vast . . . or would have been, without the presence of Anakin Skywalker - though apparently not even the colossal might of the Chosen One alone would have been sufficient for this task, this seemingly impossible challenge, given the presence of the calmly accepting, profoundly serene, absolutely white Force signature of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi - the deep, bright mark of Obi-Wan when he is within the deepest of communion's with the Force - overlaying the fragment of a ship like fingerprints that have been deliberately pressed up against and all across a sculpture of clear glass or crystal. Together, the two Jedi - partners within the Force - have brought this miracle to Coruscant. It is their combined might that has ripped across the skies and plunged wildly through the currents of the Force, stunning the senses of those watching from within the Force's embrace, and kindling the hearts and minds of those who have merely been looking on or charting the course of the fragment as it blazed to ground with a fierce hope and even fiercer joy, the kind that come only with the full understanding that they have just given witness to a miracle, seen the impossible being performed in front of their very eyes.

Unfortunately, Mace Windu cannot quite decide if this fact is entirely comforting. No single Jedi within the whole of the Jedi Order could have ever done this. Not even the combined might of all of the Jedi Masters on Coruscant would have been sufficient to this task. There is something profoundly disturbing about the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker alone managed to pull this off. The Chosen One is incredibly strong with the Force, but it seems unlikely that his control would be equal to such a delicate task. And Obi-Wan . . . Obi-Wan is a bit of an enigma, one that the Council has allowed to slide by, essentially unquestioned, for quite some time - first because of Qui-Gon's interference and then because of the desperate need for Obi-Wan's steadying influence in Anakin Skywalker's life, especially while the boy was still a Padawan. In all honesty, their partnership should not have lasted past Skywalker's Knighting, and the High Council normally would not have allowed the two to continue working together, as partners in the Force, but with the Republic's need for an icon of hope so overwhelmingly great, because of the increasingly brutality of this war, it has proven impossible to separate the two. Still, perhaps the time has come for the Council to take a closer look at Master Kenobi. If his power, in combination with Skywalker's, truly is as great as it now seems, there is a possibility that the two might be or become dangerous. In spite of Master Kenobi's obviously strong loyalty to the ideals of the Jedi Order and his current seat on the High Council, his increasing devotion to Skywalker and their substantially less than harmonic past history with the High Council is far less than reassuring, especially considering Skywalker's long-standing closeness with Palpatine and the increasingly problematic nature of the Supreme Chancellor's growing political power.

The successful landing of this fragmented hulk may simply seem like a miracle to the uninitiated, but even for those who are wise in the ways of the Force, it hardly seems possible that such a thing could be achieved by anyone. That it has clearly been done by Anakin and Obi-Wan does nothing to subtract from the feeling of unreality, of impossibility, surrounding the presence of that fire-cloaked and Force-embraced broken piece of a ship. If anything, the fact that it is Kenobi and Skywalker who have pulled this off only serves to reinforce how utterly unnatural, how completely impossible, the entire thing seems. All in all, Mace Windu finds the entire Force-ridden thing profoundly disturbing, from start to finish.

Mace has little time in which to ponder such things, though. By the time it fully registers how incredible and completely disturbing this whole thing is, the attending ships and crews get control of the remaining fire. Soon after, an escape pod hatch cycles open, across the platform. The emergency crews scramble with an escape slide, and a few quick moments later the Supreme Chancellor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker are all on the deck beside the burning ship, closely followed by a somewhat battered R2 unit that lifts itself down on customized maneuvering rockets.

Squaring his shoulders determinedly, Mace strides swiftly out to meet them.

