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Chapter Text

The comm came through in Dooku’s office. From here, at the very top of one of the castle’s spires, he could see out across the old, dangerous forests, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Beyond them lay Carannia, with her tall, modern buildings and dense old apartments. Castle Serenno, with its grounds and constituent buildings, was a legacy from various spheroid and oval architectural periods, and would have stuck out like a sore thumb anywhere else on the planet it ruled. To Dooku’s mind, it was beautiful, but it didn’t numb his grief in the way he would have liked.

That same grief clawed at him as he looked down at the incoming transmission. It was on his Jedi line, which he’d kept despite his feelings towards the Order, and the ident associated with it flashed up, over and over again, as Qui-Gon Jinn.

Now that wasn’t true, he knew. It couldn’t be true because he had felt the force sing discordant, awful notes at the death of his long-ago padawan. Someone was calling him, pretending to be Qui-Gon, and it made Dooku sick to his stomach. Had he not already felt enough?

He answered the call to yell at the offender, and watched the form of a disheveled young man take shape on his desk. The description was familiar, though he’d never looked upon the face in life.

“Padawan Kenobi,” he named, but the man in question shook his head. There was no braid there.

“Knight. Knight Kenobi.”

A hollow prize to be won in the death of a master. Qui-Gon, he knew, from many long conversations, had believed his padawan more than ready for the title, but to see him receive it alone was still a terrible tragedy. Qui-Gon would have been immeasurably proud, had he been there to see it.

“My congratulations,” offered Dooku, slowly.

It was like a dam breaking, the grief and distress that suddenly seemed to flood from Kenobi all at once. “Master Dooku, I need your help. Qui-Gon trusted you and I haven’t anywhere else to turn, nobody will train him, and Mace won’t let me, he’s said he had a vision and I-”

Dooku raised a hand to cut him off. “Start from the beginning, Knight Kenobi.” No, that wasn’t right. This was the boy Qui-Gon had come to love like a son. “Obi-Wan.”

He could almost feel Kenobi releasing his emotions into the force, finding a Jedi Master’s calm. “On our last mission together, Qui-Gon found a boy on Tatooine. He was nine, and the searchers had missed him because he was a slave. His Midichlorian count was… higher than that of any living Jedi that I know of. Qui-Gon freed him and brought him back to the temple. The council refused to admit him, and Qui-Gon threatened to train the boy himself. He-” Kenobi fought to hide his own emotions again. Such Jedi foolishness. There was no weakness in crying in times of great grief. “He asked me to see the boy trained with his dying breaths. At first, they let me. I’ve shown him as much as I can, braided his hair. However, Mace – Master Windu – has received a vision. He now says that my training the boy will be the ruin of us all. I’ve been given two weeks to find the boy a new master, or send him home. Without having been an initiate, they won’t even let him join the corps.”

It was all of the foolish arrogance Dooku would have expected from the Jedi Council, and from Mace Windu in particular. Just because he could see a few shatterpoints, suddenly he was the most important Jedi who’d ever lived. Dooku knew from Qui-Gon that Kenobi had visions himself, and wasn’t nearly so obnoxious about it. Even Dooku had been granted a few, in his time.

“What do you want me to do?”

Kenobi shuffled slightly, like a child who was sitting on his hands to avoid fidgeting. “I need you to take him as your padawan.” At a questioning eyebrow from Dooku, he elaborated, “Qui-Gon… cared for you deeply.” Not love, for course, because they were all Jedi. “Anakin will be more likely to trust someone who Qui-Gon would have trusted, and you have the respect and the resources that even Mace couldn’t stop you.”

It was all true, and yet, “they will never let him try for knighthood, if I train him illicitly.”

Kenobi gave a tiny shake of his head. “If you don’t, then he’ll be sent back to Tatooine. I can’t allow that. He’s a child; he’ll be forced back into slavery.”

Under all his Jedi trappings and grief, Dooku could already tell that Kenobi was gaining some affection for the boy. It was so wrong to deny the bond between padawan and master, that gift of the force. He remembered Qui-Gon, Master of the Living Force that he had been, describing the pure certainty that he had felt finally accepting Obi-Wan as his own, knowing what he was intended to do. In his mind’s eye, Dooku could still see the legacies of his own long-severed bonds, Rael’s, still very much alive but distant, and the empty blackness where Qui-Gon and Komari had once been.

“I will transfer you the funds,” Dooku said, “to charter or book passage on a ship to Serenno. Leave at your earliest convenience.”

He couldn’t return to the temple now, after everything he’d done. His Master would know, and there was some part of him that was not ready to see hatred in the little creature’s beady eyes.

“I can’t come,” protested Kenobi, “as a knight I must-”

He was still a child, despite the title. “I will also send you an official diplomatic request from the Count of Serenno for your presence in resolving the aftermath of a local coup. I believe the Jedi are meant to be impartial arbiters in this sort of thing.”

The relief in Kenobi’s eyes was all the confirmation he needed that this was the right thing to do.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and reached forward to end the communication.

Suddenly feeling a pressing need, Dooku stopped him. “Knight Kenobi, Qui-Gon was always proud of you. He would not have wanted your duty to the boy and your duty as a Jedi to come into conflict. If he had known the pain this would cause you, I doubt he would ever have said this burden should be yours to bear.”

He turned the transmission off himself before Kenobi could see him cry.

In the months since Qui-Gon’s death, the grief had burned cold, an abyssal numbness at the core of him from which only faint winds whispered. With methodical precision, Dooku had left the order in all but name, taken the title of Count upon himself, and secured his position, both on Serenno and within the Republic. He’d spoken to no one of what had happened, save for the initial call from the temple records office to inform him of Qui-Gon’s death. In fact, aside from his own aides, his opponents on Serenno, and the new Chancellor, he’d barely spoken to anyone of anything at all. The hole in his heart had gaped, and Dooku had felt nothing.

Now, all at once, the dam broke. The gorge in his throat rose, choking away his breath. Qui-Gon was gone. They had barely seen each other, these last few years, and now they never would again. He would never receive another letter, quickly scrawled in the minutes between resolving various political crises. Nothing else mattered. He was never going to cut his padawan’s braid, or call Dooku in the middle of the night to talk about some trivial point of some old book he’d read. The way they had come to trust each other, in losing first Xanatos and then Komari, would be a burden only for Dooku himself, now. He would remember their dead alone. He was so profoundly grateful for every second they had shared, and yet he could not help but greedily wish for more. It was a final, killing blow after a duel’s worth of wounds. Dooku’s muscles twitched without his consent.

It felt good to grieve, openly, to cry and release the emotion into the force. Seizing the grief at the heart of him, Dooku reached up and shoved it out, into the universe. It was like a scream, but silent. Every force-sensitive with enough power to dream could probably feel it, a twinge of loss at the corner of their mind. It was powerful to be known.

Then, having finally let go of all the anger that festered in his heart, Dooku curled up in his chair and wept into his knees.

--

Obi-Wan seemed nervous, as they came down over Carannia. Anakin had wanted to go look at the city as they landed, but he’d been refused. Instead, they’d sat in silence broken by Obi-Wan periodically interrupting to quiz him.

“What is the capital of Serenno?”

“Who is the ruling family?”

“Who is their representative in the Senate?”

By now, Anakin knew all the answers. Obi-Wan had been upset by his not knowing, and worse about him paying appropriate respect to ‘Master Dooku.’ Apparently, Dooku had once been a Master of Master Qui-Gon’s, all of which struck Anakin as very strange. It had been explained to him several times that Jedi Masters were-not-the-same-thing, but Anakin, who was now being sent away to serve a stranger, found the difference unclear.

Even when the ship was opening like a jaw to allow them to walk down into the green-white city, Obi-Wan was still continuing with his lessons.

“Master Dooku is one of the most venerated of the Jedi.” He was half-whispering. “Being called by that title and addressed with deference will be important to him.”

The words were foreign, but Anakin knew the meaning anyways. The man who stood, waiting for them, looked like no Hutt but had the same aura of authority. He wore tight, black clothing that didn’t seem to belong in the temple, but fit well with the colouring of the city around him. Carannia was green. Not like Naboo. Nothing seemed to be alive here. Instead, the cloud-white buildings were covered in vague shapes, forms like the ghosts of trees. After Coruscant, it seemed small, but compared to anything on Tatooine it was massive. Every building was at least three levels, most were more.

Obi-Wan nudged him, and Anakin realized that Master Dooku was looking at him. Avoiding eye-contact, he bowed as he’d seen men do for Padmé, and said, “Master Dooku.”

Master Dooku snorted. It was the dismissive sort of noise that said someone had already made a mistake. Anakin braced against the consequences of whatever he’d done wrong.

“Knight Kenobi.” Dooku’s voice sneered like a bully’s. “If you’re going to teach any padawans you may take to cower, at least tell them the appropriate titles. His Esteemed Majesty, the Count of Serenno, is the highest title I am owed.” He reached out a hand and lifted Anakin by his chin. There were surprising calluses on his fingers. He’d worked. Not just a master, then. “For now, you may call me Count Dooku in public. In private, Dooku will suffice. If you become my padawan, we will re-evaluate our terminology. Do you understand?”

“If?” Obi-Wan cut in, a stressed note underlying his words. “I thought we’d come to an agreement.”

Dooku looked at him like he was a fool. “You and I have. Traditionally, a padawan may choose to reject any such offers. Given our unique situation, I propose we give Padawan Skywalker some time to acclimate.” His hawk-eyes focused back on Anakin. “You don’t understand. In common parlance, Padawan, you may choose to be my student or not, and will wait until after you know me to choose. Alright?”

“Yes,” Anakin managed to butt in, before Obi-Wan could cut him off again. He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

With an odd look in his eyes, Dooku took it. “Deal, Padawan Skywalker.” They shook on it.

When Dooku pulled away, the careful mask that Anakin had seen before, on all the Senators except the Chancellor, on the council, and even on Padmé, was in place.

“I would be a poor host not to show you what is, in my humble opinion, the finest city in the Republic,” announced Dooku. Eyes shooting to Obi-Wan, he added, “it is a failing of your training that you have not seen Serenno, or the pearl that is her capital.”

Obi-Wan’s fists clenched, but he said nothing.

Anakin wasn’t totally sure what a ‘pearl’ was, but Carannia was definitely a really cool city. There were sleek droids everywhere, cleaning the streets and keeping the buildings shiny. The people were all dressed in tight clothes, and nobody walked like they were waiting for the whip to fall. Maybe all the slaves here were kept inside, like they were on Coruscant. Dooku talked about how it had all been built thousands of years ago, but other than that Anakin wasn’t really listening. A cloud of birds landed on little sticks poking out of one of the fake trees. It was nice to see that something natural was still alive.

By the time they finally took a shuttle back to where Dooku lived – a castle, just like a wizard in a story – Anakin’s legs were so tired they basically felt like they were going to fall off, but not in a bad way. Serenno seemed like a pretty wizard – ha, funny – place.

--

Obi-Wan held in his anger and confusion until Anakin was asleep. Even now, when they would never be Master and Padawan, he could feel the boy in the corner of his thoughts. The force around him was radiant as the two suns of his homeworld, and even the closeness of an almost-bond was enough to be blinded. Slowly, nervously, Anakin’s mind rolled over in sleep. He and Master Dooku were sitting in Dooku’s office, a desk between them, drinking a thick, sluggish wine that Dooku had called ‘a jewel of Talarma – in northern Serenno’. It didn’t taste like a jewel of anything much, but Master Dooku seemed to think of himself as someone with refined taste.

As soon as Anakin was asleep, he set his glass down. Master Dooku did the same, and watched him like a viper, coiled and waiting. Obi-Wan struck first. “What in all the Sith Hells were you thinking?” He demanded. After so many weeks of taking defeat after defeat from the council, it felt good to let go. “If Anakin chooses not to be your padawan, he won’t be anyone’s- they’ll send him back to Tatooine. You know what that would mean.”

Dooku took his glass back up, tracing circles around the rim in a manner so precise and careful it almost seemed lurid, though Obi-Wan suspected it was a subconscious choice. Unimpeded by someone fighting back, he decided to press on. “And not making him call you ’Master’? Are you saying you aren’t even a Jedi?”

Still silent, Dooku reached into his desk and pulled out his lightsaber. Its odd curves seemed to suit the fluid, curated person of its wielder. It was sleek, an obviously well crafted and maintained blade. That was no surprise; Dooku was one of the greatest duelists in living memory, and the living memory of the order – namely, Master Yoda’s – was long indeed.

“I am still a Jedi,” he said, coolly, “though I am, perhaps, not the man you assume. You know who my master was. Who my padawans were. What made you assume I would be a religious observer of Jedi tradition?”

It was a foolish question. “Qui-Gon always called you ‘Master’.”

This seemed to strike Dooku as a blow. Of course it would. It still struck Obi-Wan every second of every day.

“Not to my face,” said Dooku, his voice half-whisper, “not after he was Knighted. No matter how strained our relationship was as master and padawan, he became my friend. He was my friend.” He straightened in his seat, and the trace of emotion vanished. “Qui-Gon and Rael called me ‘Master,’ yes, because neither of them were ever afraid of me. I imagine that is because neither of them were slaves.”

He said it so coldly, and the words struck Obi-Wan like a dagger through the heart. Because he had been making Anakin use that title. Had been allowing the council to do the same. What an arrogant, foolish thing to do. No wonder Qui-Gon hadn’t wanted him, in the end. He had less empathy than a bantha. If it hadn’t been for the Sith, he probably never would have been a knight at all.

“Whatever you’re thinking about,” Dooku remarked, voice warmed in a way that felt both foreign and familiar, “you should stop. Release it into the force.” He sipped his wine. “I’ve spent many years holding on to grief and anger. Trust me when I tell you it will bring little joy.”

Obi-Wan was a Jedi. He should have been able to do this, but every time he tried to let go, he thought of Qui-Gon, standing on the opposite side of that forcefield, releasing everything into the force so he wouldn’t be afraid to die. He hated the way his heart both raced and clenched at the thought of it. He closed his eyes, and tried to feel the force the way he once had, omnipresent and deep as any ocean. Instead, it felt hard as stone and tasted like ash caught in his throat.

There was a squealing of metal on stone as Dooku pushed his chair out and stood. His footsteps were soft as he came around to place a hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. It was a gesture that in a non-Jedi might have been affection, but there was no love between them. When he spoke, it was as Qui-Gon had always spoken when Obi-Wan found himself overwhelmed by the world around him.

“Breathe with my words,” dictated Dooku, “breathe the force deep into your chest, and when you exhale, let the pain flow with it. Good. Now breathe in slowly. One, two, three. Hold. Out, one, two, three.” It released some knot of tension in Obi-Wan’s chest. Against his will, his body folded inwards. Dooku said, “there is no shame in crying, Knight Kenobi. Those on the Council who would tell you otherwise are liars who have no understanding of what the Jedi should be.”

“Path to the Dark Side,” Obi-Wan muttered back. Dooku’s grip on him tightened.

Through gritted teeth, Qui-Gon’s master hissed, “You were trained by one of the greatest masters of the Living Force who was ever born. Don’t let his legacy be that you close yourself off from feeling. He wanted more for you than that.”

There was something about the harsh, almost cruel way that Dooku said it that turned his feeling from grief back to anger. “He never wanted me. Not at the beginning and not at the end. If he trusted me, I wouldn’t have watched him die.” Dooku seemed about to interrupt, but Obi-Wan pressed on. “He chose to face a Sith alone rather than wait a moment or two for me. He couldn’t trust me, and it killed him.”

Voice soft and commanding, like the Count he was, Dooku said, “I hope, some day, you can remember that the blame for Qui-Gon dying falls to the Sith that killed him. Whatever you read into the end of his life, and whatever six kinds of fool losing Xanatos made him act as in your first meetings, I hope you remember that between those points he loved you.”

Calling his lightsaber and his wine to him with a flick of his wrist, Dooku walked out.

Chapter Text

Count Dooku was much faster about organizing lessons for Anakin than they ever were at the temple. The first morning Anakin woke up on Serenno, he found a schedule printed on flimsi under his door. The Count wasn’t far behind it, and he ate breakfast with Anakin in a large, empty dining room. Obi-wan wasn’t there, which made everything feel really lonely. The castle itself wasn’t empty, not really. Anakin had noticed the traces of slaves everywhere, but they weren’t enough to fill a space that could have housed hundreds before it became uncomfortable. He wondered where they kept the slaves who had made breakfast. Anakin hadn’t seen any of them in the main body of the Castle. Maybe one of the external buildings?

“Padawan Skywalker,” Dooku addressed him, “am I correct in assuming you have received no formal or standardized education?”

“Haven’t,” Anakin told him, honestly. It seemed it would be a bad idea to lie to him. “But Obi-Wan’s been teaching me lightsaber stuff.”

Dooku nodded seriously. “Knight Kenobi is a very skilled duelist. I have no qualms about his instruction on that front. When you are more familiar with the basics, we will discuss which form of duelling you find most suited. My focus is on Makashi, an ancient and elegant technique, but most Jedi prefer other styles. It is better to have mastered an inferior style that suits you than to have been incompetent at one with greater potential.”

Anakin didn’t really have anything to say to that. “Neat.”

Heavy eyebrows coming together, Dooku looked at him for a long second. “Yes, Padawan Skywalker, Lightsaber duelling is very neat.” Anakin thought it might have been a joke. “Given your lack of formal education, I believe it makes some sense for you to begin immediately with a tutor. I’ve employed a specialist in delayed access learning. She will assess what you’ve been able to figure out on your own, and develop a specialized strategy to help you in whatever areas you require the most help.”

The idea filled Anakin with a mix of excitement and fear. And just a flash of anger. He shouldn’t have needed any special help.

At the end of the day, Doctor Jaila - “Most Serennians only have one name, and whatever title we receive” - took him back to Dooku’s office and left him waiting outside with an old, grumpy lady whose long grey hair was piled on her head like a nest. It was forever before Doctor Jaila came out, and the old lady sent Anakin in.

Dooku was sitting behind a heavy desk, silhouetted by the Serennian sunset. It was nothing like the bright oranges Anakin had grown up with on Tatooine. Instead, there was red, with purple lining the sides of the clouds that were still high overhead. Dooku watched Anakin as he sat down. His strange, curved lightsaber rested at his hand, and Anakin wished he could have seen how it was used before he got dismissed.

“Doctor Jaila,” began Dooku, “believes that you could pass qualifying exams as both a mechanic and a pilot tomorrow, if you wanted to, although she would like us both to remember that you have to be sixteen standard before it’s legal for you, as a human, to work in either field. She also says that you will need special instructors in coding and astrophysics, because she can tell that both fields will come naturally to you.” Maybe he could go into one of those fields after he failed at being a Jedi. “But I suppose you know the problem we’ve arrived at. You were never taught to read or write Basic?”

Anakin shook his head, focusing his eyes on the ground. He could feel his shame. “I know the letters. And I can put the sounds together sometimes.”

“Even that is usually forbidden to slaves.” Anakin kept his focus on the ground, though the coiled anger in Dooku’s voice made him want to look up and see if it was directed at him. “Still, from what Jaila says, I am sure you will not find it too difficult to learn. She’s recommended some holos that will help you get started immediately. The two of you will focus on that for as long as you require, while I continue instructing you in the ways of the blade and the force. I will endeavour to find you instructors in coding and astrophysics during this time.” As it often seemed to be with Dooku, there wasn’t really much else to say, so Anakin just let him continue. “Who taught you as much as you know?”

Anakin forced himself to meet Dooku’s eyes. There was none of the judgement he’d been scared of there. “My mother.”

“She must be a very brave woman.” He couldn’t possibly have understood. Anakin nodded, and Dooku noted, “we will also have to work on you keeping your thoughts to yourself. For what little it is worth, I will say that in the little time I had with her, my mother was always very kind. She gave me up to the Jedi to protect me. It was very difficult to explain that, both to Jedi and non-Jedi, albeit for different reasons.”

“Mom let Master Qui-Gon take me away so I wouldn’t be a slave anymore.”

Dooku nodded solemnly. “And where is your mother now?”

“Still with Watto, probably. Unless he decided to sell her.”

Something about Dooku went very, very cold. Anakin felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, as if someone was whispering just behind him. The air in the room stilled, and the world held its breath. “Qui-Gon didn’t free your mother.” Anakin nodded, but thought that Dooku wasn’t really talking to him anyways. He stood. “Come, Padawan Skywalker, you can show me what Obi-Wan has taught you of combat, and I will show you lightsaber duelling in its purest form.”

--

It was easier to plunge himself into his work than anything else. Though he knew Dooku inviting him as Count to investigate his own coup was nothing but a ruse to trick the council, there was a small, vindictive part of him that wanted to actually go through with it. Besides, this was his first mission as a knight, and now that Anakin was gone – Dooku seemed intent on keeping them seperate – it was all Obi-Wan had to do here.

He took a shuttle back to Carannia, and went through the public records first. Serenno had little press, but there were a number of news organizations in the capital, and Obi-Wan turned back time in their record rooms.

Count Ramil of Serenno, son of Count Gora and Countess Anya. A playboy of interstellar caliber. Where other princelings drank, and left the room with a girl from a different planet on his arm every night, Ramil had gambled with his life more than his money. A speeder accident had left him tragically disfigured. The press never said a wicked word about him, but the implication was there: this man was not qualified to rule. Then, after an obituary of Count Gora – the Countess already many years dead – the disguised slander had stopped entirely, and every writing on the direction of the government had become focused on the Senate. Obi-Wan leafed through, speeding past pages of dreck before he found: Count Ramil Missing; Abyssian Pirates Suspected. With those words, the rumours began again in earnest: Breaking! Count Hired Suspected Abductors. Count Ramil’s Body Found, Mourning Period Ordered. From Jedi to Count: Master Dooku of House Serenno to be Crowned. State Funeral for Count Ramil to be Closed-Casket.

It was this last headline that caught Obi-Wan’s eye. He read on:

“In a startling break with tradition, Count Dooku announced today from Castle Serenno that the funeral for Count Ramil would be closed-casket. Much deliberation had surrounded this decision, given Count Ramil’s well known disfigurement, but many believed that he would be displayed in state, as Count Gora was before him.

“The tradition of Reigning Counts or Countesses being displayed on the occasion of their deaths goes back to the Four Branches Period, when conflict between different parts of House Serenno made assassination and even faked deaths rampent. When a third woman claiming to be Countess Lacke II surfaced, it was determined that a system to prove to the populace that the ruler was actually dead was necessary. Some historians, however, point to this as a desire for a spectacle belonging to a less civilized age. Countess Lacke II, Third Claimant, was famously beheaded, and the display of her body a gruesome affair.

“In his statement, Count Dooku drew on this history, as well as Count Ramil’s well-known concern over his disfigurement. ‘I will not subject my brother to the scrutiny of gawking masses,’ the Count told onlookers. ‘Serenno is one of the greatest worlds in the Republic, and we are above treating our dead like bugs under a microscope. We will preserve our traditional mourning periods, and shed their more shameful trappings.’”

Obi-Wan set down the datapad. It was probably nothing; Dooku was right that forcing the ruling family to display the bodies of their dead was hardly civil, but something twinged in the back of Obi-Wan’s mind. A mysterious death of a man who, by Serennian aging rates, had been quite young. Pirates. And then, out of all of it, an outcast family member returning from a lifetime spent as a Jedi to take over. There had been no indication of when in the mess Dooku himself had shown up. And every article was without a single mention of Lady Jenza, the third of Count Gora’s children. Certainly, she was the youngest, but with Dooku notionally having forsworn attachments, she was at the very least heir to the County.

He tapped his fingers on the table, and tried to think about it how Qui-Gon would have. In the moment, Living Force buzzing beneath his fingertips and running as blood through his veins. For the first time in months, with a problem at hand that wasn’t insurmountable, thinking of Qui-Gon brought him something other than grief. His Master’s words would live on, always, in him, even as the man himself had become one with the force.

Sitting within the grey walls of the Serennian Life reading room, alone on a sturdy chair surrounded by walls of datapads and flimsi, Obi-Wan closed his eyes. “Let’s think about what we know, Padawan,” Qui-Gon would have said, low and soft.

We know that Count Gora of Serenno had three children, Obi-Wan thought, Ramil, Dooku, and Jenza; in any story, it’s important to know the principal players. Ramil was the oldest, and the heir. His status was assured when the secondborn, Dooku, was found to be force-sensitive. It was odd for families as wealthy as the Serennos to give up their children to the Order, but Dooku was secondborn, and had never been destined for the corps, with his strong grasp of the force, sharp mind, and deadly skill. He probably would never have let his Master die at the hands of a Sith.

After being sent to the Jedi, Dooku had disappeared from the Serennian consciousness entirely for years, all the way until his Mother’s death, in point of fact. After that he was featured once or twice, usually in the Republic Affairs section. Then, when his brother inherited, he vanished entirely until he returned as the Count. Ramil was not unpopular but obviously not well loved. He was also, if the rumours were to be believed, a traitor to the Republic. Dooku was… cold. He’d admitted to thinking less of the Order than he ought to. What was to stop him from stepping in and taking his inheritance?

There had to be more information out there. Despite being theoretically ruled by the Count, Serenno had a parliament of elected officials, as well as a council composed of the other Serennian noble houses. These bodies did much of the day-to-day ruling of Serenno, and also, notionally, elected the Count from members of House Serenno. With a four-fifths majority vote, they could even transfer rulership to one of the other Consular Houses. The records of their votes on Dooku’s ascendance, and perhaps even his brother’s, might prove enlightening.

Obi-Wan put away his borrowed flimsi and datapads, said goodbye to Recordkeeper Anito, and walked over to the Council Palace. They’d passed the striking, glass building only yesterday, but the extravagance of it was still shocking. Yesterday, at Dooku’s side, they’d been welcomed enthusiastically in for a tour. Now as “Knight Kenobi, hoping to access session transcripts?” They barely paid him any mind. He would have sworn that one of the librarians had even drawn some kind of superstitious sign over her heart at the sight of him. These ones didn’t leave him alone with the records, either. Instead, one of the senior librarians kept eyes on him at all times. Trying to ignore them, Obi-wan found the records he wanted and began to read.

Ramil had been elected Count by a clear majority. His inheritance was clean, and the only people who had voted to keep the title from him were the small number of anti-nobility representatives in Parliament, and his brother-in-law through Lady Jenza in the Council. That probably explained why the lady herself was nowhere to be seen. The vote on Dooku’s title had been much less clear. He had a similar percentage of the vote, certainly, but five of twenty noble houses and sixty of five-hundred representatives had been absent. Of those, four houses and fifty-three representatives had returned to meetings since. Those missing eight were another question again. Obi-Wan had their files pulled.

One of the representatives had been diagnosed with a heart condition months before Dooku’s takeover, and had died shortly after the vote. Not suspicious, probably, Obi-Wan decided. Another had been the subject of a lurid sexual scandal, already on his last legs. Also probably unrelated. A third had been in the hospital, giving birth, and was now on maternity leave. Most assuredly not related to Dooku, Obi-Wan hoped. That meant there were only five questions.

Three of the five missing votes were alive. Because of the important role of titles in the Serennian world, there was a ministry that registered a person’s ‘official’ titles. They also regulated those like ’doctor’ that required it. Two ex-parliamentarians had changed their titles respectively to ‘advocate’ and ‘citizen’. The third, who had voted on the council, had changed his title to ‘captain,’ which probably meant he’d vacated Serenno entirely. All in all, a thoroughly weird set of circumstances.

Three hours later, Obi-Wan was kicked out of the Planetary Defence Services records room, he was certain he had a full picture of the coup Dooku had told him to investigate, and was equally certain that if he hadn’t been told that a coup had happened, he never would have noticed. What did it mean that Dooku had entrusted him with this information?

It had to be more than a few government representatives being intimidated. Because none of them were dead. Obi-Wan was sure of that. The force agreed. That left the one person in this whole circumstance who was dead: Ramil of Serenno. Ramil was dead. Dooku had intimidated five of the top ten people in government who had most commonly voted with him out of government. There had been pirates involved, but they’d never been captured or interrogated about the circumstances, and there was no sound evidence they’d killed Ramil. And then there was the matter of the closed casket funeral. Perhaps to hide the disfigurement, but… a lightsaber wound would certainly be something to hide on a dead body.

The force didn’t seem to contradict the thought, and Obi-Wan’s heart sank into his boots. What had he brought Anakin into?

Obi-Wan knew what he had to do, but he wouldn’t do it angry. He’d killed in anger once this year and knew how it gnawed at his soul. What Qui-Gon would have thought – it would have hurt him. After Xanatos, the idea that Dooku would have fallen for power would have been unbearable. Whatever his other flaws, Qui-Gon had genuinely loved them both (unlike Obi-Wan, a treacherous voice whispered), and now Dooku too had betrayed everything he stood for.

Obi-Wan meditated. Dooku has helped him break the barrier that had kept him from it, and it was easier than it had been for months to trust in the Force. All will be as it wills, he could imagine Qui-Gon saying. That faith would have to live on in Obi-Wan, now.

He went up to Dooku’s office. His secretary had already gone home for the day, and Anakin, Obi-Wan had confirmed, was elsewhere in the castle. The Count looked up as he stepped through the door.

“Skywalker still doesn’t believe that we do not keep slaves,” Dooku informed him. “I’ve introduced him to some of the kitchen staff in hopes of reducing that fear, and recused myself so Anakin will not think they are under duress when speaking to him. Chef Ethchu has a daughter about Anakin’s age, I think. It would be good for him to have a confidante his own age.”

Obi-Wan let his hand drift to his saber. “By the authority of the Jedi Council, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Ramil of Serenno. It will be easier for both of us if you come quietly.”

Dooku appeared unperturbed by the notion. “Yes, I did kill him. If you will take a seat, I can tell you why.”

This was a bad idea, but the truth was that if Dooku decided to fight, Obi-Wan was not likely to win. He’d killed a Sith, but this was the Makeshi Master, Yoda’s prodigal padawan. Obi-Wan took a seat, though he kept his weapon in hand.

Dooku took his own saber from his belt and handed it to Obi-Wan. “Qui-Gon loved you. It’s little more than a pretence to act as though I would strike you down. But I rather suspect you’d like to go to Master Windu with a motive, so I’ll provide it.”

The curved hilt was strange in his hand. Obi-Wan could never have practiced his own favoured form with such an odd weapon. He wondered how Dooku, student to one who didn’t practice his own form, had ever ended up with such an odd style.

“My father,” Dooku began, “was not an especially good man. When it was discovered that I was force-sensitive, he abandoned me in the woods to die. Just there.” Dooku pointed behind him, to some dark place between the trees. “The Jedi found me before the animals, fortunately for me. His sentiment, that Jedi or potential Jedi were monsters who deserved death, was not an uncommon one among the nobility of Serenno. This is because House Carannia, my mother’s house, has a genetic predisposition towards the trait. The Serennos usually view this as a threat to their supreme authority.” He shook his head. “Foolish, but there we are.”

“I don’t understand the relevance of this,” Obi-Wan told him. Maybe Dooku was stalling, waiting for help.

The Count shook his silver head. “You wouldn’t. Most don’t. I inherited my mother’s genes, with the force strong in me, and a mostly clear mind. My brother inherited our father’s paranoia. He had a… need to consolidate power. It began with Jenza. She was here. She knew that Ramil was reckless, was ill-suited to be Count. She sought to guide Parliament from behind the scenes, leaving him a figurehead, and was exiled for her crimes. She contacted me then, and I told her not to worry. I told her it was the usual Serennian political drama, but at her request I agreed to approach Ramil myself. Any good Jedi would have done the same. We are peacekeepers, meant to be above the politics of any one world. Ramil took my appearance as a personal threat. It drove him from paranoia to madness, and he began actively working against the Republic.

“That wasn’t why I killed him, though. If you let me stand and walk to the other side of the room, I can show you why.”

Obi-Wan gave his permission, and watched carefully as Dooku stood. His black suit was tight over his thin form, and his eyes tracked Obi-Wan even as he walked up to a portrait of a tall, severe woman on the far wall. It was painted in a realist style, with a thick wooden frame carved like vines. She was Countess Anya, Obi-Wan knew, and she looked so very much like her second son. The child in question pressed his thumb against a scanner hidden in the twists of the carved wood, and Obi-Wan watched as the right side of the frame slid open, revealing a hidden scroll. Dooku took the rolled flimsi and slid closed its compartment.

“Here,” he said, and passed Obi-Wan the flimsi. With his eyes to their weapons, Obi-Wan unrolled the scroll and stared at the incomprehensible list of names. They were all Serennian mononyms, of course, and mostly very young by their titles. Student Atashu, Heir Cathaya of Carannia, Baby Oniel.

“Who are they?”

Dooku returned to his seat. His exterior was calm but in the force Obi-Wan could feel seething rage boiling beneath the surface. “It’s a list of every force-sensitive or relative of a force-sensitive on Serenno. Most are too weak for the temple. Because of my father’s prejudice, most of the older ones petitioned to be unlisted by the temple. Those lists are meant to be confidential, of course, but House Serenno has our ways. Of course, I have my ways too. Master Nu informed me that someone had accessed those records, and had changed them to say it was my datakey, no less.”

The implications were chilling. “So you killed him to stop… whatever this was for.”

“I confronted him. It was shortly after I lost Qui-Gon and I was… very angry. Too angry. He was trying to defend his prejudice, and I drew my saber and killed him. I pinned the crime on his own men to cover my tracks, and dealt with his allies here. My claim was strong but for some the prejudice was stronger.”

He said it all so coldly, describing a fall to the dark side as if it was a social faux-pas. Obi-Wan felt a rising anger of his own. He pushed it out into the force. Finish the confession, he thought.

Dooku continued, “I didn’t have to kill any of them, but I implied strongly to a few that they should leave. Others vanished of their own accord. This is not the first time Serenno has experienced a coup. It will probably not be the last.”

--

Obi-Wan was watching him, shrewd and judgemental. Both of their lightsabers rested in his lap with little more care than a child’s plaything. It was a reminder that Obi-Wan was so very young. Dooku could have turned the switches on both and killed him instantly. But his earlier words were true. Qui-Gon had loved this boy as a son, and Dooku would let no harm befall him. However, he would not allow harm to befall Anakin either, and Kenobi could not protect the child alone. He needed to talk his way out of this. His own master would have tried the same, and Qui-Gon. One of the mad members of their line might even have been smart enough to succeed.

“You fell,” Obi-Wan said, harsh and simple. It was damning in its accuracy.

As he had all these weeks, Dooku thought of Qui-Gon. In his mind, he saw his apprentice curled on the floor of Dooku’s temple apartments, shaking like a leaf. In the force, it felt as though his flesh was being rent from his bones. Xanatos had been lost, but not yet dead, and the loss in Qui-Gon’s heart was all-consuming. It had been the first time, in their many long years of knowing each other, that Dooku had realized two key things. The first was that despite their many disagreements, Qui-Gon trusted him. The second was that he loved Qui-Gon, and wanted to protect him. He had knelt on the floor beside him, not knowing what to say, and had grasped Qui-Gon’s hands tight in his own into his sobbing had faded away. It had been the beginning of their new, repaired relationship. A step towards dangerous attachment, but also a movement away from the power-hungry nature of the Sith. Now, older and wiser, with such grief of his own, he wondered if he could have made Komari’s attachments into the same sort of thing. Not with him, ever, but to someone else who could have wanted her as she deserved.

Dooku was an expert in the dark side. It was his specialty, as much as the lightsaber and the politics and his manipulations of the physical world with the force. He’d called on it long before Xanatos had fallen, long before Komari had vanished, and had felt it touch him again in the anger with which he had killed Ramil. But a fall was not an ending, and Dooku had studied enough to know that. If they cast out every Jedi who had ever struck down a foe in anger, or felt an attachment beyond what the modern council permitted, or held ambitions beyond their station, they would have no Jedi in the Order at all. After Xanatos and Komari, he’d dedicated years to this study and was certain that no Jedi was truly above the dark side. Come to that, he’d felt the emotions Obi-Wan had released into the force during their discussion of Qui-Gon.

“Yes, I did. But now I’m back. How angry were you when you killed the Sith?” A ripple went through Obi-Wan’s form, and Dooku almost regretted his words. He changed tactics. “I have dedicated much of my life to studying the history of the Sith, and of the Jedi. There is more to the force than either side would have you believe, and both more and less room between them than you might think. I’ve touched the darkness before, felt it burning cold in my veins. I suspect I will again, before the end of my life. But it is not all that I am. You studied the Living Force. You know that it permeates everything, not black and white but infinite colour.”

Qui-Gon could never have understood Xanatos falling, because the force, to someone who felt this aspect of it so strongly, had nowhere to fall. It was beautiful and honest and right. After so many decades of griping about the platitudes of Qui-Gon’s doctrine, Dooku finally thought he understood. Not the harsh contours of good and evil (or, a sinister part of him hissed, strength and weakness), but a power that breathed in every aspect of the universe, touching all people in myriad ways. It was better. It had kept Qui-Gon from true darkness even when he was broken, had kept him from the corruption of the Council, and had allowed him to feel love without attachment. It might take Dooku the rest of his life to understand as much.

“There is no emotion, there is peace,” Obi-Wan corrected, half to himself. It was the common version of the code, but not, in Dooku’s estimation, the most correct translation.

“Emotion, yet peace,” retorted Dooku, “your Sith and my brother were dangerous and harmful people. Perhaps we risked falling, but here we are. If we are not Jedi, neither are we Sith.”

“I still have to bring you before the council.”

Mace Windu, for a man who danced with darkness every time he drew his purple blade, was remarkably opinionated about preservation of the light. He would have Dooku’s head surely as a master had his padawan’s braid. Dooku thought again of igniting his blade in Obi-Wan’s lap, and rejected the dark intrusion.

A few weeks earlier, Obi-Wan would have been right in saying that Dooku had fallen. He had, in killing Ramil. But that was then. Now, he’d steadied himself, had released the cloying grief and anger into the force. He had a purpose here, Jedi or no Jedi. He would change Serenno, rule it better than his father ever had. Just as strong a need, he would raise Anakin. It had been a long time since Dooku had raised a child, but he knew when he was needed, and Anakin needed him. Well, not Dooku specifically, but someone who could teach his remarkable skill without condemning his emotionality, his love for his mother. Not merely to teach him to reject emotion, but to work with it to do what was best. Qui-Gon might have done the same, but Qui-Gon was with the force, now. Dooku would do better than he had with Komari, better than they had with Xanatos. Skywalker would not fall.

“Kenobi,” Dooku began. He watched the Knight’s eyes carefully. “Obi-Wan. Before you do anything, I ask you to share a meditation with me. If, at the end of that, you decide I am lost irretrievably, I will come with you peacefully. I meant what I said when I told you that I would never do harm to one who Qui-Gon loved, and I swear that to you now on my honour as a Serenno and as a Jedi.”

Obi-Wan gave him a grim look. This was it; his words had failed him and his own grand-padawan was going to take him to Mace to be shackled and put down like a rabid animal. Then, silently, Kenobi returned his own saber to his belt and held Dooku’s out by the hilt.

“I felt the Sith,” he said, “on Tatooine and Naboo. I also felt you, yesterday, when you helped me release my emotions. We do not need to meditate to share that. If you were as power hungry and vicious as him, I would be dead already.”

“Yes.” There was no denying that Dooku, armed with the dark side, had enough power to do this.

“You won’t let Anakin fall?” There was a desperation in his tone. No matter the terrible circumstances that had brought them together, it was beyond question that Kenobi had come to care for the boy. He thought again of Qui-Gon, broken by the loss of the first Padawan he’d loved as a son. No. Even with Dooku’s own fall, it wouldn’t be right to let the darkness touch Anakin. It always felt good in the moment, but afterwards it was oppressive, like being trapped in a tiny ship deep in the vacuum of space. Anakin deserved to be free from that.

“I’ll do my best.” He returned his lightsaber to his belt. The weight was reassuring. “But it may not be Jedi orthodoxy either.”

Obi-Wan folded his hands in his lap. He seemed calm, focused. In the force, Dooku could feel his complete presence. It was calming, a change from the grief and nervous energy that he’d held the day before. This Obi-Wan was so clearly trained by Qui-Gon. In the force, there was an intensity to him, directed at the present, curled as a serpent, watching with one eye open.

“What would you leave out?” Obi-Wan asked. The snake in the force lifted its head ever so slightly.

“It isn’t so much a matter of leaving out as adding in. Anakin should have all the information available to him, and all the choices also. Even if I were as obedient a Jedi as the Temple had ever produced, they may not allow him knighthood. You know how stubborn Mace is. I want him to be equipped for a life outside of the Order. I’ve been considering how I might do that.” Obi-Wan leaned forward. The snake was calm, but curious. “I would allow him to pursue his technical gifts. Anakin’s tutor already believes that he’s a genius. But I’ve been considering more than that.” It seemed early to confess the thought, but, “Neither Lady Jenza nor Ramil have children. I obviously never will. If Anakin was trained, and Mace rejected him, I could adopt him as the heir to House Serenno.”

The snake relaxed. “That makes sense,” agreed Obi-Wan. “Is that all?”

Would Obi-Wan help? Would he understand? “You and Qui-Gon didn’t free Anakin’s mother.”

Obi-Wan put it together instantly. “That’s a very powerful attachment.”

“True. But it’s one Anakin has, for better and for worse. Keeping them apart- especially while he knows she is suffering- will only lead to us losing him.” It was how I lost Komari. She felt attachment, and I didn’t help her, didn’t allow her the opportunity to work through the feelings in the time she needed.

If Dooku had been allowed to have his mother, his sister, and the order, he never would have looked to other force teachings. It wouldn’t have been necessary. Love – attachment – would have drawn him away from the darkness. His mother would have wanted him to be noble, honorable, just, and true. They were traits for a Jedi as much as a Count. Jenza, wherever she was, was probably furious with him for succumbing to anger and ambition in killing Ramil. And they weren’t the only people he had ever loved. Qui-Gon would have been furious, and Rael would have stopped speaking to him entirely. Dooku’s other friends in the order would have given him up, and Yoda would have been uncompromising in his principles. Dooku loved the order, even if he hated its features, the way it submitted to the Senate and failed to champion its own principles. Anakin, who already had a strong sense of right and wrong, would face the same trial.

Obi-Wan shook his head, unaware of the thoughts that coursed through Dooku’s. “I do not understand how you are so calm about this. You – we – are nearly fallen Jedi, and you speak as if it is all a matter of personal affairs.”

The truth was, Dooku himself did not understand this calm. It had come upon him so suddenly, and had become utterly consuming. “Regardless of the many, many flaws of the Jedi order, I still love the principle of what it should be, and the people who fight and have fought to make it thus. Qui-Gon and Rael. My own master. The care and loyalty you have shown to Anakin, no matter the circumstances that brought you together. So what if I’ve danced with darkness, provided I still wish to serve the people of this Republic?”

Not the Republic itself. The Senate had not earned that, nor would it. But the people of Serenno? They deserved more and better, and Dooku could give it to them, with either side of the force.

Kenobi drooped, snake burying its head between the coils of its form. “I wish I had your certainty in what I was.”

He was so young. Though he’d been worthy of knighthood for more than a year, Kenobi was still a child. On Serenno, he would have been past the age of majority for democracy and alcohol, but not yet legally able to draft his own marriage contracts, adopt a child or rent a speeder. Of course, Serennians lived longer, but the point stood. This was all the uncertainty of youth, compounded by grief and anxiety.

“Qui-Gon would have been proud of what you are, regardless of the path you choose.” You were like a son to him, Dooku thought privately, but knew that to a Jedi it would have hurt more to say.

Shaking his head slightly, Obi-Wan said, “I can’t believe that.”

Dooku knew what needed to be done. He’d been thinking of it since Obi-Wan had first reached out, and more so after he had seen what losing Qui-Gon had done to the boy. What a field knighting had done to him. Mace should have made him take the trials, perhaps, and then Kenobi would have been able to see that Qui-Gon was right about his worth. He reached into his desk, and pulled out a folder filled with pieces of flimsi and even some paper. He and Qui-Gon had often exchanged physical letters, for the tradition of it, and the tangible feeling. Often, it had been easier to communicate their feelings in this way.

