FicWad

Author's Reminder: Lengthy pieces in italics still denote memories being shared between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Some memories will, necessarily, be a bit repetitive, so bear with me, okay?





/Obi-Wan Kenobi listens to his former Padawan laugh - his expression almost happy, but for the quiet sorrow that never quite manages to completely leave Anakin's eyes anymore - and watches, longingly, as the younger man waves before turning around to head off after Palpatine, quickly taking several long, graceful, loping, ground-eating strides to catch up with the Supreme Chancellor as Palpatine wades boldly into the waiting crowd of Senators and various other political hangers-on with the smooth-as-oiled-transparisteel ease of a lifelong politician. That amazing sense of being enfolded within the bright, warm embrace of a Force entirely clean of the taint of the Dark Side - which buoyed Obi-Wan up from almost the instant they had been captured and taken into custody on /Invisible Hand right up until the moment they were safe upon Coruscant and Mace Windu had looked upon him and Anakin with nothing but judgment in his eyes - is no more than fading a memory now. Obi-Wan is so tired that he feels hollowed-out, scraped clean and empty, and the loss of both the profoundly deep and complex connection with the suddenly - if, sadly, only briefly - brilliantly pure power of the Force and the simple touch of Anakin's supportive arm, slung casually but securely around his waist, combines in a way that makes him feel weak and lightheaded, not only exhausted but disoriented.

Obi-Wan is so weary that he would rather face both the disgustingly unclean, unctuous feel of the crowd of political sycophants waiting to fawn over Chancellor Palpatine and the undisguised greed and disquieting combination of outright fanatical awe and jaded, suggestive questioning of the HoloNet crews doubtlessly already panting after Anakin than deal with the unpleasantness that he can feel coming, that Obi-Wan has been able to feel coming ever since he exited what remained of the Invisible Hand and was almost immediately presented with the perpetually darkly troubled and increasingly obviously unapproving features of Jedi Master Mace Windu. But Master Windu has signaled for him to stay, signaled that they needed to talk, and so Obi-Wan is obeying the wishes of the far more senior than he Council Master, as he believes he should, despite what he would far rather do. Thus, as the hatch cycles shut and the shuttle lifts off, Obi-Wan releases his smile for Anakin, takes a long, deep, composing breath, and then turns about to face Mace Windu, his expression as tightly shuttered as he can force it to be. "You wanted to speak with me, Master Windu."

In response, Mace Windu moves closer 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, and Obi-Wan finds that he cannot regret having issued what amounts to a direct challenge of the Master's implied judgment of Anakin.

"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 stop and frown as nothing else could have - something Mace is doubtlessly counting on. Still . . . there /is something about Palpatine that doesn't quite sit right with Obi-Wan. "Yes," he finally admits. "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 simply 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." In truth, Mace Windu had, until recently, been even more blindly supportive of Palpatine than Anakin has ever been, doubtlessly because Mace had honestly believed that the Chancellor was good for the Republic, which Mace regards with a passion that Obi-Wan frankly has always found almost disturbingly strong, reminding him of the kind of fiercely protective attachment that most beings reserve for members of their families.

"Things," Mace Windu merely notes grimly, not even bothering with the courtesy of turning 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, he knows, given how little comfort Anakin would have been able to find in the presence of Mace Windu. Troubled by the personal weakness this selfish response reveals and feeling bowed down by the weight of all of those terrible changes - the thought of so many friends and colleagues he will never see within the Temple again, lost to the horrors of this terrible war - he finds himself remembering with longing the feel of the suddenly clean and radiant Force, as it had been on Invisible Hand. Jedi do not dwell on the past, but it is hard, sometimes, not to remember, not to wish for those past times, when things were so much simpler than they are now. Before the madness of this terrible war, when the Force was as pure and limpid as spring water sparking in the sun, and it was so much easier to believe in the basic goodness of the Republic and its people, to trust in the prevalence and eventual overall triumph of the Light . . .

Obi-Wan's eyes fall shut momentarily, half out of pain for the damage this terrible war has wrought and half out of an aching, wistful need to remember, if only for a little while, how things once were - and how they could, still, be again, even with all the losses that the Temple and the galaxy itself has suffered - and in the darkness behind his eyelids there forms, suddenly and inexplicably, an image of Qui-Gon Jinn - a younger, much more obviously happy, much less emotionally guarded Qui-Gon Jinn than he has ever known, so far as Obi-Wan is aware. This Qui-Gon Jinn has little in common with the unmistakably powerful but somewhat careworn and reticent figure of the man he usually sees, whenever he remembers his former Master. All but visibly shining with love and life and Light, this Qui-Gon is towering colossus in brown robes, one who is eminently unconcerned with the fact that he is being rained upon and that the many layers of his Jedi garb are already soaking wet, his long brown hair and clipped beard as yet untouched by time - a rich, glossy nut brown color, not yet silvering even at the temples - but streaming with water. This shockingly young and vital Qui-Gon Jinn is smiling - laughing,/ even - openly and unabashedly overflowing with joy and contentment, his pale blue eyes as bright as the ignited blade of a radiant blue lightsaber. The feeling of safety, of happiness, of belonging, that this vision brings is shockingly strong, and for a moment Obi-Wan simply allows it to fill him, to transport him back to a time when all he knew of the Force was love and Light, and the words war and /Sith held no meaning for him.