Palpatine's robes are scorched and tattered at the hem, and he seems weak; he leans a bit on Skywalker's shoulder as they move away from the ship. On Skywalker's other side, Master Kenobi seems a touch the worse for wear himself: caked with dust and leaking a trickle of blood from a scalp wound. Skywalker, by contrast, looks every bit the HoloNet hero he is supposed to be. He seems to tower over his companions, as though he has somehow gotten even taller in the months since Mace has seen him last. His hair is tousled, his color is high, and his walk still has the grounded grace of a natural fighter, but there is something new in his physicality: in the way he moves his head, perhaps, or the way the weight of Palpatine's arm on his shoulder somehow seems to belong there . . . or perhaps something even less definable. Some new confidence, new ease. An aura of inner power. Presence. Skywalker is not the same young man the Council sent off to the Outer Rim five standard months ago. However, as his natural arm reaches out to steady a staggering Obi-Wan, wrapping with an automatic ease around the battered Jedi Master's waist, Mace is also sharply reminded of a strengthening tie that, even five standard months ago, was immensely troubling to him - due to its potential repercussions, which Mace is able to see more clearly than others might - as well as a growing concern to the other Council Masters. Obi-Wan Kenobi has never been incredibly free with touch, and yet now he leans into Anakin as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Mace Windu finds this extremely disconcerting. He is even more concerned to hear Obi-Wan's first words to Anakin. "Another happy landing," the young Jedi Master slyly jokes, his entire face turned up towards Anakin, making Anakin lean down over Obi-Wan as his eyes crinkle up delightedly and his chest rumbles with helpless laughter.

Strangely rattled by this obvious show of camaraderie, Mace focuses on Palpatine as he meets up with them, nodding once. "Chancellor. Are you well? Do you need medical attention?" He gestures over his shoulder at the waiting gunship. "I have a fully equipped field surgery - "

"No, no, no need," Palpatine responds immediately, if rather faintly. "Thank you, Master Windu, but I am well. Quite well, thanks to these two."

Mace nods again. "Master Kenobi? Anakin?"

"Never better," Skywalker replies, looking as if he means it, and Kenobi shrugs, his body still entirely at ease within the enclosing circle of Anakin's arm, wincing slightly as he reaches up to gingerly touch his scalp wound.

"Only a bump on the head. That field surgery must be needed elsewhere."

"It is." Mace's demeanor is unremittingly grim. "We don't have even a preliminary estimate of civilian casualties yet." He waves off the gunship, which immediately roars away towards the countless conflagrations that are already painting the dawning day red. "A shuttle is already on the way. Chancellor, we'll have you on the Senate floor within the hour. The HoloNet has already been notified that you will want to make a statement."

"I will. I will, indeed." Palpatine steps entirely away from Anakin Skywalker to touch Mace on the arm. "You have always been of great value to me, Master Windu. Thank you."

"The Jedi are honored to serve the Senate, sir." There may have been the slightest emphasis on the word /Senate/. Mace remains expressionless as he subtly moves his arm away from the Chancellor's hand. He looks at Obi-Wan, who is still quietly allowing Anakin to hold on to him. "Is there anything else to report, Master Kenobi? What of General Grievous?"

"Count Dooku was there," Skywalker announces, his grip tightening a fraction upon his former Master, almost possessively - though most likely in an entirely unconscious move on his part, given his fiercely protective nature - who, strangely enough, simply allows the gesture. Skywalker has a look on his face that Mace can't quite decipher, one that is proud and yet wary, perhaps even unhappy. "He's gone for good now. Dead."

"Dead?" Mace looks from Anakin to Obi-Wan and back again. "Is this true? You two have killed Count /Dooku/?"

"My young friend is too modest; he killed Count Dooku." Smiling, still not moving away from Anakin's encircling arm, Kenobi touches the lump on his head. "I was . . . taking a nap."

"But . . . " Mace blinks, stunned. Dooku has been to the Separatists what Palpatine has been to the Galactic Republic: the center of gravity binding together a spiral galaxy of special interests. With Dooku gone, the Confederacy of Independent Systems will no longer really be a confederacy at all. They would fly to pieces within weeks. Within days/, even. Floored, Mace says again, "But . . . " However, in the end, he can't even think of a /but/. This is all so astonishing that he very nearly - almost, but not quite - cracks a smile. "That is," he eventually breathes, "the best news I've heard since . . . " He shakes his head helplessly. "Since I can't even remember when. Anakin - how did you /do it?"

Inexplicably, young Skywalker looks distinctly uncomfortable; that newly confident presence of his collapses as suddenly as an overloaded deflector, and instead of meeting Mace Windu's eyes, his gaze flickers towards Palpatine. Somehow, Mace doesn't think that this is due to modesty. The Korun Master looks to the Chancellor as well, his elation swiftly sinking, transforming into puzzlement tinged with suspicion.

"It was . . . entirely extraordinary," Palpatine says blandly, oblivious to Mace's narrowing eyes. "I know next to nothing of swordplay, of course; to my amateur's eye, it seemed that Count Dooku may have been . . . a trace overconfident. Especially after having disposed of Master Kenobi so neatly."

