Work Text:
REGNAL YEAR 20 AMIDALA
0 BBN
THEED PALACE
Imperial Crown Prince Jinn Amidala, Elector of Naboo and Grand Moff of the Chommel Sector, paced the floor outside his father’s private apartments. For all that his father claimed to welcome him at all times, experience had taught Jinn otherwise; once in his youth, he’d interrupted his father’s deep meditation and thought to glimpse at his Force-signature, and the onslaught of memory put Jinn in medbay for a week. His father apologized profusely, of course, and Jinn eventually forgave him, but by seemingly mutual agreement Jinn did not enter his father’s rooms unless the door was already open. So, he paced. The carpet, Alderaanian and boldly patterned in blues and golds, had a well-worn track from years on-and-off of agitated waiting.
Jinn, at nineteen, was small and fine-boned, with reddish hair like his father’s in the propaganda posters of old. The physical resemblance ended there, as his mother’s genes were much stronger, and he was in possession of the Empress’s small nose and wide eyes, and round cheeks that he hoped would thin more attractively with age. His allotted doubles were all younger than he, since so many of his agemates had shot up past him during puberty. He frankly wished he’d brought one of them with him now, but no, only his father’s silent guards flanked the door, waiting for the signal from within that his father was done meditating.
It came, eventually, mid-pace, and the grand double doors opened of their own accord. Jinn nodded at the guards, barely human in their trailing robes and white masks, then crossed the threshold just as the doors closed behind him.
In comparison to the rest of the palace--in comparison to the hallway, even--Imperial Consort and High Commander Obi-Wan Amidala’s chambers were like entering a different world. No rugs, barely any furniture, and a practical smattering of earth-toned art on the walls that never held Jinn’s eyes for long. He’d seen the old Temple on Coruscant, years ago: only now, as an adult, did he notice the similarities. The wall of windows was unlighted, this time of day, and Naboo’s glorious sunset stretched out over Theed’s cityscape, filling the flat planes of the room with brilliant orange and gold. In near-silhouette against the city, Obi-Wan was still kneeling, but his meditations were done; his eyes were open, and he smiled that famous, enviable smile.
“How was Zygeria?” Obi-Wan asked, as if he knew the answers to everything else.
Jinn tried not to gulp. “Fine, thank you. Uncle Ani sends his regards.”
“Excellent.” Only then did Obi-Wan get to his feet and cross the floor to his son, wrapping him in a brief embrace and projecting warmth through their bond in the Force. Jinn sent a pulse back in kind, but couldn’t help clinging longer, and when Obi-Wan laughed and clapped him on the back it was a clear signal to let go. “Tell me everything.”
“It’s all in the formal report I gave mother,” Jinn said, even though he knew that’s not what his father meant. “If you want to know how Uncle Ani is, you can ask him.”
Obi-Wan’s particular exasperated sigh was also a thing of legend. “Jinn, I already know he’s amassing a personal armada. I just want to know what side it’s on.”
Jinn rolled his eyes. “His, of course. But--you know, father. You know he’d never move against mother.”
Beyond the windows, the sun dipped below the skyline. A shadow crossed Obi-Wan’s face, bringing out the blinding white of the hair at his temples and in his beard. His shields, always high, wavered just once.
“I know,” Obi-Wan whispered. “But he’d move against me.”
* * *
* *
*
It started when the Council stood firm to doctrine. Of course they did: they never took Qui-Gon seriously, even after he was dead.
But Obi-Wan Kenobi kept his oath, and told the Jedi Order exactly where they could stick Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. It was, perhaps, not his finest moment, but then, neither was calling on the darkness to avenge Qui-Gon in the first place, so there was something of a precedent.
And so he, and nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker beside him, knelt before Queen Padmé Amidala of Naboo and begged political asylum.
She granted it, of course. They were her war heroes, her friends. She gave them rooms in Theed’s palace, tutors to help Anakin acclimate to civilized life, tools and codes to access training. When Anakin confessed that he was still worried about his mother on Tatooine, Amidala sent her captain with money to buy Shmi’s freedom, and a trail of marked credits that led directly to the Trade Federation and tied them up in court for years. When Obi-Wan shared his discomfort with Padmé’s charity and his fear of indolence, she employed him as an advisor, to take the place that Palpatine left behind when he became Chancellor. All was safe, if not quite well. All was peaceful.
But all was not in line with the will of the Force.