“He spoke of you often,” Dooku told Obi-Wan, as he handed the folder over. “This is barely a fraction of it, over the years, and mostly the more recent examples. If I had known he was going to die before I did, I would have kept more.”

Obi-Wan opened the folder carefully as if it were some ancient text. “I don’t understand.”

Dooku stood, and offered Obi-Wan a hand to do the same. He had a Jedi’s rough palms, and a very strong grip. “You will always wonder whether Qui-Gon truly believed in you, and what your relationship might have been after your knighting. I cannot give you every answer, but I will give you what I can. Even in knighthood, the relationship between master and padawan is an important source of assurance, of faith, and of support. It was an honour and a privilege to find that with Qui-Gon. With your permission, I would be equally honoured to share the same with you. Now come. Anakin will be relieved to see us on common ground.”

Clutching the folder against his chest, Obi-Wan followed him out of the office. Behind them, a call from the Chancellor of the Republic buzzed unanswered, until Dooku’s abandoned comlink eventually fell silent.

Chapter Text

It took Obi-Wan more than a week to convince himself to open Qui-Gon’s folder of letters. He spent the time in a manner his Master might have approved, sending falsified reports to the council and familiarizing himself with the people of Serenno. Doctor Jaila, the specialist Count Dooku had hired to work with Anakin was, when off-duty, both funny and surprisingly vulgar. She took Obi-Wan for drinks in a seedy bar in Carannia and between the two of them they won several games of sabacc. Obi-Wan made a point to know the rest of the castle staff. They seemed like a dedicated and responsible group of individuals. Of course, a man like Dooku would not have allowed them to remain if they had not been. Though some were old, there was a notable swell of new hires who post-dated Dooku’s ascension. With all of them, of all ages, Obi-Wan did not find it terribly difficult to make a place for himself among them.

Living in Castle Serenno was very different from living in the temple. All of the bureaucrats and diplomats and servants went home – or at least to their own apartments in outbuildings – at the end of the day. There was none of the dormitory-like character of the temple, where everyone who worked there resided there. During the day, however, Castle Serenno had the same busyness in the force that the temple had, and more every day. Dooku told them once, over dinner, that he was trying to increase this trait intentionally. Before his father’s time, Castle Serenno had housed a whole court apparatus, which had transferred over to the parliament in Carannia. The court had served many functions, some merely extravagant, others diplomatic and political. Great negotiations had been hosted there, marvellous balls, and historically, in times of crisis, refugees. Rebuilding it would increase the political influence of the Count himself, but might also restore a useful piece of Serennian infrastructure and tradition. They had discussed Dooku’s plans yesterday, and to Obi-Wan’s surprise, Dooku had coaxed Anakin to give his opinion on the matter. He’d been nervous, but by the end of the conversation was confidently contributing to the discussion. It made Obi-Wan happy to see Anakin feeling that Dooku trusted and wanted to listen to him.

It was with all of this, and many other things, that Obi-Wan distracted himself. The distraction, however, could only last so long. With a heavy heart, Obi-Wan went back to his room after dinner with the intention of reading the letters. Dooku and Anakin were making an appearance at the opening night of a traditional Serennian Opera, and everyone else who worked for the count was already home or leaving soon. A silence permeated the fabric of the castle. It seemed appropriate, like walking through a cemetery to all the dead counts and countesses, Lords and Ladies, who had once called this place home.

Most of the letters were written on flimsi, cheap and cheerful as it was, and Dooku had taken the liberty of sorting them into chronological order. There were twenty total, eighteen on flimsi and two on true paper. After all the time Obi-Wan had spent watching his master scribble a mysterious note between one mission and the next, he knew that this was but a fragment of their years-long correspondence. Dooku had said he had kept very few, and, Obi-Wan thought, this might be all of them. A few were dated to before Obi-Wan had ever met Qui-Gon, which he skipped over. Even if Dooku had given them freely, some aspect of privacy ought to be preserved.

Waiting could only hurt more. He placed the clear sheet of the first letter dated after himself on a solid white square cut out of the wooden desk for reading flimsi, and began to read.

Master Jedi, Lord Dooku of Serenno,

By the time this letter reaches you, the rumours and the news will have made seven circuits of the temple and been laid down to rest. For you, here it is: I’ve taken another apprentice. In response to what you will have already heard, the answers to your questions are: he’s called Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Yoda’s idea, not at all like Xanatos, and very glad I changed my mind. You were right that I would come to want another student, in time.

Padawan Kenobi is righteous, but not in an irritating way, most of the time. I’m sure you have words for me about myself at that age, to which I say yes, probably, and Yoda has the same for you, you self-interested bantha shit. He’s got a great deal of potential as a warrior (No I will not be insisting he practice Form II), and it would have been a tremendous loss for the order to send him to the corps. The force already shows me that I will guide this padawan to knighthood, in a way it never did for Xanatos. I guided him blind, without support from the Force, but now I see clearly and I know what I must do. I will see Obi-Wan Kenobi to knighthood.

If he lets me, that is. I was an incorrigible fool all through our first few meetings. I’m sure Master Yoda told you all about that, so I won’t repeat his words here. I almost got Kenobi killed. I’m sure I made a worse first impression than you did. If I were him, I would never forgive me. Xanatos certainly never would have.

Well, we may never be friends, but I will do my duty. I owe him that much. If he ever allows me to become his friend – as you and I have become – five or ten or twenty years from now, then I will count that a great honor indeed.

Yours,

Qui-Gon Jinn.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to try not to cry. With tears slipping down his face, he put the next letter down and read on. The force seemed to coalesce around him, a brief embrace, before letting go and taking some of the immeasurable sadness with it. Most of the letters were relatively innocuous, arguing some minute point of the code or ethics, describing Obi-Wan’s progress and, in the early letters, asking about Komari Vosa’s.

Dooku,

Hopefully one of my coms will reach you before this letter does. If not: call me. Please. I heard they moved Komari onto the KIA list today, and I want to remind you of some things:

1) You did not send her on this mission. You would not have sent her alone, and you knew that she wasn’t ready for any of this.

2) There has never been a Jedi master without mistakes. You know very well what I did when I first met Obi-Wan. I’ve come as close to killing him as any Master ever has their apprentice, and you know that. I let Xanatos fall for kriff’s sake. Don’t shut me out because you blame yourself.

3) Komari was not entitled to you just because her choice to join the mission to Baltizaar without permission resulted in her death. I know you, and I know you’re wondering if she would still be alive if you’d pretended to love her the way she loved you. That isn’t how this works. You were entitled to say no, and right to tell the council.

4) Grieve in whatever way feels best to you, and don’t feel guilty for your conflicted feelings. Grief is complicated. I miss Xanatos and resent missing him in equal measure, every day.

5) Being Jedi doesn’t make us any less human, and our species has complex social, emotional and psychological needs beyond what the order can provide. Talk to someone about this. A mindhealer, ideally, but if that feels like too much, come to me. Obi-Wan and I will be back in the temple in a couple weeks, and staying for long enough that he can knock out his language requirement and temporal physics exams. If not me either, then consider speaking to Rael, or Master Yoda. I know those relationships are strained but they do both care about you. Neither would turn you away if they knew you were struggling. Or Master Nu or Sifo Dyas or somebody. This order cares about you. Don’t let yourself forget that.

I’ve always felt death in the Force, ever since I was a child. To me, it is circular. I feel the currents that make up one life move on to others, swirling infinitely across the expanses of the universe. It is a dance, one in which we all play our part. Grieve Komari, and then let her be free.

Yours,

Qui-Gon Jinn.

Obi-Wan lowered the letter. He remembered finding out about Komari Vosa’s disappearance, the futile search that had ended with the declaration of her death. He remembered Qui-Gon’s distant, subtle grief for the sister-padawan that he had barely known. Obi-Wan, who had never met her at all, had not gone to the funeral. Depa Billiba had offered to take a number of padawans to the outer rim with promised opportunities to meet some monks that practiced force meditation, and Qui-Gon had insisted he go. It had been a nice trip, and when he returned, they’d been sent away again. Maybe, thinking about it now, Qui-Gon had made Obi-Wan go because he needed to be present for Dooku instead.

There were more letters. Most irrelevant, some overly personal, a few funny. There was one where an obviously mortified Qui-Gon declined Dooku’s offer to have Master Rael teach Obi-Wan about Jedi views on sexual need and conduct.

You, Qui-Gon accused, wryly, scarred me for life with that talk. I tremble in fear at what Rael would do on your recommendation.

They had obviously cared so deeply about each other, Dooku and Qui-Gon. It was a seering reminder of all that he’d lost. If he and Qui-Gon could have been able to keep in touch so loyally after so many years, Obi-Wan would have had all he’d ever truly wanted. It seemed a great injustice that Dooku, who by the admission of all parties was never a good teacher for Qui-Gon, had received that time instead. On the other hand, if not for Master Dooku, Anakin and Obi-Wan would have had nowhere else to go. Without question, he was responsible for making Qui-Gon into the rebel he had been, and for making Obi-Wan into the same. If Dooku hadn’t seen the wrong of the council, shown it to Qui-Gon, who in turn had made Obi-Wan promise, then Anakin would be back on Tatooine at this very minute. And that would have been unimaginably wrong.

The last letter was only a few months old. It was mostly trivial, but one passage stuck with Obi-Wan and would for the rest of his life.

Don’t let me keep Obi-Wan from his trial for another year, Dooku. He’s more than ready, save for the fact that he doesn’t feel like he deserves it. I think if I tell him after a win, a mission that goes well, he’ll see. If this thing on Naboo doesn’t get absolutely kriffed up by the Trade Federation, then maybe I can use that. If not, well, there are always other missions. I need you to help steel my resolve. I admit attachment, for your eyes only. I’ll miss him very much. But it’s time. He is already a far wiser Jedi than I have ever been. Perhaps when I knight him, you can finally see him for yourself. Would you come to Coruscant for that? Yes, I think the Force rather likes the idea of that. Or I do at the very least.

It went on from there to other matters. Obi-Wan buried his face in his hands, and breathed until the calming of the force was able to flow through him, steady and brilliantly alive in the way Qui-Gon had always seen it. When he had exhausted his grief, he went, and drew up a letter to the Council explaining that there had been no wrongs committed in the coup that had placed Dooku in charge, but that he was staying on Serenno anyways. Just to be safe.

--

The hologram was life-sized, filling the chair in the centre of Dooku’s office with the bejewelled and made-up figure of Queen Amidala of Naboo. It was remarkable how young she was. No wonder Anakin, still an exuberant boy, had found it easy to call her a friend.

“Count Dooku of Serenno,” one of the handmaidens introduced him, “this is Queen Amidala of the Naboo.”

Was she being honest, or had one of her handmaidens swapped in? Dooku scanned the faces of the two girls at the Queen’s side. They were equally young, and looked very much alike. He was an important enough ruler that one of the three would have to be Queen Amidala, but which?

“Your majesty,” Dooku greeted, “I am calling on two matters of importance, both relating to my new apprentice, Anakin Skywalker.” The girl on the left twitched, ever so slightly. That was the real Queen Amidala, then. He turned to look at her. “The first matter is a simple one. Anakin is learning to write in basic, and I think he would appreciate the opportunity to practice writing letters with Padmé, a handmaiden he befriended during his time with the Naboo.”

The handmaiden dressed as the Queen said, “I am sure that can be arranged, Count Dooku.” With a glance at the real Queen to affirm she was making the right choice, she added teasingly, “We all know that Padmé was very fond of the boy.”

“He knows, Sabé,” Padmé said, looking into Dooku’s eyes. She was a very clever woman, that was instantly clear, and well versed in manners enough to ignore them when needed. “The Naboo owe your apprentice a great debt, Master Count. We would be honoured to keep in contact with him. But, please. Tell me what this second matter of importance is.”

“A greater one, Queen Amidala. It is the matter of the boy’s mother. We on Serenno feel that leaving a Lady to whose son a debt is owed in slavery would be a terrible oversight.”

Her expression was hard. “We Naboo feel that slavery existing anywhere in the Galaxy is a terrible oversight.”

She was right, of course. It was yet another of the Jedi’s failings that they only protected those who needed it within the bounds of the Republic. “Be that as it may, the Jedi Council would not approve of a master of their order becoming emotionally invested in so trivial a matter as the freedom of one woman, and since that Master has already taken on an apprentice whose training was forbidden, and has become involved in the politics of his home world, he is operating on very thin ice.”

She understood. “The Naboo do not negotiate with slavers, Master Dooku.”

“I trust in your wisdom. If she were to be freed, house Serenno would be honoured to take Lady Skywalker into our home.”

“So be it. I trust Anakin will be in touch.”

Feeling the rush of a successful negotiation, Dooku made two more calls. This first was to an assistant, to have a necklace of Serennian emeralds sent to the Queen of Naboo as a gift. The emeralds were, historically, a known good of house Serenno, and giving them would be a diplomatic way to pay the Naboo for any costs incurred in freeing Anakin’s mother. Besides, the transmission of jewels and cultural artifacts was a tradition as old as the ruling classes of both Naboo and Serenno.

The second call was to Doctor Jaila, to tell her that their plan had gone exactly as intended. Twenty minutes later, Anakin burst into his office and threw his arms around Dooku’s neck. With Jedi instinct Dooku caught the boy and, awkwardly, returned the embrace.

“I can write letters to Padmé!” He yelled, in Dooku’s ear. “That is so wicked!”

Jaila, standing in the doorway, smoothed down her skirts from where they had rustled as she chased Anakin. “I believe you had something else to say, Anakin?”

Feet returned to the ground, Anakin bowed and said, “thank you, Count Dooku.”

Jaila had taught him the proper degree to bow not as a servant but as a member of a noble house to its head.

“You are welcome, Anakin, and that was correctly done.” He gave Jaila the slightest nod of approval. The more people that understood Anakin was to be treated as a Serenno, the better. “Now, I am sure you have work yet to do today, as do I, but tomorrow could most assuredly – that is to say, definitely – be spent practicing with the force, if you are amenable – if you agree to it.”

“Jedi magic, wizard!”

Already, he felt such fondness for this boy. If only Qui-Gon had lived to see the true potential he’d discovered on Tatooine. “Indeed, young Skywalker. Indeed.”

--

He was in lessons with Doctor Jaila, learning about the history of the Republic, when her comlink buzzed. She glanced down to read the words, and then looked up at Anakin in shock. “Count Dooku requests our presence in the private landing bay immediately.”

They had to get directions from one of the slaves – servants, nobody here is a slave – but eventually they found their way down to discover a ship Anakin recognized as one of the shiny, fish-like craft of the Naboo waiting for them. For a second, he thought, it must be Padmé, but then he saw the woman Dooku was talking to, and he almost knocked him over as he ran to grab her as tight as he could.

“Mom!”

She was just like he remembered. It felt like he hadn’t seen her in basically forever, but when she said, “Anakin,” and hugged him back, that time all went away.

“I missed you so much.” In the force, he could feel Dooku sneaking backwards away from them, which wasn’t fair. He brought Anakin’s mom here. He should stay.

“Count Dooku!” Anakin pulled back just in time to watch the old man freeze. “Did you really get Watto to let her go?” It was just like he thought when Qui-Gon showed up. The Jedi really had come to free them.

For a Jedi, Dooku was pretty sneaky. He said, “oh, I only mentioned to the Naboo that it would be generous of them to help. Queen Amidala arranged the rest.” Then, looking at Mom, he said, “As I was saying, Lady Shmi, you and your son are welcome to stay as long as you want.”

Wait a second. “Hey, does this mean I don’t get to be a Jedi any more?”

Dooku knelt down, slowly, to look in his eyes. “I offered you a choice, Anakin. That choice is still yours to make. But I wanted you to make it knowing that no matter what you chose, you would have people there with you. If you and your lady mother choose to live as normal citizens here on Serenno – or even to return to Naboo, where I am sure the Queen would welcome you – then that choice is always yours. But you will both be equally welcome if you choose to be my padawan.”

Mom and being a Jedi. And getting to write letters to Padmé. “I definitely want to be a padawan, Count Dooku.”

The old man smiled. “In that case, Anakin, you are going to need a haircut.”

Chapter Text

Shmi stood on the landing platform, shivering against the cold Serennian night. A moment later, a thick cloak was pressed into her hands.

On Dooku, it was more of a fashion accessory than anything. Wrapped around Shmi, it closed in front of her and pooled on the floor.

She still wasn’t quite comfortable with what felt almost like lavish gestures of generosity. “There’s really no need for you to be cold too.”

He laughed. “This is warm weather for Serenno. In the end, I’m sure you will get used to the climate. I have, on each world I’ve ever lived on for a long stretch.”

That was a comfort. She’d had to get used to Tatooine, a very long time ago. At least here, she had other people to share it with. And this time, there wasn’t a bomb under her skin forcing her to stay.

“Thanks.” It really was a very warm cloak.

“It has a hood, too, you know.”

Shmi pulled it up, and it fell so far over her eyes, she couldn’t even see where the last few stars hung in the sky. The cold air twinkled, and it slid back on her head until the edge rested just near her hair line. Dooku lowered his hand, fingers slightly outstretched. He hadn’t touched her, but with his extraordinary power, that hardly mattered.

“There’s a fine art to wearing cloaks. I find I much prefer the cape of the count to the robe of the Jedi for that very reason.”

He was an odd man. From anyone else, she would have thought such kindness was flirting. But from him, she knew it was genuinely kind. Nothing else. He was kind to Anakin, too. If any man on Tatooine had come so close to him, Shmi would have scooped him up and run as far as she could. Watto hadn’t ever let anyone lay hands on him. That was better than some got. But Shmi still knew what to be afraid of. She knew that there had always been a chance he would let them go, for the right price.

“You were kind, to offer to wait here with me.” His words brought her back from the sands of Tatooine to the cold Serennian landing pad.

“You didn’t deserve to stand out here by yourself.” It was a small kindness, after all he’d done. But all good people were made of small kindnesses.

“Standing out here was… unnecessary. A ritual, more than anything. I could have waited until the ship touched down. Only, I haven’t seen my sister in many years.”

“Rituals are important, too.”

The form of a shuttle was descending steadily through the atmosphere, lights shining out across the landing bay where Shmi herself had come to Serenno, not so long ago.

Dooku adjusted his belt, slightly, with a nervous energy Shmi had never seen before in him. His fingers grazed across the hilt of his lightsaber as if seeking reassurance in its power. “Jenza is the only family I have left. By blood, anyways.”

“And not by blood?”

He shot her a sly smile. “I suppose we shall have to see about that, Lady Shmi.”

“I’m no lady. Though, for what it’s worth, that son of yours said the same.”

That made him flinch. It was hard to know what would, with these Jedi. She had hoped it would make him happy to know that someone else had seen the kinship between them. “On Serenno, titles are very important. They are part of our names, the part we make ourselves rather than that which we’re given. They represent the part of us that can change. Perhaps I instilled a little of that value in Qui-Gon.”

“That’s a beautiful tradition. But ‘lady’ makes me feel… less like myself,” Shmi confessed, as the lights came down on them. “Isn’t there a title that’s less about ruling?”

“A title can be anything, provided it doesn’t have a regulating body like ‘representative’ or ‘doctor’ or ‘barrister’. You just need to submit it to the registry for approval.”

A thought struck her. “Could I just… say my title was ‘Skywalker’?”

Jenza’s ship touched down, and a woman with Dooku’s white hair and sharp features walked out into the early morning air. She wore a black dress that flared slightly around her ankles, and a blood red cape that fell just to her waist line. There was a moment of stillness, where Shmi could sense, like a prickling in her mind, the pain that radiated off of both of them.

Dooku spoke first. “Lady Jenza, may I present Skywalker Shmi, mother of my padawan, Anakin.” His brows furrowed, slightly. “Where is Satil?”

Lady Jenza shook her head, and Shmi realized that there were tears in her eyes. “Heart attack. We weren’t anywhere near a medical center.”

Dooku was across the room, holding her, before Shmi could even blink.

The single sun of Serenno finally parted with the horizon.

Chapter Text

“You seem tense, Padawan.”

Anakin adjusted his robes for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. “Forgive me, Dooku, I had thought that seeing my oldest friend in person for the first time in three years and making my case for knighthood to the Jedi council might be cause for anxiety.”

As if taunting Anakin, a screen outside their shuttle flashed with the words ‘Renowned Anti-slavery Activist and Senator for the Chommel Sector Arrives from Naboo.’

Dooku changed topics, for Anakin’s sake. “Has ‘Taré’ written any more treatises about the Hutts lately?”

Padmé and Anakin had been covertly engaging in political work for years. Anakin, between her and Dooku, had grown into a savvy politician, these last ten years. Now, they were engaged in efforts to expose corruption in a variety of sectors throughout the Republic. Padmé had received all the credit for their writing and research, among those who knew who ‘Taré’ really was; Anakin, absolutely besotted with her, didn’t seem to mind.

“She may be working on something about senators who’ve been blackmailed by the Hutts after raping enslaved women in Hutt-run brothels.”

“And do I want to know whose credentials were used to access their bank accounts and track those payments?”

Anakin adjusted his robes again. “Oh, please, Taré is too good at slicing to be caught doing something simple as using codes associated with her. She borrowed some information from the Trade Federation.”

Of course Anakin had. When didn’t he. “Don’t get caught.”

Their shuttle settled down in front of the temple. Anakin stood, and offered Dooku a hand. “On account of your advanced age.”

He was a troublesome youth. Dooku thought he finally understood how Master Yoda felt, surrounded by impetuous children that didn’t understand the value of wisdom. Still, Dooku allowed himself to be pulled up, if only so he could feel how his apprentice’s pulse was racing.

“Steady yourself,” Dooku urged him. “The force will see you to the place you need to be, inside the order or not. You know that I would happily support you in another path. Doctor Jaila would be glad to see you enroll in university, and your mother would appreciate having you home on Serenno.”

“You sound exactly like her.”

Perhaps he was spending a little too much time with Shmi, but, well, she was good adult company who wasn’t liable to use him for political gain, and with Jenza in the Senate and Obi-Wan often off Serenno running missions, that was a thing he’d often sorely missed since leaving the temple.

“I aspire to be as wise as she. Now, straighten your robes one last time. We are going to make every one of those Jedi believe that they were wrong to give up on you.”

The ship opened up before them to reveal both the members of the council that Dooku had dreaded seeing most. Windu and Yoda. Why couldn’t it have been Koon or Fisto. Shaak Ti. Someone with a little sense of nuance. Adi Gallia, even, if the force was good to him. But no, it just had to be Windu and Yoda together. Perfectly synchronized, Anakin and Dooku bowed.

“Master Yoda,” Dooku greeted his teacher, deeply conscious of the degree to which he sounded more like a politician than a Jedi. “I am honoured again to stand in your presence, and to present your grand-padawan, Skywalker Anakin of Serenno.”

In Serennian tradition, they often used Anakin’s surname as his title, making it proper and lawful. Besides, at least to Dooku’s ears, it made a great deal more sense to have a Skywalker, name of Anakin, from Serenno, than an Anakin Skywalker, whatever that was.

“I don’t seem to remember you taking an apprentice from this temple, Dooku,” Windu butted in.

Dooku turned all the disdain he’d mastered in a decade as Count on the younger Jedi. “Of course, Master Windu. That would be because Anakin was brought to me on Serenno. It was very generous of the Council to give us this opportunity. In spite of my nervousness, I very much enjoyed having the opportunity to train one last padawan. Thank you both for coming to welcome us here.”

Windu, as Master of the Order, was at least as skilled a politician as Dooku, when the need arose. He smiled blandly. Yoda cut in, “We are pleased to have you with us, Count Dooku.”

Somehow, Yoda calling him ‘Count’ hurt more than any blaster bolt could have. “Please, Master Yoda. I will always hold what you taught me in the greatest esteem. I hope those duties I have taken on will not come between us.”

“Perhaps,” said Yoda, “perhaps.”

Then, slowly as ever, the little green master walked away.

Dooku’s turn to politics must have hurt him far more than he had ever let on in the few letters they had exchanged, these last few years. A part of Dooku wanted to run, to beg the master who had raised him for forgiveness, but he stood his ground and turned back to Windu. “I trust I’ve been moved into a suite with room for a padawan?” Before the man had a chance to answer, he continued. “Anakin has business to conduct for me on Coruscant. He’ll be taking a speeder from the temple lot. You can show me to our room, and I’ll comm him the number later.”

“You can check in to the Temple the same as any other Jedi, Dooku,” Windu griped, and strode off after Yoda. It was good. Dooku’s rudeness had actually worked.

Anakin stared like he had as a boy. “I’m not sure offending the highest ranking Jedi in the order is going to convince them to let me stand my trials.”

“I can hardly convince them both at the same time, Anakin. I am no miracle worker. Besides, wouldn’t you like the chance to meet Padmé when she lands?”

Anakin couldn’t say no to that, and they parted ways on their respective missions. He was nervous about seeing Padmé again. That much was obvious. Not matter how many letters they exchanged, or how often they spoke – sometimes daily – it could hardly compare to seeing her in person. And besides, there was much to fear about her induction into the Senate as well. While she was relatively safe on Naboo, there had been an attempt on her life two years earlier by a Hutt-affiliated Senator, and just last month, Dooku had been victim to a similar attempt when investigating a corrupt Serennian nobleman. It had been Anakin’s serenity in that moment, the way he had defused the situation and taken Lady Castores into custody without harming her, that had convinced Dooku it was time to present him for knighthood. Anakin’s anxieties would be settled some by allowing him to see Padmé in person and know that she was safe.

After checking in with the head of logistics, a Bothan who would have been in her mother’s womb the last time Dooku had lived in the temple, he pocketed their keys and went to track down the first person on his list of potential allies.

Shaak Ti was an unconventional choice of councillor to approach, especially for a matter like this, but Dooku had chosen her for a very specific reason: she had trained all her padawans away from Coruscant, on her own homeworld, to be precise. She would not judge his unconventional methods.

She asked of him but a single question. “Can he pass the trial?”

It was one Dooku had asked himself, many times. Anakin had weaknesses, attachments that some would have seen as disqualifying. To his mother, to Padmé. In his weaker moments, Dooku hoped that Anakin might even be attached to him. But then there had been the incident a month earlier. Lord Jefest of Orania had been involved in an operation to undercut Serennian droid manufacture in favour of the Techno Union. Dooku had made a social call, discovered damning evidence, and been held at blasterpoint by Jefest’s wife. Dooku could have saved himself, but not without killing her. Anakin had discussed with her the options, had soothed her emotions with the force, and ultimately had been handed the blaster without so much as igniting his lightsaber. And all this in spite of the fact that someone he was attached to was in danger. He had proved that he could perform his duty in spite of his attachments. Even in a highly emotional situation, he’d done incredibly well.

So it was with confidence that Dooku told her, “yes, he can.”

As Dooku was on his way out, she stopped him to say, “you know however many of us you get on board – and it will definitely be more than half – you won’t ever get him a trial without at least Yoda or Windu onside, and Windu will never agree. He fears that child. I wish I knew why.”

“And Yoda? Do I have a better chance with him?”

Dooku loved that little green goblin, for what it was worth.

“You always have a chance with Yoda. I mean, you know how he is, and if anything, the last decade has made him more unpredictable than ever.”

Dooku still intended to speak to the rest of the council first. He had an appointment with Adi Gallia in half an hour. That left him with just enough time to go see an old friend.

Jocasta Nu was older. But of course, she wasn’t Serennian. Dooku was no Yoda, but he would likely live to see many of his agemates, especially those who were not Jedi, buried. Still, she was a fierce woman, and Dooku was surprised to see her smile at the sight of him. He pulled the chair across from her out with the force, closed the door to the reading room, and took a seat.

“Dooku.”

“Jocasta, as ever, the force around you sings with untold stories.”

She knew him well enough to take it for both a compliment and a joke, lips twisting in a fond smile. “Your timing is impeccable. I’m running an errand for your beloved grand-padawan. I suppose he hasn’t told you about any ominous dreams of a mysterious girl with a lightsaber.”

Obi-Wan really was cut from the same cloth as Qui-Gon. “Of course not. What has he asked you for? Surely the visions of a mere knight are beneath the incomparable mind of Jocasta Nu.”

“Two things.” She turned a padd towards him. “First, he wanted to know her species. She’s Dathomiri. I can see why Kenobi didn’t recognize it, but I can tell by her facial structure. Besides, he was never a young girl nourishing herself on stories of force witches. That experience was what led me to recognize it so quickly. Second, he asked me to pull descriptions of missing Jedi and their lightsabers.”

Komari’s had never been recovered. “Did he send you a sketch of that too?”

“He offered, but I declined. I’ll only waste so much time. He can go through the records I pull himself. But while I was doing it, I did notice something interesting.”

She pushed a button and sent a cloud of information swirling through the air. There seemed to be a flurry of names and faces, along with several maps, line and bar graphs, and sections of computer code. The storm of data was overwhelming.

“The number of Jedi reported missing or killed in action has declined steadily over the last two decades – probably in line with decreases in the overall population. Normally, people are transferred from the missing to killed list either because sufficient time has passed or because we have confirmation of death, but the latter hasn’t happened since…”

Since the testimony confirming Komari’s death, she meant. “That doesn’t make any sense. If the overall numbers of killed and missing are decreasing, we should have more resources to dedicate to finding answers, not less.”

Jocasta nodded. “Exactly. Why is nobody looking for answers? Why is nobody looking for bodies? For lightsabers?” She gestured to the datapads on her desk. “If your Kenobi manages to find one of them, he’ll do better by this Order than any one of us. Of course, he has a lead on what the planet looks like, which should narrow down which worlds to check, but it’s staggering to realize how many knights we’ve lost contact with..”

Jocasta had been doing favours for Dooku for a very long time, and he felt some guilt about the fact that she was now doing the same for his grand-padawan. “Is there anything I can do?”

She tapped her fingers. “This many missing, I start to wonder… is there someone behind it?”

“Well-” Dooku said, thinking that the partner of the Sith that killed Qui-Gon would still be out there.

Just then, a Togruta initiate stuck her head into their private room. “Master Nu! Turn on the news, someone just tried to blow up Senator Amidala.”

Dooku met her eyes, and then ran from the room.

—

“Padmé!” Anakin caught her as their world tilted from the explosion. The lifeless body of her decoy – her friend – tumbled to the ground, faintly singed. As Padmé pulled free of him and ran to her, Anakin drew his lightsaber and stood guard. The rich green light from his blade barely cast a shadow in the bright Coruscanti sun. The shot he’d been expecting from a waiting assassin never came.

Padmé’s hand returned to rest on his shoulder. “Let’s go inside. We have a galaxy’s worth of business to discuss.”

She changed into her formalwear while Anakin sat on the edge of the bed and watched the window and the door for more potential threats. Despite Padmé’s words, they didn’t speak of what had happened. She was still a little in shock, he thought. The grief hadn’t quite set in yet. If he knew Padmé at all, she wanted to think about anything else, in this moment.

“Dooku still thinks I’m hopelessly pining after you, you know.”

In point of fact, they’d been dating for almost six months. Padmé threw a pair of tights at him.

“Ani! He’s your teacher. You need to tell him.”

Anakin laughed, and threw the tights back at her. “I will. I’m just trying to figure out how. I know it wouldn’t bother him, it’s just… I know he already thinks I should be thinking more about politics and less about being a Jedi. This would make him insufferable. Just imagine if we got married, Countess Padmé.” He gave the title a teasing lilt. “I think Dooku has dreams about having an heir as capable as you.”

“Well,” Padmé said, sitting down beside him to put on her shoes, “I hate to ask then, but I am going to require you to dedicate a little more of your time to the political sphere. If someone is trying to kill me, then I would think it is very likely to be someone opposing my legislative proposal. I need someone I can trust to help me figure out who.”

What Padmé had proposed was legislation to place trade embargoes on any world trading with a world that practiced slavery. The harsh reality was that even if slavery was illegal in the Republic, many worlds benefitted from it, in whole or in part. Her legislation also intended to reclassify both serfdom and indentured servitude as forms of slavery, and classified having sex with anyone who was enslaved as a Republic-level offence. It was going to have a lot of serious consequences for the lining of a lot of people’s pockets.

“You know I’m always happy to help, but you might be safer with a real Jedi. Obi-Wan would come back from Serenno if you asked him to. Dooku would happily meddle in politics at your behest.” Anakin, for one, would feel better knowing Padmé had a master on her side.

“They’re great Jedi, Anakin, but if I have one of them protecting me, everyone in the galaxy will know I’m afraid. I refuse to allow that. You can protect me and keep your head down. In fact, just ask Senator Jenza to say she invited you as her nephew. Then you can hang around the senate building and people won’t even have to know that I have anything to do with it. Besides, I can ask other people for protection. I need you to find the culprits and give me their names.”

Oh, right. That all made sense then. “I can call on her tomorrow. Auntie J always loves a good piece of… underhanded learning.”

Padmé turned his head so that they could kiss. Her lips were as soft as Serennian snowfall, and there was just a hint of sweetness from the moisturizer she wore on them.

Just then, there was a knock at the main door, and one of Padmé’s guards called, “the Count of Serenno for you, Senator!”

They leapt apart. “Quick,” Padmé hissed, “help me do up the back of this dress.”

There was a lot of ties, but Anakin figured it out eventually. Tying a bow, he let Padmé go to the door first.

“Master Dooku!” She burst out into the main room, and curtsied. The pale green triangles of her dress perfectly complimented her necklace of Serennian emeralds, and it was without question that Dooku noticed this detail. He bowed in turn, and kissed Padmé’s hand.

“Senator Amidala, you are as radiant in life as in your letters.”

If Anakin hadn’t known his teacher was asexual, he almost would have been jealous.

“And you as charming.” She glanced to her guards. “Leave us. With two Jedi, I have no cause for concern.”

As soon as they were alone, Dooku raised an eyebrow. “In the Senator’s chamber already, Anakin? At least your padawan-brother Rael was an adult before he started sleeping with the heads of governments.”

Well that was one secret out. “Dooku,” Anakin complained.

The old man laughed. “Peace, my young Padawan. You’re subtle enough for someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do. Now, Senator, are you unharmed? I came as soon as I heard the news.”

“Upset, but not hurt. I trust it would be alright if I borrowed Anakin for a few days to look for the culprit.”

He waved his hand magnanimously. “If Anakin were to uncover a plot on the life of a popular young Senator, it would give me all the ammunition I need to argue that he is more than fit to become a knight. If he would like to be a knight. Every senator could use a handsome consort to organize her social functions.”

Padmé laughed, and Anakin did too. Even Dooku smiled at his own joke in his sly way.

Then, more seriously, he said, “if they are trying to kill you over this, I fear you may have stumbled onto something far more serious than a few senators dipping into the pockets of the Hutts to finance their… perversions.”

It was something Anakin had already been turning over in his head. Some of the things they’d found had been despicable, but nothing worth killing over. Most of it wouldn’t even be punished under current laws.

“I’ll start with names we’ve already published, but I think we may have to face the very real possibility that someone believes we know more than we do.”

Dooku’s smile turned rather sinister. “With you on the case, Padawan, I fear they will have stumbled onto far more than they anticipated.”

--

As long as Obi-Wan lived, he thought he might never get used to that terrible foreboding feeling when the force was trying to tell him something. All week, it had been prickling in a corner of his mind, just over to the side of where his training bond with Qui-Gon had once rested. The closeness of the contact made him even more uneasy than usual.

Well, it was probably just nerves. The oddness of being here on Serenno while Dooku and Anakin were on Coruscant had put him on edge, and his fear that Anakin would be forbidden from taking the trial was palpable. Not as strong as Dooku’s, although the Master Jedi hid it better, but certainly tangible. Not as strong as Anakin’s either. In spite of all his other skills, Anakin seemed to truly want to be a Jedi. Instead, for whatever reason, Shmi was the only one of them who was totally calm about the prospect.

“If it’s bad dreams,” she said to Obi-Wan over breakfast, “they do have drugs for that here, you know.”

“I know. But the interactions of the force with any kind of mind altering substance can be… disturbing.”

Shmi shuddered. “Yes, I can see that. Well, is there anything that would help?”

Qui-Gon would have been able to help. That was one of the great virtues of Master-Padawan bonds. But Obi-Wan had coped with his visions for many years alone. He knew what he was doing.

“Either I need to soothe my nerves, or I need to track down the source of this disturbance. Either way, meditating will help. You could join me, if you would like.”

Buttering a piece of toast with a silver knife, Shmi paused to look at him. “I would be happy to, Obi-Wan. Provided it’s before work tomorrow or after it today. I agreed to help write a puff piece for Dooku’s decade anniversary. You know, they’re thinking of putting a statue up of him in the Garden of Leaders in Carannia. The whole thing is a farce, mind. They did the same for his bastard father.”

As Senator Jenza’s periodic girlfriend and a member of House Serenno’s public and press relations team, Shmi had strong feelings about the history and the present of House Serenno. Not to mention the fact that her son was the heir presumptive.

“How are they coping with the fact that the Count is spending the actual anniversary on Coruscant?” It really was terrible timing, but Anakin had wanted so badly to see Padmé that none of them had it in their hearts to deny him.

“Well enough. He’s technically supposed to be back in a month, which is when the actual anniversary is. Whether he’ll make it there is another matter.”

If Obi-Wan knew anything about the Jedi council, it was that they did nothing at a convenient time.

He went about his day, not doing anything much. He still took missions from the council, but there weren’t any coming up, and Dooku and Anakin had felt more comfortable leaving Serenno and, more importantly, Shmi, knowing that Obi-Wan was there. Besides, it didn’t hurt to take some time to rest.

Then, that night, he had a dream. It was a rocky, unpleasant world. And a girl. A girl whose species he couldn’t name off the top of his head. She was shaking, lightsaber clutched between sweaty hands, and she screamed. It was an awful, long sound that stayed with him long after he woke up.

Shmi found him in his study, datapads spread around him and a map of the Galaxy hovering in the air. “I was worried when you didn’t come meditate with me. I assume this means your vision became clearer.”

She pressed a cup of caf into his hand, and sipped gently at her own. She was wearing loose clothes designed for exercise and her greying hair was piled onto her head. Obi-Wan thought that if he’d ever known his mother, she would have been something like Shmi Skywalker. Or, well, he hoped so anyways. Shmi was incomparable.

“There’s a girl in trouble. I thought she was a lost padawan at first, but the last female padawan to be put on the missing registry was Komari Vosa, who was moved to KIA when I was a teenager. But she definitely had a lightsaber, I’m sure of that. Dooku’s contact at the temple offered to pull me a list of all missing knights and masters, and descriptions of their lightsabers. If one of them died, maybe their blade was found by a child who took it up. All I have to go on is the blade, the species which I didn’t recognize, and some arid world. Not Tatooine, too many mountains, but that still means it could have been anywhere.”

Shmi reached over his shoulder to tap at a few buttons on the projected map, stars disappearing as she moved. “Well, we can start by removing the water worlds, the ice worlds, the jungle worlds, the sand worlds, and any moons without enough atmosphere for any known species to breathe. I wouldn’t bother referencing by species, unless she turns out to belong to one with unique atmospheric requirements.”

She was the sole genetic source of Anakin’s powerful mind. “You’re right. Say, if I drew her, could you tell me if you recognize her species? I’m no artist, but-” Obi-Wan interrupted himself, embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, but Shmi nodded along as if he’d said something clever.

They had no results from Obi-Wan’s sketch, but, that evening, shortly after Dooku and Anakin sent a holo to assure that they were both unharmed, as was Padmé, and nobody was in any danger, Obi-Wan received a call from Master Jocasta Nu.

Obi-Wan greeted the Master of the Archives politely, and pretended to be alone. Shmi sat on the other side of the room, just out of range of the holoscans so that Nu couldn’t see her. “Does this mean you have results for me?”

Dooku’s old friend gave him a wiley grin. “Why I would never, Kenobi. Unless you mean the missing Jedi records I’ve had transferred to you, and the answer, ‘a Nightsister of Dathomir.’ In which case, yes, I certainly do.”

It wasn’t a name Obi-Wan was familiar with. “Where is Dathomir anyways?”

Nu shook her head grimly. “Nowhere you want to go, Kenobi. Besides, it isn’t likely a Nightsister would be in danger on her home world, and if she was, her sisters would help her. Trust me. Whoever you’ve seen, she must be off world. Tell me if you find her. I’ve always wanted to meet a Witch.”

Darksider nonsense. Great. Just… great. Still, the girl hadn’t felt like a Sith, and the dream hadn’t felt like a warning about a foe. “Thank you, Master Nu. May the Force be with you.”

Something in her expression was grim. “May the Force be with us both, Kenobi.”

As the transmission died, Shmi cracked her neck and looked at Obi-Wan with a bright smile. “Well, Master Jedi. It looks like a long night ahead of us if we want to cross reference the last known locations of all those missing Jedi, and the descriptions of their lightsabers.”

“You’ll stay up and help?”

“Well, that puff piece may very well write itself, and anyways, she’s in trouble. I know exactly how much it means to a girl in trouble to have someone with the power to do something actually stop and help.”

It was a good thing they had her around. Anakin certainly wasn’t learning all this dedication and selflessness from Dooku. “Thank you, Shmi.”

By the time the sun rose, they had a name, Ky Narec, and a mountainous planet in the outer rim, Rattatak.

Chapter Text

There was something in the force that felt sour. Like it had gone rotten. Anakin could taste it. His fingers flew towards the lightsaber resting on the bedside table.

The room was bathed in green light just fast enough to send the first blaster bolt ricocheting back over the assassin’s shoulder. The second shot landed where Anakin’s head had been a few seconds earlier, searing a hole in his pillow. Padmé screamed. Anakin jumped out of bed and, grabbing the assassin by his cloak, flung him into the nearest wall.

His presence in the force was sickly and dizzying. Anakin pressed the blade of his lightsaber against his neck. Human, with a sickly green tint to his white skin that had nothing to do with the lightsaber’s glow and a totally vacant look in his eyes.

“Who do you work for?”

“Ani!” Padmé rolled off the bed, pulling a blaster from a drawer, and shot out the hole in her window at a droid. Her first shot went wide, but the second hit, as did the third, knocking it out of the sky.

There might be valuable information on that thing. Anakin reached out in the force, first slowing its fall and then reeling it up. That was when the assassin kneed him in the gut.

Years of sparring with Dooku had given him a deep understanding of combat. That never made any of it hurt any less. But it did improve his reflexes. As the assassin brought up his blaster again, Anakin spun his lightsaber, cutting the weapon in half.

“Please,” Anakin said, “surrender. If you tell us who paid you, I’m sure the authorities will be lenient.”

He tried to turn it into a compulsion, pressing into the mind of the stranger, but it just made his head spin.

The assassin dropped his half of the blaster, and threw himself out the hole in the window. Anakin braced himself to jump, but stopped when he heard Padmé yell,

“No!” As he paused, she continued, “Anakin, what if he isn’t alone?”

Right, good point. He watched over the edge of the building, expecting to see the culprit land on a waiting speeder. Instead, he fell faster and faster, crashed onto the front of a speeder several levels down, and then, lifeless, rolled away.

Shit. Anakin spun his lightsaber, feeling the reassuring weight of the curved hilt in his hand. He waited for more shots, but they never came. In the end, Padmé’s security arrived with Dooku, who had been roused by Anakin’s fear, and took them both away.

They met again in the Chancellor’s office, Anakin robed properly as a Jedi, with Dooku’s imposing presence just behind his shoulder. Padmé, dressed as Senator Amidala, had no such protector with her, but Anakin trusted that Dooku would look out for her just the same.

“I thought you rejected Jedi protection, Senator,” the Chancellor said. Anakin had grown up surrounded by politicians, Padmé and Dooku not the least among them, but there was something about the way the Chancellor’s every word seemed to drip syrup that set alarms blaring in his mind.