Obi-Wan flushes, just a bit, while Anakin flushes considerably more deeply, his lips moving as if to shape a protest, though nothing quite manages to emerge from his mouth.

"Perhaps young Anakin was simply more . . . highly /motivated/," Palpatine finally offers, turning a fond smile upon him. "After all, Dooku was fighting only to slay an enemy; Anakin was fighting to save - if I may presume the honor - a friend."

Mace's scowl darkens. These are fine words that the Chancellor is saying. Perhaps they are even true words. However, he still neither likes nor trusts them. No one on the Jedi Council has ever been comfortable with Skywalker's close relationship with the Chancellor - they'd had more than one conversation about it with Obi-Wan while Skywalker had still been his Padawan - and Mace is less than happy to hear Palpatine speaking for the young Jedi as if Skywalker cannot speak for himself. However, he merely says, "I'm sure the Council will be very interested in your full report, Anakin," placing just enough emphasis on full to get his point across.

Skywalker swallows, and then, just as suddenly as it had collapsed, that aura of calm, centered confidence has rebuilt itself around him. "Yes. Yes of course, Master Windu."

Obi-Wan is watching Anakin's face with an odd intentness - a curiosity that seems strange, given the fact that he must have been present during these events - though the Jedi Master still makes no movement, as yet, to extract himself from Anakin's grasp. "And we must report that Grievous escaped," the Jedi Master merely adds quietly. "He is as cowardly as ever."

Mace accepts this news with a nod. "But he is only a military commander. Without Dooku to hold the coalition together, these so-called independent systems will splinter, and they know it." He looks straight into the Supreme Chancellor's eyes. "This is our best chance to sue for peace. We can end this war right now."

And while Palpatine answers, Mace Windu reaches into the Force.

To Mace's Force-perception (thankfully by that point restored enough to be fully functional, so long as he doesn't look too closely directly at that fragment of a ship), the world crystallizes around them, becoming a many faceted gem of reality shot through with flaws and fault lines of possibility. This is Mace Windu's particular gift: to see how people and situations fit together in the Force; to find the shear planes that can cause them to break in useful ways; and to intuit what sort of strike would best make each cut. Although he unfortunately cannot consistently determine the significance of the structures he perceives - and the steadily darkening cloud upon the Force that has risen with the rebirth of the Sith makes this harder and harder with each passing day - the presence of shatterpoints is always clear.

After Naboo, Mace had supported Anakin Skywalker's training, though it ran counter to millennia of Jedi tradition, because the structure of fault lines in the Force surrounding the boy had allowed the Korun Master to intuit the truth of Qui-Gon Jinn's guess: that the young slave from Tatooine was in fact the prophesied Chosen One, born to bring balance to the Force. Mace had also argued for Obi-Wan Kenobi's Knighting and then his Mastership, not to mention giving the training of the Chosen One into the hands of this new, untested Jedi, because his unique perception had shown him powerful lines of destiny that bound their lives together, for good or ill. And on the day of Palpatine's election to the Chancellorship, Mace had seen that Palpatine was himself a shatterpoint of unimaginable significance: a man upon whom might depend the fate of the Republic itself.

Now he sees the three men together, and the intricate lattice of fault lines and stress fractures that bind them each to the other is so staggeringly powerful that its structure is, quite simply, beyond calculation. Well beyond his ability to weigh.

Mace Windu sees the now/, the fulcrum points that bend and break the paths of the most probable of all possible futures, magnified to such a point that, with his awareness of certain intersections and weaknesses, he can often drive the events of the /now onto the path of a very specific and wanted future. It is a prescient awareness, yes, but it is not true sight of the future, nor does his ability allow him to truly gain sight or knowledge of actual past events. Many long hours Mace has meditated on the seemingly unanswerable questions, the differences between prophecy and prescience, mulling over his own ability to cause or to forestall events with the striking or annulling of certain shatterpoints, trying to puzzle out how much is actual prediction of future events and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the terms of prophecy. Trying to puzzle out the harmonics inherent in the very act of prophecy, and the reverberations that accompany the use of his own gift. Many long hours he has spent, attempting to unravel the mystery as to whether or not the various prophets of the Chosen One had actually seen the future or if they had merely seen a line of weakness, a fault of cleavage that could be shattered with the application of certain precisely timed decisions or words, much as a diamond-cutter can shatter a gem with a specifically angled and calculated tapping blow. Trying to discover how much of the fragmented, disputed, sometimes contradictory, and seemingly always incomplete prophecies of the Chosen One constitute actual predictions and how much of them are just smoke and mirrors, little more than self-fulfilling suggestions meant to catch and to tip events along the fault lines of certain shatterpoints. Because the calculation and manipulation of these fulcrums are a gift of his homeworld, Haruun Kal, Mace has long thought that he could use his talent with the knowledge of Jedi prophecies to set the Chosen One to tasks meant to bring about a specific future, in much the same way he can perceive and use the delicate lattice-work of individual shatterpoints.

