Chapter Text
Anakin can’t stop staring at the HoloNews.
The footage loops for the seventh time.
Palpatine stands beneath the gold lights of the gala with Windu, Yoda, Obi-Wan, and several other Jedi closing around him. The Chancellor says something the recording can’t catch. Windu answers. Palpatine’s face twists.
Then every Jedi in front of him flies backward.
Anakin watches the image freeze on Palpatine’s raised hand.
SITH IDENTITY CONFIRMED, the headline beneath it reads.
He doesn’t believe it.
He sees the lightning. He sees the red lightsaber in the next recording. He sees Palpatine throw Obi-Wan through a table hard enough to splinter it.
He still doesn’t believe it.
The Chancellor had always been kind to him.
Not generically polite in the way senators were polite when they wanted Anakin to win a battle for them. Palpatine listened. He remembered things. He asked about Anakin’s opinions when the Council dismissed them. He never treated Anakin like an unstable weapon or a former slave who should be grateful the Jedi had rescued him.
He’d understood.
Sith Lords weren’t supposed to understand.
Sith Lords manipulated. They lied. They twisted everything they touched until nobody could tell kindness from a chain.
Anakin’s stomach turns.
He lowers the volume but doesn’t switch off the display.
Padmé is asleep in the bedroom.
At least, she’s supposed to be asleep. She’d spent most of the night sick, frightened, and furious that nobody would let her return to the Senate Dome. The twins had been restless ever since the first emergency alert, reacting to every spike in her stress by kicking harder.
They had left the gala separately less than an hour before the attack.
Padmé hadn’t been feeling well. Her back hurt, her ankles were swollen, and one of the twins had apparently decided her ribs were a ladder. Anakin had slipped out through a service corridor ten minutes after her so nobody would see them leave together.
If they’d stayed, he would’ve been there.
The thought keeps returning no matter how often he tries to crush it.
He would’ve been beside Palpatine.
Maybe he would’ve heard the accusation.
Maybe Palpatine would’ve explained.
Maybe Anakin could’ve stopped the fight before anyone died.
Or perhaps Palpatine would’ve attacked him too.
Anakin doesn’t know which possibility hurts more.
The broadcast changes to the recording everyone keeps replaying.
Fox lies near the outer wall, half hidden by smoke and overturned furniture. His black dress uniform is torn. One side of his face is burned so badly that even the added blur can’t hide it well.
He should be unconscious.
He should be dead.
Instead, he crawls.
Slowly. Stubbornly. Dragging one side of his body through broken glass while Palpatine fights the Jedi near the central platform.
Anakin’s jaw tightens.
Fox draws his blaster.
The recording zooms in as much as the poor image quality allows.
The Chief’s arm shakes. He waits until Palpatine turns away.
Then he shoots him in the back of the head.
The bolt strikes.
Palpatine falls.
Fox collapses.
The footage restarts.
Anakin slams the display off.
The apartment goes dark except for the city light leaking through the windows.
He sits on the sofa with both hands clenched between his knees and tries to breathe through the pressure building in his chest.
Fox killed him.
A clone killed the Chancellor from behind, and the entire Republic is calling it heroic.
The HoloNet is full of praise for the shot. Experts are calculating distance and visibility. Politicians who barely acknowledged Fox a day ago are calling him the defender of the Republic.
Anakin wants to rip the display from the wall.
Fox can’t even answer for it.
He’s unconscious beneath half a medbay’s worth of machinery while everyone else explains what he saw, what he intended, and why he was right.
Anakin knows what a battlefield execution looks like.
He knows Fox waited for a clear shot.
That doesn’t make it easier.
The bedroom door opens.
Padmé stands there in a robe, one hand supporting the underside of her stomach. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and exhaustion has drained most of the color from her face.
“You’re still awake.”
“So are you.”
“The broadcast stopped.”
“I turned it off.”
“You were watching it loudly enough to wake me through two doors.”
Anakin looks away.
Padmé crosses the room carefully and lowers herself onto the sofa beside him. She doesn’t ask before taking one of his hands and placing it against the curve of her stomach.
A small foot presses into his palm.
Alive.
Warm.
Real.
He curls his fingers around the movement.
“Do you believe it?” he asks.
Padmé doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“I believe what I saw.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
Anakin pulls his hand away and stands.
“Palpatine wasn’t like that.”
Padmé’s expression tightens.
