“Understand exactly where your concern lies, I do not. Yoda’s green eyes had gone softly sympathetic. “Named must
your fear be, before banish it you can. Do you fear that perform his task, he cannot?”
“Oh, no. That’s not it at all. I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything. Except betray a friend. What we have done to him today ...”
“But that is what Jedi are,” Mace Windu said. “That is what we have pledged ourselves to: selfless service—”
Obi-Wan turned to stare once more toward the assault ship that would carry Yoda and the clone battalions to Kashyyyk, but he could see only Anakin’s face.
If he asked me to spy on you, do you think I would do it?
“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s why I don’t think he will ever trust us again.”
He found his eyes turning unaccountably hot, and his vision swam with unshed tears.
“And I’m not entirely sure he should.”
=12=
NOT FROM A JEDI
The sunset over Galactic City was stunning tonight: enough particulates from the fires remained in the capital planet’s atmosphere to splinter the light of its distant blue-white sun into a prismatic smear across multilayered clouds.
Anakin barely noticed.
On the broad curving veranda that doubled as the landing deck for Padme’s apartment, he watched from the shadows as Padme stepped out of her speeder and graciously accepted Captain Typho’s good night. As Typho flew the vehicle off toward the immense residential tower’s speeder park, she dismissed her two handmaidens and sent C-3PO on some busywork errand, then turned to lean on the veranda’s balcony right where Anakin had leaned last night.
She gazed out on the sunset, but he gazed only at her.
This was all he needed. To be here, to be with her. To watch the sunset bring a blush to her ivory skin.
If not for his dreams, he’d withdraw from the Order today. Now. The Lost Twenty would be the Lost Twenty-One. Let the scandal come; it wouldn’t destroy their lives. Not their real lives.
It would destroy only the lives they’d had before each other: hose separate years that now meant nothing at all.
He said softly, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She jumped as if he’d pricked her with a needle. “Anakin!”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled fondly as he moved out from the shadows. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She held one hand pressed to her chest as though to keep her heart from leaping out. “No—no, it’s all right. I just—Anakin, you shouldn’t be out here. It’s still daylight—”
“I couldn’t wait, Padme. I had to see you.” He took her in his arms. “Tonight is forever from now—how am I supposed to live that long without you?”
Her hand went from her chest to his. “But we’re in full view of a million people, and you’re a very famous man. Let’s go inside.”
He drew her back from the edge of the veranda, but made no
move to enter the apartment. “How are you feeling?”
Her smile was radiant as Tatooine’s primary as she took his flesh hand and pressed it to the soft fullness of her belly. “He
keeps kicking.”
“He?” Anakin asked mildly. “I thought you’d ordered your medical droid not to spoil the surprise.”
“Oh, I didn’t get this from the Emdee. It’s my...” Her smile went softly sly. “... motherly intuition.”
He felt a sudden pulse against his palm and laughed. “Motherly intuition, huh? With a kick that hard? Definitely a girl.”
She laid her head against his chest. “Anakin, let’s go inside.”
He nuzzled her gleaming coils of hair. “I can’t stay. I’m on my way to meet with the Chancellor.”
“Yes, I heard about your appointment to the Council. Anakin, I’m so proud of you.”
He lifted his head, an instant scowl gathering on his forehead. Why did she have to bring that up?
“There’s nothing to be proud of,” he said. “This is just political maneuvering between the Council and the Chancellor I got caught in the middle, that’s all.”
“But to be on the Council, at your age—”
“They put me on the Council because they had to. Because he told them to, once the Senate gave him control of the Jedi “ His voice lowered toward a growl. “And because they think they can use me against him.”
Padme’s eyes went oddly remote, and thoughtful. “Against him,” she echoed. “The Jedi don’t trust him?”
“That doesn’t mean much. They don’t trust me, either.” Anakin’s mouth compressed to a thin bitter line. “They’ll give me a chair in the Council Chamber, but that’s as far as it will go. They won’t accept me as a Master.”
Her gaze returned from that thoughtful distance, and she smiled up at him. “Patience, my love. In time, they will recognize your ability.”
“They already recognize my abilities. They fear my abilities,” he said bitterly. “But this isn’t even about that. Like I said: it’s a political game.”
“Anakin—”
“I don’t know what’s happening to the Order, but whatever it is, I don’t like it.” He shook his head. “This war is destroying everything the Republic is supposed to stand for. I mean, what are we fighting for, anyway? What about all this is worth saving?”
Padme nodded sadly, disengaging from Anakin’s arms and drifting away. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re on the wrong side.”
“The wrong side?”
You think everything I’ve accomplished has been for nothing—?
He frowned at her. “You can’t mean that.”
She turned from him, speaking to the vast airway beyond the veranda’s edge. “What if the democracy we’re fighting for no
longer exists? What if the Republic itself has become the very evil we’ve been fighting to destroy?”
“Oh this again.” Anakin irritably waved off her words. “I’ve been hearing that garbage ever since Geonosis. I never thought
I’d hear it from you.”
“A few seconds ago you were saying almost the same thing!”