But this . . . this is entirely beyond his ken.

Anakin is somehow a pivot point, the fulcrum of a lever with Obi-Wan on one side, Palpatine on the other, and the galaxy hanging in the balance, but the still darkening cloud on the Force prevents his perception from reaching into the future for so much as a hint as to where this might lead. The balance is already so delicate that Mace cannot even begin to guess the outcome of any given shift: the slightest tip in any direction would inevitably generate chaotic oscillation. Anything could happen. Anything at all. And, most concerning of all, the lattice of fault lines that bind all three of them to each other stink of the Dark Side.

Mace lifts his head and looks to the sky, picking out the dropping star of the Jedi shuttle as it swings towards them through the now swiftly lightening gloom. "I'm afraid peace is out of the question while Grievous is at large," the Chancellor is saying sadly. "Dooku was the only check on Grievous' monstrous lust for slaughter; with Dooku gone, the General has been unleashed to rampage across the galaxy. I'm afraid that, far from being over, this war is about to get a very great deal /worse/."

"And what of the Sith?" Obi-Wan asks, frowning. "Dooku's death should have triggered a weakening of the darkness, but instead it almost feels stronger than ever. I fear Master Yoda's intuition is correct: Dooku was merely the apprentice of the Sith Lord, not the actual Master."

Mace starts walking toward the small-craft dock where the Jedi shuttle will land, and the others fall in with him. "The Sith Lord, if one still exists, will reveal himself in time. They always do." He hopes Obi-Wan will take the hint and shut up about it; Mace has no desire to speak openly of the investigation in front of the Supreme Chancellor. The less Palpatine knows, the better. "A more interesting puzzle is Grievous," he continues. "He had you at his mercy, Chancellor, and mercy is not numbered among his virtues. Though we all rejoice that he spared you, I cannot help but wonder why."

Palpatine spreads his hands. "I can only assume the Separatists preferred to have me as a hostage rather than as a martyr. Though it is, of course, impossible to say; it may merely have been a whim of the General. He is notoriously erratic."

"Perhaps the Separatist leadership can restrain him, in exchange for certain . . . " Mace allows his gaze to drift casually to a point somewhere above the Chancellor's head. " . . . considerations."

"Absolutely not." Palpatine draws himself up, straightening his robes. "A negotiated peace would be a recognition of the CIS as the legitimate government of the rebellious systems - tantamount to losing the war! No, Master Windu, this war can end only one way. Unconditional surrender. And while Grievous lives, that will never happen."

After a long pause, Mace simply says, "Very well, Chancellor. Then the Jedi will make the capture of General Grievous our particular task." He glances at Anakin and Obi-Wan, who are still standing together, Anakin's arm around Obi-Wan's waist, and blinks, frowning, dazzled momentarily by a sudden impression of inexplicable light, blazing in a corona around and shot all throughout the figures of the two Jedi, who are standing far too closely together. Startled, he pauses for an instant, deliberately shutting his eyes and muffling his connection with the Force, convinced that it is only an aberration, just another side-effect of having had his senses scorched by the passage of that fragment of a ship - still faintly glowing in the background with subsiding power, even with his Force senses all carefully muted - a reaction something like the lingering shadows of sun-dazzle that linger after staring too long upon the sun. Distracted by other, more immediate concerns, Mace dismisses the entire experience as only an illusion and turns back to Palpatine. Leaning in close to the Chancellor, his voice goes low and final, with a buried intensity that hints - just the slightest bit - of suspicion, and warning. "This war has gone on far too long already. We will find him, and this war will end."

