Fic: Momentum of Fate (Part 4)
Title: Momentum of Fate
Pairings: Just Anakin/Padmé at the moment. Though future chapters are showing a definite inclination towards Aayla Secura/Barriss Offee
Rating: PG-13
Place in Timeline: Begins mid-ROTS, and should progress right through to ROTJ
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: AU. A minor difference changes the course of the future - Anakin has a different vision his first night back in Coruscant. But can he be saved, or will it merely change the nature of his fall into darkness?
Previously...
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Warning: These next two chapters, much like RotS canon, may cause the uncontrollable urge to slap Anakin upside the head
Chapter 7 - Yes, Master
Anakin awoke, and was aware of pain.
That couldn’t be good. He carefully stayed still, his neck beginning to ache as his head hung limp. His breathing remained deep and even. There was a searing pain in his left arm and lower back where he’d been hit by blaster bolts, and he didn’t even want to think about the line of agony painted in fire across the right side of his face. His hands were bound tightly behind his back, forcing his shoulders round at an uncomfortable angle, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It felt like he was tied to a chair. He heard breathing from his left; Clones, two of them by the sound of it. Probably flanking a door
The last thing he remembered was running from a squad of Clones and being shot in the back. Any amount of time could have passed since then, anything could have happened…which begged the question of why he was still alive. There was the faint sound of a door sliding open followed by soft footsteps muffled by carpet. Anakin managed not to tense and give himself away, but it didn’t seem to help. “Oh, stop playing dead, boy, you’re not fooling anyone,” a familiar voice said impatiently. Anakin’s head snapped up and he found himself staring at Palpatine. Or rather, Darth Sidious. There was something a little odd about his vision, and Anakin realised he couldn’t open his right eye. Trying resulted in a wave of pain that threatened to make him black out. With his good eye he looked calmly up at the Sith Lord standing over him.
“Chancellor Palpatine,” he said evenly; “You’re looking well.”
“Oh it’s Emperor Palpatine now,” the man replied with a smirk. Anakin didn’t miss the flicker in his eyes; Sidious hadn’t expected him to take this so calmly.
“Surely you mean Emperor Sidious?” Anakin played his trump card and was rewarded with a moment of shocked fury.
“Clever boy,” Sidious said softly when he had regained his self-control; “I didn’t expect you to work it out so quickly. But then again, you haven’t been reacting at all according to my plans lately.”
“Yeah, I often have that effect on people,” Anakin replied flippantly; “Is there a reason for me being here, or did you just want to scold me for messing up your plans?”
Palpatine regarded him in silence for a moment, then nodded to one of the Clone Troopers. The white-armoured Clone stepped forward and cracked Anakin across the side of the head with his blaster and Anakin saw stars, the world swimming before his eye. A blinding headache was building at the base of his skull, one potentially severe enough to prevent him from focusing enough to use the Force properly.
“Now Anakin,” Sidious said in a paternal tone, leaning closer; “I’m sure you appreciate how easy it would be for us to kill you. But there is the better way. Ever since you killed Dooku, I’ve been looking for a new apprentice. You would be more than satisfactory.”
“I’d sooner die,” Anakin spat. Sidious looked blank, and Anakin realized he was so rattled he’d slipped into Huttese. He repeated the sentence in Basic. Sidious gave a sly smile.
“I thought you might say that,” he said smugly; “But there are other lives you value rather more highly than your own…” He waved a lazy hand and a surveillance hologram flickered into life. It was a bare prison cell, and sitting in the middle of it was Padmé, pale with fear and trembling with fury. Anakin drew in a sharp breath before he could stop himself. As he watched she drew her knees up and hugged herself, rocking gently back and forth.
Sidious walked around the chair, taking a vicious satisfaction in the pained look on Anakin’s face, and leant down from behind to speak softly into the young Jedi’s ear; “You can refuse to enter my service if you wish. But if you do, it will cost you her life. She will die slowly, in terrible pain, taking your unborn child with her. You will be made to watch her as she is tortured, able to do nothing, and just before she dies I will tell her that you could have saved her but chose not to.”