Padmé smiled, matching him for sweetness. “Oh no, Chancellor. Perhaps you misunderstood. I said my security concerns were addressed, because Master Dooku offered to send his padawan to keep an eye on the situation. And I am very lucky he did.”

Mace Windu, who was sitting between Yoda and Depa Billiba, cleared his throat.

“Master Dooku, I don’t seem to remember the council giving you the authority to assign your… padawan to individual missions.”

Anakin could hear Dooku turn on his authoritative voice. “The Council doesn’t have authority over the bonds of master and padawan, Master Windu. They’re older and more sacred than that. A Jedi’s duty is to serve. As I’m sure Chancellor Palpatine and the Council would agree, the security of a senator of this Republic is a matter of importance. Anakin’s exemplary service has given us all valuable evidence in tracking down a criminal enterprise. Master Windu, I know for a fact you had no desire to send a full Jedi knight to supervise one woman, and, since my padawan was fully able, you had no need to.”

Depa Billiba folded her hands in her lap. “And we are grateful for that, Master Dooku. We only ask that in the future, we be more closely informed of your actions.”

“Of course.” Dooku handed a piece of flimsi across the rest of them to Billiba. “Which is why I drew this up, intending to inform the Council this morning. The speed of the subsequent attack on the senator’s life put a stop to that.”

Yoda drew all their attention with a flick of his clawed hands. “In grave danger, Senator Amidala was. For his service, Padawan Skywalker should be recognized. Our thanks we will give him. But other matters are of more concern. Still in danger, the Senator is.”

In his honeyed voice, the Chancellor said, “I am sure Padawan Skywalker would be more than willing to continue his exemplary job.”

Across their padawan-bond, Anakin said to Dooku, (I’ve never felt more stone-handedly seduced. Do Senators actually fall for this?)

He received dry amusement in response. (He’s laying it on thicker than Jenza usually describes it. And it certainly isn’t making my job of convincing the Council you’re a perfectly normal, if talented, padawan any easier.)

Well, that at least gave Anakin some direction as to what he should say. “I’m honoured, Chancellor, but surely a real knight, or even a master, would be more prepared for something so serious.”

“I agree.” Master Windu pulled a datapad from within the folds of his robes. “Preliminary reports suggest that the ‘sickness’ you described to Master Dooku in the force came from a form of modified deathstick, which was consumed by the deceased. Your assassin was only an addict, as could have been found on the streets of most worlds, being used in service of a much larger operation. Possibly in affiliation with the Bando Gora.”

A wave of fear surged over Dooku. Anakin resisted the urge to reach up and put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“In that case,” Dooku said, voice faint as a spirit, “you really need more Jedi. At least one to protect the Senator, and at least two full knights tracking whoever the Bando Gora contact is. They are… very dangerous.”

All the Jedi in the room knew that Dooku’s last apprentice, Komari Vosa, had been killed in a confrontation with the Bando Gora. Unfortunately, Padmé did not.

“You can’t assign three or more Jedi to me,” she objected, whirling in her seat to glare at Dooku. “The order needs to serve the people, not just the Senate. I’ve built my career objecting to the way we privilege the lives of the elite over the rights of ordinary people, and I refuse to allow this assassin to make me into a hypocrite.”

Anakin opened his mouth to explain. Padmé would not say such things if she knew about Komari. No doubt, she believed that Dooku was being protective of Anakin rather than being triggered by this reminder of trauma. If she understood, she would willingly accept a larger guard.

The Chancellor turned that terrible, fawning smile on her. “Now my dear, whatever would the Senate do without you? But I see your moral objections are too strong. Why don’t we dedicate Padawan Skywalker’s talents to your security? If he hides you somewhere safe, surely his skills will be sufficient. As for the rest, well, the Bando Gora are a known terrorist organization. Any number of Jedi dedicated to tracking them down would surely be a service to the Galaxy.”

Anakin still felt a crawling sense of wrong down his spine, but Windu said, with a slight look of disgust towards the chancellor that mirrored Anakin’s own feelings, “Chancellor Palpatine is right. The Bando Gora have maintained their operations for far too long. I have a pair in mind already to handle the situation. But I do not agree that Padawan Skywalker should be permitted to have Senator Amidala’s safety left to him. It would be… unwise, to leave something like this to someone with his inexperience.”

He shouldn’t have said that. Anakin winced in anticipation of Padmé snapping, “Padawan Anakin saved Naboo at age nine, with only Master Jinn and then-Padawan Kenobi as the help your order provided us. I sincerely doubt you and yours have anything to offer me that I could possibly want. Chancellor, I accept your proposal.”

She stormed out, guard at her heels. There was a tense moment where Anakin wondered if he was supposed to follow before Dooku nudged him in that direction.

As the door closed behind them, he heard Depa Billiba say, “do you think she knows the Chancellary doesn’t come with the authority to order that?”

As Anakin and Dooku both knew, Padmé was well aware. She just didn’t care.

--

“I’ve never seen you actually fly this thing before.”

Shmi, notionally seated as Obi-Wan’s copilot but with her hands well away from the controls, was giving him a dubious look. They were in what was, notionally, Obi-Wan’s ship, a dinky little thing that Anakin kept threatening to sell for scrap but really kept in good enough condition it probably could have completed the Kessel run. It was one of the ways Anakin showed affection, Obi-Wan thought. Starship maintenance.

“Of course not. I only take it when I’m going on missions where I don’t want to immediately be recognized as a Jedi or be assumed to be a Serennian noble.”

“So, when you’re undercover.”

If Anakin found out Obi-Wan was taking his mother to a slaveholding world ruled by a bunch of warlords, one of them was probably going to die. “Yes. Which is what this will be. Are you alright with that?”

Shmi gave him the same smile Anakin did when he was about to do something terrible, and said, “you forget. I lived most of my life on worlds like Rattatak. Who’s to say that Skywalker Shmi of Serenno isn’t the cover?”

“I hope she isn’t,” Obi-Wan said, which won him a smile as they jumped to hyperspace.

Rattatak was, basically, as far from Serenno as it was possible for another world to be, which was a little convenient, since it gave Shmi time to finish her flattering nonsense – her article – and send it off. By the time they settled down, hiding the ship behind a rocky outcropping, they were both thrilled to be back on solid ground. Obi-Wan was a fine pilot, thank-you-very-much, but he had never seen the appeal of flying, and his years of relative peace on Serenno had given him a taste for having his feet on a surface that didn’t feel like it was moving.

Shmi, dressed in anonymous brown leggings and a pilot’s jacket, complete with a blaster hidden in the lining in addition to the one worn openly at her hip, spun in a circle.

“Would you believe that I’ve actually missed the dry heat?”

Humans really could get used to anything. “Sometimes I miss the Temple, until I remember the quality of the food.” It was a weak joke, and one that didn’t really capture the gravity of the situation. “I didn’t mean to take you to a place that reminded you of… there.”

Shmi sighed, softly, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Obi-Wan, you can say Tatooine. You can say that I was enslaved there too, for what it’s worth. That there was a little chip under my skin primed to explode if I stepped out of line. But even if we were back on Tatooine, it wasn’t the place itself that was the problem. The desert is beautiful. The problem was everything they forced people to do to survive there, from me and Ani, to the moisture farmers out on the edge and the podracers and all the city-folk living at the whims of the Hutts; there was no freedom on Tatooine, only degrees of its absence and those who helped to steal it from others. Being somewhere that reminds me of Tatooine could never be like being there because I’m free. And because I’m not alone. There’s a world of difference between having a nine year old boy as the only person you can really trust and walking side by side with a full Jedi knight, knowing that there are two more Jedi who would scour the galaxy to look for you if something went wrong.”

“As long as you’re comfortable with what we’re doing, here.”

Blessing him with a smile, she said, “Obi-Wan, if it gets to be more than I can handle, I’ll let you know.”

Rattatak left Obi-Wan… on edge. It was clear that whatever the force wanted him to look for, it was here. Lightsaber hidden in the folds of a cloak, blaster on his other hip so he could have a weapon that didn’t reveal him as a Jedi, he followed Shmi into the dingy town near where they’d hidden their ship.

The locals, a mix of human and weequay, all eyed them with suspicion. It was a good thing they’d dedicated some of their hours in hyperspace to coming up with a good cover story.

Obi-Wan approached a scrap dealer, and sold a spare part from his ship in exchange for some of the local currency, which seemed to be a variant on wupiupi. Covertly, he asked where someone looking to buy information would go, and, pockets lighter than they had any right to be, followed the directions to a local cantina.

It was only a matter of time before one of the weequay found them. That was how it always worked, in towns like this. Shmi, brazenly, put her feet up on the table.

“Heard you were buying,” she said, voice gruff enough that Obi-Wan thought she was lowering it on purpose.

“Heard you were selling,” Obi-Wan retorted, “my client wants the location of a… somewhat sensitive figure.”

He slapped a holo of Ky Narec down on the table, rattling all of their drinks. Everyone else pointedly looked away.

The weequay laughed. “Oh, he’ll be easy to track. Two villages down and six feet under.” At Obi-Wan’s blank look, she continued, “he’s dead, scout. Not literally buried. Digging’s expensive. He was also a karking Jedi. So, what do you want with him anyways?”

Obi-Wan loved cheap gossip. Slipping a coin from his pocket, he said, “why don’t you buy us all the next round, and then we can talk about the Jedi. Did he have any family here? Friends? Long lost pets?”

She took the money and pocketed it without buying any drinks. “What’s it to you?”

Shmi, looking exactly as assured in her power as any Hutt or Serenno, said, “where I’m from, love, revenge doesn’t die with a man.”

“Well,” the weequay said, “there is the bitch who killed my cousin. Some kind of daughter, maybe. Last I heard, she was swinging his lazer sword and calling herself a warlord of Rattatak. Will she do?”

Shmi grinned. “Yes, that should do brilliantly.” She pulled another coin from somewhere, flashing the silver between her fingers like a children’s magician. “Now really do get us another round. I’m celebrating an enemy’s death.”

--

At least Windu was taking the Bando Gora seriously. It was the only thing in all of this that gave Dooku even a hint of comfort.

“Can I get you anything? Caf? Tea?” Vos offered.

Secura, sitting at his side, said, “I would love a cup of tea.”

They were trying to make him feel comfortable. “I would be grateful for a cup of whatever Knight Secura prefers.”

Vos smiled, and walked into his kitchen. It was a good sign that they were meeting in Vos’s quarters rather than in an interrogation room.

“How are you feeling?” Secura took notes on a pad, spinning a stylus between her fingers while she waited for him to say something.

My nineteen year old padawan is going up against the people who killed my last padawan. Alone. He’s already in love like Komari was. History repeats itself. Again and again a ceaseless torrent of my failures.

He breathed in, and allowed himself to feel life in the Force. Anakin was alive, shining brighter than any star in a corner of Dooku’s mind. Rael was alive, always distant, but there. Obi-Wan, far away but surprisingly close to Dooku’s heart was there. Since he was on Coruscant, he could even sense Jenza well.

And beyond that, here in the temple there was such life. From the smallest child to Yoda and the other ancient masters. All of them shone in the force. He exhaled, and released his fear with it.

“Sick, Knight Secura. I feel sick.”

She didn’t write anything down. “We won’t take up too much of your time, I hope. We have the temple records for the Bando Gora of course, but we were hoping for an… expert opinion.”

That was a gentle way of putting it. “I have just a few words. Should I save them for Master Vos, or would you like to repeat them for me?”

“No need,” Vos said, placing a tray with three teacups down on the table. They were surprisingly fine porcelain. “The water was already hot from earlier.”

Dooku took the offered cup, but didn’t drink. The warmth on his hands was reassuring.

“There isn’t much I can tell you that the temple records can’t. The Bando Gora are a cult. They also run a death stick operation, and were for some time involved in the spice trade, although I have no idea if they still are. Seventeen years ago, my apprentice Komari Vosa was denied the opportunity to take her trials because of a violation of the rules on attachment. She… fell in love with me, and I informed the Council. Upon receiving the news, Komari joined a mission to Baltizaar without the permission of the Council or my knowledge. The team was decimated. Several bodies, including Komari’s, were never recovered. It is-” This was always the hardest part. It had been equally difficult when he’d told Anakin this story, on the fifteenth anniversary of her death two years earlier. “Because the Bando Gora were force-based cultists, it is believed they may have taken the bodies for use in their rituals. They moved her onto the Killed in Action list two years after on testimony from a former cultist who remembered a ritual involving Jedi blood. He was highly drugged at the time, obviously, but he swore it to all to the spirits he knew. I kept track of Bando Gora action for five more years, but… after Anakin came under my protection, I knew it wouldn’t be fair to dedicate so much of my time to a padawan who I couldn’t help any more.”

Secura’s stylus stilled, tapping on the rim of her padd. “I’m sorry for your loss, Master Dooku.”

“Dooku is fine, for private use. Nobody’s called me ‘master’ in many years.”

Vos sipped at his tea. “Because they call you Count?”

“Because my padawan was enslaved until he came to me. As you can imagine, it emphasised some of the… issues, with the way we encourage padawans to treat their teachers as infallible.”

“And did Komari emphasize those too?”

All these years, the only person he’d ever really discussed this with was Qui-Gon. Even Anakin, who he’d offered the opportunity to ask any question, hadn’t wanted to know. He’d said it was in the past, and if it ever came up, he’d ask.

“Is this relevant to your investigation?”

They exchanged a look. Secura, eventually, answered. “What Anakin sensed in the force, during the attempt on Senator Amidala’s life, was a drug that makes those who consume it extremely… suggestible, to force users. But whoever was controlling it in this instance was locking Anakin out. That means the Bando Gora has someone who is skilled in the use of the force. Since none of the bodies that were missing at Baltizaar were ever recovered, we need to look seriously at the possibility that at least one of the three may still be alive.”

He felt so sick. The idea that Komari had suffered for two years was something he’d come to live with. The idea that she had been a prisoner for seventeen years was intolerable.

“The training bond was… strained, as soon as I told the council. I don’t know when it broke, but I know it has, and she’s gone. And to answer your question, yes. Yes, what happened to Komari perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with the order, with ‘master’-padawan relationships. The second Komari’s feelings for me turned sexual – romantic – something I could never give her, not least because she was a child – she was left utterly without a meaningful support structure. It was my obligation to inform the Council, under the code, and because I did not feel she would have been safe taking her trials given her emotional state at that time. It was morally right to inform them, because it would have tainted the bond between us, and no teacher, Jedi or otherwise, should be allowed into a position where they could manipulate a student for sex. A supervising authority needed to know and take control of assessing and managing the risk inherent to our situation. But the fact that me fulfilling that obligation resulted in her being completely alone is the fault of this system. The fact that nobody stopped a padawan, with no authorization from anybody whatsoever, from joining an extremely dangerous mission, is a shame on the Order itself. If the rest of them hadn’t been slaughtered or critically wounded, I would have demanded that someone be punished. Sometimes, I still think I should have. That their bodies were properly treated as Jedi while she was used in some kriffing cult ritual is a black spot on all our flesh.”

The tea was growing cold in his hands, which were steady despite the grief and rage that made him feel like shaking.

Secura put down her stylus. Vos said, “You’re right, what happened to her was wrong. Do you mind if we ask a couple more questions?”

“You may.”

“Can you describe Komari’s strength in the force?”

Secura picked it up again. Evidently, she’d misread the situation. “Komari was strong, undoubtedly. All my Padawans have been. Not as strong as Anakin, of course. None of them were ever as strong as Anakin at his age. I’ve never known a Jedi as strong as Anakin at his age. Regardless, Komari never reached the height of her gifts. I believe that, like Qui-Gon and Rael, she would have developed a unique approach to the force that suited her better than that I had the capacity to teach her.

“Of the three of them – four, with Anakin – Komari was by far the most like me as a padawan. Rael’s grasp of the force has always been based around the tangible world. Qui-Gon saw the living force in everything, every moment of his life. I couldn’t teach either of them the full scope of what they need to know any more than Yoda could teach me to see the force the way I needed to see it. In the end, only time could teach that. Anakin is more like I am now, and I believe that seeing him to knighthood will truly show why we require teaching for a mastery of the force. But Komari had what I had at her age. A great deal of power. A great deal of loneliness. A sense that I was made for, entitled to, something more without really knowing what it was.”

“The title of Count?” Secura asked. She hadn’t taken any more notes, which probably meant Dooku was going off track.

“No. Remember, I was always secondborn. Ramil was supposed to live a long, prosperous life and have many children.” And not be a fool who threatened to kill other people's children. “No. Maybe that was it in the end, but I didn’t believe it at the time. Someday perhaps I’ll find out what it was for me, although Komari never will.”

In truth, Dooku knew exactly what it was. It was many things. The countship. The way he finally understood the unshakeable complexity of goodness and the force. Seeing Obi-Wan and Anakin grow into the men he took such pride in. Watching Jenza terrorize the Senate. Shmi creating a title for herself. If he died tomorrow, he was assured that he had left the galaxy a better place, with all those people in it.

“Was that part of what you felt made her unfit for the trials?”

“In a way. Perhaps Yoda knew me better than I knew myself at that age. But in hindsight, I wouldn’t have counted myself as a true master of the force until ten years ago.”

That Qui-Gon’s death has been the cost was the cruelest trick of fate. He wondered, often, if his padawan would have been proud of him. He certainly would have been proud of Anakin and Obi-Wan.

Dooku needed to get them back on topic and get out of here before he displayed more emotions that a Jedi ought not. “Komari was powerful, and dangerous, and her control wasn’t what it should have been. If it had been, maybe she wouldn’t have died. Or perhaps she would have. Obi-Wan tells me that Qui-Gon died perfectly at one with the Force. It didn’t save him.”

“In Komari’s file, there’s a report on her conduct at Galidraan.”

Dooku knew it well. He’d read it a hundred times, looking for signs that he should have known something was wrong. At the time, he’d been so steeped in his own darkness that he never could have noticed Komari’s. Now, he thought, he might have sensed some of the pointless violence that would have stained her presence in the force.

“We were all too violent, at Galidraan. Komari was just a girl.”

Secura observed, “you seem to have cared about her very much.”

From a Jedi, it was not a neutral comment. “My padawan. My responsibility. Master Vos, I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Quinlan. You can call me Quinlan.”

That was kind. Dooku forced himself to remember that these two were just trying to do their jobs. They were good Jedi. Good people.

“Thank you. My apologies if I’ve been… harsh. Losing padawans never gets any easier, if you can believe it.”

Secura, who had never even trained one, asked, “if I can ask you one more question… Dooku.”

Almost done, then. “Go ahead.”

“In your opinion, if Komari lived, would she have the power and the inclination to the dark side to do something like this?”

It broke something in him to say it, but, “if she spent the last seventeen years in the hands of the Bando Gora, I doubt I would know her at all.”

His tea was lukewarm, when he finally took a sip. Quinlan asked, “is there someone we can call, to come be with you at this time, or would you prefer the solace of meditation? Master Yoda, perhaps?”

Yoda would never forgive him if it was true. This was even more unconscionable than Dooku himself falling. Komari deserved to be protected, to never be abandoned. If she was alive… if she was alive, then Dooku had allowed her to be subjected to what was very likely seventeen years of unimaginable torture. He had replaced her without even knowing she was alive. Nobody decent would ever forgive him that failure.

“Master Nu, please. And tell her to bring me that list.”

Chapter Text

The general consensus was that Ky Narec’s apprentice, who every weequay seemed to want dead, was to be found hiding in the mountains, terrorizing defenceless merchant caravans who attempted to pass through.

“She’s robbing bandits and warlords,” Shmi translated, as they walked back to their ship. “Not killing them, I think. That’s good. It means there’s hope for her yet, isn’t there?”

Dooku killed his own brother, and had turned out to be one of the greatest Jedi Obi-Wan had ever met. “The force is sending me to her. That’s hope, as much as anything.”

“True. And it’s you, not just some Jedi. I know you’ll actually try to help.”

Shmi had such faith in him, which really wasn’t earned. It was Dooku and Qui-Gon who had really shown what the Jedi order could be, what it could do. Obi-Wan was just their wayward descendant.

“You’ll stay on the ship won’t you, while I go looking for her?” Shmi crossed her arms over her chest and Obi-Wan added, “it’s possible we’ll need to make a… hasty exit. You can fly well enough to take us off the ground, if needs must.”

Years of Anakin talking about nothing but flying and data slicing at the supper table had filled all of them with an intimate knowledge of the two skills. And anyways, someone had taught Anakin the basics all those long years ago. Even if he’d taken it far beyond anything a normal person could do, the core of his skill was still a testament to Shmi’s.

“I’ll stay,” Shmi agreed, “but you need to promise me that you’ll give her a fair shot. Even if she seems too broken to help.”

“Always,” Obi-Wan swore, and the force sang in time with his promise.

He took a borrowed speeder out into the mountains. Though none of the local humans seemed to place much trust in him, the Weequay had been concerningly sympathetic to ‘Shara’ and her desire to kill a girl who had nothing to do whatsoever with anything. Anakin would have loved this mission, the romantic danger of saving a girl, the deception, the wind through his hair as he sped between rocky outcroppings.

The first shot took his speeder out from under him. Obi-Wan threw himself free of the wreckage, landing clean on his feet and ready to fight. The force drew him left, stepping out of the way as a second bolt nearly clipped his ear.

The Nightsister landed in front of him, lightsaber humming in one hand, blaster grasped tight in the other. He wondered which was dominant, or if she was ambidextrous, and if so, by individual or by species.

“I heard you were looking for me, Ben.”

He raised his empty hands in a gesture of submission. In the force, he could feel the anxiety, the grief and rage, that swirled around her like a cloud. “My real name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m a Jedi Knight, looking for the padawan of Ky Narec. I assume that’s you, Padawan…”

She didn’t supply her name. “And the woman? Is she meant to be a Jedi too?”

“She’s a friend of the Order. Her real name is Shmi.”

“How did you find me? Ky thought his people didn’t know where he was. You left him here and they killed him!”

There was something Obi-Wan could understand. “We didn’t know where he was. But I had a vision, I saw you here. I saw that you were in danger. So I searched for a planet that looked like what I’d seen near where Ky Narec’s last known location.”

Her blaster lowered slightly, to point at the centre of his chest. “Oh, so the Jedi knew where he’d gone missing and never thought to look? That’s believable. What evidence do I have that you’re even a Jedi? You seemed very cosy with those sleemos earlier, for a Jedi.”

Had she been there all along, watching over his shoulder? Or did she have a contact, someone else on this world who she could trust?

“I have a lightsaber, on the inside of my cloak. I can show you. I can also use the force, if you promise to allow me to do so without shooting. If you feel towards me as I use it, you should be able to sense a hint of my personality, of my intent. I will lower some of my shielding to make that easier for you.”

“Do it.” He could feel her trepidation.

As he’d promised, Obi-Wan reached out in the force to a few pebbles that lay on the ground. One by one, he drew them into the air, set them dancing around him like courtiers at a ball. Into the force, he put his promise to Shmi, his desire to help others the way Dooku and Qui-Gon had helped him. His serenity at the idea that this was something he was called to do.

She flicked the lightsaber off, keeping her blaster firmly trained on him. “You said you saw me in danger, what did you see?”

“I saw you scream. I saw the lightsaber. My visions are rarely so helpful as this, and are almost never more so.”

She glared at him. “Well, you’re too late. They’ve already tried to kill me many, many times. I can look after myself.”

For all her discussion of the subject, she didn’t have any sense how eager people were to see her dead. “We can take you away from here. Complete your training. The Padawan of one Jedi is entitled to take up training with another, should she see fit.” He bit his tongue to keep the word ‘master’ off his lips. It had never come so easily for him as it seemed to for Dooku, to change the nature of their order so fundamentally. But if it was needed anywhere, it was needed here.

She levelled the blaster. “Stay away from me, Kenobi. I’m not coming anywhere with you. Now, step back from the speeder. I’m taking it so you can’t follow me.”

Where had he misstepped? “Please, you’ll be safe with me.” But he did as she asked, stepping away as she moved forward, climbing onto his damaged speeder and fiddling one-handed with the controls until it revved to life.

She left Obi-Wan in the dust. It was a long, miserable walk back to the ship.

--

The name he had chosen, from Jocasta’s list of missing Jedi, was familiar to both of them. It was even known to Jenza, who had called and demanded Dooku come to her office as soon as she heard the news about the Bando Gora. Sifo-Dyas. Something in the force had sung to Dooku, as his fingers had lingered over the datapad on Sifo’s disappearance, and so he had picked it up. There was a sadness in Jenza’s eyes. Evidently, she remembered the strange boy, steeped in the future, who had once saved her life.

“I had no idea he was even missing,” Dooku heard his own voice say, over the rushing in his ears. “I thought that my assumption of the title of Count was simply too much for him.” Privately, he corrected, I thought he hated me.

“No,” Jocasta said, “he disappeared just around that time. There was a mission from Chancellor Valorum, in the Kessel Sector. He was diverted to Felucia, but never arrived. In the turmoil surrounding Naboo, and the new Chancellor, nobody had time to investigate why one Jedi master never returned our messages.”

Pyke Syndicate probably got him, if it was in the Kessel Sector, but that answer wasn’t good enough. Not as an explanation for why one of his eldest friends had vanished in Dooku’s time of greatest need and nobody had ever noticed. “I suspect I can remember his Holonet password. Or at least the one for his temple accounts. He never changed it.”

It only took a few keystrokes before the most intimate secrets of Sifo-Dyas’s life were laid out before the three of them. His last search was for a holodrama that had been off the net for eight years. Dooku only remembered the name because Shmi had watched it too. So, he certainly hadn’t been on the holonet with his temple codes since his disappearance.

Jenza asked, “can you check other locations he’d have connected from?”

So, down the rabbit hole they went. Coruscant, Temple. Coruscant, Senate. Coruscant, Temple. Jedha. Coruscant, Temple. And-

“This is a connection keyed to coordinates, but they aren’t synced to any planet in the temple archives.”

It only took Jocasta a breath to pull up a map of the relevant sector. Perks of having the chief archivist on your side.

“There,” Jenza pointed, to an empty space at the edge of the known universe. “Somehow, he managed to connect the temple servers from there. I didn’t know you could do that with just the transmitting power of a ship moving through empty space. Especially so far out.”

“That isn’t possible,” Jocasta muttered, which it wasn’t, but she seemed more confused than an oddly strong connection warranted.

“Perhaps he rerouted the signal off a nearby world. Ryloth looks close enough, maybe.”

“No.” Jocasta pointed to the empty spot. “If there isn’t a star there, then all these other stars should be in different places. The gravity is all wrong.”

It was easy to forget sometimes that unassuming Jocasta Nu was one of the most highly respected scholars the Jedi Order had ever produced. “You’re right, but… this is the official map from records, isn’t it?” Jocasta nodded. “Then who had the power to remove a planet from it?”

“Sifo-Dyas could have. He was on the council at the time, and nobody would have questioned him.”

That was good news, if it could reduce the number of mysteries they had to face. “Do only councillors have the power to make map amendments?”

Jocasta sighed. “No, any full master does.”

Well that barely helped. “Well, how far back do the access records go? Could we see who has been looking at this sector to begin with.”

“They go back a year before being automatically deleted to save space. And anyways, if you want to investigate everyone who’s ever been to Ryloth, be my guest. The most likely explanation is that Sifo-Dyas did it himself, for some unknown reason.”

Jenza’s clock buzzed at the hour, and Dooku, realizing the time, got to his feet. He still felt unsteady, barely under his own control. “I rescheduled my meeting with Adi Gallia. I should go. Anakin needs the support of more councillors than Shaak Ti’s vague indifference if he is to take his trials.”

“No,” Jenza and Jocasta said, at exactly the same time. In another life, they would have been a terrifying pair of allies.

Jocasta said, “if you go back to the temple like this, every Jedi there will know how upset you are. That would do Anakin no favours. Adi is an understanding woman. Ask her by holo, or send her a letter.”

Jenza dissented, “Master Gallia is a Senate official. She’s likely heading back to the temple from this very building. Let me call her. You need to speak in person, but we can help you.”

So that was what they did. Adi Gallia, looking the very picture of a Jedi Master in her black robes and white tunic, stood across the room and watched them, not inviting herself to take a seat.

“Master Dooku. I understand that circumstances have changed since you first asked to meet with me.”

She, at least, had not been convinced that politics was a stain upon his ability to call himself a Jedi. No doubt because it was a vice she shared. “Indeed they have. Yet my greatest purpose remains the same. In view of your great experience, I ask your support in the matter of seeing my padawan put forward for his trials.”

It occurred to him then that Adi Gallia would have been a nightmare at a sabacc table. Her face was utterly illegible. “He would be very young, to be a knight.”

“He was very old to be taken into the Order. Perhaps this will balance things out.”

“You know that I opposed Padawan Skywalker’s admission into the Order.”

Padawan Anakin, really, by Serennian naming, but he was too tired to argue. “There were no records of that vote, and, of course, Qui-Gon could hardly have enlightened me on the matter.”

If Anakin or Obi-Wan had ever known, they’d long forgotten. Since Gallia was one of Anakin’s longtime personal heroes, Dooku wasn’t in any hurry to inform him of the fact that she apparently did not offer Anakin her regard in turn.

“It wasn’t a vote. Qui-Gon already had a padawan. The point was inarguable.” Something about her demeanour changed; the politician’s mask dropped. “But he was also my friend. For many, many years. And I know well that if you and he both admired someone, then they must have earned it.”

It was less remarkable now than it had been before Xanatos, when Qui-Gon was more idealistic, or before Anakin, when Dooku was far angrier.

“He counted you as a friend.”

She gave him a sad smile. “And I him. When Padawan Skywalker is ready for his trials, I will see him admitted to them. You can count Masters Koon and Fisto the same, knowing them. But I do question whether that time is now. What makes you see it thus?”

Dooku returned the gesture. “The time comes in any padawan’s life when the best thing you can give them is the opportunity to make their own way. Anakin needs that, and as I am sure you have heard, this morning’s debacle with the Chancellor and Master Windu has proven beyond a doubt that he cannot have that chance while his braid is uncut.”

“Depa mentioned that,” Gallia admitted, “my sympathies. Of late, reconciling the wants of the Council and the Senate has been… difficult. Trust that we know it does not reflect on your padawan, nor on Senator Amidala, who is ever caught up in political machinations larger than her world merits.”

Except for the trade federation, which had come to her, Padmé had thrown herself into all her political machinations regardless of Naboo’s importance. “Thank you.”

Turning to let herself out, Gallia paused. “Windu had a vision about Skywalker, a decade ago. Don’t be surprised when he turns you down, it is not a personal slight.”

He hated to ask, but, “and Master Yoda? Will it be personal when he turns me down?”

Gallia was less an optimist than Shaak Ti. “Oh, very.”

There was nothing for it then. “In your opinion, Master Gallia, can anything get by the council without the approval of one of them?” He already knew the answer before she gave it, and with the affirmative, continued, “in that case, Master Gallia, I wonder if you would do me the considerable honor of introducing a piece of… let us say legislation, to the council.”

That caught her interest like a cornfly in netting. “Legislation?”

He gave her his most winning smile. “I would like to establish a formal set of standards to qualify padawans for their trials. Beyond the existing academic requirements. I want it in writing, so some day, there will be no need to appeal to the council for such things. When a padawan is ready, everyone will agree.”

“You ask the impossible of me, Master Dooku.” She gave him a wry grin. “Lucky for you, I like that.”

--

They argued some, about whether Naboo was really where they wanted to go. Or, rather, they argued about what the objective of going somewhere was, and then argued further about how they wanted to achieve that objective. Padmé’s positions were thus: their primary objective should be to go somewhere where they could be productive, but if they had to choose somewhere safe instead, then Naboo was the place where she trusted the most people, and could still get work done while she waited. Anakin’s were rather different: their primary objective should be to go somewhere where Padmé would be safe, somewhere the Bando Gora wouldn’t expect, which meant they should really just choose a random planet by throwing a handful of dice or something. Padmé said that was a stupid idea, so they left for Naboo instead.

It was lucky Anakin had never had time to unpack to begin with, he reflected, as he sat on his bunk and felt them begin their assent through Coruscant’s atmosphere. The bag beside him was surprisingly heavy. Obi-Wan had a way of getting so many things into a small space that Anakin thought he might be misusing the force for personal gain. If Anakin himself had tried to replicate it, it would have been a disaster.

The idea that he would be returning to Naboo, after all this time, was a strange one. He hadn’t been there since Qui-Gon had died. Not even to visit. Other times he’d seen Padmé when they were younger, it had always been on other planets where Dooku and she could make diplomatic efforts at the same time, making the whole thing very efficient. And on one memorable occasion on Serenno, when the handmaidens had taken over as Queen for almost three weeks. But now they were going to be on Naboo, together. It would have been exciting if not for the fact that her life, and by extension Anakin’s, was on the line.

“Entering hyperspace in five, four,” the pilot counted down over the speakers. Anakin braced for the transition, but it never came. Instead, about a minute later, Padmé stuck her head in the door.

“Dooku is on the Holo,” she said, “he thinks we might be able to solve one problem with another.”

It was a simple proposition, really.

“The Bando Gora can hardly trouble you on a world that, as far as they know, does not exist. All you need to do is see that there is a planet there, and, if they seem amenable, perhaps figure out who they are, and see if anyone remembers Sifo-Dyas.”

“It certainly seems possible,” Padmé agreed. Anakin could already tell he was going to lose this argument simply by the fact they were in accord. “Is there anything else?”

Dooku’s tinted figure smirked, just a little. “Perhaps a name to the planet, for Temple Records? Surely Jocasta has tolerated enough of your meddling over the years for that.”

Well, it was certainly true that Anakin had caused plenty of trouble for the head archivist over the years. And she was good about helping him use interarchival loans to get into the Senate collections. “I imagine that is possible, yes.”

Tracking down a missing planet. What could possibly go wrong?

They stopped off at Naboo, left the guard behind with a decoy Senator in a secure location, and took a two man ship to the edge of mapped space.

Chapter Text

The force was sharp with anxiety, but not as sharp as Shmi’s temper.

“You left her there alone?” Obi-Wan massaged his calves. It had been a long walk back.

“She didn’t want it. I should really be reporting this to the temple. If she doesn’t want to be in the Order, then she’s a serious threat.”

“Don’t you dare,” Shmi hissed. It was night on Rattatak, and though they were alone for at least a click in every direction, yelling would have seemed wrong for the atmosphere. “After you left, I went into the next town, as Shmi Skywalker of Tatooine. Told them my Master was moving in. The average Serennian may not recognize Skywalker as a slave name, but they do on Rattatak. They told me that if he ever beat me, there was a protector I could call on. She comes down hard on the slavers and bandits. If they break a finger, she breaks an arm.”

“That is not the Jedi way.”

“Of course not. It’s desert justice. You know as well as I do that wherever the law of the Republic fails, the morality of the Order does too. Otherwise, Qui-Gon wouldn’t have felt nearly so comfortable gambling with slavers on a nine year old’s life.”

They never spoke about it, the unethical thing Qui-Gon had done to win their passage off of Tatooine, to win Anakin’s freedom. Or, rather, Shmi never spoke about it with Obi-Wan. He rather suspected that she did with Dooku, who took little pride in the way his Padawan had conducted his last days, with regards to her, or Anakin, or even Obi-Wan himself.

Obi-Wan wished he could still his tongue, but the force was roiling darkly around him. “He wanted to help Anakin.”

“Only because Anakin had the force!” Shmi snapped, looking as horrified by her disruption of the silence as Obi-Wan was by his own.

They exchanged a tense glance, and Obi-Wan, feeling out into the force, realized that the shifting blackness, the cloudedness and unease, was not coming from either of them. He had long suspected Shmi was just sensitive enough in the force to pick up on things like this, a certain dread, a lucky catch. Perhaps the act of being pregnant with Anakin had done it, or perhaps it was simply in her blood.

“Did you learn the padawan’s name?” He asked. The apologies would come later, when things were less tense. And, perhaps, a discussion of why they both had such reason for anger.

“Ventress,” Shmi murmured, the almost-silence returned, “they called her Ventress. I don’t know if it’s a mononym, or a title, or one of a set of names.”

Well, it would do. “Something is going to happen to her. Is happening to her. We need to take the ship, it will be faster than trying to find another speeder-” The thought struck him, and he counted himself a hundred times a fool. “If Ventress is only attacking slavers and bandits who have earned ‘desert justice’, and she killed the brother of our Weequay friend, then what did he do to deserve it?”

They got the speeder as a gift from people who wanted Ventress dead. From people who knew she would steal something like that.

Shmi swore in a rather illustrative Huttese. Well, Anakin had to have learned it somewhere, and it certainly wasn’t from Dooku. “We led them straight to her.”

That meant there must have been some sort of transmitter on the speeder. “Turn on the short range scanners, look for any sort of location transmitting signal.”

He ran to the pilot’s seat, throwing switches and pushing buttons at a speed that would have even made Anakin jealous. Flying so low was risky, but it was their best option.

Shmi took the second set of controls beside him. “No transmission. It’s probably tuned to their receiver specifically. We’d need to slice our way in.”

“Then I will have to use the force.”

Shmi gave him a look of bafflement. “Can you really track someone so precisely with only the force?”

There were certainly Jedi who could. Obi-Wan wasn’t one of them. “It wants me to find her. I just need to let it guide me.”

He closed his eyes, and freed his mind. Slow, steady breathing. The control and systems of the unifying force, the way blood flowed through his body, the thousand intricate pieces that kept him alive. The rise and fall of his chest, the sound of inhaling air, the buzzing and infinite ways of the living force. He let his hands move as they would, ignoring Shmi’s sharp gasp as he began to fly. The stars overhead sang. Beneath them, the volcanic heart of the planet spun and roared. Qui-Gon’s voice, just a whisper, a memory, said, (stay focused on the task at hand, Obi-Wan.)

“Obi-Wan!” Shmi was shaking his shoulders. “I can hear blasterfire below. I’ll keep the ship steady.”

It seemed just a heartbeat later that, lightsaber already ignited in his hand, he opened the cargo bay door and jumped out into the night.

There were thirteen assailants. Eight weequay, five human. Four of them, two of each, were already on the ground. But now three of the weequay were holding Ventress down. A fourth held Ky Narec’s lightsaber, at a distance from his body as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Obi-Wan pulled the blade to him with the force, and deflected a blaster shot into one of the weequay holding Ventress. That gave her the opportunity to grab the blaster from another and shoot one of the humans.

Obi-Wan flicked her saber off and threw it to her. Ventress sank into a deep lightsaber stance. She looked like she really wanted a second blade. Perhaps when she was his Padawan, they could go to Ilum and fetch a pair of crystals. Obi-Wan had never been much one for Jar'kai, but he was sure that if a lightsaber style existed, Dooku had a concise view on the best way for it to be taught. No, he was definitely getting ahead of himself.

A blaster bolt shot past his ear, and Obi-Wan took a hand off of another weequay. Above them, the engine hummed as Shmi began to lower the ship over them.

“Can you jump that high?” Obi-Wan thought he could, with the force assisting him.

Ventress growled in the back of her throat. “These bastards tried to kill me. I’m not letting them win.” Then she winced as she tried to bring her lightsaber down on a human, and Obi-Wan realized that there was a real, force witness it, slugthrower cut in half a ways away.

“You’re injured. We can treat it. You’ll be no good to anyone if you lose that arm.”

Ventress whirled around to deflect a blaster bolt from behind, but her injured arm slowed her and it glanced across her thigh. She screamed. Obi-Wan, putting his lightsaber away, grabbed her, and, with the force glazing around them both, leapt up into the ship.

“Go!” Shmi shut the doors and sped away, leaving them in the dust. Ventress punched him in the face.

“You left Ky’s lightsaber!” It was true, it wasn’t in her hand any more. She must have dropped it when Obi-Wan grabbed her. He let her go, and she sank to the ground.

“Obi-Wan,” Shmi called, “I need you to come land this.”

Against his better instincts, Obi-Wan left Ventress alone, took the controls from Shmi, and watched her disappear back into the rest of the ship. Over the humming of the engines as he set them down, far enough out that her attackers wouldn’t find them any time soon, he couldn’t hear what Ventress and Shmi were saying to each other. But it was certainly something. When he rejoined them, Shmi was applying bacta to Ventress’s slugthrower wound. It was a nasty thing that seemed to have either gone through or scored across the bottom side of her upper arm. If the person who shot her had turned their hand a degree towards the centre, it would have struck Asajj in the chest.

“I don’t think we have anything here I can use to make a sling,” she was saying, “but you do need to immobilize it. And with your leg, I think you’ll be off your feet for a few days.”

Ventress was staring at her with a vaguely awed expression. Obi-Wan, when he cleared his throat, felt almost as though he was disturbing a sacred thing.

“We’re safe here, for now. I thought it best not to leave the atmosphere until Ventress decides what she wants.”

“You haven’t given me much of a choice, have you? My weapons are gone. The people who are trying to kill me found me. Everything I built here is gone.”

Shmi shot a look over her shoulder at him.

Obi-Wan said, “you’re right. I’m sorry. It would be wrong to leave a lightsaber in the hands of bandits and criminals. We can go… retrieve it when your wounds are tended.”

She jutted her chin forward with a slight arrogance. “And if I decide to stay here and be a bandit and a criminal?”

There were many ways to be a Jedi. But none of them were best done alone, without the support of years of training.

“I doubt you would. I think you know what lawlessness has done to the people of Rattatak. You want to replace this system, not become part of it.”

“What could you possibly know of what I want?”

Not nearly enough. But there was one thing. “My mentor died before I was knighted. I took up his lightsaber and killed the Sith that killed him. I think you want it back because it’s what you have left of him. Because you want to finish what he started, make him proud. Maybe he was like a father to you. Qui-Gon was to me. I thought, for a long time, that the way to do that was to do exactly what he was trying to do. He even begged me to. But that wasn’t my path. I needed more time, to grow into a true Jedi. I needed more training, even after they named me a knight. I needed to grieve. To listen to the force. I think you need the same, but in time, you want to finish the path Ky Narec started you on. With me, or any other Jedi who offers.”

“They killed Ky trying to get to me. They wanted to make me a slave again, but he died instead.” Her voice was falsely drained of emotion.

“I’m sorry. He has become one with the force that lives in all things, but that does not make losing him in this life hurt any less.”

There was a stillness, where the only sound was a soft hiss from Ventress as Shmi finished cleaning her slug wound and started wrapping bandages around to keep the bacta in place. They really were a barbaric sort of weapon.

The force was calm, save for the buzzing of unfulfilled potential that lay between Obi-Wan and Ventress. He wondered if she could feel it too.

“Asajj,” she said, into the calm of the bay. “My name is Asajj Ventress.”

“Skywalker Shmi of Serenno. Once of Tatooine. This is Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s… my partner’s brother’s padawan’s padawan? Or, I suppose, my son’s brother-padawan’s padawan? Whatever lineage, he’s my friend.”

Somehow, the introduction worked better the other way around. Asajj said, “thank you for saving my life, Skywalker Shmi.”

Shmi, rather impulsively, grabbed the wayward padawan and pulled her into a hug. Surprisingly, Asajj went willingly, tucking her face into Shmi’s shoulder.

Obi-Wan left them be. If Asajj were to join him, and by her spirit and the way she felt in the force, he hoped she would, then she would decide it in her own time. For now, he had a call to place to inform the council, for the second time in his life, that a padawan had lived where the master had died. He could only hope to do as much to help Asajj as Dooku had done, so long ago, for Anakin and him.

--

They came up with two sets of cover stories. For obvious reasons, particularly the price on Padmé’s life, they didn’t want to tell the truth unless they had to. The first story was for if it seemed Anakin would have to reveal himself as a Jedi. The second was if he didn’t. In both, Padmé was the same rather self assured (now former) handmaiden she’d pretended to be upon their first meeting. In a way, Anakin was rather looking forward to it. Though the work of Queen or Senator Amidala was Padmé’s greatest passion, and he loved – yikes, maybe moving too soon, don’t tell her that – the way that passion made the force sing around her, Padmé without the finery, the jewels, was much more herself. It allowed her to be angry, to actually express that same passion in a way she never could when the future of her people rested on her shoulders. It was rather the opposite for Dooku, who was never happier or more able to express his feelings than with the weight of his titles behind him. Perhaps it was their personalities, or the way Serennian titles were, or, in point of fact, his gender. It would have been false to say that sexism was not alive and well in the Republic.