There is a confusion of impressions, then. Spatters of falling raindrops breaking open against dusty stone. Trees whispering and nodding and giving up leaves, twigs and deadwood being broken away and sent flying. Smell of stone, smell of bruised leaves, smell of ozone and rain-washed air. Taste of water. Chill of wind. Flash of lightning that hurts the eyes. Boom of thunder that shakes 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 in this moment he has no real need to move, because he is just watching, just partaking of, the power and the beauty of the storm.

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 he is in, spattering the surface of the forming 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 and so he dares not try to 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 the puddles still building in the low places of the stonework, making channels between the stones in the high places. Water makes all the dusty pale 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, even though the rain is gray. A shockingly bright green leaf is stuck to the pale stone, and he wonders curiously why it stays there.

"Obi-Wan!"

Straightening up from his headlong dangle, arm lingering to brace himself on the stone edge, he looks back towards that startled voice. Blinking water from his eyes, he 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, reassuring him that all is well, and so high, ringing peals of giggles escape from behind his own lips. It is such pure pleasure, after all, to be flown about and then clasped lovingly, securely, to a broad chest and carried away, back indoors, to light and warmth and an oversized, 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. Slid deftly into an oversized set of sleeping clothes and then bundled within a soft blanket, cradled still in Qui-Gon's strong arms, he blazes, shining with the light of his love, his joy, leaning back against Qui-Gon's broad chest and sleepily letting the now similarly clad Jedi (in a blessedly dry set of sleep-pants and -shirt) comb through the wet tangle of his hair, already well on its way to growing out into a copper-tinged shoulder-length mane. In time, perhaps, his hair will be just as long and shining and beautiful as Qui-Gon's . . . Sleepily, he reaches up and touches a lock of that glossy brown and still very damp hair, wrapping it several times around his hand before tugging, slightly, until Qui-Gon laughs, again, and lowers his head until their foreheads meet, Qui-Gon ever so gently pressing his much wider brow against Obi-Wan's.

Child of my heart . . .

The thought is only the barest breath of a whisper, and yet it is so full of warmth and joy that he almost feels as if he could reach out and touch the love that is within it, pull it in around him and snuggle down into it, until he is cocooned in it much as he is currently wrapped about by the blanket Qui-Gon so carefully placed around him. Qui-Gon's soul is luminescent, his joyful heart and Light-embracing nature burning so powerfully within him that he blazes like a beacon within the Force, a pillar of fire and strength that is so strong with the Living Force that it is almost overwhelming. Or it would have been, if not for the fact that Obi-Wan himself has already flared luminescent with the strength of his own love, the light of his own power within the Force, shining as though his skin were the translucent shade of a lamp whose fire was being stoked to a roaring fury within. At the touch of that thought, that whisper rising up not so much from Qui-Gon's mind as from the depths of his heart, the very core of his being, that light within Obi-Wan flickers and jumps in bursts of perhaps ever so slightly blue-tinged white across his skin and clothing, a golden glow like liquified light dancing up and down the shining length of his coppery hair. He can hear the irresistible song of the Force tapping its rhythm out in his soul, twining within a counter-melody from Qui-Gon to create an exquisite duet of light and love. He can feel it taking root in his heart, spreading joy throughout his soul as it grows, and he knows that Qui-Gon can feel it as well when the Jedi Masters raises one trembling hand and ever so carefully cups the base of Obi-Wan's skull, fanning his long fingers up through his hair, until he can press him up ever so slightly closer to him, ever so slightly tighter against him.

And he yields, because there is not even so much as a single particle of doubt within him as to the rightness of what he is declaring, what he is promising.

Master.

. . . Yes . . .

With that acknowledgment comes such a sense of pure, unadulterated joy that he cannot keep himself from laughing. The rightness of this is so true, so overwhelming, that Obi-Wan feels as if he must laugh or else burst apart into a million brightly burning pieces from the power of that love, filling him and warming him in more ways than he has ever before dreamed possible.

The echoes of that laughter, in memory, follow him back up into awareness of the now.

For a few heartbeats, he is so stunned that he cannot even begin to respond.