“You bastard,” Anakin whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight before him.
“Now I’m not an unreasonable man,” Sidious continued as if he hadn’t heard; “You were always meant for the Dark Side, Anakin. Turn and she will be spared. You will have everything you desire. You will be able to openly be with your wife and child, as you always should have been. Simply bow to me, and every other sentient being in the galaxy will bow to you…”
At that moment, Anakin couldn’t have framed a coherent answer even if he’d had one to give. His mind was a scrambled, dizzying mess as a minor civil war broke out between his principles and his instincts.
The problem was that no matter how hard he tried to justify either one of the paths open to him, he ran up against one of two immutable, irreconcilable facts. The first instinctive line of thought went something like; if I join him, I can save Padmé, she’ll be okay… And no matter how ingenious the sophistry he came up with to justify this course of action, it invariably encountered the steel door of; but he’s a Sith.
However, when he tried approaching it the other way - he’s evil, he opposes everything the Jedi order stands for, he’s been manipulating the Senate for years - this common sense made little headway against the deep-seated emotional reaction provoked by the simple truth; but I have to save Padmé. His thoughts were running in circles, and frankly it was starting to make him feel dizzy. But in the end, it was a simple choice. No matter what the cost, no matter what humiliation and disgust the very thought of serving the Sith lord provoked, he couldn’t let Padmé die.
Anakin bowed his head, defeated. The words choked him, but he forced them out anyway for lack of any other option.
“Yes, Master.”
Chapter 8 - Reflections
Winter was starting to make its presence felt in one of the shabbier districts of Coruscant, an icy wind sweeping through the narrow streets as rain poured from the dismal grey sky. Obi-Wan wrapped his tattered fourth-hand jacket more tightly around himself and burrowed his hands deeper into his pockets. Sith, but it was freezing. He’d never realized before just how warm Jedi robes were in comparison to normal clothing.
Resolving to acquire a pair of gloves at the earliest possible opportunity, he tugged his scarf up higher to hide most of his face and scanned the street for a shop to lurk in.
Three weeks had passed since the attack on the Temple and the horrors of the Jedi Purges, and the newly formed Empire was in turmoil. With the sudden and mysterious deaths of their leaders on a fiery moon named Mustafar, the Separatist army was in disarray. The sudden collapse of their military power had resulted in minor civil wars breaking out all over the galaxy. The imperial forces had taken swift and merciless advantage of this: on all the central systems, the Empire’s power was absolute. The outer rim was still more or less free, and would always be more so than the core, but the Empire’s arm was lengthening all the time. Soon nowhere would be safe.
Rumours of all sorts of atrocities were circulating. Clone Troopers patrolled the streets of Coruscant at all times, and those who dared oppose them were mercilessly crushed. But most worryingly of all, the self-proclaimed emperor had an apprentice, a frighteningly powerful young Sith who went by the name of Darth Vader. He had appeared seemingly from nowhere and been put to work hunting down the surviving Jedi. Mere days ago, Ki-Adi-Mundi had been brought back to Coruscant and publicly executed. Obi-Wan had watched the vidcast on the huge public screens with mesmerized horror, unable to look away. That was the first time he’d seen Vader: a menacing figure clad in black and red with his face concealed, only the gleam of a sharp yellow eye visible in the darkness of his hood. And if there was anything familiar in the way he held himself, Obi-Wan’s subconscious determinedly ignored it.
There wasn’t much point in staying on Coruscant any more; better to disappear to one of the backwater worlds on the Outer Rim. He would wait another few weeks to see if Anakin made the rendevous and then leave the planet…with or without Anakin, as circumstances dictated. In the meantime, he would lie low in the planet’s poorer areas.