*
“It’s certainly not the Senate’s highest priority,” Palpatine said, in Anakin’s eleventh year, when he took advantage of a recess to come home to Naboo. “But as a personal project, and a thing of great interest to me, I’d be glad to help.”
“Great interest?” Padmé asked, an elegant eyebrow raised into the beaded fringe of her headdress. Obi-Wan, sitting at her left hand, caught a crystal glint of skepticism in her eye.
But Palpatine’s smile was reassuring and crisp as he slid a datapad across the dinner table. “Ever since the war, I’ve been somewhat intrigued by the reports of that red Zabrak. He was a Force user, yes? One who was never a Jedi?”
“As far as I know,” Obi-Wan conceded.
“Once I acclimated to my new office, I started looking up what I could about those who use the Force outside the Jedi Order. Granted, there is a limit on such information, but what I did find in the Senate archives might be useful to you in getting the Order off your case, so to speak. Our galaxy has a long history, and it’s certainly not the first time that there’s been a dispute over jurisprudence for those who use the Force...” he trailed off, but drummed his elegant, withered fingers on the datapad to activate it, right under Obi-Wan’s eyes. “If you want the Order to stop breathing down your neck, I would be glad to help. They’re far too involved in the politics of this age anyway, if you ask me.”
Padmé met Obi-Wan’s eyes, just out of the range of the datapad’s muted light. She’d been looking to him a great deal of late--at sixteen, coming up for re-election as Queen, she craved his reassurance--but this moment was different. Framed by shimmering paint, their stark humanity drew Obi-Wan in, one sentient seeking to ascertain the comfort of another.
For a moment, Obi-Wan forgot at whose table he sat.
“Perhaps,” Obi-Wan said, to Padmé and Palpatine both.
*
The legal dispute took years. Obi-Wan devoured all the texts he could about the Nightsisters, the Dagoyan Masters, the Ashlarot of Lasat and the ancient Sith and the splintering of the Order in the days of the Revanchist. There was more to the Force than he’d been taught, so much more, and he shared all he could with Anakin as well, who grew stronger in the Force each day. But Obi-Wan knew that this little war had to be won with accord, not in a contest of strength, and Padmé, with all her years of bureaucratic experience, held his hand and his focus to the task.
“I’m reminded of our own quest for independent sovereignty,” she pointed out, one evening in the palace library. Sprawled on the cushions in his favorite corner, with her hair and deep bronze dressing-gown spilling out around her, she looked part of the architecture, warm and inviting, the temptations of knowledge incarnate. “You’re like a colony trying to break away from a suzerain body.”
He laughed--her tone matched it. “A suzerain that conquered me before I could fight back. They’re right that I don’t know how to self-govern.”
“You?” Padmé grinned, the smile so bright and lovely without her paints. “You, Obi-Wan one-with-the-Force Kenobi? You, the paragon of discipline, don’t know how to self-govern?”
“A paragon of discipline doesn’t attempt to strangle his adversaries with red tape.”
She shook her head, shuffled closer on the cushions. It was easy, so easy, to let her curl up to his side, her hair tickling his throat. “I guess that’s not the discipline I meant. You’re yourself, Obi-Wan. You left the Order but you’re still the most righteous person I know. You still resolve disputes for my people. You still mediate with our allies. You could give up everything they taught you so easily, and I know how easy it would be. I’m angry too, Obi-Wan. I think what they did to you and Anakin is abhorrent. But you aren’t flinging it in their faces or storming the Temple because that’s not who you are.”
“And what if it isn’t?” Unbidden, the visage of Darth Maul flashed behind his eyes, the crackle of energy under his sweating palms, the temptation of the Dark. “What if I want them to know how deeply they’ve hurt me, and this--” he waved a hand at the datapad,”--this is how they’ve hurt me. They’ve bound me up in rules beyond sentient comprehension. They’ve built a cage of precedents and traditions they don’t even fully understand. They cite every known form of compassion yet they feel none, and what if I want them to know their own mercilessness? Their own hypocrisy?”
“That’s still righteous,” Padmé said. “It’s how I felt, when the Senate refused to hear me. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the world to understand your pain.”
“There is if I shouldn’t be feeling it.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and leant her head on his shoulder; a corner of her sleeve draped over the datapad, and Obi-Wan set it in his lap. Her presence cried out to his, whether she could feel it in the Force or not. He could, and did, and it was so giving, so gentle, but unyielding and hot, like a spring boiling beneath the earth. “No. They shouldn’t have hurt you. But maybe I’m selfish for being glad that it brought you here.”