“This is Kamino, hailing unidentified craft. Please state your name and purpose of entry. If you are an existing client of our cloning program, please also state the name of your agent or agents.”

Well, that answered something. Anakin turned on the microphone, and signalled Padmé that they were going with story two. “This is Lord Anakin of House Serenno and Lady Padmé of Naboo, lately of Carannia. We’re looking to become clients in your cloning program.”

Padmé shot him a look that said they were going to have to get that part of the story straight. And, yeah, that was a good idea.

The first words had been pre-recorded, but the next voice, calm and smooth, was definitely live. “Lord Anakin. We would of course be delighted to invite you and the Lady Padmé to tour our cloning facility. Are you interested in medical, military or personal use cloning?”

‘Military’, Padmé mouthed, but that was too obvious. Besides, if Anakin’s lies ever came out, that would be disastrous for Serenno’s reputation.

“Personal use.” Besides, it might be good to find out what that option actually meant.

They were directed to land on a small platform in the middle of a vast, angry ocean. Even after a decade on Serenno, it seemed so improbable that there could be so much water on a single world. Indeed, in this case, perhaps too much water. This world was to water as Tatooine was to sand. Taking something that was not on its own unpleasant, and making it rough and violent and deeply irritating.

A Kaminoite – Kamino? Kaminian? He’d have to ask – greeted them on their arrival. They were an exceptionally tall and thin species, with great, arching necks.

“Doctor Nala Se.” Their basic was near flawless, there must have been other visitors to this planet from the core, once upon a time. Most likely very recently.

“Lord Anakin.” He placed a hand over his own chest. “My pronouns are he/him. This is Lady Padmé, she/her.”

It was essentially impossible to discern gender markers on a species of whom you’d met a single member. Fortunately, this seemed to clue Doctor Se in. “Ah, of course. She and her are my prefered basic translations, Lord Anakin.”

They all exchanged very proper bows. Doctor Se said, “I’m afraid I cannot take much time with you both. We have very important mass order currently in production. I hope we can serve you within a limited production capacity.”

Padmé gave her a winning smile. “With Kamino’s quality, limited production capacity will certainly serve, Doctor Se.”

Flattery seemed efficient. It was hard to read Dr. Se’s expression without practice, but Anakin thought it was a pleased one.

“In that case, why don’t I give you a tour of our production facilities, show you what we here on Kamino are capable of.”

“Obviously,” Anakin said, “we would prefer to see your projects on human or genetically similar species.”

The last thing they needed was a tour of Kaminoans cloning themselves. It might be culturally informative, but it wouldn’t explain why someone had deleted this world from one of the galaxy’s most extensive databases.

Dr. Se nodded. “Of course. Currently, our most extensive project involves cloning a Mandalorian. That would be of use.”

“And is that cloning with or without modifications to the original genetics?” Padmé asked, mildly. “We are interested it making some modifications related to aging. My fiancé is Serennian by adoption, but not by birth, and I am neither. We would prefer the Serennian rate of aging, which is slower than human average. A sample can be provided if needed.”

Seemingly pleased to talk technical, she said, “Oh, knowing the exact rate you request should be sufficient. Our current project involves accelerated aging, but we’ve certainly gathered enough data to provide the same effect in reverse.”

Anakin couldn’t think of any good reason why someone would want to clone a large number of people with accelerated aging, but he could think of a lot of malicious ones. By the way Padmé was clutching his hand, she was thinking the same thing.

“Excellent,” Anakin said, “why don’t you show us your facilities, and Lady Padmé and I can explain the nature of our problem.”

While Dr. Se gave the tour, Anakin threw in a handful of details about how he and Padmé were looking for cloning as a substitute for reproduction. Every so often, he would lay bait, to get a sense of where, exactly, the moral boundaries of the Kaminoites lay. For example, while they looked at the thousands of identical fetuses gestating on tree-like structure, Anakin wondered what might be done if there were any genetic mutations. Se was very clear that at whatever stage of development a ‘malfunction’ was discovered, the clone would be terminated or redirected to a service position.

“Particularly for these of course,” she said, as they looked through a one-way window onto a group of identical toddlers being taught to speak, “they need to be perfect, if they are to be ready for the battlefield.”

No good idea ever involved five year olds on the battlefield. “If I might ask, how did you make the leap from personal to military cloning? The resources to fund this must have been extraordinary, especially to pay for Kaminoite skill.”

“Kaminoans have been group cloning for a very long time,” she said with great suspicion. “As a matter of a fact, we only first created a clone to be raised as a child ten years ago, by special request.”

He’d stepped too close to interrogation. Padmé took control. “We’re honoured to be among the first. Now, tell me, do you advise leaving cloned children under your supervision until a certain age, or would they be viable from the time gestation was finished?”

She showed them this clone army as it grew, from artificial womb to grown men, running drills. With accelerated aging and these as the oldest, this army could only have been training for a few years. Perhaps ten. Anakin’s skin crawled with the force, telling him his suspicions were along the right lines. It all came back to ten years ago. Ten year ago, Dooku became Count and Anakin his Padawan. Ten years ago, the new Chancellor took office, a good friend to Padmé at first but now someone who had achieved little in his decade of control. Ten years ago, Obi-Wan killed a Sith. Ten years ago, Sifo-Dyas had gone missing, shortly after a visit to an invisible world of cloners. Ten years ago, they’d cloned a child for someone, and, quite possibly, begun building this army. The question was: why? If only Dooku were here. Then they could speak with the force rather than Anakin spinning in his mind while Padmé kept the conversation going with Dr. Se, blissfully unaware of her ‘fiancé’s’ spiralling thoughts.

“I think,” Padmé said, “that we would like some time to talk in private, it that is permissible.” Lowering her voice slightly, she added, “this is a great deal for him to take in. I’m sure you understand.”

Doctor Se inclined her head slightly, a motion that seemed odd with such a long neck moving with it. “Of course. But first, perhaps you might tell me why you needed to come to us. Surely the more… conventional systems of pregnancy are common on your worlds. Or gene splicing, if your anatomy is a concern.”

Padmé opened her mouth for a lie, but Anakin cut her off with a truth. Dooku always said that good negotiations began with sharing of truths, and he had already offered the Kaminoans too many lies.

“I was the result of an… unusual conception. Without getting into the specifics, suffice it to say that I am unsure a child with half of my genetics would be viable. But this blood has made me powerful. I would pass it on. In addition, my conception is not common knowledge on Serenno. I would very much like to keep it that way.”

She nodded. “Of course. You can count on us for the utmost discretion.”

She left them alone in a room with white walls and a single window that overlooked where a group of clones were running on treadmills. Anakin pressed the jammer in his pocket, counted to three to make sure it had time to kick in, and then turned to Padmé

“A clone army?” He hissed, at the same time as she demanded,

“What was that about a weird conception?”

Oh, right. That was a weird thing to say. “I only have one biological parent. But I’m not a clone. Dooku says I’m never allowed to get genetic testing done or someone will probably dissect me.”

Padmé put her head in her hands. “Anakin, we are so impossibly out of our depths here.”

Yeah, a little bit. “Well, the good news is they don’t suspect a thing. We just talk to them a bit longer, then tell them we need to call my father to authorize payment, go to our ship, and run all the way back to Coruscant.”

She nodded slightly, leaving her face obscured. “What have we stumbled into that involves an army of cloned Mandalorians? Duchess Kryze would never have authorized anything like this. It’s awful. It’s…”

It was exactly the sort of slavery the Republic looked down their noses at on Tatooine and turned a blind eye to when it suited them. But, from how highly Obi-Wan spoke of her, Satine Kryze of Mandalore wasn’t the type. She loved her planet’s peace far too much.

“Then we need to figure out who the buyer is. The Mandalorian may be just a template the Kaminoans are using, but he almost certainly knows the employer, if it isn’t him.”

Dr. Se returned a while later, when both Anakin and Padmé had composed themselves. He offered her a dashing smile. “We’re almost ready to make a deal, Dr. Se. Just two things. The first is to place a call to my Esteemed Father approving our payment. With your permission, I’ll go to our ship and do so now. The second is, you mentioned others had received this service of cloned children. I wondered, would you be willing to introduce us? On Serenno, parents who choose unconventional conception methods often form groups to guide others through the process, a revered tradition. It might also help assuage any lingering fears.”

“Of course. I can take you to our first such client now, if you would like. Although I believe he is headed offworld soon.”

Padmé smiled reassuringly at Anakin. “I’ll call Count Dooku, my dear. He’ll be happy to hear from me. You go and calm your nerves.”

She kissed him on the lips, the first time they’d ever done so in front of people, and then they parted ways.

--

The password Sifo-Dyas used for his holonet account was the same that he used for his confidential datapads. He’d last backed it up a week before he died. As Dooku read all that there was, he felt a sense of sorrow and pity. It was obvious that he’d been disturbed. Deeply disturbed. Dooku had always known his friend to be a seer, but it seemed that his dreams had turned sinister.

In some ways, Padmé’s holo was only the confirmation he’d been waiting for of his worst fears.

“You think Master Sifo-Dyas commissioned this clone army?”

The holofigure of Padmé stood on his desk in her Nabooian handmaiden’s dress. Her dark hair was held with a single large clasp behind her head.

“Unfortunately, ‘Lady Padmé,’ I am certain of it.” She ducked her head at the reference to her and Anakin’s lie. “He was dreaming of an end to the Republic. But I wonder if that could have been the influence of the dark side on his mind. Why a Jedi would think to clone an army…”

He knew that many would have. But the last decade had changed him enough that he found the idea repulsive. Knowing Anakin and Shmi had solidified his belief that such a practice was a form of slavery. Still, it proved that he had changed greatly if Sifo-Dyas was doing things that sickened Dooku. Of the two of them, Sifo-Dyas had always been the moral man.

“An end to the Republic?” Padmé asked, “then who do you suspect the Kaminoans believe are buying these clones?”

Sifo-Dyas believed more in morality than in honesty. He’d lied for Dooku before, many times. Who knows what he’d told the Kaminoans. “Impossible to say.” Though he hated it, he said, “I need to inform the council. When Anakin returns to you, leave as quickly as you can. Is there a nearby world where you have contacts?”

“Nowhere closer than Naboo who I would trust with the Bando Gora hanging over my head. Shmi and Obi-Wan are on Rattatak, closer than you are in the Core, but not by as much as you might think given the indirectness of hyperlanes.”

Dooku kissed his teeth and wished he was better at geography. “What’s the closest world you’ve been to?”

Her response was instant. “Tatooine.”

Always Tatooine. “Well, avoid that. Return to Naboo and lock down. Don’t tell the Queen. I recognize as a Senator that is a difficult thing to ask, but do try. We need to control the release of this information. And do not, under any circumstances, tell Chancellor Palpatine.”

Even by Holo, she seemed to shudder. “Dooku, the way he talks to Anakin, it makes me feel…”

He understood perfectly. “I know. We can discuss it when the situation settles.”

She flicked the holo off. Dooku gritted his teeth, and called Mace Windu.

“Would you like to explain to this council, Master Dooku, why the Senator for Naboo and your Padawan, who is nineteen years old and completely untested, are alone on an unsanctioned mission?”

Jocasta, standing at his side, looked completely nonplussed. Dooku said, “Master Windu, my padawan was expressly told to guard Senator Amidala and keep her out of the way of the Bando Gora. It seems improbable that they will find her on a planet that we didn’t even know was there until this week. Of course, Senator Amidala is known for her advocacy against corruption in the Senate, and this Order has just as much potential to abuse our power as the Senate does, if not for the bounds of our code. Is it really surprising that the Senator would be interested in the illegal commissioning of an army by a Jedi Knight? This could be the most important political weapon in thirty years. We should be grateful that we heard about it before it appeared in the press.”

Windu turned to Jocasta. “And you, giving confidential information to someone outside the order?”

She maintained her calm exterior. “Ah, I assumed that given the fact Master Sifo-Dyas’s death hasn’t been investigated for over nine years, it was no longer considered a matter of any importance to the order.” She smiled blithely. “My mistake.”

Windu clearly didn’t buy it. He’d known her much too long for that.

Gallia cut in. “Surely we can discuss disciplinary actions when there is not an army of – what was Senator Amidala’s estimate? Hundreds of thousands? – of men commissioned by one of our members waiting in limbo for their fates to be decided. Do not deny our responsibility, Windu; the evidence from Sifo-Dyas’s records was compelling enough.”

The council broke out into in fighting, a rare enough thing that Dooku and Jocasta between them could likely only name a couple other occasions. Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon were snipping about something. Depa Billiba was holding forth on something to frequent interruption. Even Yoda was trying to speak, though his soft voice was lost in the commotion.

“Enough!” Windu roared, over them all. He’d taken to his feet, and the force around him curled with dangerous authority. This was the reason he was the Master of the Order. Everyone looked to him. “Thank you, Master Dooku, for bringing this to my attention. Master Piell, Master Billiba, I’m dispatching both of you to Kamino to investigate further. Master Dooku, Master Nu, when Padawan Skywalker returns from Kamino, he and the two of you will be suspended pending disciplinary action.”

While Dooku’s anger at the injustice of it all seethed within him. He found himself robbed entirely of speech as he breathed away the emotions that threatened to choke him.

Jocasta reached into the bag at her hip, and pulled out a stack of datapads. Wordlessly, she walked around and passed one of them to each member of the council. She handed one to Dooku as well, and when he pressed the power button it flashed ‘Komari Vosa’. He turned it off with a grimace, realizing what she was doing.

“In your hands,” she intoned, speaking with such force that it was a reminder that the spoken word was as much a part of her archivist’s mastery as the written was, “is the life of a Jedi whose body has been unrecovered by this temple in the last twenty years. Three of you hold ‘solved’ cases. Other than Master Dooku, who holds Komari Vosa, a Padawan who Quinlan Vos informs us may very well still be alive, the other two are Masters Mundi and Koon. Your cases are Sifo-Dyas and Ky Narec. Neither body has been recovered. The sum total of the investigations have been conducted by Padawan Skywalker, Master Dooku, Knight Kenobi and myself in half a tenday. None of us trained for this. Surely judicial’s investigators could have done better. But nobody looked. Not for lost Masters, in the line of duty, or for wayward knights who never called in, or for Padawans who made one crucial mistake. Shame on all of us.”

She turned to Windu. “Discipline them if you want. I’ve been in this order since I was two years old, and I am tired of watching it abandon its most vulnerable members.”

Then, slowly but without hesitation, Jocasta Nu walked away from the council upon which she had once sat. The doors slammed behind her. Though she had not given her lightsaber back, it was as certain a resignation as Dooku had ever seen.

Dooku had never intended any of this. “Let me go after her, I can change her mind. The archives need a librarian with Master Nu’s skill.”

“Be afraid for your friend, you should not.” After all this time, Yoda finally spoke. “She must walk her own path now, and you cannot walk it for her.”

The little green toad. “I know, Master. But the force calls her to this role. She has more than earned a chance to have one single outburst in over fifty years of dedicated service as knight and master. Especially over such a righteous cause as this.”

“Is it true?” The council turned to Plo Koon.

“Mine is,” Ti said, bowing her head with grief. Like Dooku, she must have known the person on her datapad.

“Mine is,” Dooku said, “and so is yours, if you have Ky Narec. Obi-Wan found his orphaned padawan on Ratattak, fighting weequay raiders to survive. She thought the Jedi were never going to come for her, and if Obi-Wan hadn’t been gifted a vision, we never would have. A child, a padawan, and we abandoned her.” His mind was full of Komari, of the padawan he might have abandoned in the hands of the Bando Gora.

“We need to change this,” Gallia said, passion blazing through the force around her. “How could we have been so blind? What else are we missing? I call for the creation of an emergency council to evaluate the failings of this council.”

Normally, Dooku would have been all for it, but, “can we please come to a decision about disciplinary action now so I can go ensure my padawan is actually removing himself from danger?” And so I can go talk my friend out of making the greatest mistake of her life.

Eyes went to Windu. “Dooku, nothing I could do to you personally would stick anyways. Your padawan is ineligible for his trials, for the moment; he can be invited to reapply at this council’s discretion.”

It was so monstrously unfair, to punish Anakin for Dooku’s own folly. “He has done absolutely nothing to deserve this.”

“Get out of my council.”

Dooku went.

Chapter Text

“Dr. Se,” Anakin said, conversationally, “how did you come to master cloning?” She was walking him to go meet the other person who’d received cloning services from the Kaminoans and was currently on-world. The only other person, likely, who might provide a clue as to what secrets lay underneath Kamino’s oceans.

He meant her as a person, but she seemed to misunderstand. “We lived on land, once. But it was during an ice age. No ice lasts forever. So we moved to high ground. And then the water kept coming. So we moved above the highest ground. This was the way for us to preserve our world, species that could no longer survive. Just animals, at first. Later we used it on people, to improve ourselves for our new life.”

He could work with that. “The Kaminoans are remarkable in their perseverance.”

He couldn’t get a good read on her in the force. She must have had some training in resisting force users. Or maybe it was biological to her species. It was difficult to tell.

They stopped in front of a neutral door, the same blank white as the rest of their buildings. Se tapped at the chime on the doorpad. A little boy answered. This was a product of cloning, no doubt. He looked just the same as the military clones that Anakin had seen, which meant the Kaminoans were either terrible at cloning, or his father was definitively involved in the creation of that army.

“Dr Se!” He said, excitedly, “dad just got back!”

The original genetic template came through a door, bag still slung over his shoulder. He and Anakin looked at each other for a long moment. Anakin could read him, some. He had the regimented presence of a soldier, but a carefully cultivated lethal sharpness beneath it. This was a dangerous man.

“Jango Fett,” Se introduced, “meet Lord Anakin of Serenno. He asked to speak to someone about the process of humans raising cloned children.”

There was something familiar about that name. It called to Anakin’s mind thoughts of something terrible. Perhaps he’d seen it in his investigations into the Hutts?

Anakin bowed to him. “An honour to meet you, Sir Fett.”

Se, speaking to the child, left them together,. Anakin folded his hands together in front of his stomach. “So, how did you decide on Kaminoans for their reproductive services?”

He laughed, gruffly. “Oh, I didn’t; they chose me. I’m the template for that army they’re building out there.”

It had been obvious by his looks, as he must have know, but Anakin was playing a long game. “Yes, I did notice that. It really is a remarkable effort. If you’ll excuse some nervous curiosity, who are they actually for?”

Fett shrugged. “The Republic, I think.”

Well, kriff.

Fett narrowed his brow. “And you, what brought you here, Mr. Of Serenno?”

He’d take it. “Lord Anakin or Anakin is fine. My fiancée and I have some… reproductive challenges.”

Fett ignored him. “Of House Serenno?”

Jenza and Dooku had both made enemies, over their lives, she in her political work, and he both as Jedi and as politician. It was possible that was why Anakin remembered Fett’s name. This meant tying yourself to either of them was a risky proposition. He decided to keep his lie consistent rather than undercut himself with the Kaminoans. “Yes. By adoption. The Count is my father.”

“The Count of Serenno doesn’t have any children. He has-”

Fett went for a blaster in his bag. Anakin grabbed his lightsaber from inside his shirt.

“Why?” Anakin demanded, deflecting the first blaster bolt into the wall behind him with a slash of his lightsaber.

It wasn’t because he was a Serenno. It was because he was a Jedi. Why would someone be so eager to shoot a Jedi? Why would someone be so confident that they could shoot a Jedi?

Galidraan. This was Jango Fett, one of the people in the world most likely to hate Jedi in general and Dooku in particular. Komari Vosa’s ghost, yet again. She’d been part of the atrocities there just as much as Dooku had.

Anakin kept his blade in front of him. “I’m not here for you. I’m just investigating the murder of Master Sifo-Dyas.”

Fett just shot at him again. Anakin, demonstrating that this wasn’t why he was here, turned and ran. Through the white halls and rooms of cloning tubes, and, with a lightsaber stabbed through a door lock, out onto the landing pad.

“We need to go now!”

Padmé ducked back into the ship as Fett, catching up with Anakin, shot at her.

Their astromech, R2-D2, who was trying to repair something on the landing gear, chirped,

Anakin and the droid leapt in together as Padmé started taking off. Anakin grabbed the controls so they would stop drifting towards the buildings, and took them up into the atmosphere.

“What happened?” Padmé demanded.

“They figured out I was a Jedi. Doesn’t matter. The army is for the Republic.”

“Dooku suspected that Sifo-Dyas had ordered them. Apparently he became paranoid at the end of his life. Are you taking us to lightspeed?”

Anakin shook his head. “No. I want to see if he’s going to chase us. In fact,” he turned their power off, letting them drift for a while with all the satellites in orbit.

Gravity began to swing them around the curve of the planet.

“We should call Dooku again.” He nodded in silent acknowledgement.

Anakin hated the fact that he’d failed, though he wasn’t really sure what he’d failed at. They had come here believing it would be an easy way to keep busy while Padmé was in danger. They could just as easily have gone to Naboo and spent a few days enjoying the rare opportunity to be together in person. With all the added benefits of being together now that they were dating. But that wasn’t the sort of people they were. Nobody who got together writing secret political exposés could have done anything less.

“Ani, look.”

A ship was taking off on Kamino. With force certainty, Anakin said, “Fett – the Mandalorian who was shooting at me – is on that ship.”

He kept his hand on the acceleration, but Fett didn’t seem to notice them drifting. Instead, he flew steadily away. As slowly as he could, Anakin turned their systems back on.

“Well?”

It was Padmé’s call, in the end. Her safety was all that really mattered, to the mission and to Anakin.

“Follow that ship.”

Moving below hyperspeed, they flew back, first through open space and then an asteroid belt, until they landed on a little planet, so close to Tatooine that Anakin could make out the twin suns even in the daytime, although it did not orbit them. It was the closest to the world of his childhood Anakin had ever come, both in proximity and in weather. It was brutally hot. Anakin Skywalker, age nine, would have made fun of him for being an offworlder who knew nothing about the heat. Skywalker Anakin, age nineteen, said nothing of the sort as Padmé wiped sweat off her brow and said,

“Now, please, can we call Dooku?”

The answer was that they emphatically could not. The signal to Coruscant was too weak.

Another ship was landing near where Fett’s had. It was a old model, Correlian make by the looks of it. Expensive, but second or third hand at the very least. The force around it had the same sickly air as Padmé’s assailant from the Bando Gora.

“New plan,” Anakin said, trying his best to remain calm. “You stay here, try to get through to… anyone. Tell them that the Bando Gora and their force user are here at our coordinates, and that Sifo-Dyas’s clone army is affiliated in some way.”

Padmé gave him a sharp look. “What are you going to do?”

“If the force user is here, I need to go after them. The whole galaxy is at risk. We need to know who from.”

Padmé took his hands in hers. “And Dooku needs to know if it really is Komari.”

She knew him far too well; even without saying the words, she understood that his family, Dooku and Jenza included, mattered more to him than the risk to the galaxy. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t want you assigned to guard me, remember, just to find out who was trying to kill me. I wouldn’t love you if I didn’t know you were the sort of person to think about this sort of thing.”

Oh. Oh! She wasn’t angry; she understood, and she loved him. “I love you too. So much. More than there are star in the sky, or grains of sand on Tatooine, or-”

Padmé kissed him. “I know. Now go. You have a short range transmitter?”

Anakin held the device up. “I’ll call if I have something more for you to give the order.” Over his shoulder, he called, “I love you!” Again. Just for luck.

—

When Obi-Wan returned to the ship with Ky Narec’s lightsaber hanging beside his own, Asajj had fallen asleep. She was curled on the floor of the cargo bay, blaster resting by her open hand. He thought he could detect the beginnings of hair on her head, and was surprised to discover that she shaved it rather than her species being naturally bald. Well, he could still get her dispensation to have Padawan beads, rather than a true braid. They allowed it for personal reasons as well as biological one, if you required a religious head covering, for example. If that wasn’t accepted, well, the average Jedi wouldn’t notice that Asajj’s species wasn’t bald any more than Obi-Wan had.

Shmi was talking to someone in the cockpit, in hushed tones. “We’ve contacted the temple from here already. You can be sure our systems are working. Why they weren’t able to track down Ky Narec here, I don’t have any idea. Maybe his ship was damaged, or he just didn’t want to be found. So, clone army for the Republic, and Bando Gora, and Geonosis. Have I caught everything pertinent?”

A wavy holo of Padmé Amidala stood before Shmi. She looked down at the transponder she was holding in her hand, and, with a second’s delay, they all heard Anakin’s voice.

“I’m inside. It’s a sort of… hive. Some of the rooms have humans in them, but they seemed incapable of noticing me. I could feel that mind control drug on them, and it looked like they were making more death sticks. I can hear the sounds of a factory working some kind of metal, but I can’t see what they’re making. There’s a group of important people just around the corner. I can feel one of them in the force, but I’ve never met them before. The others are less defined. Two trade federation, I think, judging by their voices, and–”

Anakin’s voice abruptly cut out. Through Padmé’s audio, the sound of an alarm began blaring. She checked the blaster at her hip. “Inform the council,” she told Shmi, seriously, “save the Republic.” Then, just like that, she was gone.

“Did you catch enough of that to understand what’s happening?”

If he hadn’t, he certainly would have as Shmi repeated it all, with mechanical precision and a false calm, in her call to Dooku. Like Padmé, he didn’t stay to chat.

Anakin was going up against a darkside user – perhaps a Sith, Obi-Wan’s greatest fears whispered to him – alone. They needed to go to, him, but something stopped him. Qui-Gon once, long ago, had gone to face a Sith with his apprentice and a nine year old failed initiate. He’d died. If Obi-wan brought Shmi and Asajj into such danger, he could in no way guarantee their safety.

Yet the force had called him here, to Asajj, and now it called every part of him to Geonosis, where the fate of the Republic would be decided. Her bones ached with the pull of the urge to fly towards danger, and a lump condensed in the centre of his chest.

“We need,” Shmi said, with a note of finality in her voice, “to ask Asajj if she would be willing to wait here, or in the ship on Geonosis, while we go rescue Anakin.”

They couldn’t ask her to risk everything for people she’d never met. Especially not while she was injured. Learning to be a Jedi was about giving up yourself for others, but learning to be a master was knowing to never force others to give more than they could bear, which could only lead to hate. Asajj had already been put under enough pressure to be a hero.

“Who are the Bando Gora?”

Of course she’d been eavesdropping.

“A force-worshipping cult who are also a deathstick ring. Seventeen years ago, Komari Vosa, a Padawan, was likely captured by them, along with two other Jedi. They were ultimately determined to have been killed in the line of duty, but no bodies were ever recovered. Komari was… in another life, she would have been part of my family. Now it seems that same organization has been somehow involved in illegally commissioning a massive clone army allegedly on behalf of the Republic. Shmi’s son, it seems, has just been captured by them.”

Obi-Wan took Ky Narec’s lightsaber from his belt and passed it to her. Asajj’s fingers brushed his as they curled around it. He could feel her in the force, without anger and fear from last night, she had a tight determination, a thrilling potential. Like Anakin, if given the opportunity she could learn to understand herself, to help people in the way she wanted to without such violence.

She looked to Shmi. “Is he a good man, your son?”

It was almost a cruel thing to say in these circumstances, but she answered anyways. “Anakin is a man who believes in justice and in the ability of people to do real good. Some day that belief will hurt him. I’d rather it not be today. But Obi-Wan and I won’t drag you into this. If you want to stay, or to go back to Coruscant, or anywhere else you can think of, then we will. We’ve already put you in enough danger.”

Her stance shifted, nervously. It was good that she was walking, given her injury. “I’ve fought with worse. At least this time, I’ll have help.”

She was a good kid. “You’re both staying on the ship, even if you come to Geonosis. Protect each other. Leave, if it comes to that. That’s a condition of us going.”

It would be wrong to take an injured padawan and a civilian into this. They looked at each other.

“Deal,” they both said, which settled it.

--

When Shmi was done explaining what had happened, Dooku took his lightsaber from his belt and held it in his hand. Aside from training with Anakin and Obi-Wan, he hadn’t used it more than two dozen times since he’d wielded it to take Ramil’s life. The poison of the dark side on it had since almost washed away. Now he would use it to take a life again. The idea sickened him, but there was no question. These were the people who had done unspeakable things to Komari. Now they had Anakin, and the council had already as good as said they didn’t want him in the order. In the end, it could only be a matter of ensuring that as few people as possible got hurt.

He clipped his lightsaber back to his belt, and called Obi-Wan’s message in to Mace Windu. Then, without waiting for the Master’s response, he went to find Jocasta.

She was meditating in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. The force around her spun with stories, history. Jocasta always had been suited to her role as a librarian for this very reason. Some people were naturally inclined to see the force as light and dark. Some were naturally inclined to hear it sing. Others were inclined to see how the present would make the future. Jocasta was naturally inclined to see the ways the force tied the past to the present.

As Dooku entered, she looked up, no doubt sensing the disquiet in him.

“Anakin,” he said, breaking the tranquility and hating himself for it. “They have Anakin. Jenza will let me take her ship.”

Jocasta was on her feet in a second, hand wrapped around his arm. Together they began to walk down to where Jenza, who he’d called while looking for Jocasta, would be bringing the ship to pick them up.

“We need more than just two old masters, Dooku. Did you tell the council that it was the Bando Gora?”

“I told Windu. By the time he scrambles a proper fighting force, Anakin could already be dead. We need to go.”

She stopped him, grabbing both of his shoulders. “Dooku, I feel your distress. You will be no help to Anakin like this.”

Dooku wanted nothing less than to be calm. But it would be a betrayal of the very ideals he had fought to teach Anakin to lose his grasp on the light now. He breathed in. He thought of the stress of the last few days, from hearing of the first attempt on Padmé’s life to hearing that Anakin would be barred from the trials due to Windu’s hatred of them and theirs. He took that anger, that fear, and imagined it turning into dust, blown away by the softly circulating temple air. His emotions could not rule him if he accepted them and moved on to peace. Emotion, yet peace. In spite of, not because of. He exhaled, and banished his disquiet. Anakin deserved a better teacher than this. But Dooku was what he had, so that would have to be better.

“Dooku.”

It was not Jocasta who had spoken. Dooku opened his eyes to the serious face of Quinlan Vos. Secura stood at his side. Both of them had travel packs slung over their shoulders.

“Mace told me you had identified the location of the Bando Gora force user.”

At least he was prompt. “Geonosis. He has my padawan captive, and possibly Senator Amidala as well. Now, if you will excuse me…”

Quinlan didn’t move. “Why would we excuse you? Our mission was to find this rogue force-user and bring them to justice. It seems to me that you might be one of our greatest assets. Windu’s strike team won’t be ready to leave for at least an hour, and they’ll be delayed. We can leave now.”

Dooku thought he finally understood why Obi-Wan harboured a surprising admiration for Quinlan. “I have a ship.”

“Then fly, we will.”

The four Jedi looked down to see the Grandmaster standing before them. Dooku’s heart shattered again. “Master, I–”

“Speak on the ship, we will.”

Dooku had been a student long enough to know the fastest path with Yoda. He knelt, and allowed his master to climb onto his back. In this way, they made good time out of the temple. There, speaking to Jenza on the landing platform, stood Adi Gallia. She raised a hand in greeting, and then boarded the ship without a word to any of them.

He found that his throat was almost closed up. He had not imagined something like this. So long had he been away from the Order than he had entirely forgotten how many people in it were willing to die for what was right, to do their duty against impossible odds.

As Yoda climbed off his back and began to walk into the ship, Jenza said, “give Shmi and Anakin my love, when you see them.” She left the love she felt for him unspoken, knowing how risky his position within the order was.

“I hope you know that Shmi loves you too.” And so do I. Very much.

She hugged him, just for a second, and then hurried him on his way.

The ship bustled with life, as Secura and Gallia took off while Quinlan filled Jocasta in on what was actually happening.

Yoda and Dooku sat across from each other, and didn’t say much. Dooku hoped that his anger and fear about Anakin’s fate had not been instantly obvious. His Master’s presence in the force was as at peace with his destiny as always, but there was a certain focus to it that Dooku knew from many years as the closest Yoda ever came to showing fear. He had not expected this to be the sort of mission that would raise that emotion in him. Few things raised emotion in him.

Yoda could love. Dooku knew that much. He loved Yaddle, and he had loved Qui-Gon, very much. Of all their lineage, Qui-Gon had been the one who had the most potential to be like Yoda. Perhaps twenty or thirty years after Naboo, had he lived, he would have settled some. His resistance to authority would have turned into Yoda’s firm denial that it could come from any person save himself. His awareness of the force would have grown from its existing strength until he was as much a Master of the Living Force as any Jedi had ever been. They might have made him Master of the Order, but he never would have taken the position.

Lives not lived, paths not taken. Anakin was alive, here and now. Perhaps Komari was too. Dooku needed to be there. He needed to protect them.

“Perhaps we should speak alone.”

“Of course, Master Yoda.”

For a Senator’s ship, it wasn’t large. Even Jenza’s room, which was the largest, had only a double mattress pressed into a corner and a shelf mounted to the wall above it. Ever since her exile from Serenno, Jenza hadn’t much been one for worldly goods. In that respect, she was a better Jedi than Dooku himself. He’d never really cared for that aspect of the Jedi doctrine.

Yoda lifted himself up with a little of the force, and they sat beside each other on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

There were years and deaths that hung in the air like a choking smoke. Dooku spoke first.

“I should have come back, after Ramil died. To explain myself. I owed you that much, and I’m sorry.” Once the words began, he found it almost impossible to stop. He had been hiding the conflict in him from Yoda since before he had even been knighted. “I should always have been more honest with you. Perhaps if I had, my Padawans would have been more honest with me in turn. Of them, only Anakin has ever trusted me completely while he still wears his braid. Komari didn’t, even when she loved me, nor should she have. I failed her. I failed you, and Rael, and Qui-Gon. I failed Anakin by sending him on this mission. My lack of preparation and hubris put his life in danger. I wanted the council to see him as I do, but I should have trusted in the will of the force to show them the truth; Anakin will be a great Jedi, if we only have faith.”

Yoda’s clawed hands were folded tightly in his lap. “Many paths there are, to being a great Jedi. To be a warrior, yes. You have trained many great warriors.”

“I never trained only warriors. Perhaps I intended to, perhaps I love my craft too well. Yet that is not what has been most admirable about any of my students. For all his alleged carelessness, Rael has been as devoted a servant to the Pijali as any Jedi Mmaster has ever been to those he swore to protect. Though he dances with the code, he thinks about its bounds with more dedication than any other. Komari would have been as great a warrior as Rael, had she lived – had she lived free, if she proves to have been a captive all this time – but when I knew her, I was most proud of her courage. If fear in a Jedi is evil, then Komari knew none of its touch. She was not always well, she did not always make good decisions, but she approached the terror she sometimes faced with a resolute will. And Qui-Gon… well, you trained him as much as I did. You know what was wonderful about him. The Order will never see another quite like him.

“And then there is Anakin. Anakin has the most raw power of any Jedi I have ever trained. He has the finest mind by far. He could turn it to a thousand pursuits, but instead, that of justice, of equality before the law and the Senate is what turns his head. He believes the Jedi can be so much more than the shadow we have become, that we can truly help the people of this Galaxy. He rekindled that faith in me. Anakin chooses the path of peace even when it hurts him, now that he has the freedom to choose. At nine years old, he was willing to risk his life to get Qui-Gon off of Tatooine, for no reason other than that it was right. If he survives this and is barred from his trials, then the Jedi Order will have lost a truly great asset. Anakin would have remade the Order, I believe, with all the wisdom of the past and a total belief in the future. And yes, he is a fine hand with a lightsaber. Obi-Wan and I could not have made him any differently. But he has never killed with it. Not once. None of my other Padawans could say the same at his age. There is not a hint of darkness that clings to his kyber crystal.”

Not the way there is to mine.

Yoda’s hand touched his arm, almost making Dooku jump.

“Many paths there are, to being a great Jedi. To be a warrior, yes, but a leader also. A teacher also.”

It was just like him, to express what Dooku thought was pride in such an opaque fashion. “I only became a true friend to Qui-Gon after he was long knighted. I know I have disappointed you in many ways, over the years, but I would be honoured if you would give me another chance.” The little goblin shortled a laugh, in that uncontrolled way of his. “What?”

“Disappointed me, you believe you have. Yet you have always been a great master of the force, hmm? A great warrior? If you have become great in more ways, how does that lessen the ways in which you were great already?”

Yoda didn’t know how far from greatness he had been. “I came close to the darkness, Master. So close I could taste it, again and again until I was freefalling into it with no hope. If Obi-Wan hadn’t shaken me out of it, I believe I would have become as much a Sith as the thing he killed on Naboo.”

“Wise we are not born, Master Dooku. Wise, we become. At your age, a true Master I was not.”

“At my age you were yet a child.”

Yoda laughed, and kicked his feet against the side of the bed. But his hand never came away from Dooku’s arm, and that was more than enough.

Chapter Text

They had a plan. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was the best that seven of the order’s strongest minds had been able to come to in the time it had taken them to get from Coruscant to Geonosis. The reality was that no matter how skilled they were, they couldn’t walk in with no intel, and only one of them could plausibly explain having come to Geonosis on his own.

“I don’t like this,” Jocasta said, as Quinlan hid the holorecorder at the collar of his robes. It would send what Dooku saw to them by short range transmission: audio and some limited visual.

“I know. But you understand why it has to happen.”

As Quinlan pulled back to admire his handiwork, Dooku surveyed the strange new group that had come with him into the gateway of the Sith hells. “Thank you all for doing this. I know it is for a duty greater than any of us, but I still feel the need to thank you on my behalf and on that of my padawan. I suspect all of us believe that this order would do better if we looked after each other more, treated other Jedi with the same care we endeavour to offer to the citizens of the Republic we serve. Today all of you have done that, and I thank you.”

“It isn’t fair,” Secura burst out, “you were right. I’d never heard anyone say it before, what you said about injustice within the Order, but you were right. Thank you, Master Dooku.”

Though he was shocked to hear her speak thus, especially in front of Yoda, it was a kind thing to say to a man about to die. “Thank you, Knight Secura.”

“Aayla.”

With that, he bid them all farewell, and began his slow creep towards the enemy base. Anakin’s descriptions of it as a factory and a hive were not inaccurate, and it was plain that something strange had happened here. The native Geonosians, who were obviously some kind of insectoid lifeform, were nowhere to be seen. The sickness Anakin had described on the tainted death sticks and the assassin who had used them hung in the air. And beneath that, something darker that Anakin likely had not recognized. Dooku knew it all too well.

Quietly, for the benefit of the listening Jedi, he said, “I sense death here. Screaming death with the stench of betrayal.”

He slipped down another corridor, towards the sounds of machinery. They turned out to be entirely automated, which was a shame. Dooku needed to find people.

Turning to the force, he pushed past the sickness and the dark and let it guide his footsteps, away from the machinery and down towards a part of the building where the air, not just the force, smelled of death sticks.

Finally, there were people here, mostly humans. Yet he could feel no relief at the sight. None of them looked up as Dooku passed them, transfixed by the task of making more death sticks with rigid, mechanical movements, like droids made of flesh. Yet in Dooku’s experience, droids had more personality.

“I do not like it here, at all.” Galactic standard with a distinct trade-federation accent echoed through the stone halls. Reacting instinctively, Dooku slid himself seamlessly into the rows of automated people. Even standing a half step away, they didn’t look up at him.

“It is not our job to like it. The Lady has made it abundantly clear that she is our best chance to take vengeance on the Jedi, and to free our people from the influence of the Senate.”

“But the Jedi are already on her trail. You heard the bounty hunter’s report. Amidala is involved too! She’ll know about our connections to this, and then where will we be? If we destroy her legislation in the Senate–”

“Better to see her dead, and that Jedi ally of hers, too.”

Dooku needed to turn, to get eyes on them for Judicial. But he needed to keep his movements as blank and rigid as those of the other drones.

“Gentlemen, am I hearing dissention in the ranks already?”

No. No, Dooku knew that voice.

His hand found the hilt of his lightsaber, drawing it as he turned. The trade federation were begging, making excuses, but Dooku’s rushing ears didn’t bother to listen.

“Hello, Master.”

Komari already held a lightsaber, unlit, against his throat. A press of the switch would kill him instantly. She must have been there for some time.

It was evident something terrible had happened to her. If Dooku had passed her in a marketplace, he wouldn’t have recognized her. The thought was disquieting. He had often imagined coming across her, and in his imagination, he would have known her no matter her disguise or change in appearance. Her hair had gone white, and her eyes yellow with the blight of the dark side. Though her face was as unmarred and elegent as ever, her bare arms bore evidence of torture, burns evenly spaced up and down them.

“Komari.”

“Drop the blade, or I kill you first and the sneak second. I can’t believe you replaced me with someone so… imbecilic.”

Komari had always measured herself against Rael and Qui-Gon. She had never come to find a love for them as they had for each other. She was always jealous of them, particularly of Qui-Gon and the time Dooku devoted to sending letters to him. She was less so of Rael, because he and Dooku were less close. Yet that had surely been because they were older, and she had feared she could not compare. The idea that she believed Anakin could ever have been a replacement for her twisted painfully in his chest.

“Don’t do this.”

Komari ignited her second lightsaber. The blade was heartbreaking red, and the haze of death in the force increased. She had killed so many people with it.

“I know so many ways to make an untested Padawan suffer.”

Dooku let his blade drop to the ground, clattering unlit against the stone floor.

“Seize him.” Two of the drones, a human male and a twi’lek female – the only one of her species Dooku could see – grabbed his arms and forced him to his knees.They moved without restraint in the way warriors trained to ignore physical limitations did, but with none of the grace or finesse. It was as if someone had overwritten the subconscious instinct that normally kept people from exercising strength beyond what their bodies could handle. In theory, a Jedi or a Sith could do such a thing with the manipulation of the mind.

“Komari, you don’t have to do this. I can help you.”

No matter what she’d done, he could take her back to Serenno. She was a child he’d been entrusted to protect just as much as Anakin, and deserved the same. He could invoke Serenno’s diplomatic rights, build barriers of law. Jenza, he was sure, would help. Komari could find herself again, as Dooku had.

She pressed her lightsaber into his shoulder, and he bit his lip until the tang of iron ran down his throat as he tried not to scream. The pain was terrible, as she burned away layers of flesh.

“You deserve so much more than this,” she murmured, voice hard. “You deserve so much more.”

Her eyes stared through him as if they didn’t see him at all.

“My lady,” the Viceroy said, “do other Jedi know that he’s here?”

Komari flicked her left saber off, sheathing it, and grabbed Dooku’s chin. “Are there others? With the Senator, perhaps?”

They hadn’t found Padmé, then. Dooku threw up boundaries in the force, shoving Komari’s prying fingers away from the truth, directing her instead towards the feelings of anger and abandonment he’d held towards the order before Anakin and Obi-Wan had given him purpose.

“More Jedi will come. They will. I told Mace Windu, and he will bring a storm down upon your head the likes of which you have never known.” Whatever his personal feelings about Mace Windu, there was no question that he was the terror of villains everywhere.

She patted him on the cheek, with a gentleness that turned his heart to ice. “Oh, my dear. You don’t believe that.”

Point one to Count Dooku, then. She looked to the drones. “Take him to the Arena, with Skywalker.” She clipped Dooku’s lightsaber beside her own two and Anakin’s, taking the grand total to four. It was a good thing neither Dooku nor Anakin practiced Jar’kai. Otherwise the situation would really have approached the point of parody.

At least Yoda and the others knew what they were getting into.