These memories - this vision of Qui-Gon Jinn and himself, both so very young, Qui-Gon seemingly larger than life because he himself had been so very small, so very young, closer to the size of a toddler despite the greater maturity indicated by both greater bodily control and a wider arena of thought, indicating that he had likely been closer to three years of age than the one and a half years that his tiny stature suggested - are entirely baffling. He can make no sense out of them whatsoever. It is impossible that he could have known Qui-Gon at such an age, that he could have been treated and acknowledged much as a beloved son would have been and all but named Qui-Gon's Padawan. Obi-Wan is well aware of his age and he is quite familiar with the more important dates in his former Master's history. Xanatos would have been Qui-Gon's Padawan at such a time, and it is impossible for any Jedi to take on a human normal Padawan earlier than the age of twelve standard years, much less two Padawans at a time! A Jedi Master only ever has one Padawan at a time. And younglings are taught in the crèche for a reason, spending the vast majority of approximately the first standard decade of their lives there not only to ready them but first and foremost in order to determine their actual fitness for the hard and often bleak lives that await them as Jedi Knights. This fragment of memory - it is entirely impossible. And yet, it feels/ so very real! The touch of Qui-Gon's mind, the feel of the Force . . . all of it! It all feels unmistakably /real to him! Though just how such a thing could ever be, he cannot even begin to fathom . . .

And this is neither the time nor the place to try. The entire issue is neither here nor there. It has no immediate bearing upon where he is and what he is doing - what he should be doing, and would be already, if not for the interruption of the memory and the confusion flooding him in its wake. Mace Windu is still waiting for an answer. And it seems manifestly clear that, once again, Anakin is in need of protection, of support, of shielding, from him against the growing paranoia and increasingly disturbingly clouded vision of the rest of the Jedi High Council - not to mention what is most likely the vast majority of the rest of the Jedi Order proper, as well.

The decision is quite simple, from this light. Anakin has need of him now, whereas this puzzling memory has apparently lain dormant within Obi-Wan for over three decades. Qui-Gon can wait: Master Windu will not.

And so he bows his head, sighs, and, after another brief moment of pained silence, simply 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 Windu shakes his head, but his grimly resolute manner speaks of an unforgiving certainty, despite what he actually says to Obi-Wan. "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 - not just potentially for the Republic, as a whole, or for the Jedi, as an Order, but for himself, personally, for the sake of his friendship with Anakin, whom he cares about deeply. It is selfish of him, perhaps, but Obi-Wan is used to Anakin and his duty being one and the same - that Obi-Wan 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 just 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, aghast, unable to hide his shock.

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 apparently startles even Mace Windu, as his eyes widen and his gaze suddenly deepens, giving the appearance both of sliding slightly out of focus and of narrowing upon him, letting Obi-Wan know that the Master is looking at him from within the matrix of his strange Force talent, an ability to see "shatterpoints," the loci of networks of fault lines and convergences that supposedly signal the potential for specific future actions. Obi-Wan supposes that the Master is checking Obi-Wan for sudden sheering, concerned that he has inadvertently caused some new shatterpoint to fracture away from the intricate knots of lines tying Obi-Wan either to Anakin or else to the larger Order, and it infuriates him that the man could think his devotion such a pale and shallow thing that he could be so easily cut away from either one.

"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," the man lectures him, voice stern, convinced.

"We - " Obi-Wan tosses his head helplessly, trying to shake off an anger and confusion that are most unlike him. "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, the sound feeling oddly threatening. "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 manages to stop himself before the protest can fully finish forming. He thinks of the 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 that Palpatine is quite possibly facing unknowingly, with a Sith Lord hiding amongst his advisers . . . and Obi-Wan almost groans with anguish, his eyes falling shut helplessly. Master Windu is right, at least about this one thing. This is a secret that Anakin simply 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 younger 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 and almost human in the Korun Master's eyes, but then Mace is turning away from him again. "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 entire body has gone numb. This doesn't seem real. It is simply not possible /that he is actually having this conversation, that Mace Windu could seriously be suggesting that the Jedi Order - and, by extension, that he and Anakin - might be forced to move against /Palpatine, 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 has so often admired, the same Mace Windu who was once a very good - if consistently quietly exasperated - friend of Qui-Gon Jinn's. Obi-Wan remembers being woken once from his sleep to one of the rare arguments between the two, hearing Mace's anguished cry: Qui-Gon, the seat I have been given upon the Council rightfully belongs to you, and we all /know it! He cannot, for the life of him, reconcile that memory with the cheerless, desolate man standing before him. It is as though the darkness in the Force is so much thicker here on Coruscant that it has breathed poison into Mace's spirit - and perhaps is even breeding suspicion and dissension among the members of the Jedi High Council. The greatest danger from the darkness 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 that 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 Koran 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 an incredibly sad weight has gathered upon and around his chest. Things change, indeed.