His throat swelled around the words, “Your Majesty--”
Her fingers stilled his lips. She smiled, a little uneasy perhaps, a twinge of girlish nervousness. “Maybe this is what I mean by self-discipline. You still hold yourself apart.”
“I haven’t always.” He smirked; whether he meant to or not, the gesture kissed her fingertips.
“I know,” she said. “And you don’t have to now.”
She leaned in. He tasted her breath before their lips met, sweet and warm and hers, and damn the Jedi notions of self-discipline to the Sith Hells.
Damn any self-discipline that perverted compassion. Damn any universe that said he cannot find comfort in the arms of a generous friend, who shared his pain and soothed it alongside her own. And damn the Order that sought to control him even now, when it knew nothing of the creature it meant to cage.
She tipped him down onto the cushions, and he went willingly, so willingly.
*
“I’ve been thinking,” Anakin started, and Obi-wan cut in with a grin:
“That’s a first.”
Anakin, laughing, punched Obi-Wan lightly on the arm. He could reach, now, with no effort at all: at sixteen, Anakin was tall and getting taller still, thoroughly dwarfing Padmé and proudly outstripping Obi-Wan by more than just the curly crest of his hair. If Qui-Gon were here, he’d probably say something about him and Anakin seeing eye-to-eye eventually.
Anakin picked up the stray thought and grimaced. “I miss him too,” he said, low and a little broken.
Obi-Wan clasped his shoulder, the milder cousin of Anakin’s little punch earlier. “I wish you could have known him as I did.”
“I do too. But that’s what I’ve been thinking about.” He looked up, at the dome of the hangar, at the distant workmen and droids repairing some scorchmarks that Anakin had left on his last piloting misadventure. “His Master is like us, isn’t he?”
Yes. Yes, Ashik Dooku was “like them”, in that he’d forsaken the Order and still lived. Obi-Wan was still somewhat dubious of this trend of conversation. “I assume you mean the Count of Serreno.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“The same Count that isn’t testifying in our trial because he’s leading the Confederacy of Separatist Systems.”
“Yeah.”
“The same Count that considers himself Padmé’s political opponent and seeks to undo everything she’s working for.”
“...yeah. That Count.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “What do you want with him, Anakin?”
“I thought it might be good for him to teach me too,” Anakin said, no shame, no diffidence. “He knows more about the other ‘saber forms, and I’m starting to think Ataru’s not a good fit for me.”
“Fair point.” Over their heads, a cleaning crew shouted orders for more varnish. Droids whirled and echoed, and the Force of the palace of Theed teemed with life. “Has he approached you?”
“Not yet,” Anakin admitted. It rang true, from a certain point of view. “I got curious, that’s all.”
Obi-Wan highly doubted that. But try as he might, Obi-Wan could think of nothing against Dooku that wasn’t about their politics, or worse, reflexive Jedi prejudice. Dooku had left the Order peacefully--more so than Obi-Wan, frankly--over the same sort of ideological issues and disagreements with the current administration. Qui-Gon wouldn’t disapprove. He might even be honored; he’d always spoken highly of his Master, and when Obi-Wan knew him he was stern but kind, the exact kind of stabilizing influence that Anakin so deeply needed.
It would keep Anakin away from Coruscant, and the Order that still wanted to lay claim to his power but deny him training.
And, more troublingly, Obi-Wan could feel Anakin’s eyes on the back of his neck whenever he and Padmé touched. The distance would do him good. The faith would do him better.
“I won’t stop you from contacting him,” Obi-Wan said. “But see if you can’t get him to testify, as a favor.”
Anakin groaned. “Please don’t bring politics into this.”
“Everything is politics, Anakin. It surrounds us and permeates us and binds the universe together. I can’t bring in what’s already inherent to the system.”
*
Twice in the first month after the move to Coruscant, Obi-Wan accidentally gave cab fliers the Jedi Temple as his address.
To be fair, he was exceedingly drunk, both times.
And the Temple Guards found it amusing.
*
Dooku came around and testified eventually; he had to be on Coruscant anyway to declare war.
Obi-Wan and Padmé met him and Anakin for dinner in neutral territory: an opulent Shili restaurant that catered to the carnivores of the galaxy. They secured a private room with a low table where they could grill their own meat. It seemed incongruous; three former Jedi, one of them planetary royalty, and a senator and queen, sitting around a table roasting rare meat on skewers. (How Padmé managed not to stain her gown or melt her long nails could only be attributed to the mercy of the Force.) But, Obi-Wan reasoned, the universe was changing, and strange times called for stranger fellows.