They marched him down and down, a series of winding corridors until he stood on the shifting sands of the planet’s surface. He could easily have escaped their grip, even disarmed, but he played the part of the dejected old man so they would take him to Anakin.

He emerged into sunlight in a massive stone arena, with three pillars in the middle. Anakin was chained to the center one, arms suspended above his head. He looked a little bored. Like Dooku, he probably could have escaped at any time, but was waiting for a moment when one of the battle droids at the edge of the field wouldn’t immediately shoot him.

As Dooku emerged into the sunlight, he raised his head. “Master!”

Anakin only used that word when something was very wrong. It was probably a signal of something. Dooku yearned to open their training bond, but stopped himself from doing so. Komari might be able to reach into his mind if he lowered his shielding, and keeping their allies safe was absolutely paramount.

They clasped the cuffs too tight around his wrists, and stretched his arms above his head.

“Don’t worry, Padawan. It’ll be alright.”

Somewhat hysterically, Anakin said, “you never use this many contractions when everything is going well!”

He was probably right. “And you never call me ‘Master’. Best not to start now.”

Anakin laughed a little, panic still evident in his voice. “Is it really her?”

“It is. Now breathe. I know the darkness of this place is stifling, but beyond that, there is always the force.”

Dooku let his words guide his actions. Beyond the shadow of this place, the death and sickness, there was the sun, blazing down upon them. There was the desert, cruel but natural. There was the light of Anakin, a sun in his own right. Dooku could feel him calming himself in the force, growing brighter as he remembered that he could not always have control, all he could do was live.

Dooku remembered the same. The odds of him walking out of this were low, so, despite the transmitter in his collar projecting every word to an audience, he said, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

Anakin’s eyes were closed as he laid his head back against the pillar. If Dooku tilted his head, he could imagine he was sunning himself in an ancient ruin. They’d done some travelling on an archeological expedition when Anakin was fourteen, a non-priority mission Jocasta had forwarded to them as a gift. Anakin hadn’t been very interested in the dig, until he’d found out the society they were investigating had practiced a unique form of consensus based government. Then he’d paid a great deal of attention, which was probably for Padmé’s benefit, but still.

“I don’t blame you,” responded Anakin, “you could never have known that your friend had ordered a clone army to be built. We still have no idea what Komari has to do with any of this.”

He was too kind for his own good. “I am proud of you.”

Anakin’s eyes were still closed. “I know. For what it’s worth, it has been an honour to be your Padawan. Obi-Wan and I might have a natural tie in the force, but you let me choose. I still remember that first day, when you told me not to call you Master. You were so calm about it, and Obi-Wan was so baffled. I was confused at the time, too, but now I think that you knew I was afraid. You made Serenno into a place where I could feel safe until I learned to process and release my own fears. You taught me that being afraid didn’t mean something was wrong with me. I don’t think you have any inkling of an idea of how much that mattered to a little boy who could not even begin to imagine anything other than constant, mind-numbing fear.”

Anakin had no idea the other Jedi could hear him. He also had no idea how much Dooku loved him. Because he did. He had loved that brilliant, clever, generous little boy from the beginning. With all his heart. Anakin was his son.

“This is all very touching,” Komari said. She strode into the Arena with all the authority of a Queen. Around them, the drones began to take their seats, watching with perfect stillness. “But we all have business to attend to, before your little friends drop in on our heads. Did you really think we wouldn’t notice Amidala is still missing?”

Kriff.

“Komari,” Anakin said, finally opening his eyes to look at her, “why are you doing this?”

She ignored him, fixed solely on Dooku. “You abandoned me when I needed you most, but you can help me now.”

“I can. Lay down your lightsabers and I swear on my life that no harm will come to you. Tell me who did this and I will–” He wanted to hurt them, but that was the darkness speaking. “–ensure that they never see the world outside a cell for the rest of their lives.”

“Oh, what have they done to you? You used to be so strong, so fierce. The boy has weakened you. I don’t want to surrender to you, you foolish man. I want you to join me, to help me kill my Master as he killed his.”

Not a Sith. Please, anything but that. Anakin asked, “did he command the Bando Gora when they captured you, the Sith Master? Or did he find you later?”

Komari twitched, but again ignored him. Dooku said, “I cannot do that for you, Komari. It would be wrong.”

Whirling around, Komari slashed her lightsaber wildly at Anakin. She still had extraordinary control. She didn’t even cut him when her blade burnt off his Padawan braid.

It was a gesture that should have been sacred, made sacrilegious. Something that should have been reserved for a gesture of respect made into a violation.

“You love this one better? What’s better about him? Is it his sad little eyes? Do you pity him? Is it his cock?”

For a moment, Dooku was robbed entirely of speech. He couldn’t fathom where she’d gotten the idea, and was utterly nauseated by her implication. Anakin’s confusion, stirring the force around him, echoed Dooku’s own.

In the end, though, he could only respond to her with care. Whatever was broken between them – and apparently, it was a great deal – she had almost been his daughter. “I loved you, Komari. As a child under my care. As Anakin is, a child under my care. But that was not what you wanted from me. What you wanted from me would have been a violation of every principle not just of the Order, and of the laws of the Republic, but of my own heart. And I do not believe you would have thought kindly of me if I had done what you wanted. That would have been a violation of your trust, of the oaths I swore to you when I promised to teach you. Perhaps you would have believed it was what you wanted in the moment, but there would always have been a sickness to a bond like that between us.”

Anakin said to Komari, “I forgive you.”

Dooku winced even before she held the tip of her lightsaber to his throat. Komari didn’t like to feel pitied.

“Enough.” She met Dooku’s eyes, yellow irises like pus. “I know you have it in you. The darkness. I was there on Galidraan. I know you have it in you. Use it now, or he dies.”

“He is not so selfish,” Anakin said, bravely. Perhaps Dooku should have taught him to be more afraid.

Komari’s other lightsaber took his left hand off at the wrist, leaving him hanging suspended from one arm.

Anakin’s scream cut Dooku’s heart out.

“I’ll do it!”

Komari’s smile was wicked.

--

Padmé and Anakin’s ship was empty except for the R2 unit. He took it back to Shmi and Asajj, and, when the droid told them that Padmé was free and hiding somewhere close by, went out again to look for her.

There was a swirling blackness to the force. Knowing Padmé and Anakin, he would find her wherever it was blackest.

He walked down the hills, keeping the force around him like a second cloak. There was a great arena before him like the Colosseum of Pijal, but in brown stone instead of white, and without any of the brilliant coloured glass the Pijali so loved to use in their buildings. A slow, steady flood of people walked in, in perfect, single file lines.

If Padmé had managed to disguise herself in the crowd, Obi-Wan would never find her. He finished his slide down the hill towards them and walked, as Qui-Gon had taught him so long ago, as if he belonged. Each of their minds felt… empty, not as though he would be unable to turn it to purpose, more as though someone had taken a spoon to the inside of their skulls. He shivered.

Nobody in the crowd seemed to notice as he joined them walking into the Colosseum. In fact, they didn’t even look at him at all. But a battle droid was standing at the door, taking a look at everyone as they came in. Looking, he assumed, for Padmé, which meant he was on the wrong path.

If he slid out of the crowd now, the droid would notice he hadn’t had his mind emptied like all these people did.

Slipping into an empty ‘fresher, he pulled the comm out of his pocket and whispered into it. “They haven’t got Padmé. Everyone is down at the Colosseum, but she isn’t here. I think they’re being… drugged, or subject to some kind of enhanced mind control. I’m going in deeper to look for Anakin. Do you copy?”

“Copy,” Asajj whispered back. Then, even quieter, she tagged on, “we’ve been running some scans and there’s another ship landed near us. Serennian model. Shmi says she knows it, and it means ‘Dooku is here.’ She doesn’t want me to tell you but I think she’s going out to see him.”

Anakin’s mother to a fault. “Don’t do that. Look… Tell her that if things turn ugly, all of us are going to need a rescue by air. Or tell her you need her to stay with you.”

“Sure, Obi-Wan.” There was a little smile in the way she said it.

“I’ll comm again when I can.”

He washed his hands in the acrid alcohol-based substance, thinking about how this building had not been built for human physicality, and wondering with a sort of cold dread what had happened to its original inhabitants.

That train of thought carried him out into the arena, where he sat with the others and stared in abject horror at the scene before him.

His eyes lit first upon Anakin, chained by one arm to a pillar. The other hung aimlessly at his side, severed at the wrist. His assailant, a white haired human female, held two red-bladed lightsabers in her hands, with Dooku and Anakin’s sabers at her belt. Dooku, for his part, was chained at both wrists to a pillar beside Anakin’s. The Sith stalked over to him, blade raised and–

Cut his chains. Dooku stumbled to his feet. The droids that ringed the arena leveled their blasters at Anakin.

She spoke, voice ringing through some sort of projection. “Use the darkness, Master. Help me.”

Dooku slipped into a combat form, ready to do something incredibly stupid, and Anakin said… something, Obi-Wan couldn’t hear him, but it made the Komari – it must have been her – whirl around. Before she could strike at Anakin, Dooku shoved her backwards with the force so hard she went flying into the stone wall at the edge of the arena.

The droids took a single, threatening step forward, and Komari, shaking herself off with a vitriolic anger like Obi-Wan had never known, yelled, “is that what you do for the padawans you really love?” She turned to the droid closest to her. “Shoot the boy!”

Obi-Wan flung himself forward, completing two full rotations before rolling to a standing position on the sand, lightsaber drawn.

Anakin was staring at the blaster bolt that hung motionless in the air a breath from his head. Dooku, hands still chained together, was holding both palms outward. His eyes were closed as he breathed hard.

Stopping a blaster bolt in the air was a demonstration of extraordinary power. It was also not an act Obi-Wan had ever before seen performed by a Jedi. Darkness roiled around the center of the arena.

In the distance, the sound of an explosion came from inside the factory. At a wave of Komari’s hand, half of the people stood and walked back out of the arena. The rest stayed utterly still, waiting for more commands.

“Good,” Komari said, yellow eyes fixed on Dooku. “Keep using it. Be selfish, like you always were. It will make you powerful.”

Anakin, whose throbbing pain rang through the force, was trying to pull his wrist out of the other cuff. It wasn’t working.

Something needed to change.

“Komari Vosa, you coward. Face a Jedi you haven’t already wounded.” She’d been better than him, at least as a padawan. But they were both older now, and Obi-Wan had spent years training with her master.

“No,” Dooku hissed, between his gritted teeth, and Komari smiled.

“Oh dear. Is this another one you love better than me? Obi-Wan, isn’t it? Qui-Gon’s little brat, the one destined for agricorps. You know, Master, I think he got his habit of picking up pathetic failures from you.”

Qui-Gon would have been honoured to be talked about in such a way. Once, Obi-Wan would have been insulted on both of their behalfs, to be called one of Qui-Gon’s pathetic failures. Now, he was proud. Just the same, he was proud to be one of Dooku’s pathetic failures. To be loved by people like Qui-Gon and Dooku was an honour.

“Then a pathetic failure should be no hardship for you to beat, would it, Komari?” He spun his lightsaber as a dare.

She came at him, a flurry of red light, slashing and stabbing. Obi-Wan kept himself grounded and steady, focusing on the more defensive techniques he’d learned from Master Dooku. There was no need to attack her; he was only trying to buy them time. There was no way Dooku had come here without warning the rest of the temple. He was too smart for that.

All Dooku’s lineage were truly great duellists. That Qui-Gon had been perhaps the least of them was a testament to the quality of the others. Rael, certainly, would never have fallen as Qui-Gon had. Komari, for her part, would have been far overmatched in size by Obi-Wan’s Sith, but she made up for it with speed, and with her second blade. Besides, on that occasion, Obi-Wan had allowed rage to fuel him. Now, he would choose otherwise. She forced him back towards the edge of the arena, and he knew that when she had him pinned against the wall, he would die.

(A duel is not a battle, Padawan), Qui-Gon’s voice, a memory, rang out in his ears.

He couldn’t remember when Qui-Gon had said it, but it was appropriate. Obi-Wan wasn’t out here alone. Dooku was still holding the blaster bolt in place, silent tears streaming down his face from the exertion or from his grief. Anakin was still struggling, blood dripping down his arm from where he was trying to pull his remaining hand free of the chain.

Anakin was the most powerful Jedi in a hundred years. He didn’t need to use brute force to free himself.

(Anakin, use the force). Even after all these years, the potential of their training bond remained strong enough to allow them to speak.

Anakin reached up, closed his hand around the chain, and though to Obi-Wan’s eyes, nothing happened, he could feel the force shifting around Anakin, light growing piercingly bright until, with a sound like a slugthrower going off, the chain snapped.

--

Anakin knew, in a clinical sort of way, that he was in shock. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, could see in excruciating detail the blaster bolt that hung suspended a breath away from striking him dead. He could see Dooku, straining to keep himself furious enough to allow the darkness to fuel him, and Obi-Wan, fighting with everything he had but losing ground anyways.

Through all of it ran the force, infinite in every direction. It was the easiest thing in the world to still himself, to let the pounding of his heart become a metronome to steady him as, with Obi-Wan’s advice ringing in his ears, he reached between the atoms of his chain and told them to break.

The link he’d chosen exploded, shards of metal bursting out. Fortunately, none of them hit his remaining hand. Fuck, his hand. He looked down at the one sitting on the sand. If he had ice, they could, possibly, have reattached it. Core-world medicine really was miracle work. But, well, this was Geonosis. They didn’t have any ice.

He left the hand sitting on the sand and stepped out of the path of the blaster bolt. To Anakin’s surprise, Dooku didn’t immediately let go. He was shivering with exhaustion, and, in the force, the darkness wrapped around his neck as if it was going to choke him.

The droids and slaves alike seemed not to move without Komari’s direct command. While Obi-Wan had her distracted, Anakin ran over to Dooku, trying to remain steady on his feet, and grasped his teacher’s shaking hands in his own bloody one.

“It’s alright, Dooku. I’m safe. You can let go.”

The darkness grew tighter around them both. No, Anakin snapped at it. He isn’t yours.

Pulling their training bond open, he grabbed Dooku’s mind in his own, and, for the second time that day, reminded him of their first meeting.

(You are anything but dark), Anakin said, (no one with real darkness in their soul finds the idea of treating another person like property so repugnant as you always did).

(Your idea of evil is skewed to how you’ve experienced it in your own life).

At least he was responding. That was good. Aloud, Anakin said, “Count Dooku of Serenno, Jedi Master, you know evil in the Force. The better to rid yourself of it. Be free and glad.” He grasped the darkness in Dooku and, together, they smoothed it over. Around them, the currents of the force, the roiling fury of Komari, the terrible death that permeated the arena, stilled.

The blaster bolt slammed into the pillar where Anakin’s head had rested, exploding and sending the heavy stone toppling down. Komari shivered, as if someone had stirred the ashes of her pyre, and Obi-Wan, seeing his opportunity, flipped over her so she was the one pinned against the wall instead. He seemed to say something pithy, but Komari only laughed, and then, one after another, every one of the possessed people sitting in the stadium around them got to their feet and began to climb down into the arena. The droids began firing, not at Komari and Obi-Wan, who were too close together, but at Dooku and Anakin. With the light ringing in his ears, Anakin gave in and let it guide him, pulling them out of the path of one shot, and then another.

There was hope in the force, new light. While Anakin was distracted by the task at hand, he became dimly aware of the hum of igniting lightsabers. Chancing a glance, he stared in amazement at a circle of them in front of a ship. Madame Nu, who he knew well enough from years of Dooku’s calls with her, stood at their front beside Yoda. With them were three more Jedi, of whom he recognized only Adi Gallia, the most brilliant mind of the Jedi politicians. If Anakin could have modeled himself after any living Jedi, it would have been her. The other two were unfamiliar, but by the male’s Kiffar face markings, he guessed it was Obi-Wan’s friend Quinlan Vos, which made the other Knight Secura. And, behind all of them, was a blaster wielding Senator Padmé Amidala. Anakin resisted the urge to punch the air in glee.

Just like that, it became a battle. Anakin dragged a still force-shocked Dooku against the third pillar, to give the droids a few less angles. He took Dooku’s right hand in his and pressed it to his own chest, just above his heart.

“Breathe with me, Dooku. Feel my life in the force, steady as stone yet flowing through time as the currents of a river.”

He did, inhaling shakily and obviously counting his breaths. Between them, he said, “I’m sorry, Anakin. I– I am so immeasurably sorry.”

Dooku had given everything, even his hard-won grasp on the light, to save Anakin’s life. “I forgive you.” There was power in such a thing. “I forgive you.”

He inhaled deeply, one last time, and looked at Anakin. There was no tint of sith yellow to his eyes. “Thank you.”

They were hardly out of the woods yet, to borrow a Serennian idiom. “If I let you go, will you be alright?”

He needed his lightsaber back, and he wasn’t going to get it standing here.

Dooku nodded. “You should go get on the ship. You need to get your injuries seen to.”

Anakin had the sudden realization that Dooku was still trying to protect him. That Dooku was being fatherly. That Dooku was, for all intents and purposes, his father.

“I am a Jedi, still.” In spite of the singed hair where my braid used to be. “Let me choose to do my duty.”

He nodded again, terribly solemn. “I cannot ask you to do anything else, nor should I. Only… be careful. Do not value your life less than you ought, and do not overestimate your own capacity.”

A reasonable request, really. “After this is over… we need to talk about your willingness to sacrifice yourself for me. I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Dooku retorted, “you just have to live.”

With that said, they dove back into the heat of the battle. Even unarmed, Dooku made short work of droids and people, soon commandeering a blaster for his own use. It was strange to see him fire one with devastating accuracy. Anakin ignored all of them, dodging blasterfire and lightsabers and clawing hands as he walked towards Komari and Obi-Wan. The force was so brilliantly alive with the knowledge of what he had to do.

Obi-Wan staggered back again. Both of them were sweating profusely, and though they fought with their lightsabers, as great a duel was going on in their minds, the force coming alive with brilliant fire as they both searched for dominance. All lightsaber duels between true masters were thus. Otherwise, one would push the other off their feet with ease. Obi-Wan stumbled backwards again, turning briefly to deflect oncoming blaster fire, and Komari struck, leaving a gash down his right arm. Obi-Wan didn’t drop his lightsaber.

“Hey Komari!” Anakin projected his voice the way Dooku had taught him for politics. “You want someone to join you in the Dark? To help you fight your Master? Why don’t you pick the best candidate for the Sith in the Order?”

It looked like she might have said “who?” But it was hard to hear over all the fighting.

Anakin threw one of her people into a row of several more with the force and yelled, “me! I tick all the boxes, don’t I? Angry. Came into the order too late. Too many attachments. You hate Dooku because he doesn’t love anyone. Well, I do! I may not be as good a duelist as he is, but you already have that covered. What you need is someone powerful enough in the force to actually protect you while you fight. And that, I can do.”

Obi-Wan was sneaking back, nursing his injured arm. Vos was only a few steps away from reaching him. Anakin kept coming closer as he spoke, and soon, he didn’t have to yell to ensure Komari could hear him.

“You’re a liar, just like him.”

Well, yes, but, still, “your informants on Kamino would have told you about me and the Senator. There’s no way they let something that juicy slip through their fingers.”

He was almost close enough, just a few steps further–

Komari struck, and, with all the gifts the force had given him, Anakin responded. As if he was holding a blade in his severed hand, he knocked first one strike away with the power of his mind, than another. Darting in, he grabbed the first hilt he could from her belt and pulled it away. Komari swung for his head and, jamming his thumb into the power, he ignited the blade through her thigh. Her strike, with perfect followthrough, stopped just short of hurting him as if a hand had wrapped around her wrist.

There was a light in the force surrounding him, preserving him. For once, it was not his own. As Anakin turned, Dooku’s saber heavy in his hand, he saw Dooku, standing calm with Master Nu at his side, hands extended. As he had just minutes ago saved Anakin with darkness, he did it again with light.

Komari’s minions redoubled their attacks, pushing inwards. Anakin called his lightsaber from her thigh, and threw Dooku’s over to him. Vos and Obi-Wan were on one side, Gallia and Padmé on another, and Secura and Yoda on the last, but they were all being pushed back towards the center of the arena. Their ship was already swarmed. As Komari vanished, borne away by the tides of her minions, Anakin fell into step beside Dooku, their matching curved hilts igniting at once.

“You could have killed her,” Dooku said, so quietly only Anakin could hear him.

“Maybe. But… we learned almost nothing about what they did to her. If it was anything like what she did in turn…”

Perhaps he had killed them all with his choice. But he had taken no lives before, and did not want his sister’s to be the first.

They pressed shoulder to shoulder. Anakin closed his eyes, and–

Felt his mother’s presence in the force. Like a falling star bringing good luck, the ship settled in the air above them, just out of reach. The doors were open.

“Sorry!” An unfamiliar voice called, “you’re just going to have to jump!”

And they did, with Padmé clutching on to Gallia, into Obi-Wan’s little undercover ship. With Gallia seizing the controls, they evaded fire until they were outside of the atmosphere, and then away into hyperspace.

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan was so relieved to see Asajj that he couldn’t even be a little upset that she’d disobeyed orders. As the chaos in the ship spread out, people running for bacta and yelling and ordering Anakin to “sit still, force preserve me, Padawan!” Obi-Wan’s world condensed to the pace or so between him and Asajj. There was a thin coating of dust on her skin, and a decisive smell of smoke.

“You set that explosion, the one we heard from the arena.”

She seemed unsure if she should be afraid to answer. “Some of the components in death stick manufacturing are very explosive. I saw a small operation go up once on Rattatak; it was awful. Keeping them near molten metal was really a set up for a timed explosion. Once you said everyone was down at the Colosseum and they were looking for your human Senator, it was easy for me to run in, locate the explosive parts, throw them into the factory, and run before they could get smelted.”

It most certainly could not have been easy. The force must have guided her every step for her to do all that in the time she had. “Asajj… that was incredible. Never, ever do it again, not without help, but I am impressed.”

She smiled, just a little. As if he hadn’t been meant to see. Then it faded. “You’re hurt.”

Ah, yes. “No need to worry. Nothing that is beyond the bounds of core medicine.”

Asajj looked totally unconvinced. “Sit down.”

He hadn’t ever wanted a padawan to have to look after him the way he’d looked after Qui-Gon. Still, he allowed Asajj to press him back onto the bench. Fussing seemed to make her feel better.

Letting his mind drift a little, Obi-Wan caught fragments of conversation from the other occupants of the shuttle.

“Should we warn Master Windu?” Aayla wondered, but Yoda reassured her that all the necessary precautions were already being taken.

“Skywalker Shmi, and you are?”

“Jedi Vos. Quinlan, if you prefer.”

Those two were leaning over Anakin, Shmi holding his arm still while Quinlan covered the severed stump with bacta.

“Dooku, you fool!” Jocasta Nu was leaning over her friend, doing much the same to the wound on his arm. Dooku, whose wrists had actually been freed from his chains, was rubbing at them for soreness. He was the only one of them who didn’t say much.

Slowly, the motion within the ship began to still. Yoda and Master Nu sat on the floor, meditating. Aayla went to join Adi Gallia in piloting the ship, while Padmé and Asajj whispered to each other in the stillness of the room. Obi-Wan leaned against Quinlan, who had come to sit beside him in the cargo bay. They didn’t talk much, but he had to reluctantly admit that Quinlan was one of the Jedi outside his lineage he trusted the most. Missions with him and Aayla over the last few years had rarely gone smoothly, but it was never any of their faults. And that trust had certainly been earned today.

Across from them, over Masters Nu and Yoda’s heads, they were being outdone in affection by Anakin, Dooku, and Shmi. That Anakin and his mother were being tactile wasn’t a surprise, after everything. She had his hand clutched tight in hers, and his legs draped over her lap as he sprawled. What was more surprising was that as he slept, he’d come to rest his head on Dooku’s arm. And Dooku was actually letting him. In fact, the look on his face was overtly fond.

It took some concentration – they didn’t have anything like the bond he’d shared with Qui-Gon, like what he could have had with Anakin – but after a time, Obi-Wan managed to send Dooku a message in the force, so as not to disturb the tranquility of the space.

(I think it’s a blessing, that he loves you like a father.)

(Yes,) Dooku replied, with a smile that seemed totally out of place on his face. (Anakin is a blessing.)

--

At first, Anakin thought the whispered argument was part of a really weird dream.

“You approved use of cloned troops?” Padmé demanded, with the artificial cool of her political mask.

Dooku, uncommonly without his own calm façade, hissed, “we have no idea who influenced Sifo-Dyas to commission those, and we do know that the bounty hunter Jango Fett was working with Komari. What were you thinking?”

What had become of that bounty hunter anyways? He’d helped chain Anakin in the arena on Komari’s command, but after that, he’d made himself scarce. Hopefully he’d gotten his son off-world. Even the child of an evil man should have been as far away from the Bando Gora as possible.

“Evidence that Sifo-Dyas was not acting under his own power, we do not have. A great Jedi he was, and not so easily misled as you believe. Necessary, this decision was,” Yoda replied.

“To breach the laws of the Republic, in their spirits if not in their wording, to use sentient beings as slaves?” Snapped Padmé, losing her calm.

Dooku, with a detachment that rendered his voice cold as the void of space, said, “I was afraid of disappointing you for so long, it never occured to me that you would disappoint me. Now, get out of my sight.”

The ship wasn’t moving any more, and, if Anakin felt out with the force, he could sense the bustling lives layered under a powerful vergence in the force that could only have meant Coruscant. There were the Jedi in the Temple, and the vague danger that Anakin always sensed on Coruscant, probably radiating up from the underworld.

“You can stop pretending to be asleep,” Dooku said, and, as Anakin opened his eyes, helped him sit up.

Obi-Wan had fallen asleep too, leaning back against Quinlan Vos’s shoulder. They, Padmé, and Obi-Wan’s Padawan – Asa? No, Asajj – were the only other people still on the ship. Quinlan offered Anakin a tentative smile and a slight wave. He’d never seen Obi-Wan so tactile with anyone outside their family before.

“Where’d everyone else go?” Anakin asked, rolling his shoulders to try and work out the soreness left by having his arms held over his head for a protracted period and then falling asleep on Dooku. The repetitive motion, a little painful, helped take his mind off the numbness at the end of his arm. It didn’t hurt with the bacta applied. If he didn’t look at it, he could almost imagine that the hand was there and frozen with medication.

“Your mother is with Senator Jenza, looking to make an appointment to have you fitted for a prosthetic here on Coruscant,” Padmé offered. “Master Yoda just left, presumably to go back to the Temple. As you probably heard, he had been part of an authorization of the use of the cloned soldiers from Kamino in a strike on Geonosis. That was what took Windu and his people so long to get there. Knight Secura and Masters Nu and Gallia went to report to those of the council who remained here about half an hour ago. We didn’t want to wake you and Obi-Wan.”

Everything that had happened on Geonosis still had an unreality to it. “What’s going to happen now?” Anakin felt like a child again, asking tentative questions and worrying over the answer.

“I see two paths,” Quinlan said, with some authority. “In the first, we tell the council about what we overheard on the hidden transmitter we placed on Dooku before he went in to confront Komari. That bodes ill for either of you remaining with the Order; some in it would view what he did to protect you, and what we all heard you tell Komari, as unbecoming of a Jedi.”

It couldn’t end like this. Dooku, voice like stones grating together, asked, “and, what do you think?”

He offered a tentative smile. “I’ve heard the call of the darkness, once or twice. The strength to throw it away, even when you know what it can offer, is the strength of a true Jedi. As I see it, nobody else ever needs to know there was a recording. You did the right thing. Neither of you ever lashed out in anger, even faced with unbeatable odds. But what I think doesn’t really matter. Nu, Aayla and Adi won’t tell the rest of the council – Adi at least partly from spite at them going over her head about the clones – so your fate rests almost entirely on what Yoda chooses to do.”

“And,” Dooku added, grimly, “what I choose to do. Nobody willing to use the dark side selfishly should have as much power as I do. Nobody with such attachment. You should arrest me and bring me into the temple for further screening – one fallen Padawan is a black enough mark against me. A fallen padawan and grand-padawan both should be more than enough to have me kicked out of the order.”

Anakin opened his mouth to make a thousand remarks, about Dooku, and Komari, and Xanatos du Crion, who he’d never actually met. But Asajj beat him to the punch.

“Banthashit!” She yelled, loudly enough that Obi-Wan snapped to attention, although his eyes were a little bleary. “Shmi told me about you getting her off Tatooine, making sure she and Anakin could be together. If being a Jedi means not caring about people, then why would anyone want to be a Jedi? There’s so much in this galaxy that needs doing. By people who actually care. If I wanted to spend my time with people who only cared about themselves, I would have stayed on Ratattak.”

She could only have been a couple years younger than Anakin. He understood her perfectly, and admired her ferocity. She’d met most of these people today, and already was yelling at them about morals. His admiration was perfectly mirrored on Padmé’s face. She regarded all feisty advocates as sisters, perhaps from growing up surrounded by handmaidens.

Anakin explained. “Some of them never had a choice about being Jedi, they just were. They don’t know why it matters.” It was the only way he could think of to make sense of it to her. And indeed, Asajj’s eyes grew wide with understanding. He could tell by her words that she knew better than they did the power of choice.

“Exactly,” Quinlan said, nodding at Anakin. “Some of us, like Dooku and myself, were born into families of incredible means who gave us up for whatever reason. Others–” He nodded at Obi-Wan. “– were taken into the temple so young they barely even remember where they came from. It’s not… a bad thing, necessarily. The Order is a kind of family, for good or ill, with all the weaknesses and strengths that come with that. Sometimes families are disappointing, but we’re stuck with them.”

“My father left me to die in the woods when he found out I had the Force,” Dooku said, suddenly. Everyone stared at him, even Anakin and Obi-Wan, who both knew the story. Dooku spoke of his mother often enough, but he almost never mentioned his father.

“Mine were murdered,” Quinlan said, and they exchange a look of profound understanding.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat, a little awkwardly. “I’m not exactly sure what you all were talking about, but Asajj is right. Being a good Jedi shouldn’t mean choosing not to care. It should be about awareness, about rejecting selfishness, rather than not having selfish impulses. It should be about the pursuit of justice, and also of fairness. It should be about protecting people, not just strangers but also those you love. A good Jedi should love broadly. They should love the force in everything, and all the people of the galaxy.

“Dooku – I know you think what you did in that arena was darkness. You said as much. Komari thought it too, I think, but her own darkness clouds her judgement. And she and Anakin both were your students, raised to your exacting standards. I was not, and I think I see more clearly as a result, at least on this subject. I felt… there was darkness, yes, but when you let it go…”

“We’d landed by then,” Quinlan added, “when the darkness faded around you, there was this flash of… it wasn’t light or darkness, it was serenity. I’ve never felt anything like it before. What you did was remarkable.”

Dooku inclined his head. “Your words are kind. But I had very little to do with that. It was Anakin who stilled the force in the arena.”

They were all staring at him. Anakin forced himself to meet their eyes, even if he didn’t like it. “I… whatever you felt, I was not doing it on purpose.”

Placing a hand on his shoulder, Dooku said, “there is no need to be ashamed, Anakin. Whether or not you are Qui-Gon’s ‘chosen one’, you have always known that you have abilities beyond any of ours. Today, you used that not in pursuit of violence or vengeance – even when the temptation was there – but in pursuit of safety, for everyone.”

Anakin gave up on meeting their eyes and looked down at his feet. “Thank you.”

Obi-Wan, clearly trying to make his voice soothing, said, “they knighted the last Padawan in this order who fought a Sith and lived to tell the tale. If I were you, Dooku, I would be asking around.” It was not a soothing thought at all.

At the clanging of steps into the ship, they all looked over to see Adi Gallia. Her expression was deathly serious.

“What happened?” Quinlan demanded.

Gallia glanced around, and then, with a few pushes of buttons, closed the open door. It took a moment for the lights in the ship to come back on to compensate for the loss of natural light, so it was into the darkness that she began to speak.

“Knight Secura and Master Nu went to pack. We reported to the council, including Master Windu and all those who went with him by holo. That was how we found out – as Yoda, apparently, already knew – that they had approved the use of the clone soldiers from Kamino. I was not present to cast a vote on the matter, nor was Master Yoda, who pre-authorized his vote in writing. Evidently, the session was reconvened after we left for Geonosis. The good news is: the council has reconsidered their stance on allowing Padawan Skywalker to face his trial. The bad news, aside from the cloning, is that the Trade Federation, along with the Banking Clans and the Techno Union, all appear to be directly involved in an insurgency against the Republic. Given what Dooku saw, this is likely associated with Komari and her forces. The Senate, as we speak, is voting on assigning emergency powers to the Chancellor to raise an army. I would say the odds of that army consisting of the Clones and the Jedi Order are very high.”

Anakin’s brain turned off. Padmé jumped to her feet. “Who proposed emergency powers?”

Gallia looked at her oddly. “Your colleague, Representative Binks.”

Padmé’s hands were balled into fists. She looked at Anakin, released them, and said, “Skywalker Anakin– thank you, for everything. My thanks to all of you. I have to go now. Master Count, if you could contact Senator Jenza and ensure she is aware of the vote and intends to be present, I would be very grateful.”

Gallia held up her hand. “A moment, Senator. I can take you directly to the Senate building. But first… after this information was revealed, Master Nu formally resigned from her position as head of the archives. She and Knight Secura have both gone to pack. What their plans are, I do not know. It was a… principled moment. Both of them feel that the commissioning and use of an army by this order is outside the scope of either morality or our mandate.”

There were more good Jedi in the Order than Anakin had expected. Quinlan stood. “I should go, too. I can hardly keep Aayla waiting. Obi-Wan, Asajj, do you think you two would like some company on your adventures, such as they are?” He winked at them. Asajj looked excited. Obi-Wan blushed.

“We always have space on Serenno,” Dooku said. He looked at Gallia, “Adi, you are welcome as well, if you ever would like to be.”

She nodded politely at him. “Thank you, Dooku. For now, I need to be here with the Senate. But if there is anyone else in the order who would benefit from being away from here, can I send them to you?”

“Always, Adi.”

She pushed the button to reopen the door, and everyone except for Obi-Wan, Asajj and Anakin stood. Dooku looked down at them.

“Obi-Wan, you’re in charge until Shmi gets back. I have… some unfinished business to see to.”

--

He walked into the temple with Quinlan at his side. It was more a sign of the gravity of the situation than anything else that they found themselves met at the doors. Shaak Ti, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Yoda. Quinlan ignored them and walked into the building. Dooku stopped, waited, and surveyed each of their expressions.

“I almost expected better of you, Shaak.”

She met his eyes without a trace of nervousness. “And, after you run back to Serenno, Dooku? Which one of us is going to Kamino? You think those cloners were ever going to let them be people without our help? No. I’ve considered all the options. This is the way for us to protect them.”

At least her heart was still in the right place. “By letting them die for the Republic? At least the Trade Federation uses droids.”

People thought that the Trade Federation’s heavy reliance on droids made them less sentient – less like biological organisms, at least – than other sentients. In point of fact, the opposite was true. No one decent would prefer their own people to die.

“Sometimes, Dooku, there are no choices that let you protect everyone. No matter how your heart calls out for it to be otherwise. You would do well to remember that.”

With danger in her eyes, she turned and walked away.

Master Mundi said, “I take it this means we will not be seeing you on Coruscant for some time, Master Dooku.”

Dooku offered him his most polite nod. “Regrettably not. I only came to Coruscant to present my Padawan for his trials. Now, Anakin needs time to recover before taking them. I do thank the council for revising their position on this matter, in light of Anakin’s actions on Geonosis.” He gave Mundi a very pointed look until he left Dooku and Yoda alone.

“Returned to speak to me already, you have.”

Perhaps he should have been angry at Yoda, for his actions and for hiding them. But anger seemed an altogether alien emotion. He had no need of it. So instead, Dooku only felt sadness at the loss of the Yoda he thought he had known. He knelt before him.

“I came to turn myself in. Regardless of your actions, I trust your knowledge of the force. If you think I am a danger – too dark, too unstable – I will get my affairs in order and you may have me in handcuffs.”

There was a pause. Yoda choked, as if he had swallowed something, and then made a high laughing sound in the back of his throat. “Told you on our way to Geonosis, I did. New strength you have found, hmm? New mastery. You and your Padawan both. Wrong, I was, saying that Qui-Gon should not have brought him home to us. Rejecting darkness, rejecting fear, and anger. Rejecting lashing out in hate. Exemplary Jedi, you both have been. Even now afraid you are not. Angry at me, you are not. Never, as a padawan, were you not angry at me.”

Dooku really had been a nightmare of a student.

“For all that went wrong between us, I am truly sorry. I hope you can forgive me, and can understand why, although I forgive you, I cannot stay for your war.”

Yoda’s stick came to rest on his shoulder. Dooku tensed himself against a blow, but none came. “Told you, I did: many ways to be a Jedi, there are. You have found yours, now lead in it, you must. Lead your padawan, and Obi-Wan, and his padawan also. The beginnings of a true lineage, you have on your hands.”

“I had a true lineage from the second Rael first wore the braid. It only took me a while to realize it.”

Yoda smiled wickedly at him, little troll that he was, and then practically shoved Dooku back out of the Temple and into the world beyond.

Chapter Text

“The Senate is truly grateful for your service, Senators. Skywalker Shmi.”

Shmi smiled benevolently at the Chancellor. Jenza mirrored her expression, as did Padmé. None of them felt the way they were acting. Shmi, for her part, felt simply too exhausted to play the game. Even though the Chancellor had sometimes been a friend to each of them – and to Dooku – over the years, the work, their political paths had diverged in such a way that even Padmé didn’t have the closeness with him that she once had. Shmi, who had only met him after the war had begun, had not grown as close, and certainly was not now. The very circumstances that had led to her presence on Coruscant precluded it.

“It is always an honour to protect my family, Chancellor. I only wish it had not been necessary.”

It had been the third of Komari Vosa’s attacks on Coruscanti institutions in as many weeks. If not for the three of them, hundreds of Senators and dignitaries would have been killed in this latest. It was bombings. Always bombings with Komari. Shmi was beginning to wonder where she’d gotten it from; Dooku didn’t seem like the type to encourage such reckless spending of life. Even if he had been a Sith, Shmi thought he was one who understood well enough the value of life as a commodity.

“If I might ask, Senator Jenza, how did you come to be aware of the attack on the Senate building before our troopers were?”

The truth was, they hadn’t. Padmé always carried a blaster now, and Shmi and Jenza, walking with her to her office, had both experienced a shiver down their spines that had set their hair on edge. It was Shmi’s theory, unsubstantiated, that they each of them were closer to being force sensitive than the average human.

Jenza folded her hands on her lap. She looked even more like Dooku now than she had when they first, aged by their experiences, with a quiet dignity that made Shmi remember exactly how she’d come to love her. “Of course you may ask, Chancellor. Though I imagine you will find the answer unsatisfying. As you will recall, my brother Count Dooku and Shmi’s son are Jedi. They shared a vision that provided us with ample warning.” It was a lie, of course, but based in the force such that Palpatine would not question it. He simply didn’t know enough to call them on the lie. “You really ought to reconsider General Windu’s offer to provide a pair of Jedi to protect the Senate.”

Jenza had been totally insistent on using the new military ranks for the Jedi unless they personally asked her to stop. Shmi wasn’t sure if it was a subtle dig at them for betraying their code, or a reflection on the Serennian value of titles. Perhaps a mix of the two

He sighed. The Chancellor had been as aged by the war as all of them, even if at least part of the mess of it was his own fault. Nobody could accuse him of shirking his duty, even if his refusal to consider freeing the troopers demonstrated what Shmi in her speechwriting had once called ‘moral rot’.

“I would, Jenza dear, if they were not already stretched so thin. With so many lost to your brother’s crusade…”

That was a low blow, and a dishonest one. He’d been trying to use Jenza to convince Dooku to pull back for months, every time there was a battle or an attack by Komari, but it was ridiculous. Even counting the padawans and those who weren’t ever trained for field duty, like Jocasta, Dooku’s quiet rebellion numbered perhaps two dozen souls. And they were not avoiding the war, they were merely doing humanitarian rather than military work. At one of the battles Palpatine had blamed Dooku for, in private, Obi-Wan and Anakin had actually been on the ground rescuing civilians.

Padmé, offering the Chancellor a courteous smile, said, “why of course, Chancellor. Thank you for your time and courtesy in meeting with us, but I am afraid we have a prior engagement with the Duchess of Mandalore.”

She spoke as though Palpatine hadn’t been the only one who wanted a meeting. It forced him to pretend, politely, that they had been free to go all along, rather than rushed there by the senate guard rather against their will the second after Padmé had put a blaster bolt into the bomber’s head.

“I am told,” Duchess Kryze said, “that I have the three of you to thank for the fact that I’m spending my morning in meetings rather than splattered on the senate walls.”

She was one of the most elegantly dressed women Shmi had ever met. Even after nearly thirteen years among nobility in Serenno and Coruscant, she’d met very few people who spent what must have been an hour doing just their hair every morning. Padmé was one, periodically, although the time she’d spent this morning ducking and shooting had ruined some of her artful curls. The Duchess, in her gorgeous green dress, looked like she’d emerged from a galaxy without war. Of course, in a way, she had.

“I hope that this is preferable,” Jenza said, mildly. Shmi twisted her lips as she fought to stop herself from laughing. Even after all these years, Jenza’s cool sense of humour always got to Shmi like nobody else could.

The Duchess grimaced. “Definitely preferable, although I would prefer not to have to be here at all.”

Padmé nodded sympathetically. “Of course you would. I’m sorry that Mandalore has been dragged into this, but you must understand… you have the greatest single power in this universe to defend these soldiers.”

There was a certain irony, in the four of them – a senator and her girlfriend with no combat experience, a senator whose best combat experience happened before she was twenty, and a pacifist – trying to save a bunch of combat-hardened veterans. But they were the best shot. Or, rather, the only one. After three years of war, senators who didn’t want to crush Komari and her friends in the Trade Federation and Techno Union into the ground were few and far between. Really, Padmé and Jenza were the only ones left with any sway, Padmé in her resolute opposition to the use of enslaved troops despite Naboo’s suffering at the hands of the Trade Federation, and Jenza, as the leader of the Senate Reform Movement, who held to their belief that the Chancellor’s extended powers were a violation of sound democratic principle.

The Duchess nodded. “I do. Whether anyone outside this room will recognize that remains to be seen.”

They hadn’t been sure if she would accept this task. Obi-Wan had always spoken highly of her in his letters to Shmi, but he hadn’t seen Kryze for years. And of course, it was a terrible risk to the peace of Mandalore to become so involved. A worse risk than Serenno or Naboo were accepting for themselves. Neither world risked violent unrest within its own population by inviting the clones to settle. Even on Naboo, the Gungans had been more than willing to meet with Padmé to negotiate an agreement that suited them, and the Naboo felt a certain debt owed to those who were fighting the Trade Federation, even if this specific war was a corruption of the democratic principles they believed in.

“So, then,” Jenza said, looking down at her desk, “if the Mandalorian State accepts the proposition that the clones of Jango Fett are legal citizens of Mandalore, by right of blood, then where is the legal precedent for that decision? What are we going to use?”

And that was the crux of the issue. Shmi had learned more about Mandalorian family law in the last three weeks than she thought she knew about Serennian family law, and she’d lived on Serenno for a decade.

“By the old laws,” Kryze said with a sigh, “there isn’t much precedent for it. Acceptance by adoption was far more legally recognized than any sort of blood. In theory, even the biological children of Mandalorians weren’t necessarily Mandalorians, if they didn’t follow the militiristic cultural tradition. People did get around that by adopting their own children sometimes, but if they chose not to...”

Padmé grimaced sympathetically. Like Satine Kryze, she was a radical reformer, just one who applied her ideas to the Senate, rather than to a single world. “And do the new laws contradict this?”