***

Obi-Wan sits quietly beside Mace Windu, studiously ignoring the weight of the Korun Master's distrustful but considering eyes and reading the admittedly sketchy report on the truncated search for Darth Sidious that went out from The Works while Yoda scans reports generated about and because of the recent battle. Here inside Yoda's simple living space within the Jedi Temple, every softly curving pod chair and knurled organiform table hums with a gentle, comforting power, the same warm strength that Obi-Wan remembers enfolding him even as an infant in the Temple crèche. These chambers have been Yoda's home in the Jedi Order for more than eight hundred years. Everything within them echoes with the harmonic resonance of Yoda's calm wisdom, attuned to him and to the Force through centuries of his touch. To sit within Yoda's chambers is to inhale serenity; to Obi-Wan, this is a great gift in these troubled times, one made greater by the disturbing nature of information he is pursuing.

Those who had stayed behind to continue searching through 500 Republica's level-one sub-basement, when Masters Windu and Shaak Ti went to determine what had caused the sudden failure of their comlinks and the raising of the district's defensive shields, had vanished, apparently destroyed. Transmission of the code confirming the continued existence of two members of the team - ARC commander Valiant and Captain Dyne of Republic Intelligence - had ceased and not resumed when communications had been fully restored near the end of the Separatist attack. Their life-essences cannot be located within the Force, confirming their deaths. Whether the droids have been destroyed or captured, any information they might have reported is inaccessible to the Jedi. Fortunately, Captain Dyne set an automatic transmission that reached the Jedi Temple near the end of the battle, tracing the Sith Lord Sidious' path to the sub-basement back through what appears to be a ferrocrete floor panel near where the trail lets out into the sub-basement, though the panel is actually a cleverly disguised movable platform somewhat like a turbolift, if powered by hydraulics rather than an antigrav repulsors. This platform rests on a shaft (possibly a maintenance node for buildings that once stood on the site of 500 Republica at some point in Coruscant's distant past), the existence of which has yet to be confirmed by the Jedi, though the Council accepts it as a matter of course. Dyne's message ends with the team's decision to search through this shaft: at some point in this exploration, the remaining members of the search team were presumably discovered and taken out, either by Sidious, his allies, or some defense system. All in all, the contents of the report are not inducive of calm.

As Obi-Wan is trying to keep from frowning, he notices that there is a notation at the end of one of the reports detailing an earlier report from Dyne regarding the decipherment of the code Dooku - and likely also Sidious - has been using to communicate with the Council of Separatists. Intelligence, whose people have been working on cracking that code for years, had received a solid lead on that code with the capture of Nute Gunray's mechno-chair's hyperwave transceiver, one that had proven instrumental in finally cracking the code. Apparently, the code embedded in the transceiver's memory is an obvious variant on codes used by the InterGalactic Banking Clan. After realizing that, Intelligence had brokered a deal with one of the Muuns who had been arrested in the aftermath of the Battle of Muunilinst. It had taken some convincing, but the Muun had finally confirmed that the Confederacy code comes closest to matching a code once used on Aargau for transferring bank funds and such. At that point, the notation refers back to the missing credits that had become the basis for accusations leveled against Chancellor Valorum back in the days when the crisis on Naboo was brewing, allegations that had paralyzed the Senate and forced Queen Amidala of Naboo to take the advice of Palpatine, then a Senator for Naboo, and call for the vote of no confidence in the Chancellor that had eventually resulted in placing Palpatine in Valorum's chair. Once the code was broken, it had become apparent that the credits that had allegedly disappeared into the pockets of Valorum's family members on Eriadu had been routed through Aargau, indicating that the charges had been purposefully arranged by those who would later become Separatists so that the Senate would be unable to move quickly enough to stop the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo.

The breaking of this code had also given them the information about the Confederacy rendevous at Belderone after the Battle of Cato Neimoidia - information that, by choosing to act upon, by sending Obi-Wan and Anakin at the head of a force to protect Belderone from General Grievous, had revealed the Jedi Order's capture of the mechno-chair to Chancellor Palpatine, who had apparently not been pleased about being kept in the dark regarding its existence, yet still eventually expressed his approval on the hunt for Sidious - as though the Jedi Order might now actually require the permission of the Supreme Chancellor to deal with the threat of the Sith! Tellingly, both Palpatine's highly worrisome speech in which he supposedly reluctantly committed an additional two hundred thousand troopers to the Outer Rim Sieges and called for an uncertain "redress" from the Separatists and what sounded like a call for the eradication of the "life-threatening" spread of the "contagious disease" represented by all "enemies of democracy" - with the end of the war supposedly now in sight - which Palpatine said would involve the "reshaping" of the Republic's Constitution to "conform to the needs of the new epoch" and so ensure thousands of years of peace "until war itself is stamped from our just domain," and the bad information on Dooku's base on Tythe (courtesy of the broken code) - the two things that had conveniently conspired to leave Coruscant essentially wide open to attack and gotten the Supreme Chancellor captured and abducted by General Grievous - had come only after the information about the Order's possession of the mechno-chair had come out. This information does nothing to improve Obi-Wan's state of mind and he all but scowls at the report, remembering Anakin's claim, after Tythe, that their long absence from Coruscant had been purposefully arranged.