"I have no doubt of it." Palpatine simply strolls along, seemingly oblivious to the Jedi Master's near threat. "But we should never underestimate the deviousness of the Separatists. It is possible that even the war itself has been only one further move," he offers with elegantly understated precision, "in some greater game."

When the Jedi shuttle finally swings towards the Chancellor's private landing platform at the Senate Offices, Obi-Wan watches with mixed feelings of exasperated amusement and sorrow as Anakin pretends not to stare out the window. On the platform is a small welcome-contingent of various officials, and Anakin is desperately trying to look as if he isn't searching that little crowd hungrily for a particular face - a face that doesn't appear to be there. The pretense is a waste of time, though; Anakin radiates excitement so powerfully in the Force that Obi-Wan can practically hear the thunder of his heartbeat. Obi-Wan gives a silent sigh. He has entirely too good an idea whose face his former Padawan is so hoping to see.

When the shuttle touches down, Master Windu catches Obi-Wan's eye from beyond Anakin's shoulder. The Korun Master makes a nearly invisible gesture, one to which Obi-Wan does not visibly respond. However, when Palpatine and Anakin and R2-D2 all debark toward the crowd of well-wishers, Obi-Wan stays behind.

Anakin promptly stops short, turning back to look at Obi-Wan. "You coming?"

"I haven't the courage for politics," Obi-Wan replies, showing his usual trace of a smile. "I'll brief the Council instead."

"Shouldn't I be there, too?"

"No need. This isn't the formal report. Besides - " Obi-Wan nods toward the clot of HoloNet crews clogging the pedestrian gangway " - someone has to be the poster boy."

Anakin looks pained. "Poster /man/."

"Quite right, quite right," Obi-Wan agrees with a gentle chuckle, one hand making a slight shooing gesture. "Go meet your adoring public, Poster Man."

"Wait a minute - this whole operation was your idea. You planned it. You led the rescue. It's your turn to take the bows," Anakin insists, brow furrowing determinedly, crossing his arms at his waist to avoid placing his hands on his hips. "You're the one who deserves to hear speeches about your greatness - "

"Oh, no, my young friend, you won't get out of it that easily. Without you there to save me from the buzz droids, I wouldn't even have made it to the flagship. You defeated Count Dooku, Anakin, and then you single-handedly rescued the Chancellor - all the while, I might be forgiven for adding, carrying some old broken-down Jedi Master unconscious on your back. Not to mention the fact that the landing you made will doubtlessly be the standard of Impossible in every flight manual for the next thousand years."

"Only because of your training, Master, and your aid in - "

"That's just an excuse. You're the hero. Go spend your glorious day surrounded by - " Obi-Wan allows himself a slightly disparaging cough " - politicians and their endless speeches."

"Come on, Master - you owe me. And not just for saving your skin for the tenth time - "

"Ninth time. Cato Neimoidia doesn't count; it was your fault in the first place," Obi-Wan firmly insists, his easy smile cancelling out the potential sting of his words. "Which reminds me: did you ever thank Commander Cody properly for his help in that particular operation?"

Rolling his eyes slightly, Anakin patiently responds with a dutiful, "Yes, Master, we both thanked him, as I'm sure you'd recall if your senses hadn't been a bit, ah, foggy at the time." Anakin grins then and, tilting his head inquiringly, asks, "Do you think the HoloNet's gotten to the Armada yet?"

"Doubtful. That Lieutenant Commander seems like a rather excitable fellow, though. Perhaps you should mention that the Open Circle Armada was merely following orders, keeping Grievous' ship pinned so that we could escape with the Chancellor once we had rescued him, and that your rather spectacular landing was the result of an extremely last-minute contingency plan?" Obi-Wan asks back, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"I can do that, Master. If you're sure - "

"Completely," Obi-Wan nods, resoundingly, and then waves him off. ""I'll see you at the Outer Rim briefing tomorrow morning, if not before then."

"Well . . . all right. But just this once." Anakin laughs and waves, and then heads briskly off to catch up with Palpatine as the Chancellor wades into the Senators with the smooth-as-oiled-transparisteel ease of the lifelong politician.

The hatch cycles shut, the shuttle lifts off, and Obi-Wan's smile disappears abruptly as he turns to face Mace Windu, his expression suddenly tightly shuttered. "You wanted to speak with me, Master Windu."

