FicWad

Author's Note: I've wanted to write a decent length Sidious fanfic for a while now, and also some theories on his backstory and character in general. This fic has a bit of action, a bit of drama, some intrigue (it is about the consummate schemer, after all) and a fair amount of darkness. Padme fans will not like me very much in later chapters. Neither will those with a fondness for the inestimable Master Windu. Mostly, though, I wanted to put Sid in an uncomfortable situation and under a lot of pressure, and see how he got out of it. This is quite severely AU, and takes place during and after ROTS.

All due thanks and credit to my friends Randal and Tom for putting up with my Palpatine obsession and allowing me to bounce ideas off them. Thanks also to Randal for reading and constructive criticism :)

Statement of the Obvious: It all belongs to George. I am merely playing with the toys, and will put them back when I have finished. And now on to the fic, in which Lord Sidious has quite a bad day...


The Threads of Fate 1: The Will of the Force


"It is over, My Lord."

The tip of Mace Windu's lightsaber hovered dangerously close to Darth Sidious's throat, and the Sith Lord scrambled backwards through shards of shattered transparisteel until his back touched the hard, cold surface of the windowsill and he could go no further. Jedi Master and Sith Lord locked eyes. Windu's radiated a hatred that Sidious, under any other circumstance, would have found amusing. The Dark Side ebbed and flowed around them both, and Sidious gathered those tendrils of power and prepared to unleash it upon his opponent. He had not lost yet.

A flurry of movement on the other side of the Chancellor's office distracted both combatants then, and they looked across to see Anakin Skywalker stepping across the corpse of Agen Kolar. Windu's eyebrows shot up at this blatant disregard of his orders, and Sidious could not suppress the tiny bubble of relief that rose in him then. The boy had taken the bait. Anakin halted in the centre of the room, regarding the tense tableau before him with a calm serenity that Sidious had not anticipated. Where was his uncertainty, his doubt?

"Oh good, you've captured him." A far too familiar voice came from the open doorway, and with increasing rage and confusion, the Sith Master beheld the form of Obi-Wan Kenobi standing there amidst the bodies of the fallen, his hands folded in the sleeves of his Jedi robe.

Tricked! In that instant, Darth Sidious felt the threads of fate slip from his grasp. He had severely underestimated the cunning of the Jedi, and the Council's capacity for deceit. With Kenobi present, Skywalker's resolve was bolstered and what discipline he possessed, reinforced. His options now were limited. He could allow them to arrest him, thus preserving his life. That was almost as unthinkable as allowing Windu to destroy him, as the Jedi Master so desperately wanted to do. He could attempt to reach Anakin still, but he knew that Kenobi's influence on the boy was as great as his own. He was not prepared to wager that Anakin felt more loyalty to himself than to his former Master, friend and brother in arms.

The final option was flight. Discretion, so the old saying went, was the better part of valour. Sidious's mind worked fast, considering the possibilities. He could regain what he would lose here tonight with a little planning and subterfuge. His forte was politics, his element the shadows. From behind the scenes, he could work the trick. After all, puppets manipulated from afar still danced to the tune one set, regardless of distance.

As Obi-Wan Kenobi approached the window, Sidious decided. The younger Jedi Master ignored the old man on the floor, concentrating his attention on Mace Windu, whose blade had never wavered from his opponent's throat. Kenobi could sense the anger and uncertainty in Windu, and held out his hand towards his friend.

"Let him get up, and we will have him transported to the Temple," Obi-Wan said quietly.

Mace shot a look at Obi-Wan and his broad brow furrowed slightly as he considered the younger man's words. Then he shook his head. "No."

"Master, he must stand trial." There was the tiniest quaver in Anakin's voice that sent a shiver of exultation racing through Sidious. Perhaps the boy could still be turned...

"No!" Windu bellowed, raising his blade to a high strike position. "It will end, here and now! He's done enough!"

The snap-hiss of a lightsaber igniting alerted Sidious to the fact that Kenobi was very close to stepping in. But the Jedi Master tried once more to reach his old friend through words. "Master Windu!" he roared. "You will stand down! Do not give in to your anger."

For a fraction of a second, Mace hesitated before bringing his lightsaber slashing down. Two azure blades flashed before Sidious's eyes as Anakin and Obi-Wan both blocked the strike and sliced through the hilt of Windu's own weapon. And in that instant, all three Jedi stopped paying attention to the defeated man on the floor. Darth Sidious rolled over with a speed that belied his age, and dropped out of the window and onto the ledge outside.