Master Yoda's reading is likewise unsettling. When the ancient Master looks up at them through the translucent shimmer of the holoprojected report on the contents of the latest amendment to the Security Act, his eyes are anything but calm: they have gone narrow and cold, while his ears have flattened back along his skull, clearly revealing an emotion that would be taken for anger, from any other being. "This report - from where does it come?"

"The Jedi still have friends in the Senate," Mace Windu merely says in a far too familiar grim monotone, "for now."

"When presented this amendment is, passed it will be?"

Mace nods, once. "My source expects passage by acclamation. Overwhelming passage. Perhaps as early as tomorrow afternoon."

"The Chancellor's goal in this - unclear to me it is," Yoda muses slowly. "Though nominally in command of the Council, the Senate may place him, the Jedi he cannot control. Moral, our authority has always been; much more than merely legal. Simply follow orders, Jedi do not!"

"I don't think he intends to control the Jedi," is Mace's unsettling response. "By placing the Jedi Council under the control of the Office of the Supreme Chancellor, this amendment will give him the constitutional authority to disband the Order itself."

Yoda is apparently so stunned by this pronouncement that he cannot even protest. Obi-Wan's response is quite likely very similar to what the ancient little Master is thinking, though. "Surely you cannot believe this is his intention."

"His intention?" Mace repeats darkly. "Perhaps not. But his intentions are irrelevant; all that matters now is the intent of the Sith Lord, who clearly has our government in his grip. And the Jedi Order may be all that stands between him and galactic domination. What do you think he will do?"

"Authority to disband the Jedi, the Senate would never grant."

"The Senate will vote to grant exactly that. Tomorrow afternoon."

"The implications of this, they must not comprehend!"

"It no longer matters what they comprehend," is Mace implacable retort. "They know where the power is."

"Yet even disbanded, even without legal authority, still Jedi we would be. Jedi Knights served the Force long before there was a Galactic Republic, and serve it we will when this Republic is but dust."

"Master Yoda, that day may be coming sooner than any of us think. That day may be tomorrow if we continue to do nothing." Mace shoots a frustrated look at Obi-Wan, who picks up his cue smoothly.

"We don't know what the Sith Lord's plans may be," Obi-Wan begins, "but we can be certain that Palpatine is not to be trusted. Not anymore. This draft resolution is not the product of some overzealous Senator; we may be sure Palpatine wrote it himself and passed it along to someone he controls, to be put forth by a Senator when the time became right - to make it look like the Senate is once more 'forcing' him to 'reluctantly accept extra powers in the name of security.' We are afraid that they will continue to do so until one day he is forced to 'reluctantly accept' dictatorship for life!"

"I am convinced this is the next step in a plot aimed directly at the heart of the Jedi," Mace adds, picking up the thread. "This is a move toward our destruction. The Dark Side of the Force surrounds the Chancellor."

"As it has surrounded and cloaked the Separatists since even before the war began," Obi-Wan quietly elaborates. "If the Chancellor is being influenced through the Dark Side, this whole war may have been, from the beginning, no more than a plot by the Sith to destroy the Jedi Order."

"Speculation!" Yoda thumps the floor with his gimer stick, making his hoverchair bob gently. "On theories such as these we cannot rely. Proof we need. Proof!"

"Proof may be a luxury we cannot afford." A dangerous light has entered Mace Windu's eyes. "We must be ready to act!"

Obi-Wan is slightly startled by this turn in the conversation. "Act?" he asks mildly, trying to feel his way along this new twist without venturing any further down it than he has to.

"He cannot be allowed to move against the Order. He cannot be allowed to prolong the war needlessly. Too many Jedi have died already. He is dismantling the Republic itself! I have seen /life outside the Republic; so have you, Obi-Wan. Slavery. Torture. Endless war." Mace's face darkens with the same distant, haunted shadow Obi-Wan saw him wear less than an hour before. "I have seen it in Nar Shaddaa, and I saw it on Haruun Kal. I saw what it did to Depa, and to Sora Bulq. Whatever its flaws, the Republic is our sole hope for justice, and for peace. It is our only defense against the dark. Palpatine may be about to do what the Separatists cannot: bring down the Republic. If he tries, he must be removed from office. Already, he refuses to allow the war to end, refuses to surrender power. The man is a tyrant. He /must be dealt with."