Windu moves close to Obi-Wan's position by the window, nodding out at the scene on the landing platform. "It's Anakin. I don't like his relationship with Palpatine."

"We've had this conversation before." The words themselves are patently neutral, but there is something faintly combative in their phrasing, an unsettlingly direct challenge.

"There is something between them. Something new. I could see it in the Force." Mace's voice is flat and grim. "It felt powerful. And incredibly dangerous."

Obi-Wan simply spreads his hands. "I trust Anakin with my life."

"I know you do. I only wish we could trust the Chancellor with Anakin's."

That makes Obi-Wan frown. "Yes. Palpatine's policies are . . . sometimes questionable. But he dotes on Anakin like a kindly old uncle on his favorite nephew. You must know that."

Mace turns his gaze out the window. "The Chancellor loves power. If he has any other passion, I have not seen it."

Obi-Wan shakes his head with a trace of disbelief. "I recall that not so long ago, you were something of an admirer of his."

"Things," Mace Windu notes grimly, not bothering to turn his eyes back towards Obi-Wan, "change."

Flying over a landscape pocked with smoldering wreckage where once tall buildings filled with living beings had gleamed in the sun, towards a Temple filled with memories of so many, many Jedi who will never return from this war, Obi-Wan finds that he cannot disagree, though the sorrow that this brings him is so great that he automatically wishes for the comfort of Anakin's presence - a purely selfish wish, given how upset Anakin would have been with Mace Windu's topic of conversation. After a long moment of silence, Obi-Wan finally asks, "What would you have me do?"

Mace's stare is hard and flat. "I am not certain. You know my power; I cannot always interpret what I've seen. Be alert. Be mindful of Anakin, and be careful of Palpatine. He is not to be trusted, and his influence on Anakin is dangerous."

"But Anakin is the Chosen One - "

"All the more reason to fear an outsider's influence. We have circumstantial evidence that traces Sidious to Palpatine's inner circle."

Obi-Wan suddenly has difficulty breathing. "Are you certain?"

Mace shakes his head. "Nothing is certain. But this raid - the capture of Palpatine had to be an inside job. And the timing . . . we were closing in on him, Master Kenobi! The information you and Anakin tracked down after recovering the mecho-chair Viceroy Gunray lost in evading capture by you on Cato Neimoidia - we had traced the Sith Lord to an abandoned factory in The Works, not far from where Anakin managed to land Grievous' cruiser. When the attack began, a group of us were tracking him through the downlevel tunnels. As it would happen, most of the probe droids and searchers on the team appear to have been conveniently dispatched during the battle." Mace looks back out the viewport at a vast residential complex that dominates the skyline to the west. "But the trail itself led to the sub-basement of 500 Republica."

500 Republica is the most exclusive address on the planet. Its inhabitants include only the incredibly wealthy or the incredibly powerful, from Raith Sienar of the Sienar Systems conglomerate to Palpatine himself. Obi-Wan is so stunned that he can only say, "Oh."

"We have to face the possibility - the probability - that what Dooku told you on Geonosis was actually /true/. That the Senate is under the influence - under the control - of Darth Sidious. That it has been for /years/."

"Do you - " Obi-Wan has to swallow before he can go on. "Do you have any suspects?"

"Too many. All we know of Sidious is that he's bipedal, of roughly human conformation. Sate Pestage springs to mind. I wouldn't rule out Mas Amedda, either, though he is a Chagrian. The Sith Lord might even be hiding among the Red Guards. There's no way to know. But Master Yoda insists that after the raid commenced, Darth Sidious moved off planet, for at least a time. Eventually, that should help narrow the range."

Obi-Wan's throat is so dry that he has difficulty forcing himself to speak again, but the question in so incredibly important that he presses determinedly forward. "Who's handling the questioning? I'd be happy to sit in; my perceptions are not so refined as some, true, but - "

Mace only shakes his head again. "Interrogate the Supreme Chancellor's personal aides and advisors? Impossible."

"But - !"

"Palpatine will never allow it. Though he hasn't said so . . ." Mace stares silently out the window for a long moment " . . . I'm not sure he even believes the Sith exist."

Obi-Wan blinks, dumbfounded. "But - how can he - "

"Look at it from his point of view: the only real evidence we have is Dooku's word. And he's rather dead now."