"Don't let him get away!" Kenobi's voice rang from within, and the dark form of a Jedi appeared silhouetted in the window. Sidious did not stop to see who it was, and leapt from the ledge into the gathering dark. A fierce wind tore at his robes as he plummeted, and he reached out with the Force to slow his fall. If the Jedi pursued him now, then time was of the essence and he could not afford an injury.

High above in the Chancellor's office, Anakin turned from the window. "He jumped," he reported tersely and put his foot on the sill in preparation for his own leap. Obi-Wan reached out and gripped his former Padawan's arm.

"No, Anakin. We will summon a gunship and search for him together."

Anakin frowned. "I can take him, Obi Wan," he growled.

"I don't doubt your abilities, my friend. But together, we are stronger by far than he. And do not forget that animals become much more dangerous when harried too closely, or cornered." Obi-Wan released the younger man's arm and pulled his comlink from his belt. "We will catch him yet."

Darth Sidious's booted feet hit the hard surface of his personal speeder bay, and he dropped instantly into a half crouch. Reaching out gently with the Force, he determined that there were no sentients nearby. He was unobserved. Standing up, he straightened his maroon robes and strode briskly towards his speeder. The dark blue, armoured car was normally chauffeured, but such niceties had no place in his hastily conceived plan. Unlocking the driver's door, the Sith Lord slid into the darkened interior. The engine purred to life as he hit the ignition, and he reached under the dashboard to disconnect the tracer beacon that allowed those who guarded him to track the vehicle's movements. Then he pulled out into the constant river of traffic that flowed endlessly through the skies around the Senate building.

Sidious knew full well that taking his own car was a risk, but in years past he had planned for such unfortunate eventualities as his own premature discovery. In the dark underbelly of this mighty city there was a small and gloomy residence that he maintained. He never intended to live there, it was simply a safe and hidden place where he kept an unmarked and unremarkable speeder, a false identification and credit chips that would give him access to an emergency fund. Although the false ID would never work now as his face was far too well known, the money and the car could still be of use as he would have a long drive ahead to the hidden hangar he maintained in the Industrial District, and he had absolutely no intention of being pursued every step of the way there.

A beeping from the speeder's computer tore him away from his thoughts and back to the present, uncomfortable reality. The complicated array of state of the art screens before him showed that the vehicle had noted pursuit. A Republic gunship displaying the blue and red markings of an elite ARC unit darted in and out of the stream of traffic behind him, weaving around speeders and drone cargo vessels with graceful ease. A gunship. A rare swearword slipped from his lips, and he angled the vehicle steeply downwards, joining another line of cars heading into the heart of the city. The gunship, naturally, followed. Sidious increased his speed and wove between two great buses, filled with workers headed for their nightshift. The buses crossed their paths behind him, and he used that brief moment of cover to bank sharply and turn into a darker, narrower flight path between the monolithic high-rise towers that housed the middle class of Coruscant's teeming population.

The screens showed that he had lost the gunship for the moment, and he felt his jaw relax. This was absolutely ridiculous. That he had underestimated the Jedi Council so badly infuriated him, and for a bleak few seconds he teetered on a knife-edge of control. The seething, boiling rage of the Dark Side beckoned to him, offering solace in its warm and rotten embrace. He was almost tempted. But one did not become the Sith Master, yes, the greatest Sith Master the Galaxy had ever seen without learning to control one's emotions. Berserk, burning rage was all very well and had its place within him, but without control, one was merely a beast, an animal. He was above that, more intelligent than that. Control. Cold, calm control...

A deep breath later, the moment had passed. So had the brief respite his hasty manoeuvre had given him. The insistent beeping from the monitor announced that the gunship was back. And it had a friend. This time, the Sith Master abandoned swearing in favour of an irritated groan and gunned the engines. The speeder shot forwards, upsetting an open air taxi in front, spilling the passengers to their deaths. They raced, the speeder and the gunships, into the dark and decaying depths of the city.

Obi-Wan Kenobi gripped the handhold tightly and leaned out of the gunship's troop compartment. The wind whipped at his hair and robes, and as his eyes began to stream with the fierceness of the ship's slipstream, he spotted the dark blue speeder ahead, darting into yet another, narrower alleyway between crumbling apartment blocks. The gunship swung about with stomach-churning speed, and followed. The familiar whine of a target lock reached his ears and he hauled himself back into the vehicle.

"We have a missile lock, General Kenobi," the white and blue armoured pilot called. "Do I take the shot?"

He was tempted. By the Force, was he tempted. It could all be ended so quickly. But in his heart, he knew that such an act was not justice, it was murder. Obi-Wan sighed, and caught the stricken look on Anakin's face. "No, lieutenant. We need him alive. Increase your speed. If he gets right into the undercity, we will not be able to follow in a ship this big..."