Anakin, clearly the most excited about the food, related stories of his tutelage. He looked forward to sparring with Obi-Wan as soon as he could. Dooku sat straight and impassive, and expressed a measure of pride and perfunctory thanks to Obi-Wan for his trust.
“I had hoped you would come around eventually,” Dooku said, dabbing gently at the corner of his beard, though it was immaculate as far as Obi-Wan could tell. “For all that Qui-Gon and I had our differences, we consistently shared the belief that the Council cared more for its longevity than its outreach.”
“To Qui-Gon,” Anakin said, raising his tiny cup of wine. The others followed suit.
Obi-Wan finished his sip first--he wished so that he could have his Master’s guidance, and then wrapped that wish in the Force and set it aside. “He wouldn’t want war, ever.” Obi-Wan met Dooku’s eyes, levelly but not pointedly. “But I cannot fault your views, and I suspect neither could he.”
“Well, we can’t fight all battles with a honeyed tongue and a ‘saber of a mind,” Dooku almost laughed. Obi-Wan recognized praise when he heard it, of course, but it was never just praise. “When one’s competitor fails to believe one exists, that limits one’s options.”
Padmé smiled, nearly as implacable as her queenly masks once were, back on Naboo. “A story I know too well.”
“Dare I presume your sympathy, Senator?”
On the grill at the center of the table, meat crackled, its sweet marinade curling into the air. Obi-Wan breathed deep, and Padmé’s hand brushed his beneath the table, looking at him sidelong.
“From a certain point of view,” she said, with equal parts humor and weight.
Obi-Wan couldn’t help the warm smirk rising on his cheeks.
“Count, I too know the corruption at the heart of the Republic,” Padmé went on, her jewelry twinkling like her eyes. “All of us here do. But my fight with it is at closer quarters, and always has been. No matter what the sages say, fire doesn’t fight fire. All that leaves is scorched earth. And none of us want that, in our similar battles for recognition.”
Dooko nodded, elegant and slow. On the grill, something snapped, like distant cannonfire. “It heartens me to hear your sympathy to our cause, if not to our means.”
“I will not break from the Republic,” Padmé said firmly.
“Of course not, Senator. No one expects you to.”
In the Force, Dooku’s unsaid words were clear to Obi-Wan: We like you where you are. Across the low table, Anakin startled, eyes locking with Obi-Wan’s. He’d sensed it too.
Obi-Wan, ever the negotiator, seized the moment, along with a skewer of perfectly charred meat. “Even hunters lay traps,” he said, with an arch of his eyebrow.
The Force didn’t need to make his meaning clear to the others.
*
The Grand Army of the Republic consisted entirely of clones, birthed and bred only to die for the Jedi cause.
Anakin knew exactly where he stood on that, and made it abundantly and violently clear by joining the Separatist Navy.
Of course Obi-Wan and Padmé fought the war on their own fronts, in the newsreels and the Senate respectively. Obi-Wan, eternally charismatic and always ready with a quip for the cameras, had all of his facts from the front in order and knew how to share them. He shed light on the policies of the Jedi and the Grand Army of the Republic that civilians might otherwise never understand; he condemned the senseless disregard of sentient life by both sides. His distance from the thousand fronts afforded him perspective, he knew, a luxury he’d never have if he were still a Jedi. “The Order that raised me from infancy would have condemned what it has become,” he said, in the sort of clip that circulated the Holonet in every dimension. “Or at least, it would have said one thing, and concealed another.”
In the Senate, Padmé had an even more brutal fight. The only thing that moves slower than war is legislation, and Padmé’s calls for moderation were lost to a desperate, complacent, power-grubbing body that thought only to sustain itself and its own interests. She came home at night to the apartment she and Obi-Wan officially didn’t share with her throat raw from trying to make herself heard and her shoulders heavy from the trappings of State, and Obi-Wan would hold her, brew her tea, draw her a bath and settle in beside her and forget about the rest of the galaxy for a blissful few hours.
“Do you ever wonder,” she asked one such night, her naked body slick and pressed to his in the afterglow, “what it would be like to just run away from this?”
He laughed, cupped the nape of her neck. The humidity of the bath had set her hair to ringlets, peeking out of the twist like the new roots of a plant. He trapped one curl between his forefinger and thumb, tugged it gently, felt her gasp against him where their bodies still joined. “Of course. You, me, a house with a library and a lake, someplace where it rains four weeks out of the year...”