“He threw Jedi across a room with the Force.”
“I saw.”
“He had a Sith lightsaber.”
“I saw that too.”
“He tried to kill Riyo.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Anakin.”
“The footage doesn’t show where he was aiming.”
“It shows Fox pushing her away before the lightning hit him.”
“Maybe Fox misunderstood.”
Padmé stares at him.
Anakin hears how desperate he sounds.
He hates it.
He walks toward the windows.
Far across the city, the Senate Dome remains surrounded by emergency lights. Air traffic has been diverted around the district, leaving a strange dark space in Coruscant’s endless streams.
“He was my friend,” Anakin says.
Padmé’s voice softens. “I know.”
“He trusted me.”
The words feel wrong as soon as they leave him.
Did Palpatine trust him?
Or had Anakin simply told him everything?
His fears about the Council. His anger. His marriage. His nightmares about Padmé dying.
A cold weight settles beneath his ribs.
“How much did he know?” Padmé asks quietly.
Anakin doesn’t answer.
Too much.
Far too much.
Padmé rises from the sofa.
“Riyo was there when Fox was hit.”
Anakin closes his eyes.
“I know.”
“She watched her husband take that lightning for her.”
“Husband,” Anakin repeats bitterly. “Apparently everyone’s secretly married now.”
Padmé flinches.
Regret hits immediately, but his anger is faster.
“Fox shot Palpatine while he was fighting the Council.”
“He shot him while Palpatine was about to attack Master Windu.”
“That’s what Thorn says.”
“That’s what the footage shows.”
“He shot him from behind.”
“Would you rather he’d announced himself?”
Anakin turns.
Padmé stands with one hand braced against the sofa. She looks exhausted, but her eyes are sharp.
“You’re angry at the wrong person.”
“I’m angry at the person who killed my friend.”
“Your friend was a Sith Lord.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“Neither did you.”
The words hit harder than shouting would have.
Anakin goes still.
Padmé’s face softens, but she doesn’t take them back.
“The man you knew may have cared about you,” she says. “Maybe some part of it was real. But he also lied to you. He lied to all of us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I know he attacked the Jedi, tried to kill Riyo, and nearly burned Fox’s face off.”
Anakin’s prosthetic hand curls.
Fox.
Always Fox.
Fox found the evidence. Fox arranged the arrest. Fox survived the lightning. Fox fired the shot. Fox is now lying unconscious while the Republic builds him into a hero who can’t contradict them.
“He hated Palpatine,” Anakin says.
Padmé frowns. “Fox?”
“He never trusted him.”
“Perhaps he had a reason.”
“He always has a reason. He has reports and regulations and evidence for everything.”
The unfairness of the complaint doesn’t escape him.
It makes him angrier.
Padmé studies him.
“Fox can’t defend himself right now.”
“I know.”
“Then stop putting all of this on him because Palpatine isn’t here to answer you.”
Anakin looks back toward the dead display.
That is exactly what he’s doing.
Palpatine is dead. Obi-Wan is injured. The Council is occupied with investigations, arrests, and trying to explain how the Sith controlled the Republic from directly beneath their noses.
Fox is alive.
Barely.
Alive means available for blame.
“He didn’t have to kill him,” Anakin says.
Padmé’s voice drops.
“Fox was on the floor with one working eye. Palpatine had already tried to murder his wife. What exactly did you expect him to do?”
Anakin doesn’t know.
Wait.
Hesitate.
Believe there was still something worth saving.
The same things Anakin is doing now.
Padmé reaches for him, but he steps away before she can touch his arm.
Her hurt enters the Force like a knife.
“I need air,” he says.
“It’s four in the morning.”
“I know.”
“Don’t go to the medbay.”
Anakin looks at her.
Padmé’s expression becomes very still.
“Fox is unconscious, Anakin. Riyo is with him. Whatever you think you need to say, he can’t hear it and she doesn’t deserve it.”
“I wasn’t going there.”
It is a lie.
They both know it.
Anakin grabs his cloak from the chair.
At the door, he looks back.
Padmé stands alone beside the sofa, one hand over their children.
Palpatine knew about the nightmares.
Maybe he knew about the marriage.
Maybe he knew about the twins.
The thought follows Anakin into the corridor.
For the first time since the news broke, his anger shifts away from Fox.
Only slightly.
Not enough to forgive him.
Enough to wonder whether the kind old man Anakin is grieving had ever existed at all.