“Not in principle,” Kryze admitted. “Citizenship still mostly relies on the child being acknowledged by the parents, even for biological children, and since the parent in this case sold his children to the Republic…”

Shmi had come to much the same conclusion, but she, Jenza, and Padmé knew something about the situation that Duchess Kryze didn’t. A fact Anakin had never allowed to become common knowledge on the general principle that it wasn’t right to do so. “Jango Fett did adopt one of the clones. It was one of his conditions for agreeing to the process. He got to keep one to raise as his child. The Kaminoans were very clear it was for familial purposes.”

“Well,” she said, with an arched eyebrow, “that certainly changes things. In that case… we could persuasively argue that Fett does intend to adopt the Kaminoan-born as his own. The only trouble might arise if anyone questions why Fett isn’t present at the hearing himself, to argue for his sons.”

“Children,” Padmé corrected, mildly.

There was a long moment of awkward confusion, where Shmi wondered if they were going to get the same lecture on gender as a construct from Padmé that Anakin had gotten at the age of fourteen.

“Oh,” Kryze said, “I always forget that’s a gendered word in basic.”

It was interesting that they weren’t in Mando’a. The Shmi of three years ago who had written puff pieces for the Count and believed her life destined for peace and tremendous luxury would have wanted to interrogate the Duchess about how that worked. Were no familial identifiers gendered? Or was the absence of gender in the Mandalorian language – or the Mandalorian culture – more ubiquitous than that?

Perhaps someday the galaxy would be enough at peace for such academic questions. Although, having had the thought, perhaps it was usable. “What’s the Mando’a?”

“Ad in the singular. Ade in the plural. Ad’ika in the diminutive. Why?”

All her press techniques hadn’t left her entirely. “The Core senators love a little exoticism. A little danger. A man wanting custody of his biological children is boring. Happens on every world from Serenno to Ryloth. A man fighting to adopt his ade under an ancient warrior rite… that has intrigue. Flare. Could make the holonet sing for us.”

The Duchess tilted her head slightly. “I hate that I think that would genuinely work on them.”

Padmé leaned forward in her seat. “Are you willing to try anyways?”

At a nod from the Duchess, Jenza turned to Shmi. “Can you prepare a draft for the holonews? Anonymous source, ideally.”

Already, the words were forming in her mind, the heartfelt pleas of a family yearning to be reunited. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter Text

Anakin watched Dooku with a certain level of resentment, as he sat up on the dias with Quinlan Vos, an assortment of the nobility, Obi-Wan, Jocasta Nu, and the elected Mayor of Carannia. It was his party, which meant he didn’t have to dance. Unfortunately, that did not carry over to Anakin. It hadn’t for Aayla either, but she actually liked dancing, and was, surprisingly, very competent at the Serennian waltz.

To Anakin’s great displeasure, she had also stolen the hand of Lady Gwennia of House Talarma, who was one of the only members of the nobility who Anakin knew and liked. Lady Gwennia was the head of the integration committee for refugees on Serenno, and was the youngest of the heads of house on Serenno at the age of fifty.

The party had been her idea, though Dooku had eagerly signed on. Even now, three years later, most of the Serennian nobility were uneasy with the Jedi who’d taken up residence on their world. Ergo, a small, controlled event where a few of them, those with the best formal social skills and, in Vos’s case, breeding,could mingle with the Serennian upper crust. Anakin searched the crowds desperately for a familiar face, or, if not that, at least an appropriate victim. He’d met many of the nobles and other political elite in passing over the years, but those who knew and liked Dooku best were almost all sitting with him or taken by other dancing partners.

As someone who seemed increasingly likely to someday be Count, even if he was not officially the heir, Anakin first dance at his first ball was a matter of some importance. It needed to be someone whose politics he could support, but not someone who could use him. Neither too old or too young, and neither too powerful nor too weak. Lady Gwennia, as the head of a relatively small house, would have been perfect.

There, sitting alone in the corner, looking down at her hands. Heir Cathaya. A significant house, by their blood connection to Dooku, and by their finances, but with almost no land to speak of. And the heir, not the Lord or Lady. She was recognizable by her strict eyebrows, which were quite like both Dooku and Jenza’s, and, more saliently, by the Carannia laurel and white of her dress. Her feathered hairpiece might also have been intended to be the Carannia dove, but her fidgeting had beaten it beyond recognition.

Anakin walked over to her, feeling the eyes of all Serenno on him.

(I never liked Lord Carannia) Dooku advised Anakin, watching from above. Harsh words, from his cousin. (But he doesn’t seem to like his daughter much. He’s the only person at my table not yet to mention their heir. Good luck.)

Anakin sat on the sofa beside Heir Cathaya, careful not to rumple her skirt.

“Heir Cathaya, may I introduce myself?”

“Doctor, actually. And you need no introduction, Skywalker Anakin.”

Of course, he wouldn’t. But she evidently did – the title was so new it didn’t even show up in the registry yet. At least, Anakin didn’t remember it from the guest list. “Congratulations, Doctor. Doctor of what?”

“History.”

“What sort of history?”

She still wasn’t looking at him. “Political history.”

Still vague, but better. “Well, Doctor Cathaya, do you want to dance?”

She shifted. “I have a girlfriend.”

“What a coincidence. So do I. That gives us two things in common.” That made her laugh, and, for the first time, Heir Cathaya looked up at him to reveal dark, wide-set eyes. The careful grooming of her eyebrows gave them a piercing depth of focus. It was the sort of face that had an attraction that couldn’t be explained by ingrained standards of beauty. Beautiful not so much by aesthetics as by confidence, personality and force of will.

“I’m not proposing marriage, I just want Dooku to stop nudging me about not paying enough attention to the… appearance of politics.”

When Anakin extended a hand, she took it. “My parents might get more joy out of our dancing than I would, although they will be very unhappy to hear about the girlfriend. Do you know that you’re meant to the most eligible bachelor on Serenno?”

And if that wasn’t a terrifying thought. “I don’t think I like that idea. Haven’t they heard that I’m supposed to be a Jedi?”

She laughed, revealing the most sincere smile Anakin had seen all evening. “How does your girlfriend feel about your path of celibacy?”

“It’s not an oath of celibacy,” Anakin muttered, feeling himself blush. “So, dancing? Do you mind leading? I know that they all think I’m Dooku’s son, but I’m not really Lord of anything, I’m just some kid from Tatooine. It would be more proper for you to lead.”

She placed one hand on his waist, and together crossed onto the dance floor, space clearing for them. Cathaya was a passable dancer. Not as good as Padmé, not as bad as Vos.

(Do me a favour) Anakin thought hard at Dooku (don’t let her father get smug. Make sure he understands that he’s not winning.)

As they slowly turned on the dance floor, Anakin and Cathaya watched as Dooku turned to her father, and, in that devastating monotone he had perfected over the years, said something that made him wince and the rest of the nobility shift, just a little, away from him. Her expression was one of wicked pleasure at the sight.

Cathaya asked, “so, you said we had two things in common. What was the other?”

Right, yes. “Girlfriends, and the fact that neither of us want to be at this party.”

“I actually like parties,” she confessed. The song ended, and by mutual consent they decided on a second dance. “I just don’t like parties where my parents put me on display like art at an auction, to be sold to the highest bidder.”

At least she didn’t make a slavery comparison. Then Anakin would have had to stop liking her.

“Is your girlfriend here tonight?”

“Unfortunately not.” She stopped talking briefly as they passed close to a silently swaying couple of ancient noblemen, before resuming, “she’s at school in Talarma. Also to be a doctor, only, you know, the proper sort.”

“Wonderful,” Anakin said, quite sincerely.

“And yours? She of the Less-than-offended-by-Celibacy.”

Anakin was rather starting to like her personality as much as her political expediency. In her company, the party seemed less like a chore. Dooku, he thought, was going to be unbearably smug when Anakin admitted to enjoying any part of the affair.

“How are you at keeping a secret?”

“Very good, when needs must.” By mutual consent, they started a second dance together. “But all due respect, Skywalker… you shouldn’t trust so easily. Count’s son or not, you are a political figure here. Some of these people will be your friends, certainly, but many more will be your enemies. I do have a doctorate in political history; I should know.”

Interesting. Dooku would have said nearly the same, although with less of the jadedness of the unappreciated youth. “And which are you, Doctor?”

“Friend, I hope,” she said, leading Anakin away from a potential collision with Aayla and her most recent partner, a younger son of Lord Kelsin. “But… all due respect, whatever my title, and however friendly you are, it would be foolish of the heir to a noble house to be your friend for no reward.”

“And it would be foolish of me to be your friend without the same, but…” Briefly, Anakin took the lead, and they sped up as the dance began to approach its crescendo. He was a little gratified to realize he could lead faster than the Doctor could. “I know almost no members of Serennia’s political classes well enough to truly call them my friends. I know servants, actors, musicians, a great number of engineers and scientists and code slicers. I know those of the nobility who are my father’s age. But people like you grew up surrounded by, the ambitious bright-eyed young of Serenno… I don’t know them, they don’t know me. I suspect by now you have a sense of me. I have a sense of you to suggest you’ll know the sort of person I want to be introduced to. I suspect most of them won’t be at this party, given the proximity to the university examination period. Introduce me to the political classes, to the… educated, to future representatives and lords, Doctor Cathaya.”

She grinned, and, as they reached the last steps of the dance, whirled away from him, letting her skirt fly around her, revealing its marvellous scope. Anakin spun after her, which wasn’t really part of the dance, but it had looked sort of fun, and the tails of his coat spun out in a pleasing manner just as her dress had. It made Cathaya laugh.

“Very well,” she said, after a moment, “we have a deal, Skywalker. I’ll… make some introductions. In exchange… let’s begin with unrestricted access to the Castle libraries, and we can go from there. I want to be seen here. Frequently.”

There was always political capital in being seen in proximity to power. “Certainly, now, for that secret we discussed.” He leaned in, and whispered in her ear, “Padmé Amidala.”

“Shit,” she said much too loudly, startling Aayla, on the other side of the dance floor, into laughter.

--

There was a contingent of Castle Serenno’s earliest risers, who broke their fast before the light of dawn had even touched the castle, at this point in their orbit around the sun. Obi-Wan was one of them, as was Dooku, although Anakin and Asajj almost never joined them. That morning, they sat in quiet contemplation with Quinlan, Jocasta, Jaila – who was in residence full time coordinating an educational program for underage refugees – and a selection of her teaching staff, most of whom were refugees themselves.

As was often the case, Quinlan broke the silence.

“Anyone have interesting plans for today?”

“Field trip to the Agricultural Heritage Centre,” one of the teachers, a Twi’lek with bright yellow robes, said. Quinlan gave her a nod.

Rather like a school class themselves, they went around the circle, discussing their plans. This, too, was part of the usual custom. It was Quinlan’s contribution, of course. When the Jedi and the civilian personnel had started sharing meals, they’d been cold, awkward, uninviting. Now they were still awkward, sometimes, but a good sort. There was friendliness and respect there. And nobody was nearly as afraid of Dooku after they’d seen him trying to drown himself in a cup of caf while Jocasta discussed the advantages and disadvantages of various artifact cataloguing systems.

“Obi-Wan?”

Asajj was standing there in her robe and sock feet, looking bleary. She’d missed a bit of the gold makeup she used to paint her head while cleaning to off last night, and it had smudged all across the right side of her head, while her padawan beads had gotten stuck behind her ear. He blinked at her. “What is it, Asajj?”

She held out his comlink. “You left this. It’s been going for the last ten minutes.”

It took him a minute to recognize the ident, during which Asajj slunk out of the room, no doubt returning to bed in pursuit of another hour or two of sleep.

“Satine Kryze,” he said, half to Dooku and half to himself, and followed Asajj out into the hallway to take the call.

She didn’t have a holo on, but to Obi-Wan, her voice sounded worn, tired. “I’ve just realized that I have no idea what time it is where you are on Serenno. I’m sorry. It took me ages to get a priority call routed through. Did I wake you?”

“No.” It was nice to hear from her. He could only wish it had been under better circumstances. “Although you did wake my apprentice. And be glad it took the call time to reroute. I’ve only been awake for half an hour.”

“My apologies to her, then.”

Satine paused so long that for a moment, he thought the call had been disconnected. “Are you still there?”

“Mm.” She paused again, to gather her thoughts. Obi-Wan began to walk, for no particular reason and in no particular direction, wrist still held close to his face.

“Someone tried to kill me today. Twice.” She said, quiet and serious. It wasn’t the first time, of course. Obi-Wan knew that better than anyone. Still, it was awful and unsettling to know that there were people in the galaxy who hated you.

“Vosa? Trade Federation?”

“That’s just it, Obi-Wan. The first was one of the suicide bombers. Amidala, Jenza, and Shmi stopped him. I thought my presence was coincidental, but… when I got back to my apartment, a man was waiting for me. I just… through sheer, dumb luck, Adi Gallia had walked me home.”

There was no such thing as dumb luck where Adi Gallia was involved. “Another mindless assassin? Like those they sent after Padmé?”

“No,” Satine whispered, making the speakers hiss and crackle. “Mandalorian.”

Force. “Unrelated to Vosa? Deathwatch?” A terrorist group had made several attempts on Satine’s life in the last year or so, but, at least thus far, none had come anywhere near success. Satine’s policy of staying out of the war was generally popular among her people, who were neither fond of the GAR nor the Trade Federation.

“I thought so, at first.” That was a bad sign, Obi-Wan thought. “But Gallia didn’t sense him in the Force until he was already on her. She’s in the Temple infirmary now.”

Deathwatch working with Vosa? Another Sith? It was always best to assume there were no such things as coincidences, which meant the two attempts were related. There was only one reason that someone could need Satine dead so quickly.. “They want to keep the Clones in the war. Whoever did this.”

But why? Nobody in the Trade Federation could want that. Vosa shouldn’t want it, but…

“She had them created, didn’t she? Her and her master.”

It was the truth that had always been there, in all of Anakin and Dooku’s evidence from three years ago, all ignored by the Council. In Jocasta’s research into missing Jedi. Someone had murdered Sifo Dyas. Someone had commissioned clones in his name. In the Order’s name.

“What the hell do they want building an army against themselves, Obi-Wan? What purpose does it serve to equip the Jedi with tens of thousands of allies?”

Barriss Offee, their most recent Jedi defector, passed Obi-Wan in the hallway on her way to breakfast, and gave him an odd look. Still, for a Mirialan, she looked positively cheerful, arrayed in her white healer’s robes. It was a far cry from the traumatized girl Luminara had dropped on their doorstep with a whisper of “I was never here” two months earlier.

Someone had dragged the Jedi into a war. Had turned what should have been a hunt for a renegade member of their own order into a conflict between states, with millions of casualties, of displacements. Had turned the Jedi into Generals and Commanders, leading soldiers, instead of healers and teachers, guides and mediators. Someone had tried to turn that devout Mirialan girl into a killer, and had very nearly succeeded. Dooku was liable to blame the Order, to blame the Code, but the Code and the Order had never been designed to be this. They’d been made into it by the singularly unique situation of the Clones, created to serve at their pleasure. Someone had intentionally given them this new power, had made them tools of the Senate rather than servants of the force, and of the people. Someone had done this on purpose. And they were willing to kill Satine to stop her from freeing the tools of their corruption.

“I think,” Obi-Wan said, matching Satine’s quiet tone, “that my name is still technically on the temple register. Given the recent attempt on your life, it would be appropriate for you to request protection from the Order. They won’t have many people available to fill the position.”

He could practically hear the smile in her words as Satine said, “Brilliant, Obi-Wan. Thank you.”

--

Now that Anakin was a knight in all but name, Dooku spent the three hours he’d once cut out of his daily schedule for teaching on a variety of other tasks. Most commonly, as had become his pastime, he dedicate them to some of the other Jedi Defectors. Today, he was blessed with his two favourite apprentices. Asajj Ventress and Barriss Offee. There were other padawans among the defectors, even excluding Anakin from this category, but Ventress and Offee were those Dooku knew best. The rest, Hanna Ding of Arkanis, Rutar Tan of Sullust, and the Quarren twins Loq and Riquel, were from either impartial worlds or actively anti-Republican ones. They questioned the war and the orthodoxy of the Order in fighting it, but would happily have returned to Coruscant tomorrow if the war ended. He liked Offee and Ventress because they were there for the same reason he was. They’d lost faith, and were fighting to find it again. Or, better, to make something they could have faith in.

“What are we working on today?”

When Asajj came alone, they almost inevitably ended up sparring, but Barriss hadn’t picked up a lightsaber since she’d come to them. He thought she never would again, if she could help it.

They exchanged a glance with each other. Finally, Barriss said, “Count Dooku, could we… ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Dooku settled himself on the ground, in meditation pose, and eventually they both joined him.

“Don’t let Obi-Wan go to Coruscant alone,” Asajj exploded, suddenly, as if keeping the words in had been too difficult to bear for another moment.

“He doesn’t have any idea what it has become,” Barriss told him, fear clear in her voice. “There is no guarantee the other Jedi will protect him, or that they could protect him. They might throw him in jail as a deserter for not having fought in the war. But you have diplomatic immunity. You could go, and Asajj could go, since she’s actually in the Republic books as a Serennian native. Plus, they can’t call her a deserter if she was never asked to fight in the first place.”

They’d been unable to find any official documentation of either Asajj’s birth or any earlier migrations, so her arrival on Serenno had been the first indication of her legal personhood. In spite of her heroism on Geonosis, the Council had never officially recognized her as either Ky Narec or Obi-Wan’s apprentice. Dooku rather suspected this was a kindness in disguise. The lack of recognition meant that she was held to none of their archaic standards. No matter how the war ended, Asajj would have a future anywhere in the Galaxy. The same could not be said for Barriss, whose desertion would render her either a villain or a coward, depending on who wrote the history books.

“It will be very dangerous for you, on Coruscant,” he told Asajj, and then to Barriss, “and more dangerous for you here, if I leave. The war is a test of all the Galaxy’s loyalties, and I suspect many Serennians are not so satisfied with my choice to choose only the side of those injured and displaced.”

Castle Serenno had been a home to displaced persons before. It was only right that it should be again, that its rooms and outbuildings should be bustling with life in a way they hadn’t for centuries. But not everyone agreed. After all, some Serennians would have said, they were spending their own resources on foreigners, who would only choose to leave again, if they could. Without Dooku here to assert his titles and his power, there was no telling what those elements in Serennian society who held these prejudices might do.

“We know,” said Barriss, quiet but confident, “but Skywalker Anakin will be here, and Aayla, and Master Vos. And Asa will have you and Knight Kenobi with her. And…” She shifted her hands, as if trying to capture her words between her fingers. “None of what we do here matters, if the war drags on and on, and there aren’t any answers. I was eavesdropping on Obi-Wan and the Duchess, earlier. The power, the armies, the war… it ruined being a Jedi for me. Ruined the Code and the Order and everything. If Master Unduli hadn’t brought me here, I might have fallen. So if Obi-Wan thinks the Sith did this on purpose. Wanted us to be Generals on purpose… then I think the Sith might have a much bigger plan than just beating us in a war. And you can’t stop that from here.”

It was always a blessing to be believed in, and an unexpected one, to be believed in so fiercely that someone like Barriss Offee thought your very presence could imperil a Sith plot.

“And you, Asajj? Are you sure? Nobody would think any less of you if you chose to stay here, to work and defend your home with Anakin at your side.”

She gave him a fierce look. Though she still shaved her head, Asajj had recently taken to painting it, or having others do so for her, and today the swirls of red and gold seemed to give her a particular ferocity and certainty of opinion.

“I’m sure, Dooku. The Force is sure. Coruscant is where I need to be.”

He could only hope that the Force would protect her, or would enable him to do the same.

“Very well, then. Let us inform Knight Kenobi that we shall be a party of three, en route to Coruscant, and let Skywalker Anakin know that his trial by fire as my successor shall come a little sooner than expected.”

Chapter Text

Their journey to Coruscant had been blessedly uneventful, which was never a certainty, these days. Some combination of the small ship by which they had travelled – though, Obi-Wan noted, it was large enough to bring back Jenza and her entire office staff, in a pinch – the route by which they took, and the presence of three Jedi on board, had deterred or slipped the notice of the anti-Senate forces. So, they arrived safely, landing not at the Jedi Temple, but at the Senate, to be covertly ushered inside by two members of Jenza’s personal guard, who were obviously uncomfortable seeing their Count surrounded by the dangers of Coruscant. As though he wasn’t the most deadly man in most rooms.

They had already made plans for their arrival en route. Not a second could be wasted, in ensuring their safety on Coruscant. The longer they stood around planning, the more opportunities for Komari to strike and kill again. So, they split up. Asajj, with Jenza’s guard, went to her office. There, she would begin using the skills she’d garnered in three years with Anakin to slice her way into any and all confidential files relating to the clones. Dooku, on his own, had scheduled meetings with both the Chancellor and Master Windu, to gauge the mood and establish his presence. As for Obi-Wan, Satine’s security was to be his top priority.

It seemed right, somehow, to be guarding her again, even after all their years apart. Once, he thought it would have made Qui-Gon’s absence feel like an ache, but now it was as though he could sense his old Master at his side, steadily assuring him that he was doing the right thing.

“Obi-Wan,” she exclaimed, when she saw him, and, to his not insignificant surprise, hugged him. Though they had spoken over the years, and more recently since he had urged her to come to Coruscant, they had not seen each other in person since they were practically children, younger than Asajj.

“Satine.” He was careful not to damage her elaborately coiffed hair. Padmé had taught him enough to know that.

She pulled back, and Obi-Wan noticed for the first time the deep red laceration along the length of her arm. No doubt, she had worn a short-sleeved gown to showcase for her Senate rivals the fact that someone had already attempted to destroy her and failed.

He didn’t say anything on the matter. They both knew that Obi-Wan would now be singularly responsible for her life or death.

“So, Duchess? Where to first?”

She gave him a little smile.

“First to a meeting with Orn Free Ta, as punishment for all my past wrongdoing. There’s no chance he’ll support us, but the clones are very popular on Ryloth at the moment, and I think he could be convincingly intimidated into standing aside. Then to Kin Robb, as my absolution, since she has been a steady opponent of increased military funding.”

Obi-Wan stepped aside. “Please, lead the way.” And followed her into battle.

--

Dooku disliked the Chancellor of the Republic. He’d decided the matter about three minutes after the Chancellor’s first meeting with Anakin, and nothing that had happened since had changed his mind. It was strange, since they had once been close friends. Indeed, he still felt some lingering affection for the way Palpatine had reached out to him after Qui-Gon’s death. But that lingering gratitude could not overwhelm the way he now felt put-off by the Chancellor’s presence Anakin disliked him too, mostly for the condescending way he spoke to Padmé and for the way he obstructed her efforts to demilitarize, but for Dooku it was more instinctual than that. Every time the Chancellor was so much as mentioned, lately, he seemed to sense a pressure in the back of his mind, like someone was pushing a hand down on the spot where his bond with Qui-Gon had once rested. A warning sign, if there ever was one.

“I appreciate your welcoming me here, Chancellor,” Dooku said, keeping his loathing cloaked away behind layers of politeness. “Though I dare to imagine that you are not nearly so pleased to see me.”

The Chancellor laughed, cheerily, and the pressure in Dooku’s skull doubled. It was as if some part of the Force had decided he needed klaxons blaring whenever Palpatine tried to be friendly. (yes) he thought, shoving the words into the Force in the direction he would have Qui-Gon truly were present, (I don’t trust him either.) He was certainly no true evil like what Komari had become, but anyone who was so willing to use slave labour as Palpatine was had not earned his trust.

Amazingly, the pressure actually abated.

“I am always pleased to see a man of your stature, Count Dooku, though I admit your presence on Coruscant is… unexpected. Have the Jedi finally called you home?”

And now time for the lie. “No, Chancellor. They have not come to their senses.” The Chancellor shook his head, an expression of sympathy plain on his face. It was the sort of expression that made Dooku loath the part of himself that would lie to him. “But if they will not see to my sister’s safety, then I will do so in their place.”

The Chancellor’s expression seemed to grow distant, and he looked down at his hands as if musing on some great secret. “I confess, my faith in the Council’s ability to see to many things has been shaken, lately.”

Very, very interesting. Perhaps, if relations were more frayed than the news suggested, it had been one of them who had somehow managed to place a Force-based warning system on Palpatine. He thought Yoda might have been able to pull it off, which would explain why it reminded him of Qui-Gon. In that case, it might be best to disregard that instinct, and remember that although Palpatine’s conduct in the war had been foolish, and his dealing with Padmé’s situation deeply unhelpful, he was a good man. There was something in the force, underlying the warning, that suggested this goodness. Still, since he certainly was not as great a threat as Komari or her master, nor as great an ally as the Jedi had the potential to be, it was an issue that could be tabled for later consideration. No harm would come to anyone by leaving the chancellor alone.

The roughness where his bond with Qui-Gon throbbed painfully.

“I can see how that might be,” Dooku said diplomatically, “after three years of war.”

“If only I believed it were just the war. But… well, I suppose you shall have to form your own conclusions, but I believe there may be external influences, operating under the auspices of the Order here on Coruscant. All evidence suggests that Vosa has some sort of accomplice, in the Force. Her Master, as a Sith, perhaps. And where better to a hide a Sith than in the last place someone would look?”

All things were hidden in the last place someone would look, because nobody ever kept looking after they found what they sought. But he had a point. It would explain why the Clones had been gifted into the hands of the Order. One of them could very likely be the Sith. Dooku suddenly felt more grateful than ever than he had raised Anakin on Serenno, away from all of this, and that Anakin was there now, where he was safe.

“I see your point, Chancellor.” He checked the time. His meeting with Mace wasn’t for another hour and a half, but still, “with that said, the Order does now have a claim on my time. I swear to keep my eyes open, for anything… out of the ordinary.”

The Chancellor nodded, seriously. “Thank you, Count. Please, tell me of anything you find. Whatever you may think of me… I do care for this Republic, and for her people.”

If not for the sudden doubling of the pressure at the back of Dooku’s mind, he would have believed the words to be utterly sincere. As it was, a certain doubt rose in his heart and lingered. If he truly cared, would he have to clarify? Trying not to grit his teeth against the pain, Dooku said, “I will,” and made haste towards the door. The second the Chancellor was out of sight, the pain faded.

(Whoever you are,) Dooku thought at them, pointedly, (I can look after myself)

He had no reason to trust this obviously constructed message in the force. A Sith could want him to mistrust the Chancellor just as much as a Jedi would.

They didn’t respond, and Dooku, with half an eye to the time, grabbed the first transport for the temple. It was almost entirely packed with clones, but there were also three senate aides with bags of datapads, and a lone kiffar padawan, her eyes fixed firmly on the ground. They all disembarked at the Temple, and went their separate ways.

It was strange, to see the Temple like this. It was still bustling with life, but there were almost no masters or knights, only clones, patrolling back and forth, and initiates and padawans. Many of them were older than Dooku was used to seeing those without braids of their own. It seemed that Barriss had been right when she told them that nobody was being sent away to the corps, anymore. Somehow, even in spite of Dooku’s distaste for that practice, its absence was equally unsettling. He doubted that any of these children were getting the training they needed to succeed. Worse, he feared that they might only be kept here for potential use as blaster-fodder later. Some latent paternal instinct left over from Anakin’s childhood demanded that he spirit them away to Serenno immediately.

He checked the time again. He had an hour, still, until his meeting with Mace. He stopped the first person in healer’s robes he saw and asked, “has Master Gallia been discharged, yet?”

She blinked at him a moment. “Yes.”

No title. Funny, she didn’t even recognize him as a Jedi. “Thank you, Healer.” Then realized his mistake as she began to walk away. “Do you know where her quarters are?”

The only response he got was a suspicious look. Well, Adi was a Consular Jedi, and she didn’t have a Padawan. That meant there was a very particular set of rooms that were likely to be hers. It took him fifteen minutes before he arrived at hers, in the last place he checked, having discounted rooms belonging to Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon.

The door was propped open, to his surprise, and there were voices filtering out into the hallway.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” one of them, a young girl by the sound of things, was saying plaintively. “Why is Vosa trying to kill Senators who oppose the war?”

Dooku revised his opinion. A smart young girl, by the sound of things. He stepped primly over the chair in the doorway to find, with some amusement, Adi Gallia lying back on a couch, holding court with a crowd of initiates and unclaimed padawans. They all turned to look at him.

“I didn’t think my Open Door Policy would draw visitors from as far as Serenno,” she said, with a laugh in her voice, “but I’m happy to have you. Initiates, padawans, this is Count Dooku of Serenno, Master Jedi.”

By the way they stared, he might as well have been an Angel of Iego. He nodded to them. “Good Afternoon. I take it this is a well worn tradition, Adi?”

“Yes,” one of the initiates said in her place, a Mirilian whose markings denoted their third-gender status. They gazed up at Dooku with wide eyes. “Are you really Count Dooku? Is it true you quit the Order?”

“Aldar,” Adi scolded, though rather gently, but Dooku sat himself on the floor among the students and offered them all his best child-friendly smile.

He’d found, over the years, that most children liked the fact that he was honest, even if it was sometimes more difficult in the moment than a pleasing lie. “I really am Count Dooku, and I didn’t quit the Order, but I don’t exactly follow the orders of the Council either. That doesn’t mean I get to ignore the code, though, and it certainly doesn’t mean I can use the dark side.” He could, of course, but most of the Serennian Order, or whatever they were going to call themselves, never had.

They nodded, seriously. “Thank you.”

It felt wrong, to pull Adi away from these children who so obviously needed her council, needed someone to take them seriously, but Dooku needed her as well.

Seeming to sense his uncertainty, Adi said, “well, you’ve all seen that I’ll be alright, and I don’t think I’ll be getting deployed again any time soon. Can all of you make it if I host Open Door tomorrow and the day after?” There was a spattering of nods around the room, except for one, a Togruta girl who said, “Master Piell wants me for his mission that leaves in an hour.” She was one of the oldest students. Any other time, she would have been sent away years ago. Maybe Piell would have the good sense to keep her. Dooku could tell by her voice that she was the one intelligent enough to ask about Komari’s motives.

After the young ones had all been shuffled off, and the door firmly closed, Dooku said, “Mother-wolf, are we?”

“No,” Adi volleyed back, “that would be Plo.”

Dooku had to have the joke, that Plo’s troops called themselves the Wolfpack, explained to him. That done, he asked, “I take it the Council has made no additional efforts whatsoever to see those Children trained.”

“We’re trying,” said Adi. She seemed tired, “Plo and Shaak and I, to say the least. But Shaak is barely off of Kamino at all these days, and Plo is usually on the front lines, where it would be far too dangerous for a Padawan. So most of the time, it’s just me. I can look after all of them better than if I took one of them as my student.”

Even if everyone Dooku had on Serenno took one of these students, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. “And Yoda? Windu? No signs of either of them relenting and taking an apprentice?”

Her expression darkened. “Depa did, a boy, which counts some in Mace’s favour. But Yoda always swore you would be his last apprentice, and I believe he intends to keep it that way. As for Mace himself, well…” She shifted, wincing as she sat up. “He hasn’t been himself, lately. We’re all worried about him.”

The last place anyone would look for a Sith. It couldn’t be, surely. Windu had always walked close to the darkness, but so too had Dooku himself, and even if Windu was a hypocrite, he couldn’t imagine him giving in to temptation. “In what way? Does he exercise his power over the clones? Is he still practicing Vaapad?”

Adi gave him an odd look. “Not in the way you’re imaging, certainly. We’re worried for him, not afraid of him. He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat. We all know that he cares very deeply about his troopers – as the vast majority of the Order does, for the record – but lately, Depa says even Ponds can’t get through to him. She thinks he might be dying, or something awful happened to him and he won’t tell any of us.”

It was strange to think of Mace Windu as vulnerable, but, well, people might have said the same of Dooku himself, once. They wouldn’t say so any more. Far too many people had seen him cry, and knew him to be a sentimental old man.

Dooku, for his part, had always thought of Mace Windu as rather judgemental, but aside from their disastrous encounters three years ago, when they’d clashed over Anakin and over the nature of the Order, they hadn’t known each other in fifteen years or more. Had Windu’s treatment of Anakin been poor? Undoubtedly, but the entire Council had agreed to it, Adi included, and Dooku more than forgave her. In some respects, Dooku and Windu had far more in common than not. Perhaps that was part of why Dooku found him so much harder to like. He projected his own fatal hubris onto Windu when, if Adi was to be believed, he had anything but pride, at the moment.

“What should I do? We’re meeting in half an hour.”

She blinked at him a moment. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do. You and he were never friends, were you? I know you parted on poor terms.”

It was true, and yet… “No, never friends. But he is a good man, isn’t he? Under all of it.”

There was a time when there would have been a great deal of digging necessary to see the good in Dooku as well. Adi seemed to understand that he meant no insult to Windu, for she said only, “yes, I think he is.”

Dooku had peeled the Jedi-mandated frigidity off of himself, and Obi-Wan. He’d prevented it ever properly forming on Rael and Qui-Gon, even if he hadn’t meant to at the time. He’d helped raise Anakin and now Asajj to be able to ask for help, to be vulnerable and weak, to doubt. If Windu was struggling alone, perhaps he was the exact man for the job.

“There’s no chance he’s the Sith, is there?”

“None,” she said, with confidence. “I’ve met Komari again since the war started. Twice. She doesn’t fight like someone who’s ever met Mace Windu, let alone someone he trained. Her skill is all to your credit and hers.”

It could have been a trick, of course, a mind game, but Dooku thought that for a duellist as great as Windu – as himself, he was still immodest enough not to add – it would be a deadly wound to the ego not to leave some mark on the style of an apprentice. Even Qui-Gon, who had thrown out all Dooku’s best lessons and started afresh, had been recognisably his own. If Adi had seen no trace of Windu’s style, then none was there to be seen.

“Then I suppose I owe it to him to help him, however I can.”

Her expression brightened, a little. “If you can, in any way at all, Depa and I will owe you a most sincere debt.”

He hoped he could earn that debt, and in equal measure that he would never have to collect.

--

Anakin found himself in the study in the back of the library before he’d even fully processed that he was awake and aware of the reality around him. He’d pulled a jedi robe over his sleepware, but knew he would have to go change before meeting with Cathaya over lunch.

“Jocasta?”

She’d asked him to stop trying to give her any sort of title years ago, and Anakin now found himself subject to her steady gaze as she set her book down. It was an ancient tome, and she handled it with gloves, for its own sake. Laying down a blanket of the force to shield the text from harm, Jocasta turned her chair away from her work.

“How can I help you, Anakin?”

He resisted the urge to drop into the chair across from her as heavily as a stone. Anakin was trying to gain the sort of steady, easy control over his every movement and over how they would be perceived, that Dooku possessed, but it was slow going. He set himself down with delicate precision, and called that progress enough.

“I need to ask you your advice, as a Jedi.” She nodded assent. “I… last night, I had a dream. A terrible dream. I think it was a vision, although I have those so rarely that I can’t be sure.”

“I assume that means you saw nothing good. If a vision breaks through in one not normally sensitive to them, it’s rarely a positive sign.”

And of course, it hadn’t been. “I saw Count Dooku, only… not himself. I saw him in a mirror, and standing beside me. He had a lightsaber, but in the mirror the blade was red, and the true Dooku, the one standing beside me, told me to ‘choose’, and then the version in the mirror stabbed him, and he fell, and I had to stand, and watch, and then I was standing in the mirror, and my eyes were yellow, and my lightsaber was red, and the version of me in the mirror said, ‘choose’, and then Padmé was there, and in the mirror she was dead, and she told me to ‘choose’, but her mouth was full of sand, and then I woke up.”

“It seems to me,” Jocasta said, rather dryly, “that there is a choice you need to make.”

It was enough to break the seriousness of the moment. Anakin allowed himself to huff a laugh. “Of course there is. There always is, for me. I was given it when I was nine years old. Jedi or slave. Jedi or civilian. Jedi or Heir.”

“Dooku never chose. He became both Jedi and Count, in the end.”

He had, of course, but, “could I keep my oaths that way? Or would I fail in both duties? Fail the Serennians by not putting their interests first, and fail the Jedi by valuing my own people too highly.”

Jocasta nodded. “I imagine your recent work with Doctor Cathaya has not helped clarify your feelings on the matter.”

Anakin couldn’t quite repress a laugh. “I like politics. Really, I do. But the people wrangling, trying to deal with men like her father? It makes me understand the appeal of totalitarianism. Truly.” Padmé would never forgive that, though, and there was the other issue. “There’s a second choice, too. Padmé. Could she be happy here on Serenno, as my wife? Could I ask that of her? Or, conversely, could I ask her to be married to a Jedi, whatever that would entail?”

“If there are two choices, might there be three?”

Choose what to be, choose who to be with, and what? The answer struck him, obvious in its simplicity. The light or the dark. Anakin had once been prophesied to bring balance between them. How could he ever truly choose a side? It was a revelation he didn’t like, and one he had no particular desire to share with Jocasta.

“Perhaps. And then there was the other element that disturbed me, that Dooku seemed to die with me, whereas Padmé was only dead in the mirror, which indicates to me that is… a fear, perhaps, rather than a reality.”

“Killed by his mirror self,” Jocasta said contemplatively.

Exactly. “You know as well as I do that that is hardly an impossibility. To be killed by the Sith he could have been, if he’d taken Komari’s offer.”

“Hardly an impossibility, but hardly a certainty either.” She was probably trying to soothe his fears, some. “Still… you ought to call Coruscant, when you have the time. Tell Dooku what you told me, and, if he is going to die… do the smart thing. Tell him that you love him, too. I think you might regret it if you did otherwise.”

She was a wise woman, and one who had already seen far too much death. “And what about you?”

“Don’t worry, Anakin. He knows.”

Chapter Text

It was with remarkable calm that Dooku pressed Windu’s door chime. Rather like his breakthrough around his own place in the Force, so many years earlier, his conversation with Adi had peeled a layer of anger and hatred out from under his skin. He had to accept that Mace had done things he disagreed with. Had treated him unfairly, even, but there were far worse enemies out there.

As he pressed the last vestiges of anger out into the Force and replaced them with compassion, he felt again the same touch in his mind upon the severed stump of Qui-Gon’s bond. This time, there was none of the insistence, none of the pressure, only a gentle touch like a hand on a shoulder.

(Are you trying to warn me against him, too?)

The presence quickly pulled away, as if startled. Dooku, wondering when he’d started to befriend this… thing, said (you’re trying to be kind?)

The touch grazed him again, briefly, and then vanished as Windu’s door slid open.

It was a shock, to see the normally well-groomed and severe Master of the Order looking so disheveled. A black fuzz of hair coated his head in a way that indicated a man who had given up shaving, rather than one trying to grow his hair out. His over-robes were only half closed, and his lightsaber dangled like an afterthought from his too-loose belt. His eyes were hollow.

A thousand insults lived and died on Dooku’s tongue. In the end, he only said, “may I come in, Mace?”

With loathing clear in his eyes, he stepped out of Dooku’s way. It was immediately evident that nobody else had been allowed here in quite some time. The windows were all shuttered, and flimsi and datapads strewn haphazardly over all available surfaces.

He wished, suddenly and fiercely, that Jocasta were here. She could have told him these documents were, what they meant. What information he should have been able to glean from them about Windu’s mental state.

“You wanted to meet with me?” Windu’s voice was still as commanding as ever. It was good, at least, that this had not changed.

“I did,” he admitted, and, abruptly, reached for the force to give comfort and realized that it seemed beyond his touch. No wonder the room had felt so cloying. It wasn’t because the windows were closed. It was because the force was closed. It was one of the single greatest displays of power Dooku had ever seen, and a totally incomprehensible one.

“What in all the Sith hells did you do to this place, Windu?”

The other man’s hand had gone to his lightsaber. “They’re on Coruscant, Dooku. The Sith Master. They have been all along. I’m sure I seem mad, but I swear on the Force it’s true, I’ve seen – I can’t stop seeing –”

Dooku was abruptly glad that none of his apprentices had been prone to visions on the same scale Mace was. They seemed a terrible curse. Though the future had spoken to Dooku, and to Anakin at times, and Obi-Wan more frequently again, it had never been a central feature of their worlds the way he knew the shatterpoints were for Mace.

“I reached much the same conclusion,” he said, in the same calm, authoritative voice he used when talking to children. “The Sith must be on Coruscant, in the Order or in the Senate. It is the only thing that makes sense. They must be on your side of the war.”

Windu stared at him in open bafflement. “And you believe me?”

“I do.” As he had done so long ago for Obi-Wan, Dooku unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and pressed it into the other Jedi’s hand. “You may never be my friend, Mace Windu. You have done too much harm to Anakin and Obi-Wan to ever be that. But you are no Sith.”

“You might once have said the same of Komari Vosa.”

No, Dooku realized, abruptly. Not in the way he was sure of Windu, now. “Komari was a child. She deserved my leniency no matter what she risked becoming. And when I trained her I was not the same man that I am now.” Windu said nothing, eyes fixed on the curved hilt of Dooku’s well-used blade. “Are you trying to keep the Sith out of this place?”

He nodded, never looking up. “It’s the only way I can be sure of my thoughts. I step out of here, and my mind becomes clouded, with visions and portents. If I sleep and let the shield fall, they return twice as strong. Death is coming, Dooku. So much death.”

Carefully, Dooku reached out and put a hand on Windu’s shoulder. He flinched, but didn’t move away. “Mace,” he said, gently. He’d always known he was older than the Master of Vaapad, but for the first time, he felt like it. “You said you knew they were on Coruscant, yes? Then you know I am not Sith. Drop whatever construction you have fashioned here. I can shield you.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. You can’t do this. They can’t know you know.”

Dooku’s heart ached for him. “Then you need to leave Coruscant. Give yourself a mission. Somewhere, anywhere but here.”

“The Sith is here.”

“And you will be of no use to anyone dead. There are still people you can trust. You can trust me, and Obi-Wan, and his padawan, Asajj. We are all here on Coruscant now, and we can all help you.” Who else in the order could be absolved? “You can trust those still on Serenno. Aayla and Jocasta, Quinlan and Anakin. And there are good people here. Adi. Yoda. Your Depa. Let us help you.” He paused, and thought of Anakin. Of his son who had the potential for all of the arrogance and loneliness Dooku and Mace had shared, yet had not allowed it to touch him. “There is great courage in stepping aside, and asking for help. I’ve never been good at it, myself, but I see that strength nonetheless.”

“Why,” whispered Windu, “do you think I approved the request for Obi-Wan to return to Coruscant?”

Oh. But of course he had. Mace Windu could be arrogant – Dooku could, too, and he was increasingly suspecting that his own pride had been a source of their mutual dislike as much as Mace’s had been – but he was never a fool.

“We will help. As much as we can. We shall find your Sith.” There was no other option.

He manhandled Windu to the couch, shoving flimsi aside. All this must have taught Windu this extreme shielding technique, but it was no help to him now.

“Is he a good man?” Windu asked, echoing Dooku’s question from earlier.

“Who?” Surely not the Sith.

Windu waved a hand vaguely. The other still contained Dooku’s lightsaber. “Skywalker. This… it all comes down to him, somehow, for some reason, and I have no idea why.”

Perhaps, Dooku would finally get the story of Mace Windu’s vendetta against a nine year old boy. He stopped, and waited to see.

“Qui-Gon thought he was the Chosen One, to bring balance to the force. But… he had no training, no emotional regulation. Everything about him marked him as unsuitable for training.”

“You must know that I disagree with that assessment.”

Unbothered, Windu continued, “Obi-Wan certainly wasn’t qualified to train him. But it was Qui-Gon’s dying wish, and the Council had such sentiment that they would have allowed him to be trained by a worm-sucker if Qui-Gon had asked it.”

“Adi told me once that you had a vision against Obi-Wan’s training him.”

Windu’s eyes shot up, filled with such distress. “I thought I did, Dooku. I thought I did, but it never felt quite right, and then after the start of the war, I began having them again, dark dreams, visions, always of death, and they never felt quite right, and I could hardly imagine why, until I realized–” He gestured to the whole room.

Until he realized that the Sith Master was here on Coruscant, getting inside his head. “They must have meant to see Anakin isolated, pulled away from the Order, made vulnerable.”