"The Sith Lord on Naboo - the Zabrak who killed Qui-Gon - "

Mace shrugs. "Destroyed. As you know." He shakes his head yet again. "Relations with the Chancellor's Office are . . . difficult. I feel he has lost his trust in the Jedi; I have certainly lost my trust in him."

"But he doesn't have the authority to interfere with a Jedi investigation . . . " Obi-Wan frowns, suddenly uncertain. "Does he?"

"The Senate has surrendered so much power, it's hard to say where his authority stops."

"It's that bad?" Obi-Wan demands, clearly aghast.

Mace's jaw locks tight. "The only reason Palpatine's not a serious suspect is because he essentially already rules the galaxy."

"But we are closer than we have ever been to rooting out the Sith," Obi-Wan says slowly, as though to clarify the point or allow Mace the chance to disagree with him. "That can only be good news. I would think that Anakin's friendship with Palpatine could be of use to us in this - he has the kind of access to Palpatine that other Jedi might only dream of, and his instinct would prompt him to protect the man. Their friendship is an asset, not a danger."

"You can't tell him."

"I beg your pardon?" Obi-Wan Kenobi's response is a snarled whipcrack of Force, one whose enormous power startles even Mace Windu, making his eyes widen and his gaze deepen momentarily within the Force, checking Obi-Wan for sudden sheering, concerned that he has inadvertently caused some new shatterpoint to fracture away from the snarled knots of fault lines tying Obi-Wan to Anakin, for an instant unsure if he should rejoice or be terrified at the thought of having possibly inadvertently cut Obi-Wan entirely free of Anakin, though he thankfully has not - at least not /yet/, a fact that makes the Korun Master briefly wonder what precisely it would take to cut those dangerously strong ties.

"Of the whole Council, only Yoda and myself know how deep this actually goes. And now you. I have decided to share this with you because you are in the best situation to watch Anakin. Watch him. Nothing more. Yoda wishes to speak to you himself, but he has, as yet, said nothing to me regarding Anakin. You are not to tell him of this - at least not yet."

"We - " Obi-Wan tosses his head helplessly, not only at a loss but clearly floundering. "We don't keep secrets from each other. We do not keep such things from each other."

"You must keep this one." Mace laces his fingers together and then squeezes until his knuckles crackle like blasterfire. "Skywalker is arguably the most powerful Jedi alive, and he is still getting stronger. But he is not /stable/. You know it. We all do. It is why he cannot be given Mastership. We must keep him off the Council, despite his extraordinary gifts. And Jedi prophecy . . . is not absolute. The less he has to do with Palpatine, the better."

"But surely - " Obi-Wan stops himself before the protest can fully finish forming. He thinks of how many times Anakin has violated orders. He thinks of how unflinchingly loyal Anakin is to anyone he considers a friend. He thinks of the probable danger Palpatine is facing unknowingly, with a Sith Lord among his advisers . . . and he almost groans with anguish, his eyes falling shut helplessly. Master Windu is right. This is a secret Anakin cannot be trusted to keep. "What can I tell him?"

"Tell him nothing, for now. I sense the Dark Side around him. Around them both."

Obi-Wan's eyes flash as they snap back open. "As it is around us all," the young Jedi Master sternly reminds Mace. "The Dark Side touches all of us, Master Windu. Even you."

"I know that all too well, Obi-Wan." For one second Obi-Wan sees something raw and haunted in the Korun Master's eyes, but then Mace is turning away. "It is possible that we may have to . . . move against Palpatine."

"Move against - ?"

"If he is truly under the control of a Sith Lord, it may be the only way."

Obi-Wan's whole body has gone numb. This doesn't seem real. It is simply not possible that he is actually having this conversation, that Mace Windu, of all people, could seriously be suggesting that the Jedi might be forced to move against the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

"You haven't been here, Obi-Wan." Mace gazes bleakly down at his hands. "You've been off fighting the war in the Outer Rim. You don't know what it's been like, dealing with all the petty squabbles and special interests and greedy, grasping fools in the Senate, and Palpatine's constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power - he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at this planet, Obi-Wan! We have given up so much freedom - how secure do we look to you?"