She laughed and swatted his cheek. “You’d go mad.”
“So would you, without a galaxy to save.”
A quick steaming kiss, a strategic hand, and she rolled them over so that Obi-Wan was leaning down to her, settled between her legs. “Well then, we’ll have to save it, won’t we?”
Neither of them knew that Anakin chose that precise moment to launch an assault on Kamino, half a galaxy away. By the time the news reached them on Coruscant, he’d already liberated the clones and taken over their facility, and was calling for an end to the war. At ‘saberpoint. With the entire ruling body of Kamino held hostage.
The Republic would not negotiate with terrorists.
That sort of thing was left to Obi-Wan.
*
Anakin’s battalion of clones had one condition: they would not fight their brothers. It was easy enough to accommodate that, and they became his rogue squadron for the rest of the war, stealthing from planet to planet in the name of liberation. He freed fifteen Republic-aligned worlds before the Jedi murdered Dooku.
The wounds were inflicted by lightsaber, instant cauterization of both hands and a stump of a neck. Holonet broadcasts showed the grisly detail, and Obi-Wan of course was available for scathing comment. The Order denied everything, but Anakin was worlds away when it happened and wrathfully inconsolable, and Obi-Wan was on Coruscant of course with a million alibis, so who else could it have been?
For weeks, Obi-Wan woke screaming from nightmares of the Battle of Naboo.
The Sith had never left, had they.
*
In Obi-Wan’s days at the Temple, a lifetime ago, his teachers said that his curiosity was akin to gluttony. He found a simple joy in knowing, in comprehension and mastery and seeing stories through to their conclusions, knots tied and corners caulked. Whatever he learned, he learned to its fullest, tugging the thread until the problem unraveled at his feet.
Now, Obi-Wan Kenobi was thirty-four, and had not been a prisoner of the Order for thirteen long years, and the matter of his Master’s death, while concluded, was never quite solved, and perhaps it was driving Obi-Wan slightly madder every day. While the Republic cried out for Jedi accountability, while Anakin and the Separatist remnants kept the war going without Dooku, and while Padmé routed out corruption until she was blue in the face, Obi-Wan could only let the Force guide him back to his books.
And the trial he’d never been given. Galactic Warfare had a way of delaying court dates, after all, and in all his knowledge of the ways of the Force Obi-Wan cursed himself for forgetting to check his sources.
Palpatine.
It all made sense, from a certain point of view. Palpatine had been there since the beginning, fueling the initial conflict on Naboo that had started this mess, and was the only one who unequivocally stood to gain from a full-scale war. Palpatine had sources that even the Jedi did not and could not access. Palpatine was clearly setting himself up to take on more power, letting the Senate eat its own rot and destroying the Jedi credibility and routing out the Separatist worlds that would never support his ascension. He’d played three sides against the middle, and Obi-Wan had fallen for it. Really, Palpatine ought to be commended, in a perverse sort of way.
But why? Obi-Wan lay awake, Padmé nestled against his side, and cast his mind out to the Force. If Palpatine simply sought to rule, well, he was doing that already. He’d eradicated his enemies, crippled his friendly opposition, and given the Order the scrutiny it deserved. What more did he want?
Obi-Wan’s comm ringed, and Anakin appeared in a short-range holo. “Morning, Obi-Wan,” he said, grinning and leaning in, a new scar over his eye. “We’re about to storm 500 Republica. You in?”
Anakin. Palpatine wanted Anakin.
Obi-Wan could not get armed fast enough.
*
“My boys,” Palpatine said, seated behind his desk like there wasn’t a war on outside his office door. “Have you come to free me, or kill me?”
“That rather depends on you.” Obi-Wan drew his saber; Anakin’s was already out, having sealed the door behind them.
“No!” Anakin barked, “He killed the Count! He’s not worth hearing.”
Palpatine didn’t even rise, but gone was the hapless act. He looked up at Obi-Wan, eyes twinkling. “And how did you come to that conclusion?”
Obi-Wan scoffed. “I notice you don’t deny it.” Anakin was already circling left, so Obi-Wan went right, but Palpatine remained seated. “I’d appreciate an explanation.”
“I’d appreciate his head,” Anakin snarled.
“Anakin, Dooku wouldn’t want you to lose yours and neither do I.”
Palpatine tilted his head back fractionally and laughed, louder than the creak of his chair. “Why hold him back, Kenobi? His anger gives him focus. He knows what he wants. He’s just waiting for the right moment.”