"Removed?" Obi-Wan repeats questioningly. "You mean, arrested?" he demands, once again aghast at what Mace is suggesting.

"If he refuses to step down when this war is over, then, yes/," Mace nods emphatically, the look on his face implacably resolute. "This is /exactly why I am concerned about the relationship between Palpatine and Anakin."

Obi-Wan cannot seem to catch his breath. "But surely - surely you don't expect - "

Surprisingly, it is Master Yoda, not Mace Windu, who responds. "Use their relationship we can, if we must. Whether necessary that use will be, convinced as yet I am not."

All Obi-Wan can see is Anakin's face, turned up towards the high vaulted ceiling of the landing bay of the RSS Integrity/, his features contorted to the shape of a sustained snarl, eyes glaring sightlessly. "You cannot do that. You cannot seriously be thinking of asking such a thing of Anakin. You /must know that you can never ask such a terrible thing of him!"

Obi-Wan's rising voice momentarily startles the two Masters away from their argument, causing them to look at their distraught colleague. Frowning, Mace Windu quietly admits, "We don't always have a good answer for such conundrums, Obi-Wan. Sometimes there isn't a good answer. That is why the timing of the attack is so suspicious. We needed the information that investigation could have won for us. We need to know how deeply Palpatine might be involved with the Sith Lord so that we can neutralize him."

With a somewhat skeptical sidelong glance at Mace, Yoda adds, "Know how important your friendship with young Anakin is to you, I do. But allow such attachments to pass out of one's life, a Jedi must."

Another man - even another Jedi - might have resented the rebuke, but Obi-Wan has grown used to hearing this command, and so he only frowns, sighing. "I suppose - he is the Chosen One, after all. The prophecy says he was born to bring balance to the Force, but . . . " The words trail off. He can no longer remember what he had been meaning to say. All he can remember is the look on Anakin's face, the feel of his hands gripping his shoulders.

"Yes. Always in motion, the future is." Yoda lifts his head, eyes narrowing to thoughtful slits, as he quietly allows, "And the prophecy, misread it could have been."

Mace manages to look even grimmer than usual at that admission. "Since the fall of Darth Bane more than a millennium ago, there have been hundreds of thousands of Jedi - quite possibly millions of Jedi - feeding the Light with each work of their hands, with each breath, with every beat of their hearts, bringing justice, building civil society, radiating peace, acting out of selfless love for all living things, while in all these thousand years, there have been only two Sith at any given time. Only two. Jedi create light, but the Sith do not create darkness. They merely use the darkness that is always there, the evil that has always been there. Greed and jealousy, aggression and lust and fear: these are all natural to sentient beings, beings who are able to feel as well as being capable of rational thought. It is the legacy of the primordial garden. Our inheritance from the Dark."

Obi-Wan's eyes are blankly uncomprehending and he is sure that it is not just his worry for Anakin, as the two Masters seem to imply, clouding his thoughts. "I'm sorry, Master Windu, but I am not sure I follow you. Are you saying - to follow your metaphor - that the Jedi have cast too much light? From what I have seen these past years, the galaxy has not become all that bright a place."

"All I am saying is that we don't know/. We don't even truly understand what it means to /bring balance to the Force. We have no way of anticipating what this may involve!"

"An infinite mystery is the Force," Yoda softly interjects. "The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know. Fully in motion, though, are the events of our time. Approach, the crisis does."

"Yes." Mace nods once, decisively, interlacing his fingers and squeezing until all of his knuckles pop, disconcertingly loud. "But we're in a spice mine without a glow rod. If we continue to stand still, we will never reach the light."

Rattled by both the accusations being brought against Palpatine and the willingness of not only Mace Windu but also Master Yoda to use Anakin to bring Palpatine down, irregardless of the damage, the pain, it would cause Anakin, Obi-Wan demands, his voice shaking, "And what if the light just isn't there? What if we get to the end of this tunnel and find only night?"

"Faith must we have. Trust in the will of the Force." Yoda also nods once, decisively.

"What other choice is there?" Mace only shrugs.

Obi-Wan accepts this with a nod, and yet the thought of Anakin still causes dread to curdle below his heart. "But to move against Palpatine/ . . . Masters, I trust Anakin with my life. You both know that I do. Yet, that is precisely the problem." The other two Jedi Masters watch Obi-Wan silently, their eyes betraying some confusion, while he struggles to summon the proper words to express the seriousness of his concern. "For Anakin," Obi-Wan finally declares, "there is nothing more important than loyalty, than friendship. He is the most loyal man I have ever met - loyal beyond reason, in fact. Despite all that I have tried to teach him about the sacrifices that support and create the central being of a Jedi, he will never, I think, truly understand." Obi-Wan looks beseechingly at Yoda, as though willing the venerable Master to understand. "Master Yoda, you and I have been close since I was a boy. An infant. Yet if ending this war one week sooner - even one /day sooner - were to require that I sacrifice your life, you know that I would," he tries to explain.