Every time he approached a door, he got a filthy glare from the shopkeeper and felt compelled to back away again. In the end he set his back against a grimy grey alley wall next to a young male Twi’lek smoking a death-stick, and closed his eyes briefly, fighting an insidious feeling of bone-deep weariness. For the past fifteen years the Republic had staggered from one crisis to the next, barely holding together. And now it had finally fallen. After thousands of years, the mighty Galactic Republic was no more. Still it surprised him how little life had changed for the dregs of society. Down here, in the very lowest levels of Coruscant, life went on much as it always had. The government had always ignored the lowest of the low, and that was unlikely to change now they had an Emperor rather than a Chancellor.
The rain was falling heavily now and the meager protection afforded by the walls of the alley did little to keep the rain off him. He slipped out of the shadows, darting from doorway to doorway in an attempt to reach his destination as dry as possible. It took twice as long this way, but at least he wasn’t quite soaked to the skin when he stepped into the reception of a shabby boarding house. A subtle wave of a hand convinced the receptionist that he had not only paid but also tipped generously, and he was handed the keys to a room.
In a tiny room in a disreputable boarding house in the poorest and most miserable part of Coruscant, Obi-Wan Kenobi stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror over the filthy sink and wondered what the hell had happened to his life. The Order which he had devoted his life to was no more. The Republic he had sworn to defend had fallen.
I just hope Anakin’s alright, he thought; if he isn’t, I’ll have lost everything…
XxXxXxX
Darth Sidious was in an excellent mood. In fact his mood had been uncharacteristically good all week, since the satisfyingly painful execution of that captured Jedi council-member. Despite some unforeseen obstacles, in the end his plans had come off beautifully.
He admitted that he hadn’t envisaged things working out quite as they had. But the current circumstances would serve as well as any others. The Amidala female would have her child soon, and given the father it was likely to be very strong in the Force. That was an unexpected benefit; one which would not have been possible if everything had worked out as planned. And once the child was born he could dispose of the infuriating woman without losing his hold on his new apprentice: a blood child would be an even more effective hostage than a wife.
He had failed to turn Skywalker against the Jedi, which was somewhat irksome, but it hardly mattered in the long run. Whether he obeyed orders out of vengeance or fear for his family, the result was the same. And hatred was hatred no matter who the target. Even now he could feel the boy’s anger and resentment building. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred; wherever one started on the path, the destination was the same.
As it happened, he wasn’t even having to manipulate the young couple any more. Amidala, predictably naïve and foolish as she was, was furious at her husband for aiding the Empire and stubbornly refused to understand his reasons for doing so. Naturally this left him hurt and bewildered, and angry at her for not listening. Everything was going splendidly.
Burning yellow eyes gleamed back at him from polished metal fixtures, and he grinned a very unpleasant grin. The word ‘mercy’ did not appear in his personal lexicon, and the next while promised to be full of opportunities not to grant it.
Skywalker is mine: the Dark Side has claimed him. There can be no turning back, not now. It is already too late.
XxXxXxX
Anakin looked at his reflection in the mirror, and it took a great deal of self-control not to smash it.
Start with the clothes. Painfully similar to Jedi clothing, but entirely in black with a red sash around the waist. Black boots. Red lightsaber. Black cloak. Black, red, black, red…darkness and blood. A deep, vicious scar ran clean across one side of his face: the medic had informed him in a bored, distant tone that he’d be blind in his right eye for the rest of his life. Yes, they had cybernetic implants for that. No, he wasn’t getting one. Emperor’s orders.
It almost disturbed him that his lightsaber felt every bit as easy and natural in his hand as the old blue one had. He wondered what had become of his old lightsaber. He didn’t allow himself to wonder what Obi-Wan would have made of him losing his weapon again. Thinking of Obi-Wan was…painful. He prayed his old master had made it safely out of the Temple. Off of Coruscant. The hell out of this mess.
He kept his face concealed at all times; all anyone else saw was a thin strip of scarred flesh, and a single burning yellow eye glaring out from the shadows of his cowl. It wasn’t to protect his identity, not really. It was for the benefit of the misguided souls who still thought Anakin Skywalker a hero. He knew better.