“Like you,” Obi-Wan said, and caught Anakin’s eye over the glow of their ‘sabers, still held at the ready.
Anakin’s eyes should have been blue.
“Yes,” Palpatine went on, like a lothcat in the cream, “like me. You both are, you know. Like me. Circling your prey, waiting for the time to strike. When you left the Jedi you did half of my work for me, and you’ve been at it ever since. It’s because you want what I want, my boys.”
“And what is that?” Anakin asked, lower than the hum of the Force through the room.
“Power. Knowledge,” he said with his head cocked to Obi-Wan, and then to Anakin, “control, call it by whatever name you like. You’ve heard its call, whatever else you claim to want, and that’s why you’re letting me speak after all. You’d like to kill me, but you want to hear what I have to say, deep in your hearts. You’re already on your way to being truly free, purged of the Jedi’s poisoned rhetoric. Join me and I’ll teach you the rest.”
“Join you,” Obi-wan repeated.
“Yes, my boy. Join me. Take up the mantle of the Sith. You killed my last apprentice, didn’t you? You know what power he held. Allow me to demonstrate my own.” But it was no use of the Force: he simply tapped a button on his desk, calling up a holo of one of the GAR clone troopers--one wearing the red of the Coruscant guard. “Execute Order 66.”
For a moment, nothing at all happened. And then the Force tore, like a claw had swiped clean through it and left only pain behind.
Obi-Wan staggered, nearly losing his grip on the ‘saber; across the room, Anakin doubled back and blinked and cursed, “What did you just do?”
Palpatine smirked, almost playful in its parody of innocence. “Consider it a gift. You want the Jedi gone as much as I do, don’t you? Or is that not why you’re fighting this war?”
Images sliced into Obi-Wan’s mind of those he used to know at the Temple: Jedi, dying at the hands of the clone soldiers they claimed not to enslave, cut down or shot or trampled. Each of them extinguished like a star by a stormcloud. Each of them a new wound in Obi-Wan’s heart.
The trouble of allowing oneself to become attached was never so apparent. He hadn’t even known all these attachments existed.
The Force itself crackled with power beyond even Anakin’s--power borne of decades, even centuries--and when Palpatine stood, blue lightning ringed his arms. Obi-Wan, delirious, raised his ‘saber to guard--
--and from the open trellis window, two blaster shots hit Palpatine in the back.
Anakin wasted no time finishing what the lucky sniper started: he lopped off Palpatine’s head, its mouth still frozen somewhere between laughter and pain.
Obi-Wan looked up, and saw Padmé, braced on the balcony with her blaster still smoking.
“He was everything wrong with the galaxy,” she said.
By the time Obi-Wan could touch her, he was already on his knees.
*
That night, the Separatists surrendered on the condition that Padmé Amidala ascend to the pinnacle of governance. Chastened, the Senate capitulated. Her formal coronation as Empress was still a few months away, but Padmé Naberrie Amidala would assume emergency powers and take up the mantle of galactic rule because no one else was strong enough, or wise enough, to do it.
That night, the few survivors at the Jedi Temple welcomed Obi-Wan Kenobi and allowed him the use of their distress beacon and the holocron chain. He implored any Jedi remaining in the galaxy to take heart, and flock to him. He urged them to trust in the Force, not in the will of any Council. But to keep their knowledge from being lost along with their heads, he would make a new Order, like Rajivari and Revan and Hoth, because no one else was strong enough, or wise enough, to do it.
That night, Padmé proposed marriage to Obi-Wan, and he accepted.
*
Padmé was pregnant at her coronation. It showed, just barely, in her grand white robes, one convex curve before the glittering train of flowers and stars that trailed out behind her like the galaxy’s spiral arms. Her hair towered in a web of brown and black and gold, framing her brilliant face and depthless eyes. She was the Core, the center of the universe, and Obi-Wan could not help but stare, spellbound, like all her subjects.
“At the age of twelve,” she said in her speech of ascension, “I was elected the Queen of Naboo. The position is ceremonial, but not entirely: for centuries, my people have called on the innocent wisdom of children to lead them and remind them of those who are most affected by their decisions. I was not the youngest to serve, nor the oldest, and in my two terms as Queen I learned that I was still a child in the eyes of the world beyond Naboo. I fought, and won, a war at the age of fourteen, to liberate my planet and its peoples from those who would condescend to us in the name of profit. And I vowed then that I would not stop with Naboo, and would not rest until the galaxy was free from tyranny.