“Where would the Republic be without Palpatine?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m not sure it would be
worse than where we are.”
All the danger, all the suffering, all the killing, all my friends
who gave their lives—? All for nothing—? He bit down on his temper. “Everybody complains about Palpatine having too much power, but nobody offers a better alternative. Who should be running the war? The Senate? You’re in he Senate, you know those people—how many of them do you trust?”
“All I know is that things are going wrong here. Our government is headed in exactly the wrong direction. You know it, too—you just said so!”
“I didn’t mean that. I just—I’m tired of this, that’s all. This political garbage. Sometimes I’d rather just be back out on the front lines. At least out there, I know who the bad guys are.”
“I’m becoming afraid,” she replied in a bitter undertone, “that I might know who the bad guys are here, too.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re starting to sound like a Separatist.”
“Anakin, the whole galaxy knows now that Count Dooku is dead. This is the time we should be pursing a diplomatic resolution to the war—but instead the fighting is intensifying! Palpatine’s your friend, he might listen to you. When you see him tonight, ask him, in the name of simple decency, to offer a ceasefire—”
His face went hard. “Is that an order?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Do I get any say in this?” He stalked toward her. “Does my opinion matter? What if I don’t agree with you? What if I think Palpatine’s way is the right way?”
“Anakin, hundreds of thousands of beings are dying every day!”
“It’s a war, Padme. We didn’t ask for it, remember? You were there—maybe we should have ‘
pursued a diplomatic resolution’ in that beast arena!”
“I was—” She shrank away from what she saw on his face blinking harder, brows drawn together. “I was only asking ...”
“Everyone is only asking. Everyone wants something from me. And I’m the bad guy if they don’t get it!” He spun away from her, cloak whirling, and found himself at the veranda’s edge, leaning on the rail. The durasteel piping groaned in his mechanical grip.
“I’m sick of this,” he muttered. “I’m sick of all of it.”
He didn’t hear her come to him; the rush of aircars through the lanes below the veranda drowned her footsteps. He didn’t see the hurt on her face, or the hint of tears in her eyes, but he could feel them, in the tentative softness of her touch when she stroked his arm, and he could hear them in her hesitant voice. “Anakin, what is it? What is it really?”
He shook his head. He couldn’t look at her.
“Nothing that’s your fault,” he said. “Nothing you can help.”
“Don’t shut me out, Anakin. Let me try.”
“You can’t help me.” He stared down through dozens of crisscross lanes of traffic, down toward the invisible bedrock of the planet. “I’m trying to help you.”
He’d seen something in her eyes, when he’d mentioned the Council and Palpatine.
He’d seen it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Her hand went still, and she did not answer.
“I can feel it, Padme. I sense you’re keeping a secret.”
“Oh?” she said softly. Lightly. “That’s funny, I was thinking the same about you.”
He just kept staring down over the rail into the invisible distance below. She moved close to him, moved against him, her arm sliding around his shoulders, her cheek leaning lightly on his arm. “Why does it have to be like this? Why does there have to even be such a thing as war? Can’t we just... go back? Even just to pretend. Let’s pretend we’re back at the lake on Naboo, just the two of us. When there was no war, no politics. No plotting. Just us. You and me, and love. That’s all we need. You and me,
and love.”
Right now Anakin couldn’t remember what that had been like.
“I have to go,” he said. “The Chancellor is waiting.”
Two masked, robed, silent Red Guards flanked the door to the Chancellor’s private box at the Galaxies Opera. Anakin didn’t need to speak; as he approached, one of them said, “You are expected,” and opened the door.
The small round box had only a handful of seats, overlooking the spread of overdressed beings who filled every seat in the orchestra; on this opening night, it seemed everyone had forgotten there was a war on. Anakin barely gave a glance toward the immense sphere of shimmering water that rippled gently in the stage’s artificial zero-g; he had no interest in ballet, Mon Calamari or otherwise.
In the dim semi-gloom, Palpatine sat with the speaker of the Senate, Mas Amedda, and his administrative aide, Sly Moore. Anakin stopped at the back of the box.
If I were the spy the Council wants me to be, I suppose I should be creeping up behind them so that I can listen in.
A spasm of distaste passed over his face; he took care to win it off before he spoke. “Chancellor. Sorry I’m late.”
Palpatine turned toward him, and his face lit up. “Yes, Anakin! Don’t worry. Come in, my boy, come in. Thank you for your report on the Council meeting this afternoon—it made most interesting reading. And now I have good news for you—
Clone Intelligence has located General Grievous!”
“That’s tremendous!” Anakin shook his head, wondering if Obi-Wan would be embarrassed to have been scooped by the clones. “He won’t escape us again.”
“I’m going to—Moore, take a note—I will direct the Council to give you this assignment, Anakin. Your gifts are wasted on Coruscant—you should be out in the field. You can attend Council meetings by holoconference.”
Anakin frowned. “Thank you, sir, but the Council coordinates Jedi assignments.”
“Of course, of course. Mustn’t step on any Jedi toes, must we? They are so jealous of their political prerogatives. Still, I shall wonder at their collective wisdom if they choose someone else.”