"As you should," Yoda only nods. "As I would yours, young Obi-Wan. As any Jedi would let go of any other, in the cause of peace."

"Any Jedi," Obi-Wan admits, voice and hands trembling, "except Anakin."

Yoda and Mace exchange glances at this, both thoughtfully grim. Obi-Wan supposes they are remembering the many times Anakin has violated orders - the times he has put at risk entire operations, the lives of thousands, even the control of entire planetary systems - while trying to save a friend. Something that Anakin has done more than once, truth be told, to save Obi-Wan. "I think," Obi-Wan continues carefully, "that abstractions like peace /don't mean much to him. He's loyal to /people/, not to principles. And he expects loyalty in return. He will, for example, stop at nothing to save me, because he thinks I would do the same for him." Mace and Yoda gaze at him steadily, and Obi-Wan is forced to lower his head. "Because," he admits reluctantly, "he /knows I would do the same for him."

"Understand exactly where your concern lies, I do not." Yoda's greenish eyes have gone surprisingly softly sympathetic. "Named must your fear be, before banish it you can. Do you fear that perform his task, Anakin cannot?"

"Oh, no! That's not it at all," Obi-Wan has a terrible sneaking suspicion that he is only making things worse, and yet he cannot keep from trying to explain either, certain in a way that he does not entirely understand but cannot force himself to doubt that the risk to Anakin is far too great to allow the matter to simply stand. "I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything he sets his mind and his will to doing, however seemingly impossible. Except to betray a friend. What you are both suggesting that we do to him, with Palpatine - "

"But that is what Jedi are," Mace Windu interrupts, voice and expression alike startled. "That is what we have pledged ourselves to: selfless service - "

Obi-Wan again feels Anakin's hands upon his shoulders, sees Anakin's face twisted up towards the ceiling of the landing bay. His eyes fall shut at the pain he feels, hurt by Anakin's agony. "Yes," he finally slowly admits, forcing himself to look at both Masters. "We are instruments of the Force, Masters. But we are meant to fulfill the will of the Force - with infinite compassion and unforgiving justness - not to act out of fear of what could happen and suspicions of what might be. We have no proof to offer him and would ask that he act in a way contrary to his nature. Betrayal is neither compassionate nor just. That is why I cannot believe that Anakin would ever trust us again, if we were to ask such a thing of him." Obi-Wan's eyes turn unaccountably hot, his vision swimming with unshed tears. "And I'm not entirely sure that he should, if we do."

Yoda only quietly shakes his head. "To a dark place, this line of thought will lead us. Great care, we must take."

"The Republic is /civilization. It's the only one we have." Mace looks deeply into first Yoda's eyes and then Obi-Wan's, and Obi-Wan can feel the heat in the Korun Master's gaze. "We /must /be prepared for radical action. It is our /duty/, the duty of /all of us, as Jedi, to act!"

"But," Obi-Wan protests numbly, "you're talking about treason . . . "

"I am not afraid of words, Obi-Wan! If it's treason, then so be it. I would do this right now, if I had the Council's support. The real treason," Mace insists, "would be failure to act!"

"Such an act, destroy the Jedi Order, it could," is Yoda's immediate response. "Lost the trust of the public, we have already - "

"No disrespect, Master Yoda," Mace interrupts, "but that's a politician's argument. We can't let public opinion - or the loyalty /of one man - stop us from doing what is /right."

"Convinced /it is right, I am /not/," is Yoda's severe reply. "Working behind the scenes we should be, to uncover Lord Sidious! To move against Palpatine while the Sith still exist, Chosen One or no - this may be part of the Sith plan /itself/, to turn the Senate and the public against the Jedi! So that we are not only disbanded, but /outlawed."

Mace is half out of his pod. "To continue to wait gives the Sith the advantage - "

"Have the advantage already/, they do!" Yoda jabs at him with his gimer stick. "/Increase /their advantage we will, if in haste we act! /Care/, we must take! Infinite care! A change there has been, in the Force! Two changes, two shifts, felt I during the attack. Too close to Darth Sidious, the Order came. Left Coruscant he did, during the attack. Returned, he has. Watch for him now we must. But this new thread," Yoda shakes his head again and crashes his gimer stick down determinedly, "lose it, break it, this we /must not do. Much potential, it carries. Perhaps a chance, even, to end this. A new hope, this brings us. Pursue it, we must! Act in haste, out of fear, against the elected head of the Republic, we must not!"