“But I am a child in the galaxy’s eyes. I have only just turned thirty. I have only just begun to bear a family of my own. I do not discount the wisdom of my elders; such sages who came before me have known horrors that no sentient should, and they deserve all of our respect. But with age comes establishment, and establishment complacency, and complacency leads inevitably to corruption. And that, more than anything else, was the curse that lay over us all.
“My predecessor was also a child of Naboo, or so he claimed. We now have evidence that Sheev Palpatine was older even than he appeared, and had used dark Sith arts to prolong his life. And in doing so, he forgot our dearest precept: that the future is paramount. That the child, the future of the galaxy, must be the reason we preserve and prosper.
“But he was not the only one to forget. My colleagues in the Galactic Senate, concerned more with retaining their positions than using them, were guilty. The Jedi Order, concerned more with the world within the Temple walls than the universe without it, was guilty. The guilds and federations and the cloners of Kamino, perpetuating crimes against sentience in the name of profit, were guilty. And who suffered? The children of the galaxy. The pilots and soldiers shot down by droids. The Jedi younglings, taken from their homes in infancy and raised innocent to their own enslavement. The clones, victims of heinous manipulation and slaughter. And those like me, who had hope but no influence, prey to the prison of bureaucracy.
“So I decree: no more. There will be no more complacency. There will be no more enslavement of our youth, no more indoctrination, no more of the old profiteering of the strife of children. I take the mantle of Empress, as I took the mantle of Queen, and for the same reason: to remind the galaxy for whom it turns about the Core.” She rested a hand on her abdomen, and Obi-Wan’s heart nearly burst from his chest at the thought of what she implied. “We serve the future.”
*
Not many Jedi survived the purge. The dead outnumbered the missing from the start but the list of the missing was considerable and Obi-Wan did not give up hope. The old Order had resources for tracking Force-sensitives through the galaxy and Obi-Wan availed himself of everything; the holocron chain, the casting beacon, the surviving scouts and padawans who’d escaped the slaughter. And Anakin, Anakin was indispensible. His power, his legion--the scarred brothers, they called themselves--followed every rumor Obi-Wan could chase and hunted up the stragglers.
Some swore themselves to Obi-Wan and the Empress. Others called Anakin a Separatist traitor and fought for their lives. Some took their own rather than face him.
Obi-Wan learned to shut out the wounds of the Force. He had a world to rebuild, a son to raise.
*
Only once, Anakin confessed, through tears of rage, that he wanted to share their bed, their life and love.
Padmé was horrified. Obi-Wan let him down as gently as he could.
When Jinn was born, they named Anakin his uncle. Firmly. Anakin never mentioned his feelings again.
(Whether there were fewer Jedi survivors for him to find, or Anakin simply hid the ones he hunted, no one would ever know. But he brought no more to Obi-Wan’s Order.)
*
After the initial stabilization efforts, there was no appreciable dissent for ten years. The Empress’s forces put down the Lothal insurgence and its companion rebellions with little effort.
Which led, of course, to a strike against the Hutts, who had bankrolled the insurgence in the first place.
That war took much longer, of course. From a certain point of view, it never ended. But uncoupling the Hutt influence from the Outer Rim and bringing their assets under Imperial control was crucial to Padmé’s peace.
*
A cell of Dark Jedi amassed on Dathomir, taking advantage of the protections of the Nightsisters. Obi-Wan foresaw the darkness rising, a dozen demons like Maul spreading chaos in the name of balance and freedom.
It was not worth troubling Anakin or worrying Padmé. He went alone, and put down the insurrection himself, and told not a soul.
The only one to know he’d even gone was the sage he met on Malachor, guarding a trove of secrets he craved to learn. She said that Knowledge would wait, and disappeared.
Perhaps he could tell Anakin. Or Jinn, when Jinn wished to learn the true depths of the Force.
*
Mon Mothma was too dangerous to let live. That was the only excuse Padmé needed.
*
Obi-Wan would not describe himself as having a monopoly on Force-study, but he could admit that it was difficult for those espousing independence to come by some of the more sensitive knowledge of the holocrons. Perhaps that was why fringe groups started pillaging ancient temples on Korriban and Lothal and Kashyyyk. They simply craved the wisdom of the past.
Nevertheless, the crime was unforgivable. And if they so wished a demonstration of the power of the Force, Obi-Wan would be glad to provide it.
*
The only person more zealous than Padmé about cracking down on slavery in the galaxy was Anakin.