Men like Darth Vader live through times like these. Anakin Skywalker is dead.
Pairings: Just Anakin/Padmé at the moment. Though future chapters are showing a definite inclination towards Aayla Secura/Barriss Offee
Rating: PG-13
Place in Timeline: Begins mid-ROTS, and should progress right through to ROTJ
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: AU. A minor difference changes the course of the future - Anakin has a different vision his first night back in Coruscant. But can he be saved, or will it merely change the nature of his fall into darkness?
Previously...
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Warning: These next two chapters, much like RotS canon, may cause the uncontrollable urge to slap Anakin upside the head
Chapter 7 - Yes, Master
Anakin awoke, and was aware of pain.
That couldn’t be good. He carefully stayed still, his neck beginning to ache as his head hung limp. His breathing remained deep and even. There was a searing pain in his left arm and lower back where he’d been hit by blaster bolts, and he didn’t even want to think about the line of agony painted in fire across the right side of his face. His hands were bound tightly behind his back, forcing his shoulders round at an uncomfortable angle, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It felt like he was tied to a chair. He heard breathing from his left; Clones, two of them by the sound of it. Probably flanking a door
The last thing he remembered was running from a squad of Clones and being shot in the back. Any amount of time could have passed since then, anything could have happened…which begged the question of why he was still alive. There was the faint sound of a door sliding open followed by soft footsteps muffled by carpet. Anakin managed not to tense and give himself away, but it didn’t seem to help. “Oh, stop playing dead, boy, you’re not fooling anyone,” a familiar voice said impatiently. Anakin’s head snapped up and he found himself staring at Palpatine. Or rather, Darth Sidious. There was something a little odd about his vision, and Anakin realised he couldn’t open his right eye. Trying resulted in a wave of pain that threatened to make him black out. With his good eye he looked calmly up at the Sith Lord standing over him.
“Chancellor Palpatine,” he said evenly; “You’re looking well.”
“Oh it’s Emperor Palpatine now,” the man replied with a smirk. Anakin didn’t miss the flicker in his eyes; Sidious hadn’t expected him to take this so calmly.
“Surely you mean Emperor Sidious?” Anakin played his trump card and was rewarded with a moment of shocked fury.
“Clever boy,” Sidious said softly when he had regained his self-control; “I didn’t expect you to work it out so quickly. But then again, you haven’t been reacting at all according to my plans lately.”
“Yeah, I often have that effect on people,” Anakin replied flippantly; “Is there a reason for me being here, or did you just want to scold me for messing up your plans?”
Palpatine regarded him in silence for a moment, then nodded to one of the Clone Troopers. The white-armoured Clone stepped forward and cracked Anakin across the side of the head with his blaster and Anakin saw stars, the world swimming before his eye. A blinding headache was building at the base of his skull, one potentially severe enough to prevent him from focusing enough to use the Force properly.
“Now Anakin,” Sidious said in a paternal tone, leaning closer; “I’m sure you appreciate how easy it would be for us to kill you. But there is the better way. Ever since you killed Dooku, I’ve been looking for a new apprentice. You would be more than satisfactory.”
“I’d sooner die,” Anakin spat. Sidious looked blank, and Anakin realized he was so rattled he’d slipped into Huttese. He repeated the sentence in Basic. Sidious gave a sly smile.
“I thought you might say that,” he said smugly; “But there are other lives you value rather more highly than your own…” He waved a lazy hand and a surveillance hologram flickered into life. It was a bare prison cell, and sitting in the middle of it was Padmé, pale with fear and trembling with fury. Anakin drew in a sharp breath before he could stop himself. As he watched she drew her knees up and hugged herself, rocking gently back and forth.
Sidious walked around the chair, taking a vicious satisfaction in the pained look on Anakin’s face, and leant down from behind to speak softly into the young Jedi’s ear; “You can refuse to enter my service if you wish. But if you do, it will cost you her life. She will die slowly, in terrible pain, taking your unborn child with her. You will be made to watch her as she is tortured, able to do nothing, and just before she dies I will tell her that you could have saved her but chose not to.”