"Yes sir." The gunship leapt forward, its wingmate keeping pace above. Once again, Obi-Wan leant out of the side door and gritted his teeth against the stinging wind.

Crumbling architecture, dark alleyways and hissing neon advertisements flashed past at blinding speed. The beat up speeders and hotrods of those who lived at this level scattered before the armoured speeder and its pursuit. Sidious was forced to concentrate wholly on simply staying alive. Flying was an activity he disdained, preferring to leave it to lesser beings and droids. And down here, it was rather more hazardous an activity than he had imagined. Above, in the heights of the city, the skylanes were straight and clear. Down here where the scum at the bottom of the pond resided, the spaces between buildings were narrow and dark, obstructed by great girders, wires and the occasional floating market or illegal racetrack. The fact that the gunships chasing him were much larger and therefore more at risk did not escape the Sith Lord, and he gritted his teeth and pushed the speeder to its limit, hoping to evade the Jedi amidst this maze of decay. He was close now, though.

There... Ahead and slightly to the left was the dark maw of an old overflow pipe that had once served the now condemned apartment block above it. His bolthole was within that dank and empty complex, and there was no way a gunship was going to be able to follow him down there. He held his breath as the car headed straight for the opening. Having misjudged the angle slightly, his ears were then assailed by the deafening screech of tearing metal. Sparks flew as the right side of the car was scraped across slimy ferrocrete, and the wing buckled under the pressure. Armoured or not, the thing was going to be a wreck by the time it stopped. The juddering and bucking of the vehicle threw him off slightly, and he stamped on the brake and pulled the nose around. It stuck with a metal crunch, jammed across the pipe and thankfully stopped.

It seemed a long moment before he could bring himself to let go of the steering column and actually breathe. It was the search light strobing across the entrance to the pipe that reminded him that time really was of the essence, and Lord Sidious threw the driver's door open and slid out, into ankle-deep fetid ooze.

"Wonderful..." And to add further insult to a variety of injuries, it appeared that his limbs might not want to cooperate after all. He clung to the open door until he felt strength return to his legs, and then strode deeper into the dark and rancid tunnel. Each footstep broke the crust on rotten he dared not guess what, and the smell was truly vile. Scuttlings in the dark distracted him for a moment, and he recalled the urban legends of creatures that dwelled in the forgotten places of the Capitol. Brain-eating spiders indeed... Nevertheless, he quickened his pace.

He sought any kind of maintenance hatch, and eventually located one, crusted with slime and rust. Sidious did not even bother to attempt to open it manually. Instead, he stood back and allowed the anger and frustration at his predicament to rise within him. The Dark Side beckoned once more, and with a satisfying shriek of tortured metal, the door flew out of its housing and crashed against the opposite wall with a hollow clang. The Sith Lord gathered his robes about him and stepped into the dark hole beyond. There was a ladder, gritty with rust and festooned with the webs of whatever crawlers lingered down here. He concentrated, pushing out with the Force at the cramped surroundings of the ladder well. Not using his power seemed rather pointless now. He felt his feet leave the floor, although the ooze clung until the last possible moment, and only released his feet with a sickening squelch. Cobwebs brushed his face and clung to his once immaculate robes as he rose up the shaft as though he was standing in an elevator. The indignity of the situation only fuelled his anger, and he rose faster, until at last he reached the access hatch at the top. This, too, went the way of its mate at the bottom.

Choking on the dust his perhaps injudicious use of the Dark Side had raised, Lord Sidious stepped out into a dim and dusty hallway. The floor was littered with the detritus of years of decay, and signs that the building was not as empty as those in charge of its destruction had thought. Old protein packets and piles of blankets in doorways showed that the destitute of Coruscant viewed this place as home. Mentally promising to have the block demolished once he had regained his former position, Darth Sidious fastidiously picked his way through the rubbish and found the emergency stairs.

Anakin Skywalker followed his former Master into the dark overflow pipe, ignoring the stench and the slime that clung to his boots. Obi-Wan stood beside the Sith Master's speeder, playing his handlight over the crumpled bonnet of the car.

"He must be somewhere in the building," Anakin theorised after inspecting the empty interior.

Obi-Wan nodded in agreement, then froze. They both felt it - a swirl of anger and bitter frustration somewhere in the apartment block above. The Jedi Master vaulted the speeder with ease and began to run, shining his torch ahead into the tunnel. Anakin lit his own small lamp and followed, slithering through the noxious muck.

"Palpatine's not going to be enjoying this," Obi-Wan observed as they slid to a halt at the wrecked maintenance hatch.

"Who is?" Anakin shot back, stepping into the ladder shaft. "But you're right. I imagine he's not very happy."