In the context of the Hutt campaign, he made an example of Tatooine. Unfortunately, other systems didn’t get the memo, so the example had to be repeated. Officially, Padmé could not condone Anakin’s methods of subdual, but the Empire reaped the benefits all the same. Besides, public opinion forgave them every time: hyperbole and half-truths traveled faster than fact, after all.
By the time Anakin’s tacitly sanctioned purge reached Zygeria, Jinn Amidala was strong enough in the Force to join him. Obi-Wan let his son go with every blessing.
*
“I still want that house with a library and a lake,” Obi-Wan said, into the crook of his wife’s pale shoulder as they lie in their canopied bed.
She laughed and stroked the streaks of white in his hair. “Only after we’ve gone mad and saved the world.”
“But how will we know?”
“Know what? That it’s been saved?”
“How will we know anything, if we’re mad from wanting?”
Her fingers trailed from his hair to the ridges of his bare spine, drumming on each bone. “You always know, Obi-Wan. I can’t imagine you not knowing.”
He smiled, and kissed her skin. “Not everything. Not yet.”
*
* *
* * *
REGNAL YEAR 20 AMIDALA
0 BBN
THEED PALACE
“Tell me, Jinn,” Obi-Wan commanded, in that level voice that shaped an Empire. “Did Anakin send you here to kill me?”
Jinn remembered, and not all of the memories were his own. The Force churned in him and around him: the horrors he’d seen, still nothing compared to the blinding visions of his father’s life that still haunted Jinn’s nightmares. The thirst for understanding fueled by a tangle of light and dark. The love, eldritch and incomprehensible, that defied knowledge and Order. Jinn knew what he saw and knew what he felt but couldn’t comprehend it.
“He,” Jinn tried, gulping because the words wouldn’t come without a fight, “he said that you--that you couldn’t see--”
“I know what he said.” Obi-Wan’s face, lined and framed in white, was as still as a portrait, as schooled as the images of Padmé in her days as Queen of Naboo, a world ago. “He’s said it to me a dozen times. He considers it his duty to keep me humble, and frankly, he’s right to try. I assure you, Jinn, I’ve taken Anakin’s words into account. I’m not asking about his words. I’m asking about his actions. Did he send you here to kill me?”
Jinn remembered, years of training, years of consideration of the Force and its currents and its power. He knew that for raw power his was nothing compared to his uncle’s, no one’s was, not even Obi-Wan’s--but Obi-Wan was more than power. He was Mastery. The Force in the room teemed about him with all the potential energy in the world, not a constantly blazing sun but an infinite catalogue of fine tools and instruments, ready to be matched perfectly to the thing he meant to create or destroy. And Jinn found himself under that scrutiny as he had so many times learning in his youth, facing not his father but the arbiter of the cosmic Force, the being that held the reins of the galaxy’s magic.
Uncle Anakin was the rock. Obi-Wan was the hard place.
A tear gathered in the corner of Jinn’s eye. “Father, please. He loves you. I love you. But he’s--I’ve--we’ve--”
“I know what you’ve seen,” Obi-wan said, still calm, still implacable. “But I assure you, as I’ve assured him and the people of this Empire that it is for the best. For the future. For you. Your mother’s government is for you, Jinn. To create and maintain a place where you can flourish. So tell me. Did Anakin send you here to kill me?”
The very ‘saber on Jinn’s hip seemed to whisper, in the voice of a galaxy of slaves, save us all.
Another wave of pain in the Force, and Jinn could bear no more. He collapsed to his knees, forehead to the floor, and cried.
“Yes!” he choked out. “I’m sorry, father, I’m sorry--he loves you--I love you--I’m sorry, I can’t--” His throat burned, and he sobbed incoherently, half-unaware of the rest of the pleas that fell from him. “--he knew you wouldn’t hurt me, but he knows--he knows there’s good in you but you’d kill him, please, don’t kill him--I’m sorry, father, I’m sorry--”
Above him, Obi-Wan simply shut his eyes.
That was how Padmé found her husband and her son: in Obi-Wan’s quarters, framed by fiery sunset, the end of a world and a line. Jinn, begging and crying, soon felt himself enveloped in his mother’s arms, his tears darkening the shoulder of her gown.
“We will deal with Anakin,” she said, a firm consolation. “You won’t be punished, Jinn. You did well to warn us. We love you.”
She met Obi-Wan’s eyes over her son’s shoulder, hers so wide with fear and enormity that he could see himself in her black pupils. Only then did Obi-Wan see reflected back at him the slit golden eyes of Darth Maul, in his own face, as if they’d always been there.
* * *