A brilliant plan. One that would have worked if not for Dooku’s rule-breaking, and his sentiment for Qui-Gon. If he had behaved as the code dictated, or if Obi-Wan had behaved as the code dictated, then Anakin would have been alone, betrayed by the Jedi, available to the Sith.

Only… until Anakin turned nine, he would have been vulnerable to them. Any truly powerful Sith would not have allowed the existence of the apprentice Obi-Wan had killed to hinder them from seeking another. Sith killed each other all the time, often expressly for the purpose of installing another apprentice, or removing themselves from the apprentice position and giving that position to a preselected acolyte. Dooku always thought that if he’d been a Sith, he would have breached the rule of two to try and protect himself from the master. It seemed best practice.

“The Sith was here on Coruscant when Anakin arrived. They must have been here at least that long, and in an elevated enough position to have either been close enough physically to sense his power, or had access to his midichlorian records, but those should have been sealed for medical confidentiality except to healers and the council.”

It didn’t eliminate everyone, but it did a good number of people. Any Jedi who’d been off on a mission at the time. Those who’d since been recalled from far-flung temples or postings like Rael. Any Senator elected in the last thirteen years.

Windu seemed to realize this as well; something about him relaxed. It was likely, Dooku realized, that he was so deprived of sleep and nutrition that even small leaps of logic, like the one Dooku had just made, had felt insurmountably high. Dooku knew that feeling. After Qui-Gon had died, everything had felt that way. Everything… until that one call by Obi-Wan had severed the haze, and Dooku had wrapped himself in light like armour. But of course, he had been vulnerable to the Sith, then. And Komari would have told her master as much. Perhaps, he had been a target of their machinations too, though he hoped not. One who could cast from Coruscant to Serenno would have been powerful indeed.

“Anakin is a good man,” Dooku said. “A far better man than I’ve ever been. He values every life, and loathes the idea of taking it. He is intelligent, and a deft hand with a blade, and he is brilliant in the force like the suns of Tatooine. For what it’s worth… I think he would forgive you for what happened when he came to the order. If you asked. I, certainly, am grateful beyond measure that I had the chance to know him. I do not know if he will bring balance to the Force – I am not sure I even believe in that prophecy in the way Qui-Gon did – but he is a good person. That is enough.”

Windu, worlds away, said, “the Sith gets into everything. How did I miss it for so long? How did we all miss it? Jedi were going missing, an army was being built right under our noses and we all missed it except for you and yours.”

And they’d seen it in just a way as to alienate them all from the Jedi order. Would a Sith have wanted that? Perhaps all their success had been part of some greater plan to divide them. Dooku hardly had time to consider those implications before the loudest sound he had ever heard shook the Jedi Temple to its foundations.

--

“You seem distracted.”

Anakin looked up from his salad at Cathaya. Without thinking about it, he’d managed to separate all of the ingredients into their own quadrants of the bowl, shadenuts into one section, lettuce into the next, and so on.

“I swear that I am not ignoring you in favour of salad.”

She rolled her eyes at him. Here, in the relative privacy of her apartment in Carannia, they had a more friendly, less formal demeanour than they had when they were together in public. Anakin, for all the years he’d been Dooku’s apprentice, was still able to pass through the streets of Carannia relatively unnoticed, but Cathaya, who would one day be the lady of this city in particular, could not. So, in public, they were polite and discrete to dissuade both rumours of impropriety and her father’s continued irrational hopes of some sort of political marriage between the two of them.

In truth, knowing Cathaya was something like what he imagined having a favoured cousin would be like. Anakin didn’t have any cousins. His mother had no siblings, he had no biological father, and Jenza’s only living sibling was Dooku, which meant Anakin himself was about the closest thing to a cousin that he had, in a four way tie with Rael, Qui-Gon and Komari.

He supposed, that if he ‘chose’ to never inherit in the way that seemed to be slowly creeping up on him, Cathaya might have a decent shot at becoming Count someday. He supposed the thought should have made him distrust her, but in truth, he couldn’t imagine that she wanted it. Everything about her suggested that she didn’t. Not a dereliction of duty, exactly. She would be a good Lady of Carannia, but more of a–

“Anakin.”

He forced himself to actually meet her eyes. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

“I was saying, you seem distracted. Are you alright? Because if you have somewhere else to be, this can certainly wait. With Count Dooku away, nobody would blame you for having additional responsibility.”

She had offered him an excuse on a silver platter. “No, it isn’t that and I should be paying better attention. You wanted to talk about publicly funded education, I believe?”

Cathaya set her own fork down with the careful politeness of someone who’d been raised to be deeply and consciously aware of how her every action was perceived.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you, first?”

He wanted to hide the vision, cradle his secret struggle close and let it stew. Some urge seemed to pull Anakin towards that course, but he summarily rejected it. There was no shame in nervousness for one’s future.

“I think I might have a destiny, and I have no idea what to do.” As she nodded slightly to show her attention, he elaborated, “Qui-Gon, one of Count Dooku’s former apprentices, who brought me to the Jedi, he believed that I was this figure from this ancient Jedi prophecy. Not everyone believes it, obviously, but I do meet a lot of the criteria, and I had this vision that seemed to be advising me that I had a choice to make about my destiny. It seemed to warn that people might die if I made the wrong one.”

“That sounds singularly unpleasant.”

Now that Anakin had begun, the words seemed to rush from his mouth like a river. “It’s so frustrating. I don’t think Dooku has ever really believed it, and I know my mother doesn’t, but Qui-Gon always seemed so brilliant to me as a kid. What if he was right? And the worst part is the contents of the prophecy. It says that I’m destined to ‘bring balance to the force’. What in all the Sith hells is that supposed to mean? The Jedi talk about it like it means destroying their enemies, but that isn’t what balance is, right? Balance is about equilibrium. How the hell am I supposed to be a Jedi or a Count or good partner or anything if I’m destined to have half a foot in the darkness?”

His voice had been steadily rising towards hysteria over the course of the rant, and Cathaya’s eyebrows along with it.

She folded her fingers together, resting her hands against the very edge of the wooden table. It was serennian pine, a soft dark coloured wood that was associated with Serennian traditional aesthetics as much as the Serennian emerald or the capes of House Serenno. It was uncommon to see genuine wooden tables on Serenno, though not as much as it would have been on Tatooine, but it was a sign that Cathaya was the heir of someone truly wealthy.

“May I be blunt with you?” At a nod from Anakin, she said, “that’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Go on.” It occured to Anakin that he didn’t spend nearly enough time with non-Jedi.

“It does not matter whether some ancient prophecy knows a single thing about you. Every person who ever did anything because they thought it was their destiny to do it has been terrible at their job. Fuck prophecies.”

“You seem more invested in this than I would have expected,” admitted Anakin.

Her eyes became fixed entirely on her hands. “I’ve known, my whole life, exactly what my father wanted for me. He has a set idea of everything that is acceptable and no room for me to choose my own fate. If Count Dooku wants something different for you–”

“He does,” Anakin said, with certainty.

“Then you’re a fool not to take that for the incredible gift that it is.”

“And what if he’s wrong like your father is wrong? He wants what he thinks is best for me, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a destiny to fulfil.”

“Then he’s wrong. But you don’t normally have to choose to fulfil your destiny. It happens whether you want it to or not.”

“And? What happens if I’m supposed to bring balance and I fail? What happens if by staying here and letting everyone I love go to Coruscant alone, I’m as good as signing their writ of execution?” He could see Dooku’s body slumping in the mirror, lifeless.

Cathaya said, “There’s a difference between destiny and duty. You can’t fail at destiny. You can fail at duty, by giving up the principles you chose to stand for. You picked Serenno. Now you have to stand by us. No matter what.”

“And? What’s going to happen here? We aren’t even in the war.”

Cathaya grimaced a little. “Don’t be arrogant. I have a bad feeling about that.”

Perhaps she was right. The opportunity to yell about it had certainly made Anakin feel better, even if he still didn’t believe Serenno was the best place for him to be. “You were saying something about education?”

Cathaya picked up her fork and launched into her rant.

--

The Force drew Obi-Wan to the window of Satine’s borrowed senate offices a moment before the bomb went off. He cut across the room in the middle of their conversation, pulled as if drawn by an invisible rope around his waist, and watched for half a second before the front of the Jedi temple was awash with flame, and a cloud of dust and smoke was rising into the evening sky. There was a wash of pain in the Force, like a heart attack, that left Obi-Wan doubled over and clutching his chest.

He evaluated his options in half a breath – stay with Satine, in case it was a trap or a diversion, leave her and run back down the stairs and try and steal a speeder – but Satine made the choice for him, grabbed his hand.

“Are you still half the daredevil you were when I knew you last?”

He shrugged. “Worse, if Dooku is to be believed.”

She gestured at the window before him. “Then let’s go.”

Understanding her meaning, he raised his hand, shattered the glass with the force, and together they jumped through it. It occurred to him, as they were falling, that Satine was quite mad to trust him with this. Still, as she held on, white knuckled, he found her confidence in him a source of strength. They landed, a moment later, in an unoccupied taxi, scaring the droid pilot so badly that he almost fell out.

“To the Jedi temple,” Obi-Wan told him urgently.

“Double pay if you get us there in half the time,” added Satine. The fall had disarrayed her hair rather dramatically, and she was pushing blonde strands out of her face as she spoke. It was a pointless endeavour. The droid whiled the speeder towards the temple so fast that the last semblances of order in the hair crumpled away and it streaked behind her like a cape.

They dodged between speeders, all fleeing the scene of the attack, and pulled up at the front of the temple to a horrifying scene. The roof of the main entryway had caved in, leaving a wall where the doorway should have been. The bomber had presumably been vaporized in the explosion, but a number of other bodies littered the ground outside the temple. Of them, Obi-Wan only knew one. Jedi Master Even Piell. He lay prone on the ground, with a braidless Togruta padawan leaning over him, keening. She seemed to be the only survivor of the blast.

“Obi-Wan!” Satine’s cry came just as the force alerted him. Whirling around, he caught Komari’s blade against his.

“Not who I was expecting,” she said, by way of greeting, “but I suppose you’ll do nicely.”

“Satine, go!” Behind Komari, she was already pulling a stack of credits from her pocket and shoving them at the driver, who took off back in the direction of the Senate.

Komari slashed at him with her second blade, sending Obi-Wan stumbling backwards across the rubble. She moved a little more slowly than during their last duel, favouring the leg Anakin had injured, but she made up for it with the awful pounding of death and darkness that besieged Obi-Wan in the force. There had been so much death here, almost all Jedi, and it made his spirit ache with vicarious pain. It was almost debilitating. He realized, as Komari forced him back towards the doors, that this was probably why the rest of the Temple hadn’t come. He’d been further away from the blast, and so less affected. It seemed somehow darker than the death merited. A more painful death than the explosion would have been, and a greater scope than the bodies Obi-Wan could see. As painful as if the entire order were gone.

“Do you like it?” Komari asked, almost playful, and her lightsaber tore through the edge of his brown robes.

Obi-Wan tried to call the force to his aid, but it only screamed at him.

He would have died, then, if not for the chunk of rock that hit Komari in the side of the head. The padawan was standing over Piell’s body, her entire body shaking. In her left hand, she held his lightsaber, glowing green. Her right hand held another piece of the broken temple entryway.

“Hey! Leave him alone.”

Force, Obi-Wan thought, someone is going to have to adopt this Padawan, immediately. She’s almost as mad as we are.

Komari ignored her, and turned back to Obi-Wan. In the moment of her distraction, he’d side stepped away from the fallen stones. As she tried to strike him, he darted forward as well, surprising her. Catching her lightsabers, he drove his knee into her injured leg. Komari yelled in fury. Another rock struck her in the side of the head.

Komari’s right lightsaber turned off, and she flashed it on, bringing it towards Obi-Wan’s chest.

“No!” Komari whirled around to block the padawan’s lightsaber, as the girl flung herself wildly at her. Their blades crashed together, one of Komari’s against the only one the girl had. Komari drew her second blade back for the killing blow. Obi-Wan, raising his own in turn, slashed through her wrist. Komari screamed, shoving them both backwards with a burst of raw darkness.

“Komari!” Dooku and Mace Windu must have come around the side of the temple, from another entrance. They were standing together, blades drawn, the two most powerful warriors in the Order. Komari, who was no fool, ran and threw herself off of the side of the building. Dooku made to follow her, but Windu stumbled over his own feet, and Dooku stopped to help him.

“We’re not dead,” the padawan said, voice shaken. “I thought we were going to die.” She collapsed to her knees, and Obi-Wan sat beside her, to offer the same companionable comfort he would have given Asajj.

“You’ll be okay,” he assured her, as Windu and Dooku, leaning on each other, reached them. With Komari gone, the terrible horror in the force, visceral and bloody, was beginning to fade.

“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he told her. “This is Count Dooku of Serenno.”

Dooku, slowly releasing his grip on Mace’s arm, knelt beside them. “She knows, Obi-Wan. We met earlier. I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano. I think I might throw up.”

Windu had a hand over his eyes, and didn’t look at them. Dooku, soothing, said, “that’s alright. You would hardly be the first Padawan to throw up after a fight. You did very well. I think the four of us – and Asajj, presumably – are the only Jedi on Coruscant who are conscious right now.”

That was a good point. “How in all the Sith hells did that happen?”

Dooku, reaching out to rub her shoulder comfortingly, turned to look at Obi-Wan. His face was streaked with drying tears, as evidence that he took had felt the surging pain in the Force. “I think,” he directed, ”that we would be better off discussing this in Master Windu’s rooms.”

Chapter Text

Asajj, Padmé, Jenza, Shmi, and Duchess Kryze all arrived, guard in tow, while Dooku was slotting the last of the fallen pieces of the temple back into place. Now that the darkness Komari had left in the force had abated for the most part, it was only the steady awfulness that always surrounded the death of Jedi. In other words, unpleasant but neither unusual nor unmanageable. Ahsoka, the padawan who had fought Komari, finally seemed to be feeling it. Mace, in an unusual display of tolerance, had allowed her to weep into his robes while Dooku lifted the rubble and Obi-Wan sealed the cracks from where it had fallen.

“Obi-Wan!” Asajj leapt from the still moving speeder to throw herself at him. “When Satine came back alone, we all thought-”

“You all apparently thought that coming here, where you knew for a fact someone who wants you dead lay in wait, was an excellent idea.” Dooku could have strangled them for their foolish risking of their own lives.

Padmé just shrugged, and helped Shmi gracefully from the speeder. “You needed help.”

She really was a perfect match for Anakin. They were both reckless, but hid it well by virtue of their noble training. Mace Windu openly stared at their merry band of politicians with blasters.

“I believe you haven’t met Asajj Ventress, Obi-Wan’s apprentice, or Skywalker Shmi, Anakin’s mother,” Dooku offered, diplomatically. At Windu’s continued uncertainty, he added, “all of them are clear. Alibied out.”

Jenza, Shmi, Asajj, and Kryze all couldn’t possibly have been on Coruscant at the of Anakin’s presentation to the council. Respectively, they’d been: watching her husband die in the Outer Rim, enslaved, trapped on Rattatak, and acting as duchess. Padmé had been there, but if she’d wanted Anakin away from the Jedi, she would only have had to say the word at any time in the last thirteen years and she would have created conflict in his soul. Fortunately, Anakin had a powerful ability, far greater than any of Dooku’s own: to fall in love with the right people. He thought it had come from Shmi.

“Amidala,” Windu began, but shook his head as if to clear it. “No. It makes no sense, if the attack on Naboo was part of the Sith plan.”

It was an interesting element of it to unpack, and one made much more interesting by the return of the encouraging press in the Force. “Your chambers, Councillor. I think we all have a great deal to discuss.”

Asajj, who was holding her teacher still so that she could use some of the healing she’d learned from Barriss on his wounds, let him go, and took Tano’s hand .

Together, they walked through the entrance hall, past where other Jedi, still looking delirious from whatever Komari had done to the Force, were beginning to gain their footing. Mace pulled one aside to give a whispered summary of events, before rejoining them. He seemed a little steadier than he had at the beginning of their time together. A combination, Dooku suspected, of an influx of adrenaline and the proximity of the crying padawan. Sometimes it was easier to release your emotions to the Force in the proximity of others who were doing the same. Windu was holding on to a great deal of fear. That was helping keep him alive, but it was also probably draining him, and he had little enough to give.

Dooku had been reliably informed that he had a habit of taking in strays. Once, the insinuation might have bothered him, but now he accepted it with a certain wry amusement. It was a habit, and one he had passed on to Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan. And, if their recent ball was any indication, to Anakin, who’d instantly sought out the guest who least wanted to be there. Come to think of it, Asajj was holding on to that younger padawan in a suspiciously concerned fashion, for two people who had just met. Four generations of people-gatherers.

The second they had settled in Windu’s room, Obi-Wan and the padawans reeling from the sudden and unexpected loss of the Force, they got down to business.

“There are two Sith on Coruscant,” Dooku said, to call the meeting to order. “One, we know. Komari Vosa, the apprentice. We need to know where she is, what she came here for, and what her next plan is.” He raised a second finger. “The other is a stranger. The master, hidden in the shadows. They’re physically here now, and, at minimum, were also physically here when Anakin was presented to the council thirteen years ago, and in the months following that. We need to know who they are, where they are, and what their plan is. Everyone, say what you know. Even little things that may seem insignificant, or obvious. I know that Komari Vosa came personally to the Jedi temple today.”

There was a moment of silence before Obi-Wan caught on to the sort of thing he was imagining. “She told me I wasn’t who she was expecting, but that I would ‘do nicely’.”

When nobody else said anything, Dooku added, “I know that the explosion left a more oppressive darkness in the force than it merited. I felt as though accessing it would have harmed me.”

Padawan Tano, who had curled herself onto an armchair with Asajj, said, “I saw the explosion. Vosa wasn’t there when it went off. There was a man, human, acting erratically, and the temple guard approached him, and Master Piell realized what was happening, and he threw the force up around me, and it didn’t hit me. I didn’t even feel everyone die, and-” She broke off. Asajj gave her a side-hug.

It explained why Tano had been conscious when the rest of the order had been knocked down. She had been saved at the cost of Even Piell’s life, because he had warning when the rest of the Order didn’t. Windu and Dooku himself were saved by Windu’s odd shielding, and Asajj and Obi-Wan saved by distance from the epicentre.

“How long was he your teacher?” Shmi asked, but Tano shook her head in response.

“He wasn’t. We hadn’t even worked together before. We only met yesterday. I don’t understand why he did that. I’m not even on track to become a Jedi.”

Obi-Wan and Dooku exchanged a silent glance. If they’d had access to the Force, they would have discussed the fact that they had both reached the same conclusion. This padawan had potential, and she needed them. But technically, both of them already had apprentices. Anakin hadn’t ever faced an official trial, even if he and Dooku both agreed that his performance on Geonosis more than qualified him for knighthood. He wondered if Anakin would take offence to his taking another student on. Probably not.

Windu saved either of them from having to commit to anything by saying, “Tano, depending on what the Sith plan was, you may have just saved the entire Jedi Order. A teacher will be found for you.”

Tano nodded, but she didn’t seem happy. Back to business, Padmé said, “we know Vosa has attacked the Senate three times, all the with same M-O as this attack, except that she’s never appeared in person before.”

“We know one of them sent an assassin after me, yesterday.”

And like that, they were off, making real progress. Windu explained his visions, Dooku his deductions about where the Sith Master had to be and when. Padmé talked about the clones, and Asajj discussed what she and Anakin had learned from slicing into various Trade Federation databases over the years, how they genuinely seemed to believe that they were only working with Komari, for their own interest. Intriguingly, the first mentions of her in their records seemed to slightly predate the Naboo Affair, and the death of the first Sith Apprentice there.

“If meeting Anakin changed the Sith Master’s plan,” Jenza said, with rising excitement, “then we should assume that his apprentice’s presence on Naboo was also meant to benefit him in some unrelated way. Who benefitted – or stood to benefit – from that conflict?”

They all turned to Padmé. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, and then started as a heavy pounding came at the door.

--

Obi-Wan’s hand automatically went to his lightsaber, a nervous dread filling his bones.

“Open up!” A clone, but not one who voice he recognized. With a sigh, Master Windu went to the door. It had been a shock, to feel the terrible thing he’d done to the Force in this place. It felt… emptied out, somehow. Wrong. But it was, apparently, the best sort of protection from the Sith. Obi-Wan could believe that. The wrongness of this room at least alleviated the oppressive darkness of Coruscant. Even before Komari’s actions, the capital had seemed… at an angle from the rest of the universe. It wasn’t how he remembered it from childhood, but returning after so long on Serenno, it seemed to be true now. In fact, he’d first noticed it three years ago, when they had come here after Geonosis. That, he reflected, might be more evidence that the Sith Master had been on Coruscant at the time, confirmation that Komari had been unsupervised in her beginning of the war.

“What can I do for you, Captain…”

“Bareknuckle, Sir. Here.” He passed a datapad to Windu, who furrowed his brow at it.

“On what charges?”

“Conspiracy and terrorism, Sir. Vosa arrived on Coruscant in a transport of Serennian emeralds.”

Force, fripping, kriffing Force. Dooku drew himself up to his full height, and went to loom at Windu’s shoulder.

“I think you will find,” he said, archly, “that the Serennian government has control over the arrest of Serennian diplomatic personnel. Either the Count, the Senators, or the Parliament, would need to approve these warrants. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I certainly haven’t.”

Jenza joined him. She wasn’t as tall as her brother or Windu, but she shared their ability to have a calm authority that was utterly unquestionable. “I haven’t, either. In fact,” she added, examining the document closely, “these were issued in the last hour. My office has been closed since the attack on the Temple commenced. As, I believe, has that of my co-Senator, who is on pre-natal leave and therefore certainly cannot have approved this fraud of a document. Your best – only – evidence is that a transport vehicle, which would have come into contact with none of the people your warrant is listed for, happened to come from our planet. This is outrageous.”

“Sir,” the clone said to Windu, unperturbed, “it would be better if you turned our suspects in for questioning.”

Windu scanned quickly through the document again. “As I believe Count Dooku has just informed you, your document is invalid. You don’t have the jurisdiction to take him, the Senator, or her staff into custody.”

The clone took his datapad back, and pointed to something on the list. “These two aren’t Senatorial staff, or the Count of Serenno.”

Icily, Dooku snapped, “Padawan Ventress is under the legal age of majority on her planet of origin. That makes her guardian, in this case me, her proxy. If you want to take her into custody, you’ll need that warrant updated to reflect her diplomatic status.”

As far as Obi-Wan knew, Ventress was, in fact, of age for a Dathomiri. For most people, except Serennians, who aged slowly. But that was a useful loophole, and if it protected his padawan, he didn’t care how dubious it was. That meant that everyone was safe for now, except one person.

“I assume,” he said, “that you’ll be taking me into custody now.”

As they cuffed his hands, Dooku placed a hand on his shoulder, in silent promise. Obi-Wan would be vindicated, or he would be avenged.

“Where should we send his advocate?” Jenza asked. Obi-Wan had no doubt she knew a dozen on Coruscant, at the least. All of them probably middle-aged or elderly women who were or had once been very attractive, and were to the last of them exceedingly competent. The Senator drew a certain type of person.

“No avocate,” the clone captain said. “He’ll be testifying before the Senate, not a Court of Law.”

“Now that is a travesty!” Dooku scoffed, but they’d dragged Obi-Wan away before he could subject them to an hour long rant on the subject.

--

Anakin convened the meeting fifteen minutes after he heard from Dooku and Jenza. In the intervening time, he followed their instructions to the letter, much as he misliked them. In Dooku’s office, he found the duplicate copy of the Palace Key, a small piece of plastisteel containing a microchip that could open any door in the building. With that in his pocket, he went to the family wing of the palace, and into one of the few increasingly rare unoccupied quarters.

The reasons for its emptiness had been evident the second Anakin entered. Dooku had left his brother’s childhood bedroom untouched. A thick layer of dust coated everything. But just where Dooku said, he found a box in the cupboard, with the clover sigil of House Serenno embossed on it.

Dooku had always worn the traditional cape of the Count in such an understated way that most non-Serennians assumed it was a personal substitution for the Jedi tradition of wearing robes. To Dooku, Anakin suspected, it was that. But it was also a tradition, an ancient one, followed by Dooku’s ancestors for millenia. This was the reason that Jenza always wore a half-cape, in deference to her position as Dooku’s heir. At least, she had until now.

Anakin had to shatter the lock with the force, since Ramil’s passcodes had long since been lost to the shifting currents of time. True to Dooku’s word, he opened it to find a half-cape, fitted for a man of about Anakin’s stature, with a fine silver chain that fastened at the neck. Unlike Jenza’s variant on the same, which was usually red, Ramil’s heir-cape was a dark green, like the forests of Serenno. A single emerald was set into the silver clasp, the diameter of the nail on Anakin’s ring finger, and around it was a ring of diamonds. Ramil had, by popular consensus, been ostentatious and wasteful in his wealth.

It was a garment Anakin never would have chosen for himself, but it was one he needed, now.

Dooku’s words from minutes earlier rang in his ears as he fastened the garment around his neck. “It is not given to House Serenno to choose the next Count,” he had said, “only our people may choose that. But it is given to us to put forth whichever of our members we see as best suited for that position. As the head of House Serenno, and your father, I choose you, Skywalker Anakin. You are owed many titles. Skywalker. Knight. Jedi. But from now on, I name you Heir Anakin, of House Serenno. Serve your duty well.”

Jenza, witnessing the ceremony, had bowed her head in silence. Then they had told Anakin where to find this garment, and his hunt had begun.

He tapped at his comlink, feeling sick to the stomach with anxiety. “Quinlan,” he said, “I know you’re training, but I need you to gather everyone and come to Dooku’s office. Now, please.”

Sitting behind this desk, Dooku always looked regal, confident and calm. Anakin felt like a child trying on his father’s clothes, even as their few resident Jedi filed in and closed the door behind them. Barriss, Aayla, Quinlan, and Jocasta.

Anakin blinked. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Gone offworld,” Master Nu explained. “There was a distress call picked up from Toprawa. Droid attack. There’s no Temple Jedi in this sector at the moment, so we sent everyone we could.”

Of course they had. But that left the question, “why are you all still here?”

Quinlan shifted, slightly. “There was… the identified possibility that this might be a diversion, or a trap. If not from Toprawa than by Komari. You know as well as I do that she’d like nothing more than to see you dead.”

Oh. Good point. “Well, I’m grateful to have all of you, although you may not be grateful to have me. I bring bad news.”

Jocasta’s eyes widened as she seemed to take in his new dress. “Is Senator Jenza?”

Oh. Of course. “No. She’s alive, as is Count Dooku. For now. However, someone as yet unknown is framing them – or, rather, framing Serenno – for Komari Vosa’s attack on the Jedi Temple. Allegedly Vosa came to Coruscant aboard a Serennian transport. Several Jedi were killed, including Even Piell. In the interest of protecting Serenno in the event this progresses further, I have taken Jenza’s place as the heir. If they are killed…” Somehow it was difficult to breathe. He stuttered nervously in a way he hadn’t while public speaking in years. “If th- uh- If they are charged or killed, then I will be Count, pending approval by the nobility.”

There was a moment of stillness, as everyone came to understand the gravity of the situation. “And you trust us?” Quinlan asked, after a moment, “knowing that someone on Serenno may have aided Komari?”

“Senator Jenza raised that very point. However…” Anakin scanned the room. In some ways, with their decreased numbers, this was far easier. “Jedi Windu and Dooku are both confident that the Sith Master is currently on Coruscant. Obviously, none of you are. While you might be acolytes of Komari’s, or even other competitors for the status of apprentice, I must have faith in my own instincts.” He thought, perhaps hubristically, that the force would have warned him if he had stood in the presence of a Sith Master. Somehow, there would have been some sign. “I trust all of you. Jocasta, you’ve been a friend to Dooku for longer than the rest of us have been alive. Quinlan, Aayla, you saved my life on Geonosis, and you gave up the potential for power within the so-called Grand Army of the Republic to be here with us. That is not the choice of a Sith.”

He looked at Barriss Offee. She shifted nervously under his eyes. Anakin knew that she had struggled with the darkness. Perhaps that should have made him fear her. But he remembered Dooku on Geonosis, quaking with the terrible power Komari had forced him to draw on, and Anakin felt a surge of compassion for her. So many of them could have fallen, had things turned out different. Anakin was sure he could have. If his vision was right, that darkness might still exist within him. How could he fear Barriss, or exclude her? Barriss had come to them in need. It was not within the nature of the Sith to ask for help.

“And Barriss… you find this hard. I know you do. But the fact that you came here and chose to help people, that you question the code not out of ambition but out of a desire to do good, tells me everything I need to know about you. I trust you.

“The Sith grow stronger by making us afraid. I will not allow them to make me afraid of you.”

There was a moment of calm. Then Quinlan said, “very well put, Heir Skywalker. Now, what do they on Coruscant need from us?”

So Anakin filled them in on the situation, as Dooku had for him, about Komari’s attack on the temple, and the potential of the Sith Lord to be either a Senator or a Jedi. They listened carefully to him, and as he spoke, the weight of the cloak seemed to lessen some, and he felt more sure of himself. He told them of the attempted arrest of their friends, and the successful arrest of Obi-Wan. And then, to close, he reminded them of the danger now faced not just by Obi-Wan, Asajj and Dooku, but also by their colleagues in the Senate, and by Duchess Kryze, whose presence was absolutely necessary to free the clones from the GAR. He thought it was no accident that her guard had been removed, although Dooku had assured him that Windu would see to it that the Duchess was safe.

“I’m open to hearing theories, options, anything.”

“I don’t like this,” Barriss said, a sentiment which everyone could agree with. “Why would Komari go to Coruscant herself? What does she think she can accomplish there?”

“That’s a very good question,” Quinlan told her, with an encouraging smile.

It was… up in the air, which of them would officially become Barriss’s teacher. She was already past any of their skill in healing, and had no desire to learn more about swinging a lightsaber. Frankly, even the idea of ‘knighthood’ and ‘mastery’ were up in the air, in their New Order, or whatever they were. Anakin was fairly certain that everyone had simply started treating him like a knight one day, without ever saying as much. Whatever the case, he was sure that there were a good number of competitors to take Barriss as an apprentice, Quinlan not the least of them.

His words seemed to give Barriss the encouragement she needed to begin spitballing. “If Komari went to Coruscant, then either her Master wanted her there, and they have some plan involving her presence, or they didn’t, and she’s planning to betray them.”

“Good, Padawan.”

Aayla picked up the thread where she’d left off. “I say with permission. It’s too high-risk, going to Coruscant. If she chose it for herself, trying to kill them, then it was a stupid choice. All she has to do to kill her Master is tell their name to the Jedi Council, and Mace Windu will slice them into bits.”

“There is always the possibility,” Quinlan said, “that the Sith Master intends the risk to Komari’s life to be fulfilled. She has power over them. If she were killed, they could select another apprentice.”

That raised an interesting question. “The rule is that there are always two, isn’t it? Does that mean that when the apprentice dies, another has to be appointed instantly? Does the Sith Master have to have candidates in the wings?”

They all turned to Jocasta. She was the one most liable to know. Resting her hands delicately on her cane, she said in a professorial tone, “not necessarily. It has been practiced for Sith lords and apprentices both to take acolytes under their wing. Dooku was always interested in the ways that practice could lead to the accumulation of dark armies. But I’m sure that if I did the math, you would learn one simple fact: the two people most likely to ascend to the position of apprentice are an acolyte who helps the apprentice kill the master, and whoever kills the apprentice.”

“Well,” said Quinlan, with a faint amusement, “I suppose we should all be glad Obi-Wan didn’t chose that path.”

No, he hadn’t. Not even close. “So then, if the senior sith has an acolyte, they might already have plans for Komari’s death. Another apprentice waiting in the wings. Maul’s death might even have been orchestrated to allow Komari to take his place.”

“No. Komari was never meant for this.” Jocasta said, and offered no justification of her knowledge. Such was her ability in the force. Sometimes, it told her truths that she could not possibly have known.

Aayla had her eyes fixed out on the forest, staring into the distance as she concentrated. “That certainly seems to suggest that Komari would be expendable to her master. That might mean either he wants her dead, or she wants him dead, if she knows that he would be willing to give her up in place of another, stronger apprentice.”

A sudden memory arose in Anakin. “Komari was mentioned in trade federation records before the Siege of Naboo. Maybe the Sith chose her after missing out on someone else because they knew her from then, just like Dooku thinks the Sith tried to choose me after meeting me then. Maybe Komari is meant to be a stopgap until they can get to me.”

Everyone Anakin loved in this world was on Coruscant. Padmé and Dooku, Mom and Obi-Wan. Even Auntie Jenza and Asajj. No doubt, the others could see the horror on his face.

One of the advantages of being in the Count’s office was that Dooku had a direct diplomatic line to the Senator’s office on Coruscant. Anakin fumbled with the device in his haste to place a call. But as soon as he punched in Jenza’s Ident, it buzzed discordantly to indicate that there was insufficient signal.

“How the kriff does the most important room on the planet have insufficient signal?”

As if summoned, Dooku’s secretary burst into the office. “Skywalker! Three unidentified battle cruisers have just jumped into orbit. They’re blocking transmissions offworld. Parliament and the Noble Council have both called emergency sessions. They all want to speak to the Count.”

Anakin wanted much the same. His heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest, and the darkness of the force seemed to wrap around him like a cloud of smoke, stealing away his breath and filling his lungs with poison.

Quinlan’s hand came down on his shoulder before he could panic, or scream, or break the window and jump out, or do something else ill-advised. “Heir Anakin,” he said, voice firm but gentle, “Aayla and I have a ship here. A small transport vessel. We can go up near the poles, where the electromagnetic currents will make it difficult for their sensors to notice us. We’ll sneak past them, warn the Coruscant crowd of what’s happening, and see if we can identify these unidentified ships.”

It was a brilliant plan. There was a reason Quinlan was one of Obi-Wan’s favourite Jedi. He was smart, if a bit mischievous. “I’m coming with you. I need to talk to Dooku myself.”

Jocasta raised a single curved eyebrow. “And the Council and the Parliament, Heir Anakin?”

Dooku wouldn’t have paid them any mind, either. “They’ll have my attention when I can bring them information of what we’re dealing with, exactly. In the meantime, I want you to brief them on the situation. Not… what is happening with me, but the attack on the Temple, the signal about the droid attack on Toprawa. Barriss… scramble any healers we have among the refugees, and begin preparing for possible wounded.” He was forgetting something. Something important. The force swirled around the key in his pocket, reminding him. “Secretary Avan, please take this. There is a bunker under the Castle dating back to the Four Branches period. See if it’s fit for sentient habitation, and if so, begin preparation to fit as many people as possible. Children and their caregivers first, please.”

He nodded seriously, and then, seeming to consider, bowed to Anakin. “Yes, Heir Anakin.”

It felt surreal to be called that by a civilian. Unnatural. He turned to Quinlan. “Lead the way, Jedi Vos.”

Chapter Text

In spite of what the clones had told Dooku about his questioning by the Senate, Obi-Wan was fairly certain he had been entitled to some kind of advocate. Not least because, upon his arrest, he was questioned by investigators assigned to the Senate Guard. It took them almost an hour to give up when Obi-Wan refused to speak to them other than to profess his innocence and ask for a drink of water. He thought they would have questioned him for longer, had something outside his knowledge not interrupted them. So, instead, he was taken to a cell, and left with a single guard, also a clone.

It would have been moronic, to leave a Jedi almost unguarded, except, “why in all the Sith hells does the Senate have Force-inhibiting cuffs, anyways?” They’d put them on him only after the interrogation, not in front of Dooku and the others. Maybe to lull him into a false sense of security.

“Not my job,” the guard muttered, so low Obi-Wan thought he wasn’t supposed to hear it.

He’d met clones before, of course. Him, Aayla and Quinlan regularly went to recent battlefields to provide aid, and often arrived before the GAR had officially left. They met living clones, and, on more than a few occasions, had helped retrieve and bury their bodies after the living had been forced to move on to another battle. But he’d never had a real one-on-one conversation before.

“What’s your name, trooper?”

“CT-2224, General.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Jedi, maybe, but no general. I’ve never commanded anything in my life, unless you count my apprentice, and she’s not known for her tendency to take orders.” He wondered how Asajj was coping, now that their bond had been interrupted by the cuffs. “Do you have a personal name? I mean, if you don’t find it rude to ask.”

Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he caught a glimmer of amusement in his voice. “Not rude, no. And it’s Cody.”

Obi-Wan had to fight to hide a smile at the wonderful normalcy of that name. “Pleased to meet you, Cody. I’d like it if you would call me Obi-Wan.”

There was a pause, where Cody seemed to consider the proposition, “well, I suppose I can’t call you General, can I?”

“I suppose not.”

Obi-Wan, who had a terrible suspicion that he was going to be stuck here for a while, decided to at least try and make it worth his time. “Can I ask you something?”

“Well, I can’t stop you from asking.”

He seemed… a little playful, maybe. This was banter, not just rudeness. “Well, if you deign to answer, Trooper Cody, I’d very much like to know who, exactly, gave the orders for me to be brought here.”

“I get my orders from Commander Fox.”

Another clone, presumably. “Sure, but where does he get his orders from? I know the Jedi didn’t have me arrested, since Master Windu didn’t know anything about it. And if the Senate had convened to do it, Padmé or Senator Jenza would have known, and they didn’t either.”

There was a silence, as if Cody was debating whether he should answer. Obi-Wan encouraged him, “it can hardly be a secret. I’m just new to Coruscant. I admit total ignorance about how any of this works. I thought that everyone reported directly to the Jedi Generals.”

“Fair enough. I was surprised too, after my first assignment here, but with Vosa striking at the Senate directly, we were needed here. The Chancellor gives us our orders, usually. His office sets the schedules for patrols and all.”

The Chancellor had direct control over a small private army. Obi-Wan wasn’t by any means a political expert, not the way Dooku and Anakin were, but even he could notice that wasn’t by any means normal.

“Does everyone know about that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Cody asked, with understandable confusion.

And of course, why wouldn’t they? The Council had probably approved it as an alternative to assigning a full Jedi guard to the Senate, which the Chancellor had been refusing for months. But why had the Chancellor declined a Jedi guard, but accepted a personal army of clones? No wonder Padmé and Jenza kept running into bureaucratic walls. The Chancellor was deriving personal power from the continued exploitation of clones, in addition to the political power he derived from the continuation of the war.

“True enough,” he said, although he had a sneaking suspicion that Padmé and Jenza, at the very least, had no idea. When he got out of here, he was going to have to tell them as much. “‘So, Senate Guard. Do you ever actually work with the Senators, or is it all… holding cells and allegedly-treasonous Jedi?”

Cody shrugged, evident even in the armour. He was leaning up against the wall across from Obi-Wan’s cell, now, almost lazily. He seemed relaxed by the flow of their conversation.

“A bit of this, a bit of that. A lot of patrols and checking people’s bags as they enter the Senate building. Sometimes we get assigned to Senators who are travelling, but I’ve only done that once, with Riyo Chuchi.”

The name was familiar, from all Satine’s ranting yesterday about various senators, but Obi-Wan couldn’t remember if Chuchi was one of the bad ones or one of the good ones.

“Do you like it? The Senate, I mean. The work must be very different from what you trained for.”

In truth, Obi-Wan had no idea how the clones had been trained, save for Anakin and Padmé’s description of the cloning facilities on Kamino, but Cody had no way of knowing that.

“Oh, it’s different, certainly. I had been in training for command, actually, but there weren’t enough Jedi for my assumption of a command post to be necessary.”

Obi-Wan didn’t wince at that, but it was a near thing. He rarely doubted his decision to take a pacifist’s stance on the war, but sometimes, he lay awake at night and wondered if he could have helped more people by choosing to fight. He wondered what Qui-Gon would have chosen in his position. After all, even other Jedi who normally ignored the council, like Dooku’s padawan Rael, had returned to follow them for the war. They on Serenno were a minority, but not, as Cody’s testimony showed, an insignificant one. Obi-Wan’s presence might have allowed this man to fulfil his destiny. Or it might have gotten him killed on the front lines of a war he’d never freely agreed to fight in.

“Do you enjoy the Senate?”

“I enjoy the senators,” Cody said, after a moment’s thought. “Some of them are a bit shit, but not all of them. I like Chuchi, and her crowd. Organa, Mothma.”

Those two, Obi-Wan was certain, were allies of Padmé’s, although they had their own voting block distinct from hers and Jenza’s. This provided Obi-Wan the opportunity to get to the question he’d wanted all along. “You’ve met Jenza and Amidala, then?”

The silence stretched uncomfortably long. Obi-Wan almost told him that he didn’t have to answer the question, until Cody finally murmured, “I have. I can’t say more than that, really. They’re good people.”

“Keep your secrets,” Obi-Wan said, aiming for a playful tone he couldn’t quite capture. He knew that certain clones had provided anonymous testimonials for Padmé. Satine had been reading over them, looking for pieces she could use in convincing her allies on Mandalore that this was a worthy cause that would not undermine their pursuit of peace at home. Perhaps, he’d found the source of one.

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.”

--

Aayla took them up over the poles. She was a good enough pilot to navigate easily, even within the protection of the atmosphere, and Anakin was far too nervous to do the flying himself. Instead, he rehearsed over and over in his mind what needed to be said. Their deductions about Komari were important, of course, and the invasion, but so too was Anakin’s vision, or nightmare, or whatever it was. And so too was Jocasta’s warning. He needed to say goodbye, even though he wanted nothing less.

“Skywalker,” Aayla said, “we’ll be in a position to make your call securely in about five minutes. You’ll have to do it in front of Quinlan or I in the pilot’s seat, for safety reasons. Do you have a preference?”

They were good people. Anakin had to remember that, even if he wanted to have Dooku and Obi-Wan here in their places more than anything.

“You can both stay. I… well, you both overheard the most private conversation Dooku and I ever had, didn’t you?”

Aayla shot him a sly smile. “As you like it.”

They rose through the atmosphere, and into empty space. From here, Anakin could clearly see two of the three ships surrounding the planet.

“Those look like Republic cruisers.”

Quinlan, leaning forward over Aayla’s shoulder, nodded his agreement. “I see one Venator-class, and one Acclamator-class. The third…” his eyes slipped closed, and Anakin knew he was trying to glean some information from the force. Quinlan, in addition to his remarkable gift of psychometry, had a great number of skills in the force that were useful for intelligence gathering. Nobody had ever said he was a spy in as many words, but it was not difficult to deduce. “By population, I would guess a second Acclamator. Acclamators are ground-assault vessels. As a result, they’re more densely packed. Less room needed for hangers, more for living quarters.”

“That is not a good sign for Serenno.” Ground assault. Force preserve them.

“Unequivocally not. And worse… I sense living minds, not droids, but I do not sense any Jedi.”

Very, very bad.

Aayla shut off almost all their power, save for life support and communications, and let them drift slowly in the embrace of Serenno’s gravity. “You’re clear to make the call.”

Quinlan’s hand touched down on Anakin’s shoulder, for a second, gentle along the velvet of the cape. “I can do the debrief, if you want. Leave the feelings to you.”

“No. I need to do this.”

Leaning over the console, he considered a moment, before inputting not Dooku’s Ident, nor Jenza’s, but instead, his mother’s. This way, if their attackers somehow did have a way of noticing their transmission, or identifying its point of arrival, it would seem more like a personal call than a political one.

She answered instantly, as Anakin had known she would. “Aayla? Is something wrong?” Then she realized who she was speaking to. “Ani? Same question.”

He couldn’t help but smile at that. “So much, Mom. Are Dooku and Jenza there?”

She fidgeted with her comm for a moment, before their holos appeared beside her, looking worn, but very much alive. “We’re back in the Senate offices, now. Preparing for Obi-Wan’s questioning. Padmé and Satine have gone to brief the other senators. Asajj is remaining with the Jedi, for now. I believe she’ll be bringing Adi Gallia to join us later.”