“You bastard,” Anakin whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight before him.
“Now I’m not an unreasonable man,” Sidious continued as if he hadn’t heard; “You were always meant for the Dark Side, Anakin. Turn and she will be spared. You will have everything you desire. You will be able to openly be with your wife and child, as you always should have been. Simply bow to me, and every other sentient being in the galaxy will bow to you…”
At that moment, Anakin couldn’t have framed a coherent answer even if he’d had one to give. His mind was a scrambled, dizzying mess as a minor civil war broke out between his principles and his instincts.
The problem was that no matter how hard he tried to justify either one of the paths open to him, he ran up against one of two immutable, irreconcilable facts. The first instinctive line of thought went something like; if I join him, I can save Padmé, she’ll be okay… And no matter how ingenious the sophistry he came up with to justify this course of action, it invariably encountered the steel door of; but he’s a Sith.
However, when he tried approaching it the other way - he’s evil, he opposes everything the Jedi order stands for, he’s been manipulating the Senate for years - this common sense made little headway against the deep-seated emotional reaction provoked by the simple truth; but I have to save Padmé. His thoughts were running in circles, and frankly it was starting to make him feel dizzy. But in the end, it was a simple choice. No matter what the cost, no matter what humiliation and disgust the very thought of serving the Sith lord provoked, he couldn’t let Padmé die.
Anakin bowed his head, defeated. The words choked him, but he forced them out anyway for lack of any other option.
“Yes, Master.”
Chapter 8 - Reflections
Winter was starting to make its presence felt in one of the shabbier districts of Coruscant, an icy wind sweeping through the narrow streets as rain poured from the dismal grey sky. Obi-Wan wrapped his tattered fourth-hand jacket more tightly around himself and burrowed his hands deeper into his pockets. Sith, but it was freezing. He’d never realized before just how warm Jedi robes were in comparison to normal clothing.
Resolving to acquire a pair of gloves at the earliest possible opportunity, he tugged his scarf up higher to hide most of his face and scanned the street for a shop to lurk in.
Three weeks had passed since the attack on the Temple and the horrors of the Jedi Purges, and the newly formed Empire was in turmoil. With the sudden and mysterious deaths of their leaders on a fiery moon named Mustafar, the Separatist army was in disarray. The sudden collapse of their military power had resulted in minor civil wars breaking out all over the galaxy. The imperial forces had taken swift and merciless advantage of this: on all the central systems, the Empire’s power was absolute. The outer rim was still more or less free, and would always be more so than the core, but the Empire’s arm was lengthening all the time. Soon nowhere would be safe.
Rumours of all sorts of atrocities were circulating. Clone Troopers patrolled the streets of Coruscant at all times, and those who dared oppose them were mercilessly crushed. But most worryingly of all, the self-proclaimed emperor had an apprentice, a frighteningly powerful young Sith who went by the name of Darth Vader. He had appeared seemingly from nowhere and been put to work hunting down the surviving Jedi. Mere days ago, Ki-Adi-Mundi had been brought back to Coruscant and publicly executed. Obi-Wan had watched the vidcast on the huge public screens with mesmerized horror, unable to look away. That was the first time he’d seen Vader: a menacing figure clad in black and red with his face concealed, only the gleam of a sharp yellow eye visible in the darkness of his hood. And if there was anything familiar in the way he held himself, Obi-Wan’s subconscious determinedly ignored it.
There wasn’t much point in staying on Coruscant any more; better to disappear to one of the backwater worlds on the Outer Rim. He would wait another few weeks to see if Anakin made the rendevous and then leave the planet…with or without Anakin, as circumstances dictated. In the meantime, he would lie low in the planet’s poorer areas.