“As I said in my report, they’ve already assigned Obi-Wan to find Grievous.” Because they want to keep me here, where I am supposed to spy on you.
“To find him, yes. But you are the best man to apprehend him—though of course the Jedi Council cannot always be trusted to do the right thing.”
“They try. I—believe they try, sir.”
“Do you still? Sit down.” Palpatine looked at the other two beings in the box. “Leave us.”
They rose and withdrew. Anakin took Mas Amedda’s seat.
Palpatine gazed distractedly down at the graceful undulations of the Mon Calamari principal soloist for a long moment, frowning as though there was so much he wanted to say, he was unsure where to begin. Finally he sighed heavily and leaned close to Anakin.
“Anakin I think you know by now that I cannot rely upon the Jedi Council. That is why I put you on it. If they have not yet tried to use you in their plot, they soon will.” Anakin kept his face carefully blank. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You must sense what I have come to suspect,” Palpatine said grimly. “The Jedi Council is after more than independence from Senate oversight; I believe they intend to control the Republic itself.”
“Chancellor—”
“I believe they are planning treason. They hope to overthrow my government, and replace me with someone weak enough that Jedi mind tricks can control his every word.” “I can’t believe the Council—”
“Anakin, search your feelings. You do know, don’t you?” Anakin looked away. “I know they don’t trust you...” “Or the Senate. Or the Republic. Or democracy itself, for that matter. The Jedi Council is not elected. It selects its own members according to its own rules—a less generous man than I might say whim—and gives them authority backed by power. They rule the Jedi as they hope to rule the Republic: by fiat.”
“I admit ...” Anakin looked down at his hands. “... my faith in them has been... shaken.”
“How? Have they approached you already? Have they ordered you to do something dishonest?” Palpatine’s frown cleared into a gently wise smile that was oddly reminiscent of Yoda’s. “They want you to spy on me, don’t they?”
“It’s all right, Anakin. I have nothing to hide.”
“I—don’t know what to say ...”
“Do you remember,” Palpatine said, drawing away from Anakin so that he could lean back comfortably in his seat, “how as a young boy, when you first came to this planet, I tried to teach you the ins and outs of politics?”
Anakin smiled faintly. “I remember that I didn’t much car for the lessons.”
“For any lessons, as I recall. But it’s a pity; you should have paid more attention. To understand politics is to understand the fundamental nature of thinking beings. Right now, you should remember one of my first teachings: all those who gain power are afraid to lose it.”
“The Jedi use their power for good,” Anakin said, a little too firmly.
“Good is a point of view, Anakin. And the Jedi concept of good is not the only valid one. Take your Dark Lords of the Sith, for example. From my reading, I have gathered that the Sith believed in justice and security every bit as much as the Jedi—”
“Jedi believe in justice and peace.”
“In these troubled times, is there a difference?” Palpatine asked mildly. “The Jedi have not done a stellar job of bringing peace to the galaxy, you must agree. Who’s to say the Sith might not have done better?”
“This is another of those arguments you probably shouldn’t bring up in front of the Council, if you know what I mean,” Anakin replied with a disbelieving smile.
“Oh, yes. Because the Sith would be a threat to the Jedi Order’s power. Lesson one.”
&n
bsp; Anakin shook his head. “Because the Sith are evil.”
“From a Jedi’s point of view,” Palpatine allowed. “Evil is a label we all put on those who threaten us, isn’t it? Yet the Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power.”
“The Jedi’s quest is for greater understanding,” Anakin countered. “For greater knowledge of the Force—”
“Which brings with it greater power, does it not?”
“Well... yes.” Anakin had to laugh. “I should know better than to argue with a politician.”
“We’re not arguing, Anakin. We’re just talking.” Palpatine shifted his weight, settling in comfortably. “Perhaps the real difference between the Jedi and the Sith lies only in their orientation; a Jedigains power through understanding, and a Sith gains understanding through power. This is the true reason the Sith have always been more powerful than the Jedi. The Jedi fear the dark side so much they cut themselves off from the most important aspect of life: passion. Of any kind. They don’t even allow
themselves to love.”
Except for me, Anakin thought. But then, I’ve never been exactly the perfect Jedi.
“The Sith do not fear the dark side. The Sith have no fear. They embrace the whole spectrum of experience, from the heights of transcendent joy to the depths of hatred and despair. Beings have these emotions for a reason, Anakin. That is why the Sith are more powerful: they are not afraid to feel.”
“The Sith rely on passion for strength,” Anakin said, “but when that passion runs dry, what’s left?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a great deal. Perhaps it never runs dry at all. Who can say?”
“They think inward, only about themselves.” “And the Jedi don’t?”
“The Jedi are selfless—we erase the self, to join with the flow of the Force. We care only about others...”
Palpatine again gave him that smile of gentle wisdom. “Or so you’ve been trained to believe. I hear the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in your answers, Anakin. What do you really think?”
Anakin suddenly found the ballet a great deal more interesting than Palpatine’s face. “I ... don’t know anymore.”
Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Page 20