"The elected head of the Republic is a dictator! His dictatorship has already been legitimized - and can still be legalized, by enshrined in a revised Constitution - by the supermajority he controls within the Senate if we continue to fail to act! Just because Obi-Wan has become Anakin's partisan and Palpatine is - " Windu is almost shouting by this point, and the way that he speaks Obi-Wan's name, with so much scorn, the way that he spits out Anakin's name, as if it were distasteful, the way the snarls the word "partisan," as if it were a foul curse - Obi-Wan wants to shudder, wants to cry out in frustration.

"Filled with corruption, yes, the Senate is. Controlled, a majority of the Senators are, by Palpatine. But the true enemy, neither the Senate nor Palpatine is! The true enemy instead is the Sith Lord Sidious, who controls them both. Our job to police politicians it is not. To hunt down the Sith Lord and to destroy him is our duty. Lose track of this we cannot, do we wish to remain Jedi within a functioning and lawful Order!" Yoda only interrupts, his voice very loud and firm.

"Masters, Masters, please!" Obi-Wan steps boldly into the conversation, just as Mace Windu's frowning mouth is opening to issue yet another combative challenge. He looks from one to the other and then inclines his head respectfully, if sorrowfully, knowing that neither Master understands the danger that Obi-Was has so desperately been trying to convey to them - that the Order will most likely lose Anakin, if the Council tries to force him to betray any friend of his, and that the Order will also lose Obi-Wan if this happens, as he would not hesitate to go with Anakin. "Perhaps there is a middle way," he offers, thinking to himself a way that will not directly involve Palpatine.

"Ah, of course: Kenobi the Negotiator." Mace Windu settles back into his seating pod, not quite scowling in displeasure, in outright contempt. "I should have guessed. That is why you asked for this meeting, isn't it? To mediate our differences. If you can."

"So sure of your skills you are?" Yoda snaps, folding his fists around the head of his stick. "Easy to negotiate, this matter is not!"

Obi-Wan keeps his head determinedly down to avoid rising to the bait, strengthened by the memory of Anakin's pain, Anakin's desperate hold on his shoulders. "It seems to me," he simply carefully offers, "that Palpatine himself has given us an opening. As he said to you, Master Windu - and doubtlessly will repeat in the HoloNet address he was meaning to give concerning his kidnaping and rescue when he left us earlier - with Dooku gone, General Grievous is the one true remaining obstacle to peace. This means that Grievous is the one true remaining danger. Let us forget about the rest of the Separatist leadership, for now. Let Nute Gunray and San Hill and the rest run wherever they like while we put every available Jedi and all of our agents - the whole of Republic Intelligence, if we can - to work on locating Grievous himself. This will force the hand of the Sith Lord; he will know that Grievous cannot elude our full efforts for long, once we devote ourselves exclusively to his capture. It will draw Sidious out; he will have to make some sort of move, if he wishes the war to continue."

"If?" Mace blinks. "The war has been a Sith operation from the beginning, with Dooku pulling strings on one side and Sidious manipulating everyone from behind the scenes: it has always been a plot aimed at us. At the Jedi. To bleed us dry of our youngest and best. To make us into something we were never intended to be." He shakes his head bitterly. "I had the truth in my hands years ago - back on Haruun Kal, in the first months of the war. I had it, but I did not understand how right I was."

"Seen glimpses of this truth, we all have," Yoda agrees sadly. "Our arrogance it is, which has stopped us from fully opening our eyes."

"Until now," Obi-Wan gently interjects. "We understand now the goal of the Sith Lord - we know his tactics, and we know where to look for him. His actions will reveal him. He cannot escape us. He will not escape us."

Yoda and Mace frown at each other for one long moment, then both of them turn to Obi-Wan and incline their heads in mirroring acknowledgment of his respectful bow.

"Seen to the heart of the matter, young Kenobi has."

Mace nods. "Yoda and I will remain on Coruscant, monitoring Palpatine's advisers and lackeys; we'll move against Sidious the instant he is revealed. But who shall we send to capture Grievous?" he asks, frowning thoughtfully. "I have fought him blade-to-blade. He is still more than a match for most Jedi."

"We'll worry about that once we find him," Obi-Wan insists, and a slight, wistful smile creeps over his face as he relaxes, thinking that the danger has passed, that he has successfully distracted both Mace with his inexorable will to duty and Yoda with his implacable will to selflessness with his offer of Grievous and that Anakin will be safe now because of it, that the one threat against Anakin that Obi-Wan simply does not know how to counter has instead been at least momentarily diffused. Recalling a particularly apt saying of his Master's - and struck with a vivid memory of Qui-Gon, and rain, and a love and trust so pure, so absolute, that they could permit the presence of nothing within him, within them, that was not of the light, was not of the Light Side of the Force - he gently adds, "If I listen hard enough, I can almost hear Qui-Gon reminding me that until the possible becomes actual, it is only a distraction."

***