Every time he approached a door, he got a filthy glare from the shopkeeper and felt compelled to back away again. In the end he set his back against a grimy grey alley wall next to a young male Twi’lek smoking a death-stick, and closed his eyes briefly, fighting an insidious feeling of bone-deep weariness. For the past fifteen years the Republic had staggered from one crisis to the next, barely holding together. And now it had finally fallen. After thousands of years, the mighty Galactic Republic was no more. Still it surprised him how little life had changed for the dregs of society. Down here, in the very lowest levels of Coruscant, life went on much as it always had. The government had always ignored the lowest of the low, and that was unlikely to change now they had an Emperor rather than a Chancellor.
The rain was falling heavily now and the meager protection afforded by the walls of the alley did little to keep the rain off him. He slipped out of the shadows, darting from doorway to doorway in an attempt to reach his destination as dry as possible. It took twice as long this way, but at least he wasn’t quite soaked to the skin when he stepped into the reception of a shabby boarding house. A subtle wave of a hand convinced the receptionist that he had not only paid but also tipped generously, and he was handed the keys to a room.
In a tiny room in a disreputable boarding house in the poorest and most miserable part of Coruscant, Obi-Wan Kenobi stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror over the filthy sink and wondered what the hell had happened to his life. The Order which he had devoted his life to was no more. The Republic he had sworn to defend had fallen.
I just hope Anakin’s alright, he thought; if he isn’t, I’ll have lost everything…
XxXxXxX
Darth Sidious was in an excellent mood. In fact his mood had been uncharacteristically good all week, since the satisfyingly painful execution of that captured Jedi council-member. Despite some unforeseen obstacles, in the end his plans had come off beautifully.
He admitted that he hadn’t envisaged things working out quite as they had. But the current circumstances would serve as well as any others. The Amidala female would have her child soon, and given the father it was likely to be very strong in the Force. That was an unexpected benefit; one which would not have been possible if everything had worked out as planned. And once the child was born he could dispose of the infuriating woman without losing his hold on his new apprentice: a blood child would be an even more effective hostage than a wife.
He had failed to turn Skywalker against the Jedi, which was somewhat irksome, but it hardly mattered in the long run. Whether he obeyed orders out of vengeance or fear for his family, the result was the same. And hatred was hatred no matter who the target. Even now he could feel the boy’s anger and resentment building. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred; wherever one started on the path, the destination was the same.
As it happened, he wasn’t even having to manipulate the young couple any more. Amidala, predictably naïve and foolish as she was, was furious at her husband for aiding the Empire and stubbornly refused to understand his reasons for doing so. Naturally this left him hurt and bewildered, and angry at her for not listening. Everything was going splendidly.
Burning yellow eyes gleamed back at him from polished metal fixtures, and he grinned a very unpleasant grin. The word ‘mercy’ did not appear in his personal lexicon, and the next while promised to be full of opportunities not to grant it.
Skywalker is mine: the Dark Side has claimed him. There can be no turning back, not now. It is already too late.
XxXxXxX
Anakin looked at his reflection in the mirror, and it took a great deal of self-control not to smash it.
Start with the clothes. Painfully similar to Jedi clothing, but entirely in black with a red sash around the waist. Black boots. Red lightsaber. Black cloak. Black, red, black, red…darkness and blood. A deep, vicious scar ran clean across one side of his face: the medic had informed him in a bored, distant tone that he’d be blind in his right eye for the rest of his life. Yes, they had cybernetic implants for that. No, he wasn’t getting one. Emperor’s orders.
It almost disturbed him that his lightsaber felt every bit as easy and natural in his hand as the old blue one had. He wondered what had become of his old lightsaber. He didn’t allow himself to wonder what Obi-Wan would have made of him losing his weapon again. Thinking of Obi-Wan was…painful. He prayed his old master had made it safely out of the Temple. Off of Coruscant. The hell out of this mess.
He kept his face concealed at all times; all anyone else saw was a thin strip of scarred flesh, and a single burning yellow eye glaring out from the shadows of his cowl. It wasn’t to protect his identity, not really. It was for the benefit of the misguided souls who still thought Anakin Skywalker a hero. He knew better.
Men like Darth Vader live through times like these. Anakin Skywalker is dead.