"And therefore more dangerous," Obi-Wan reminded his former student. "Anakin, when we catch him... be careful."

Anakin stiffened and glared up the cobwebbed shaft. "I am the Chosen One, Obi-Wan," he said softly. "Perhaps it's time you and the Council let me be what I was designed to be."

"I meant no insult. But I do not want to lose you... brother." Obi-Wan shook his head. "Palpatine is fixated on you, and that troubles me."

The younger Jedi smiled reassuringly. "I am resolved on this matter, Master. But we had better get up there before he does something really stupid..." With that, he began to climb the elderly ladder.

Obi-Wan looked after his friend for a long moment. Resolve was all very well, but he had seen the expression on Anakin's face when he had though the former Chancellor's life was threatened. What hold did that old monster have over the Chosen One? Dust and dirt rained down upon him in the wake of Anakin's climb, and he banished that dark line of thought for the moment. They had a job to do. Setting his foot on the bottom rung, he followed the hope of the Jedi up the dark and cramped shaft.

It had taken some effort on his part, but the Sith Master had finally located the tiny apartment he sought. Feeling rather pleased with himself, Darth Sidious stepped into the grey and dusty living area and headed straight for the cramped space that was, supposedly, a bedroom. This apartment was really rather special. He had paid well for it, and it had proven to be invaluable. Apart from the small items he had concealed within a secret panel in the bedroom wall, the apartment also contained a small, hidden garage. This was, in fact, the apartment next door with its walls knocked through and a holographic advertisement playing across the exit. The small stipend he paid out yearly to keep some soft drinks company happy had turned out to be money well spent. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he collected the credit chips and keycard to the speeder that awaited him next door. He turned then to leave the room, and the smile faded as he beheld himself in the cracked mirror on the wardrobe door. The sight was truly frightful. Normally impeccably dressed and groomed, he was currently covered from head to foot in dust, while cobwebs clung to his robes and silver hair. Slime coated the lower half of his clothing, and some of it appeared to be crusty. Sidious shuddered, and futilely attempted to brush some of the clinging, gossamer strands from his hair and arms. The cloud of dust this activity raised was impressive, and he sneezed. Giving up, the Sith Lord scowled at the reflection in the mirror, about turned and marched, seething, to the tiny living room. A savage kick to the bottom part of the far wall raised another cloud of dust, and the wall slid aside to reveal a small speeder, partly covered in a tarpaulin. Sidious yanked this off, and opened the driver's door.

He had a nasty moment when it seemed that the engine might not start, but fortunately it coughed to life after a long few seconds. Without another thought other than leaving this hellish part of the city behind, the Sith Master guided the small, green vehicle out through the garish soft drinks advertisement that concealed the garage and into the steady stream of equally unremarkable and battered speeders that passed in the narrow street outside.

Obi-Wan entered the small apartment cautiously, wary of booby traps. He could not sense the Sith Lord's presence, but he was aware that this meant little. Sidious had stood in a room full of Jedi Masters more than once, and not been detected. Footprints in the dust showed that the man had visited the bedroom, and the open wall and garage beyond indicated that he had probably left in a speeder. The Jedi Master strode into the space formerly occupied by Sidious's speeder and scowled. He nudged the tarpaulin with his foot, and turned to re-enter the main apartment. He found his way blocked by Anakin, who looked grim.

"Bedroom's empty, so's the kitchen and the fresher," he reported. "But I did find this in a hiding place." He held up what looked like a small, silver cylinder.

Obi-Wan took it and frowned. "It looks like an ident chip," he said, turning it over in his hands. "But an old one. The ones we use now are much smaller."

"Yup." Anakin craned his neck to see past his friend and into the garage. "Looks like he's been keeping this place up for a while."

The Jedi Master sighed and stroked his beard. "Well, he's gone, and in a new vehicle. We won't find him down here."

A flicker of worry crossed Anakin's face, and his frown echoed his former Master's. "Do you think he'll leave the planet?"

"I don't know, Anakin. You are closer to him than I. What do you think he will do?"

Anakin studied the floor thoughtfully for a moment, then looked up and met Obi-Wan's eyes. "Go away, regroup, formulate a new plan and return. Use this opportunity to figure out what went wrong, and deal with it." He smiled tightly. "We'll see him again."

Obi-Wan nodded. "I think you're right. I wish with all my heart that you are not, but wishing will not make it so. However, he'll be hard pressed to out manoeuvre us from his current position."

The younger Jedi shrugged. "Whatever happens, the will of the Force be done, Master."

They both fell silent as they contemplated the vastness and mystery inherent in that statement. The will of the Force was not one easily determined, and even harder to understand.