Obi-Wan's heart clenches helplessly. This is not the same Mace Windu he knows and so often admires; it is as though the darkness in the Force is so much thicker here on Coruscant that it has breathed poison into the Korun Master's spirit - and perhaps is even breeding suspicion and dissension among the members of the Jedi High Council. The greatest danger from the darkness threatening from without comes when Jedi feed it with the darkness within. Obi-Wan knows this. He has feared that he might find matters somewhat deteriorated when he returned to Coruscant and the Temple; yet, not even in his darkest dreams has he ever seriously thought it would get this bad. "Master Windu - Mace. We'll go to Yoda together," he finally says firmly. "And among the three of us, we'll work something out. We will. You'll see."

"It may be too late already."

"It may be. And it may not be. We can only do what we can do, Mace. A very, very wise Jedi once said to me, /We don't have to win. All we have to do is fight/."

Some of the lines erase themselves from the Korun Master's face then, and when he meets Obi-Wan's eye there is a quirk at the corner of his mouth that might someday develop into a smile - a tired, sad smile, true, but a smile nonetheless. "I seem," he slowly admits, "to have forgotten that particular Jedi. Thank you for reminding me."

"It was the least I could do," Obi-Wan says lightly, but a sad weight has gathered on his chest. Things change, indeed.

***

Anakin's heart pounds in his throat, but he keeps smiling, and nodding, and shaking hands - and trying desperately to work his way through the crowd of Senators surrounding him.

She isn't here. Why isn't she here? Something must have happened.

He knows/, deep in his guts, that something has to have happened to her. An accident, or else she is sick, or perhaps she has been caught in one of the vast number of buildings hit by debris from the battle today . . . She might even be trapped somewhere /right now/, might be wounded, might be /smothering/, calling out his name, might be feeling the approach of /flames -

Stop it/, he tells himself. /She's not hurt. If anything has happened to her, then he would know it. Even from the far side of the Outer Rim, he would know. Surely he would know.

Wouldn't he? Wouldn't he?

There had been that one odd moment, on Tythe . . . It had been while he and Obi-Wan were buried together under the fallen dome, when Anakin had automatically stretched out with his feelings and crashed up against an image, clearly pictured in his mind's eye, of Padmé being stalked by a dark, towering creature with a mechanical hand, poised at the edge of a deep abyss, her world turned upside down. Certain details had been distressingly clear: a surprise attack; opponents locked in combat; and ground and sky alike filled with fire, smoke billowing in the air, clouding everything. But it had all melted away when Obi-Wan stirred and coughed beside him, his unreasoning fear for Padmé falling before his more immediate concern for his Master. As they had struggled together out of the rubble, all such fears had been subsumed in the sudden sharp realization that they'd been had, manipulated, tricked into going to Tythe, which had never been a real target for the Separatists. And there had been no other instances, no disturbances or nightmarish images, after that. Anakin's absolutely sure of that. He's certain he can't possibly have missed anything. Other than that one moment, there have been no other warnings or even hints that anything might possibly be wrong, that Padmé might possibly be in any danger. And he would know if she were really in any kind of trouble. So she must be alright, wherever she is.

Padmé has to be alright. That's the only thing that makes any sense.

But then why isn't she here? If she can, she always comes to see him. Has something . . .

He can barely breathe. He can't even make himself think it. He can't stop himself from thinking it. Had something changed? For her? In how she feels? Has something - oh, Force, please, no! - finally managed to come between them while he's been gone?

Anakin manages to keep a smile plastered firmly across his face as he disengages himself from Tundra Dowmeia's clammy grip and insistent invitations to visit his family's deepwater estate on Mon Calamari; he slides past the Malastarian Senator Ask Aak with an apologetic shrug, still smiling so widely that his teeth show.

He has a far different Senator on his mind. And as much as he wants to be here now, to show his support for Palpatine, and as much as he enjoys being where he can put on a good showing for the HoloNet reporters, there is nothing that Anakin Skywalker would rather do in this precise moment than to break and run, just bolt away from the crowds of well-wishing hangers-on and Palpatine's greedily grasping hands and not stop until he is alone somewhere quiet enough that he can start sorting through all the conflicting and painful thoughts cluttering up the back of his brain, each and every one of them trying to claim his attention, distracting him and making him so fearful and uneasy that he can hardly recognize himself in all of these terrors.

In this moment, Anakin Skywalker feels a surprisingly desperate need to meditate.

***