Good. That was good. They were all as safe as they could be, given the circumstance. “We’re under attack. Most of the Jedi were drawn away by a diversion. There are three cruisers in orbit, Republic models. They haven’t contacted us. They’re blocking communications from the surface. Fortunately, Aayla and Quinlan have more than a few tricks up their sleeves.”

Anakin could see fear in the faces of all of them. Somehow, seeing them so terrified made him feel calm, as if the justification of his own anxiety washed it away.

“We think that it’s intentional. That the Sith wants us to be separated and afraid. We think Komari was never really meant to be the apprentice. She’s a stop-gap, for someone more powerful, someone who has the signs of falling, but hasn’t.” Anakin let his words settle, for a little dramatic flare. “You, or me. I think that we were meant to be separated. That the reason for the ridiculous and continual attacks on the Senate, always when Jenza or Padmé were there, was to draw us in. To scare us. I think Komari being called to Coruscant the second you arrived is intentional. She’s supposed to die there and one of us is supposed to fall.”

Jenza covered her mouth with one hand, as if trying to keep herself from interrupting. After so many years, it was strange to see her without her cape.

“I agree,” Dooku asserted, deathly calm. Anakin knew him well enough to know that he was trying to be steady for them. “I will be in touch with Mace about sending a Jedi force to relieve you on Serenno. And… I swear to you, Anakin. No matter what happens, from here on out, this Sith will not have me.”

But they could still hurt him. Could kill him. Dooku had almost fallen three years ago when Anakin had been injured. What would he do if Anakin died? What would Anakin do if the Sith killed Dooku, or Padmé, or his mom.

“I need to tell you,” said Anakin, dulling his tone to prevent the words from cutting him, “about a vision I had.”

He described the things he’d seen. The mirror, their Sith counterparts, Dooku’s death.

“Ani,” Mom said, when he was done. There was a teariness to her expression. “I’m sorry you had to see that. But if what Windu told us is true, then the Sith has the power to give people visions. They would want you to be afraid of losing those you love, I am sure.”

They would. Any Sith worth their salt would, but, “how can I know whether or not it was a true vision?”

They looked to Dooku, as the highest authority among them. His expression was grim. “You can never know that, Anakin. But you can choose what to do with what you have. I would rather die than become a Sith. I heard your vision, and was petrified not by the thought of my death, but by the thought of my falling. It has told me something, no matter its intent. I know more about myself than I did before.”

But nobody ever really wanted to fall. That was the trouble. People wanted the power, wanted their loved ones to be safe. Anakin knew that as well as anyone. They wanted to be safe and to be free. He doubted that Komari becoming a Sith after being subjected to torture and captivity by the Bando Gora was an accident. What better way to guarantee never being a prisoner again than to be the person who keeps the prisoners? If Anakin hadn’t had the people he had to protect him, he might have turned out just the same.

“Anakin,” Jenza murmured, “I may not be an expert, but I know what it is to feel as though destiny is playing you like a marching drum.” And of course she had. She was always the heir, never the Count. “You say the vision, or dream, wanted you to choose… so choose, Anakin. And remember, sometimes both or neither are options. Being a Senator was a ‘neither’ option. Look how that turned out.”

A thought seemed to make Dooku smile. “And you were a ‘both’ option,” he said, and managed to make direct eye contact with Anakin even through the holoprojector.

Anakin wished he could give him a hug. “You’re both right. Thank you.”

Just one more thing, then. The hardest thing. “I love all of you, you know. Padmé and Obi-Wan too. Will you tell them? Oh, and Asajj, that villain.”

They all nodded. Mom reached up to clasp Jenza’s hand in her own. “We’re all very proud of you, Ani.”

Dooku coughed. “Might Anakin and I have a moment of… relative privacy?”

Quinlan slipped silently out the back of the cockpit. Mom passed her comm to Dooku, and, with a final, “I love you, Ani,” she and Jenza both left.

Anakin’s heart twisted, uncomfortably. Dooku winced, raised a hand slightly as if to brush something off of his shoulder, and then stopped.

“This is it, huh?” Anakin said. The force around him had a certain finality to it. Anakin knew, the same way he could place his hands on a keypad and know the password, and the way he knew that if he took the controls from Aayla, he could fly this ship through an asteroid belt without so much as a scratch. He knew that something massive and terrible way about to happen. They would never meet again as the same men.

Dooku bowed his head, solemnly. “I suspect as much, yes. One way or the other.”

“Did you know, before you left for Coruscant?”

“I only knew when you said it in as many words.”

It was always a surprise, when he knew more than Dooku. Even if Anakin could recognize on an objective level that his Midichlorian counts were off the charts, it never felt that way. “What did you want to talk about, then?”

Dooku shifted in his place. “I… had a sense that you were upset. I thought I might be able to help.”

Force. “You did. You have. You always have.” There was so much he wanted to say, and so little time. Aayla, beside him, was pointedly staring at the cruisers in the distance. As they drifted, they turned slightly so that the form of the third cruiser was visible. Quinlan had been right about its nature. “Dooku, I’m supposed to be the Chosen One, what in all the Sith hells am I doing out here, when the Sith is on Coruscant? I should be there. You need me.”

“Serenno needs you, too.”

That didn’t really help any. “Yes, but you could help Serenno. Aayla and Quinlan are more of a help in facing… whatever this is, than I am. I’m supposed to face the Sith. It’s everything you ever trained me for.”

“If you think what I trained you for was to face the Sith,” Dooku noted, mildly, although Anakin could sense a slight hurt behind his disinterested expression, “then I have to ask if you were really paying attention.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But it seems… wrong, somehow, for this to come to a head with us worlds away. I swore to protect Serenno, and I will, but I wonder if Serenno would not be in danger if I had come with you. If I am not there, I worry it will not end, that the Sith will kill you and it won’t end.”

That won him a look of sharp pity. “Anakin… I will try to live. I promise you that. You know I love you and Jenza and Jocasta all far too much to do otherwise. And no matter what happens to me… I will do all I can to protect our family.”

It helped to hear it, even if he already knew. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I know.” He seemed to choose the next words carefully. “Anakin… I know Qui-Gon always put a great deal of stock into the prophecy, but these things are rarely so simple. It is possible that you are only a remarkably powerful Jedi. I am sure Yoda was considered much the same, when he was your age. Or, well, a few decades older, but still about your age. Or you might be destined to fulfil a prophecy, but prophecies are strange and unreliable at best. You may have already done what you need to do. You may do it when you have lived a hundred years and I am long gone to my pyre. You may do it in the next few days, there on Serenno. I don’t know. But I do know that you are a good Jedi, and a good man, and you will be a brilliant Count, if you only trust yourself, and trust our family.”

Anakin found that he couldn’t cry, and hated it. Perhaps if he cried, Dooku would know how much his words meant. Aayla Secura, despite all her pretence at not eavesdropping, had reached up to wipe tears away on the back of her hand.

“You know… for all the dubious circumstances of my conception, you are my father. You have been for thirteen years. From the second I set foot on Serenno, you gave me trust, and love, and I can never thank you enough for that.”

“Nor should you. Like any other child, you never need to thank me for any of those things. They are yours unconditionally.”

There was the chime of a door, on Dooku’s end of the call, and he looked past the holotransmitter to ask, “is it time?”

“No,” Jenza’s voice came, sounding impossibly weary, “it’s something else.”

Dooku looked back to Anakin. “Know that whatever happens today, I love you very much.”

“I love you too.”

They’d drifted around to face directly down at the pole, and as Dooku’s form vanished, Anakin watched the green of the aurora dance. He’d seen it from the ground, once, visiting a polar research station with Jaila for school, but he didn’t think it had made him feel awe then the way it did now. Auroras were… something to do with magnetism and solar radiation and the atmosphere, he though, but in this moment it looked like it was rippling off of a forcefield protecting Serenno, a natural thing, and Anakin felt unbearably small in the face of the universe, of what he was about to lose.

A hand pressed a small square of cloth into his, and he glanced up to see Aayla looking at him. She’d given him a handkerchief.

“I know the code says I shouldn’t be attached,” he said, “but I don’t want to lose him.”

“I think,” she told him, “that isn’t what attachment means. If anyone says they’re alright with losing their teachers or apprentices, then they’re all a pack of liars. The difference is here, in what you chose to do with it.”

“I choose,” Anakin said, voice rough to his own ears, “to save his planet. My planet. After everything, it’s the least I can do.”

--

“What is it that you were trying to avoid Anakin hearing about?”

Jenza winced at the way his words had been sharpened by premature grief. “That was Asajj. She thinks she has a lead on Komari. Komari’s slicer, whoever they are, is good. They’ve been erasing her from security feeds while she passes through the lower city. If you weren’t looking for it, it would seem coincidental, but Asajj has been combining feeds from the Coruscanti network and various private networks all day. She thinks she’s traced a route to an abandoned supply warehouse owned by a shell company for the Black Sun, a crime syndicate with some force-acolyte tendencies. They allegedly had their own force-messiah a year or so ago, some Zabrak, but nobody’s heard from him in some time. Smart money says Komari killed him and absorbed his supporters.”

“I assume Windu and his people are already on their way to her location.”

It was madness. Komari was the only person who knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the true identity of the Sith Master. And she would die before telling it to Mace Windu, out of sheer spite if nothing else.

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Dooku still felt as if he could talk Komari around, if he really put his mind to it. Their circumstances now were different than three years ago. Then, he’d been her prisoner, as had Anakin, and the emotional stress had been so great that he’d been forced into an impossible position. Now, Dooku thought he had the upper hand. Komari was injured, badly. She’d been forced into hiding. She was likely trapped on Coruscant. It was very possible that the Sith Master was trying to kill her. There would be no future for Komari here, but if she could be returned to the light, as a prisoner or on the run in wild space, there might be a future for her outside of the Sith. She might be able to have some semblance of the life the Bando Gora had stolen from her. If there was any faint hope of saving her, and of saving Anakin by getting this information from her, then Dooku had to try.

“Actually,” Jenza told him, somewhere between sly and displeased, “Asajj said she was giving you half-an-hour’s head start on this information.”

Half an hour. A lifetime’s work could be done in half an hour. If only it had been any hour but this one. “And Obi-Wan’s interrogation?”

“You never do like to mince words, do you?” Her attempt at lightening the mood failed rather spectacularly. “They’ve given us a schedule, finally. It starts in half an hour as well, but the Chancellor will be speaking first, and because it’s a senate hearing, technically a motion to hear whatever Obi-Wan has to say must first be passed. I can stall for time by raising the legality of arresting Obi-Wan before the Senate had actually agreed to interrogate him. The Chancellor unlawfully arrests the man who saved his homeworld. The press will have a very, very good day.”

It was easy to forget that Palpatine and Padmé were technically co-Senators. They had almost nothing in common, and yet the people of Naboo had supported both of them, in one position or another, for the last thirteen years. Dooku wondered, vaguely, if there might be some significance in that, but decided against it. Whatever his personal dislike of Palpatine, the man could not possibly have been a Sith. He let that thought go, and it slipped from his mind like warm butter.

“Thank you.”

And then, suddenly, he had an armful of Senator, and several pieces of Jenza’s white hair in his mouth. She was wearing heels, which was the only thing that made her tall enough for that to be a problem.

“Don’t you dare let her kill you, you stupid, arrogant, asshole.”

He squeezed her tight. “She won’t. Obi-Wan injured her badly in their last confrontation. And, as you say, she only has half an hour before the entire Order drops down on us.”

That reminded him. “I have to hurry, now.”

He took off from the Senate at an almost unseemly pace, barely remembering to grab a cloak to throw over his Count’s cape to hide his rank and face. There weren’t many familiar with the significance of the Serennian device, but it would be absolutely typical to run into one today.

Dooku would have felt alone in his mission, if not for Asajj’s clever hands easing his way at every opportunity. Holosurveillence devices turned away as he passed them. The turbolifts he had to take were ready and waiting. It seemed that Anakin’s months of training her were finally paying off. When he had a moment of relative isolation at a particularly empty street, he nodded at one of Asajj’s innumerable eyes. The bobbed as if nodding back.

The warehouse where Komari was hidden was low, even for Coruscant, ill-lit by a row of fluorescent lights along the roof. It was so dark, in fact, that Dooku had to move his hand away after it had fallen to the hilt of his lightsaber by instinct. That light would do him no good, here.

The security on the door looked towards him, and not away. That was how he knew it was not Asajj in control, here. Reaching out in the force, Dooku presented himself openly, showed his presence for any force-wielder in proximity to see.

“Komari,” he called, “I’m here to help.”

He was just considering whether he should have taken his lightsaber to the door instead, and to the hells with the consequences, when it slid open of its own accord, and a too-familiar voice within called,

“Enter.”

Chapter Text

The advantage of attacking Republic cruisers, rather than droid motherships or the strange hive-mind ships that were Komari’s contribution to the anti-Republican cause, was that Aayla had their official schematics downloaded already. By the time Anakin had dried his tears, and Aayla had briefly engaged the engines to bring them onto an intercept course with the Venator-class ship, Quinlan had conceived of a plan to bring them onboard.

“There’s an airlock,” he explained, pointing at his projection of the ship, “designed for the maintenance droids to go in and out. It’s not equipped for docking, and you couldn’t land even a single-seater craft in it.”

Anakin hated where this was going. “What’s your plan?”

Quinlan pointed, mutely, at their array of EVA suits. “Aayla will hold the ship stable. You and I are going aboard.”

The advantage of entering via a droid-specific entrance was that no people were there to notice their lightsabers burning a hole in the side of the ship. To Anakin’s surprise, Quinlan only cut a hole the size of his arm, and then reached in, quickly slammed the button to open the door, and pulled his arm back before it could get cut off by the door retracting.

“Path of least resistance,” he said over comms, and indicated that Anakin should climb before him into the tunnels. “With a hole this size, I can seal it with this-” he lifted a maintenance kit he’d brought with him. “No harm done.”

Anakin’s hands itched as he watched Quinlan begin to sloppily weld a patch of durasteel over the hole they’d cut. “Let me.”

With the task done and Anakin’s superior craftsmanship in place, they were able to repressurize the chamber and sneak out into the room where the droids were being stored. They were maintenance droids, mostly inactive, although a couple buzzed around, seemingly paying no mind to the Jedi in their midst. There, they stripped off their EVA suits, to give themselves a better range of motion, and hid them up on a shelf right near the ceiling. Quinlan, with a gentle care that Anakin didn’t really associate with him, trailed a hand against the side of one of the little ones.

“This one’s been cleaning up blood,” he murmured, all business.

“You can sense that with your psychometry?”

It was a power that was completely beyond Anakin’s grasp. Quinlan spared him a disappointed look. “There’s flecks of blood on the base, there.”

So there were. Anakin knelt down to examine for himself. It was dried, but there must have been a great deal of it to stain a maintenance droid. “Not human, I don’t think.” Which meant it wasn’t any of the clones.

Quinlan raised a hand, silencing Anakin. He made a gesture indicating that he wanted to be followed. And together, they moved towards the doors. Quinlan walked lightly and deliberately, with a feline silence. Anakin had to tap into the force to be as light on his feet as Quinlan was without any apparent effort. In silence, they slipped into the hallways, empty of people, and, after passing carefully along for some time, Quinlan stopped in front of a doorway.

Anakin stopped him with a raised hand, and moved over to the door panel. The force in this place had an uneasy character, not unlike what Anakin remembered sensing from Komari’s mind-controlled drones. It was a sickness that Anakin had to cut through. Closing his eyes, he imagined the force as a neutral thing, the lights dancing over the Serennian sky, the still lakes of Naboo, the shifting sands of Tatooine. Around him, the sickness cleared, and he could feel shock radiating from Quinlan. Ignoring that, he stretched out his fingers, and allowed himself to type the passcode without looking at it. It was the same number four times, which was almost disappointing.

The door slid open, revealing another storeroom. This time, one that contained a large number of blasters, as well as some spare armour. Quinlan, with a hand on his back, shoved Anakin through the door and let it slam shut behind them.

“You did it again,” he hissed, “that thing you did on Geonosis.”

“What thing?”

He waved a hand, dismissively. “Really, Skywalker. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed that the force comes when you call like a loyal hound. You stilled the darkness on Geonosis, and again, just now. Be grateful that I use psychometry, not a more generalized sense of violence in the force, or you would have wiped away all my evidence.”

This said, he reached over, preparing to place his hand on one of the blasters closest to them. Anakin grabbed his wrist. “Isn’t it forbidden to use psychometry on weapons?”

“Isn’t it forbidden to sleep with the Senator for the Chommell Sector?”

“Actually, no. Technically, I can have sex with whoever I want. It’s the dating her that’s the problem with the Council.”

Quinlan gave him an absolutely scathing look. “Yes, and, like dating your Senator, using psychometry on weapons is forbidden because it can pull one to the dark side. It is not a choice to be made lightly. But I would imagine you know all about that.”

Ouch. Quinlan, seeming to sense Anakin’s continued concern, pulled back for a moment. Dark eyes highlighted by his Kiffar markings, he looked carefully at Anakin. “If I seem… distressed, after what I touch, then do whatever you just did to still the force again. That should help.”

Anakin released his wrist, and watched, as Quinlan laid his palm to the barrel of the blaster and staggered under the weight of whatever he was seeing. Locks of black hair tumbled forward over his face as he fell to his knees. Anakin considered reaching to the force, but already, Quinlan was shaking his head no.

“I’ll be alright. Just… give me a minute.”

The force pulled at Anakin, bringing his hand down to the hilt of his lightsaber a second before he heard the first click of a button on the door-lock.

“We don’t have a minute, Vos.”

Anakin unclipped his saber. At least this way, they would see whoever it was who had taken over this cruiser, whoevers blood was on the cleaning droids and whose sickness in the force permeated the air. The number pad clicked again, thrice in rapid succession, and the door slid open on the face of a clone.

--

Through the doorway, Dooku could see only darkness, even blacker than the street on which he stood. There were formless shapes at the edges of his vision that he thought might have been durasteel containers, but in truth, it was too dark to tell even that much.

“I could use a little light,” he said, keenly aware that Komari could hear him. “I have come to help you, but I will not throw myself on your mercy.”

The light, which flickered to life before him like a sickly creature gasping on its last breaths, was barely a pinprick against the vastness of the darkness, but it was suspended above the head of one Komari Vosa, who sat huddled on top of a crate, trying to apply bacta to the stump of her hand. Dooku, flooded with memories of Anakin, suffering through this same pain surrounded by family, still found it in himself to pity her. Where Anakin had a thousand passions stronger than his skill with a lightsaber, Komari had always loved the blade best.

“Let me do that for you.”

Even in the darkness, her eyes glowed Sith-yellow. “As if I would allow you close enough.”

Dooku made it clear that his hands were nowhere near his lightsaber, although he could have called it from his belt at any time. “You let me in. You know as well as I do that we need each other, today. You need me, if you want to survive the Jedi. I need you, if I want to survive the Sith.”

As Dooku drew closer, though still at a safe distance, he saw her maddening smile. Just a few hours ago, she had come within a breath of killing Obi-Wan. She had killed dozens. And now here she was, nursing her wounds and smiling in a deranged fashion. “I’ve waited a very long time to hear that you needed me. But now it comes to it… I think I would rather die than help you.”

This was a critical moment, like so many years ago, when Dooku had convinced Obi-Wan to allow him to train Anakin. Wars were won and lost in moments like this. He weighed the information he had, thought of Anakin’s message, and made a choice.

“Liar. If you weren’t desperate enough to work with me, you never would have been foolish enough to come to Coruscant.”

If anything, the smile grew wider. It seemed in danger of splitting her face open. “What makes you think I’m in danger from the Jedi? I disabled the entire temple today. If not for the Kenobi brat, I would have killed most of them in their beds. The power that it handed to me… well, wherever he is, I suppose Maul will be pleased to learn that our collaboration finally had positive results. A shame I had to kill him for it.”

Dooku didn’t dignify her rambling with a response. “I never thought you were in danger from the Jedi. But they are hardly the only people on Coruscant, are they? Do you think you can face him, weakened by Obi-Wan as you are?”

The pronoun was a guess. He would judge its accuracy by her reaction .

“It seems to me that you have little to gain from a deal.” His guesses were both right, then. A male Sith, currently on Coruscant.

Evidence. All I have are suspicions. You can prove what he truly is.”

The smile finally dimmed. He saw then the powerful, businesslike Komari Vosa who had run criminal organizations spanning the galaxy. There was a shrewdness to her expression, a deliberate quality in the way she watched Dooku that reminded him of himself. He knew that Anakin was trying to learn to have a political persona and self-control the way Dooku did, but he suddenly and viscerally wanted the opposite of him. If this was what it looked like when one of his children tried to act the way he did, he wanted no part in that.

“And what will you do, if I give you what you ask?”

“I would have thought that would be obvious.”

Komari leaned in, placing her elbows on her knees. “Come closer.”

Dooku’s footsteps seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the warehouse, echoing down hallways of durasteel crates. As he drew closer, he realized that Komari had pushed a single crate, as high as Dooku’s hip, up against the edge of one of these walls of crate, creating a platform for her to sit on where she could have her back secured. The light, she’d attached to the crate behind her. There were ration wrappers strewn on the ground, as well as a few discarded needles. It seemed Komari had been dosing people with her contaminated death stick formula all on her own. Or perhaps consuming it herself. How long had she been living here?

Allowing the precision and neatness of his own mind to flow outward into the universe around him, Dooku waved his hand, gathering all the trash in a neat pile at the base of Komari’s throne.

“You aren’t well.”

She raised her remaining hand, almost letting the bacta patch slip to the floor, as she made a rude gesture in his face. “Oh, eat a sack of bantha shit. You couldn’t care less whether or not I was well. I haven’t been ‘well’ in decades.”

Dooku would have given almost everything he had – not Anakin, not Jenza, but all else – to unmake that fact. “I mourned you. I looked for you.”

“You failed.”

“Yes.” Dooku stepped forward, and offered up his hands. “I did. And then you tried to murder everyone else left alive who I love. Some of them multiple times. Let us be diplomatic and say there were failings on both sides, shall we?”

And Komari smiled. Not the terrible false thing she did in fights, where she seemed manic and deranged by the darkness. A real smile. It barely lasted for a second, until she slung her feet off the edge of the crate, closed the distance between them, and placed the bacta in his hands. Her wrist remained extended. She didn’t say what she was doing. Nothing needed to be said.

“I understand why you used the dark,” Dooku murmured, in a gentle voice he had mastered during Anakin’s childhood. “And I understand why you took control of the Bando Gora. It feels good to subjugate the thing that attempted to destroy you to your will. What I don’t understand is, why the Sith?”

He unfolded the bacta patch to its fullest extent, and peeled away the adhesive strip with his thumb. Then he thought better of it, and pulled a bacta wipe – the kind in flimsiplast packets that you could use to sanitize cuts – out of his pocket, opened that package, and cleaned Komari’s wound as best he could. She winced, but didn’t complain. Such things had never been in her nature, up to and including the point of dismemberment, apparently.

“He… he made the offer, I suppose. We’d met before. I helped kill his master, although I had no idea at the time. And I knew Maul – the Sith Kenobi thought he killed on Naboo.”

Oh, no. “Thought he killed?”

“Do you want the story or not?”

Weighing his options, and the level of Komari’s jealousy against Obi-Wan, he made his choice. “Oh, I want the story. But apparently, you know more about this story than Obi-Wan ever did. Or told me, at least.”

Flattery never hurt; Komari smirked. “Oh, he’s dead now. There were… artistic differences.”

It was an old joke. One Dooku had long since forgotten, with nobody left to remember it. Artistic differences were what they had called it when he and Qui-Gon had taken their disagreements over lightsaber forms and settled them with dueling. He hadn’t even realized Komari would have known it at the time, let alone well enough to remember years later.

“Sounds serious.”

She snorted, undignified and almost childish. “Oh, it was. But, well, better he’s dead. If we had both lived, I doubt he would have been happy to call me ‘Master’.”

“Your story?”

He smoothed the adhesive down around her wrist. It caught on her arm hair in a way that was going to hurt, at some future stage. But certainly less than an infected lightsaber wound would.

“He didn’t make me the offer until Maul had been ‘dead’ for months. I think he was cultivating someone else. You, I think. But at the time I had no idea. I thought it was important. I thought I was special.”

“You were. But not because he thought so. I don’t think most master Jedi could survive what you survived.”

Komari pressed her lips together. “There was a time when hearing you say that would have meant everything to me.”

Sometimes, Dooku thought that if he could turn back time, his first action would have been to stop Komari from going anywhere near the Jedi mission to Baltizaar. “I was always proud of you. But I was never the teacher you needed. I know that. I wasn’t what Qui-Gon or Rael needed either. I was too hard, not compassionate enough. I saw you as a vessel to have skill imparted, not as a person.”

“And yet you loved Qui-Gon and Anakin.”

“Qui-Gon and I were only close after he lost Xanatos. And Anakin… I was lucky. I knew there was a good chance that they would never give him a knighthood. It meant I could never place the expectations on him that I did on you. I’m sorry.”

She slid forward, and Dooku realized abruptly that she was crying, slow and silent. Her remaining hand reached out and clutched at his. “I was so stupid to trust him. But I thought – I knew what I was. There was no future for me other than as a Sith. They would never have given me a knighthood, even before.”

“Forget the Order. There was a future for you with me. He wanted you alone so he could use you, just like everyone else. Your future isn’t set in stone, Komari. Tell me who he is, save the universe. You have always had the capacity to do such remarkable things.”

The first dart caught her in the neck. The force of it, which was as great as a blasterbolt, sent her body tumbling forward into Dooku’s arms. He caught her, and ducked down behind her crate. The second dart flew just a breath over his head.

“Komari!”

Her eyes were closed, so it was impossible to know whether it was the Sith or the girl who spoke her last words, reaching out to grab his hand. “Forgive me.”

“Always,” he said, “always,” but she was already gone.

Though he hated to leave her to the mercy of the Jedi strike time that was already on their way, Dooku summoned his lightsaber to his hand, and leapt, force-powered, to chase after Komari’s killer.

--

Something had gone wrong. That much, in Obi-Wan’s estimation, was obvious. They’d removed the force-cuffs to parade him in front of the Senate, and he could feel the absence of any Jedi in the audience. Even Dooku and Asajj weren’t there.

Along their training bond, he asked her, (where are you?)

Asajj’s mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, as if everything was happening at once. (There soon. Found Komari. Dooku gone after her.)

Somehow, Asajj didn’t seem to feel that was a good thing. (Alone?)

(Yes.)

“Knight Kenobi,” Mas Amedda snapped, with the lost patience of a man who had repeated himself several times, “Do you swear to speak only the truth in your appearance before this Senate?”

Asajj would have to explain everything later. No doubt Dooku was distraught at the loss of his former apprentice, no matter what she’d done in the intervening years.

“I swear it.”

“And you are aware of the penalty you will be subject to, if you are discovered to have perjured yourself before us?”

“Remind me.”

Amedda, obviously not used to people making him actually do his job, gritted his teeth. “A sentence of up to one year’s prison time will be delivered upon anyone found to have lied in testimony before this Senate. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

Amedda turned back to the room at large. “As you are all aware, this is a questioning period. At this time, Knight Kenobi has not been formally accused of any crimes. If he is charged, a panel of Senators may be appointed to serve as the jury. At that time, both defence and prosecution may appoint advocates. However, none are necessary for this stage at the proceedings. Questioning will go first to the Chancellor, followed by senators on the speakers’ list. Any senators wishing to be added to the speakers’ list, please make yourself known, now.”

The Senate always took at least twice as long to get anything done as was needed. But in this case, it was for the best. Amedda was still taking down names, and settling arguments between the senators about the appropriate order of the list, when Asajj slunk into Jenza’s booth, and began whispering to her and Shmi.

“Chancellor, would you like the first question today?”

The Chancellor had a persona of control that was unalike any Obi-Wan had ever known. He was very covert, almost gentle, but he used his power like a dentist’s tools, scouring away opposition one scrape at a time, except upon the very rare occasion when he decided he had to pull a tooth. Then he was ruthless. The former made people forget that the latter was an option.

“No, thank you Mas. I would prefer to take the last question set.”

Nothing good could come of that. Obi-Wan steeled himself, and let the questions come.

Chapter Text

The force around him crackled with the potential for dark lightning, to seize power for himself and destroy whoever it was who had killed his daughter. Komari might have wanted that, but to kill for her would be to doom Anakin, and as he had done on Geonosis, Dooku found himself forced to choose the child he knew he could save.

The assassin was not one of the brainwashed death stick addicts Komari had used in her attempts on Padmé’s life. Instead, he seemed invisible in the force. The Sith, whoever he was, had done a fine job of it. Neither Dooku or Komari had noticed until it was too late, and the name of her master was forever caught in her throat. How long had he been anticipating that Komari might betray him? Did he have another apprentice waiting in the wings already?

The assassin fired up a jetpack, launching himself towards a skylight near the back of the building. Dooku, who had always believed minimal interference was key, gave him a nudge in the force. He shot instead head-first into a durasteel beam, though his mandalorian-style helmet likely saved his life.

Landing smoothly from his long force-propelled leap, Dooku walked up to the assassin. He tried to fire a blasterbolt, presumably having run out of his poisoned darts, but Dooku deflected it easily, and summoned the blaster to his off-hand with a flick of his wrist.

“Helmet off, Mando.”

He went for something at his belt, but Dooku’s blade was at his throat before his fingers could close around it.

“Is that a grenade?”

It was. But the assassin obviously wasn’t suicidal enough to consider setting it off while Dooku had him pinned. His fingers twitched towards it, as if considering his options, but he didn’t decide quickly enough to truly want to do it.

“The girl you killed wasn’t a very good person,” Dooku told him. He aimed for calm, but even to his own ears, his voice sounded hollow and threatening. “But she was the closest thing I have to a daughter, and I loved her. And in killing her, you may just have doomed the galaxy to the rise of a new Sith empire. But in her honour, I will make you an offer. The same one I made her. Tell me who gave your orders. If you do this, I will let you live.”

There were voices and a swell in the force at the other end of the building. Windu’s strike team arriving, presumably.

He tensed again, as if reconsidering the grenade. He was conflicted between a desire to live, and a desire to destroy Dooku at the cost of his own life. Why?

“He is leveraging something against you, doesn’t he? The Sith?” Another flinch. He probably thought Dooku was reading his mind, as non force-sensitives sometimes assumed all Jedi did on a regular basis. “You kill Komari, or face consequences. But I wasn’t supposed to be there, was I? I’m not in the mission. You don’t know if killing me will guarantee that the consequences won’t happen. If it would, then you would die for it in a heartbeat.” There were very few things in this world that healthy people were willing to die for, in Dooku’s experience. Ideals were one, but if this man believed in the ideal of the Sith, Dooku would be dead already. Communities or patriotism was another, but what community that didn’t believe in the ideal of the Sith would ask one of their own to die for it? No, it was the simplest option: people.

“He has a hostage.”

The man broke. He took his hand off the grenade, and reached up to unclasp his helmet.

“I never met him in person.”

He was a clone. No, that wasn’t right. He was too old to be a clone. He must have been their father. It was strange to see him in person, after all these years. Anakin had said that the original had had a clone made to raise as a son. “Jango Fett. He took your son?”

Fett nodded, just once.

Dooku wanted so badly to kill him. There would be no vengeance against the Jedi who had senselessly taken Komari into the path of danger. No vengeance against the Bando Gora who had tortured her. The name of the Sith who was responsible for her death had been lost when her heart had stopped. This might be his only chance to make someone bleed for Komari. But this was also a father trying to save his child. And the boy, who could have been not much older than Anakin had been when he came into Dooku’s care, had no part in Komari’s fate at all.

In addition, there was the matter of the clones. Jenza had mentioned how useful Fett’s testimony would be to securing them Mandalorian citizenship, which would protect them from many of the Republic’s abuses of their dignity and liberty.

“New deal. I save you and I hunt down the Sith and save your son, if I can. In exchange, you do whatever senators Jenza and Amidala tell you to in service of ensuring your clones are made citizens of the Republic.”

It probably sounded too good to be true. “Anything else?”

“You may yet be imprisoned for any crimes committed before or after this moment. I cannot shield you from all harm, nor would I wish to. But if you follow my lead, you will not see the inside of a cell for Komari’s death.”

“Deal.”

That wasn’t quite good enough. “You keep your people’s code, do you not? Swear on that and on your son’s life. I swear the same, for my code and my son.”

He gritted his teeth. “I swear to it.”

Dooku switched his lightsaber off, and offered Fett his hand. Turning his face away slightly, he called, “over here!”

As he explained to an irate Mace Windu, a stony-faced Yoda, a grimacing Adi Gallia, and holograms of the rest of the council, he’d gone to confront Komari on his own. She’d seemed likely to turn, had confirmed some information about her Sith Master – his gender, for example – and had been liable to turn further. However, Fett had seen them drawing close, and had assumed that Komari was trying to kill Dooku, so he’d killed her first. It was the fastest debrief in temple history. They were all extremely keen to get to Obi-Wan’s inquisition, and the last thing any of them cared about, save for Dooku, was the circumstances of a Sith’s death.

He’d gotten away with it, had saved the life of Komari’s murderer. They let him hide under their roof, under a false name, and with their assurances that they would do all that could be done to save his child.

At least, he’d mostly gotten away with it. Yoda pulled him aside, after Windu had scampered back to the security of his shielded room, and Adi had limped away to her flock of children.

“Curious, it is, that a bounty hunter of Master Fett’s renown would need two shots to hit Komari. Curious that neither of you noticed the first shot when it missed.”

“Sometimes, the truth is curious.”

Yoda laughed. “Impertinent as a boy, you are. Carry me, you must, if we are to make it to the Senate in time, hmm?”

--

The speakers’ list was endless, and none of them had done even the slightest preliminary research. The wanted to know what Obi-Wan knew about Serennian emeralds – nothing – if he had ever been to the commercial docks of Talarma Province – no – and when he had last seen Komari Vosa – this morning, when she attacked the Temple – and when the actually relevant questions ran out, they wanted to know about Serenno in general, and Obi-Wan’s avoidance of military service, and his upbringing. They asked dangerous, invasive questions, about Dooku, and about Anakin and Asajj. He point-blank refused to answer one that implied she was a seperatist agent, and laughed at another that suggested she was his lover.

Even those who were on Obi-Wan’s side were obligated to ask painful questions, albeit for his own good. Bail Organa made him recount that morning’s fight with Komari, how he had ‘saved the Jedi Temple’. Riyo Chuchi asked him about his ‘heroism’ on Geonosis. Mynok Torval used xer time asking about Obi-Wan’s work with volunteer relief efforts over the course of the war. All of it hurt to talk about, even if it was useful.

They pulled the Senate into overtime for the questioning. It was evening now, judging by the way aides kept slipping in with food for the senators. Dooku and Yoda arrived, the former in Jenza’s pod, the latter, surprisingly, with Padmé and Satine.

Dooku’s mind skimmed up against his, a careful suggestion of contact that invited Obi-Wan to choose when to accept it. Orn Free Ta was blathering about something.

Asajj told him, (you need to talk to Dooku. I’ll tell you what the question was if he ever asks one.)

With a burst of gratitude in her direction, he opened his mind to Dooku. As expected, Dooku contained a rush of grief so strong it threatened to make Obi-Wan weep. There was anger too, and more complex emotions. Loneliness, regret. But none of it felt as though it threatened to overwhelm him, to lead him to darkness. Instead, the core of Dooku’s presence was a single memory. The moment when Anakin had stilled the force on Geonosis. Dooku carried that within himself, and was calm.

(I almost got her back), Dooku informed him, mental voice rough with pain, (but she’s gone. Not by my hand. She confirmed that the Sith is here on Coruscant, that he is male, and that he selected Komari as an apprentice as a second choice. They were working against each other. Also, she mentioned in passing that you didn’t kill the Sith on Naboo. He survived, and Komari killed him some time later.)

Dooku delivered the information in such a blasé fashion, as if he hadn’t just upset one of the defining pieces of Obi-Wan’s life. He had never killed someone in anger. He had believed he was doing it, which was perhaps nearly the same thing, but he hadn’t actually done so. That mattered. It felt both good and bad. On the one hand, killing was a wrong, and killing in anger was against the very nature of a Jedi. On the other hand, it meant that he had allowed Qui-Gon’s murderer many more years to enact evil upon the galaxy.

Asajj cut into his train of thought with the precision of a dancer cutting in for a waltz. (Taa wants to know why you came to Serenno)

Hadn’t someone already asked that? “Senator, I first went to Serenno to introduce Skywalker Anakin to Count Dooku, and to conduct, as requested, an independent review of the transfer of power between the late Count Ramil, and the current Count Dooku.”

Taa had taken so long in getting to his question that he was out of time after one. Mas Amedda consulted the list and declared, “with that, we move to Senator Jenza. Senator, you have the floor.”

She maneuvered herself into the centre of the senate chambers, drawing everyones’ eyes. Those who were familiar with Serennian politics, as Obi-Wan was, probably immediately noted the absence of her cape, indicating that Dooku had finally chosen an heir. Though nobody had told him, Obi-Wan knew, instantly, who that heir must have been. It was a political move, no doubt, but he was proud of Anakin all the same.

Jenza launched into questions immediately, with none of Taa’s posturing. “Knight Kenobi, do you know where Komari Vosa is currently?”

That was how they were playing it, then. “I know she’s dead, if that’s what you mean.”

The Senate stirred, restlessly. Some called for evidence, or to adjourn while they consulted with their advisors on this new development, but Amedda called for order, and Jenza turned up the volume of her microphone to continue speaking. “Do you know how she died?”

“No.”

“Did the possibility that she might die today occur to you?”

It had seemed terribly far removed, but, well, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I had injured her, during the attack on the Temple. And because I knew Coruscant was the most dangerous place in the Galaxy for her to be.”

“Why was that?” Jenza was leading somewhere. Dooku gave a nudge of encouragement in the force.

“Because the Jedi are here.”

“Any other reason?”

Obi-Wan could only hope that House Serenno knew the game they were playing. “Yes. I believe that the Sith Master is here also, and I think him and Komari were trying to kill each other.”

“Do you believe the Sith Master is here in this room, now?”

Jedi or Senator, they’d agreed. It had to be either a Jedi or a Senator. And there were far, far more Senators currently on Coruscant than there were Jedi. Also, in spite of Komari and Xanatos and all the evidence to the contrary, there was a part of Obi-Wan who still believed that a Jedi, a true Jedi, would not simply become a Sith for power, believed that a Jedi would be better than that. Which meant it was a Senator. It had to be a Senator, and all the Senate was here tonight.

“Yes, I do.”

The uproar increased. Over it, Jenza called, “why did that Sith choose to frame you for Komari’s arrival on Coruscant, Knight Kenobi?”

She’d timed it perfectly. Her time ended before Obi-Wan could be forced to answer the question, and her revelations had disrupted the event so thoroughly that the subsequent four people on the list all yielded their time in favour of whispering to their aides about what, exactly, the implications of all of this were.

“Vice-Chancellor,” Palpatine called, pleasantly, “I recognize this is slightly unorthodox, but I was wondering if I might begin my own questioning now, before we take a recess to examine this new evidence.”

Nobody objected. Palpatine usually got what he wanted, in the end. In fact, that reminded Obi-Wan. He reached out to Asajj and Dooku both.

(Do either of you find it odd that the Senate guard apparently answers directly to Palpatine?)

They looked at each other, far above him in Jenza’s pod. (Yes), Asajj said with conviction. (I find it exceedingly suspicious.)

He tuned back in as Palpatine was saying, “Knight Kenobi. I, and all the people of Naboo, owe you a tremendous debt. What you did for us, in killing the Sith, is well remembered.”

Apparently not, if Komari Vosa was honest. “Thank you, Chancellor. What’s your first question?”

Apparently, in a rare synergy between Padmé and her co-senator, they were both going to swoop in and save Obi-Wan. He appreciated that. After all, it was partly thanks to Obi-Wan, and everyone who had been on Naboo then, that Palpatine was chancellor.

A touch in the force trailed across his back, sending shivers down his spine. Perhaps it was in warning. Palpatine, voice mild as ever, went in for the killing blow.

“Tell me, Knight Kenobi; how does one become a Sith?”

He could see, like lightning, the path they were going to walk down. “I don’t know, Chancellor. I know now that Komari was recruited by the Sith Master after several years with the Bando Gora, but I don’t know how it happens in general.”

“What are you taught, as a Jedi, about how one becomes a Sith?”

The world seemed to shrink to just the two of them, Obi-Wan and the Chancellor, sitting far above him like a lord in his tower.

“We’re taught about the path to the dark side, if that’s what you mean. But the Sith are a specific order of dark side adepts. I suppose they determine what makes one of their order.”

“And are there other active orders of dark side adepts?”

“Other than those determined by birth? Not that I know of.”

“Then tell me, how does one fall to the dark side?”

Obi-Wan felt like a child, standing before the class and being called to task for some obscure wrong he knew nothing about. “We’re taught that the path to the dark side is through emotionality. Dark emotions. Fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, covetousness and greed. But if you are asking what I personally believe, then the answer is simple: I believe the path to the dark side is selfishness.”

It was a matter he’d given a great deal of thought. How was it that he had killed in anger, but had not fallen? How was it that Anakin had carried such fear, and had not fallen? How was it that Dooku’s political ambitions had not driven him to fall? The one, unifying factor was that they had chosen to dedicate their lives, and their power, to the service of others. That was what the best parts of the Jedi order were, healers and protectors, those who served to deliver justice, and those who sought to bring peace.

“Let us take the… more expert view, rather than your own opinion. Would you say you have ever acted out of one of these emotions?”

“That’s a very vague question, Chancellor.”

Obi-Wan could sense something strange in the force. It was a feeling as if he was floating, but when he looked down, his feet were fixed firmly upon the durasteel slates. His mind was carried away, gently, out of himself. The rest of the Senate turned to white noise, until all he could hear was the Chancellor’s voice.

“Take anger, then. Have you ever killed someone in anger, Knight Kenobi?”

He had, hadn’t he? And he had promised to be honest. But Dooku said that he hadn’t killed the Sith on Naboo. Was Dooku lying? Dooku probably would lie about that to protect Obi-Wan. And Komari might have lied about it, just for fun.

“I don’t think so.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

It was an odd question not to know the answer to, Obi-Wan supposed. “Well, anger is an odd emotion. What I might call anger, you might see as righteous fury. And you can be angry but not be acting from anger. The Sith I killed was a dangerous person. If I hadn’t killed him, I would have died. But I was angry that he killed my master in front of me. Does that mean I shouldn’t have killed him?”

“Knight Kenobi, did you use the dark side to kill the Sith on Naboo?”

He wanted to confess, to tell the entire Senate about how he’d killed Darth Maul, how it had felt good to cut him in half and watch him fall. The floating feeling was so pretty. He could float forever, if only he told them the truth.

He wasn’t alone in the floating feeling. Something grabbed him, like a hand around his ankle pulling him back down to the ground. It wasn’t right, was it? Obi-Wan hadn’t enjoyed killing the Sith, even though he’d wanted to do it. It had felt awful, and it hadn’t done the only thing Obi-Wan had wanted, which was to bring Qui-Gon back. Why did he feel like confessing to something he hadn’t done?

But the universe felt so light, so free of consequence. What could it hurt to say something?

He didn’t know the Sith’s name, did he? Why had Obi-Wan called him Maul, just now? That thought hadn’t come from him. Someone had planted it there. How?

The Sith was in the room, and Jenza had more or less challenged him to a fight of course he was making a show of power, here and now. And he was using the Chancellor to do it. What a brilliant plot.

Obi-Wan was a murderer. The Senate needed to know the truth. They needed to know how there was corruption in this lineage. Komari, Xanatos, Dooku, Obi-Wan. He needed to tell everyone the truth.

(Asajj!) He forced his thoughts through the smog that clouded his mind. (I need you to knock me unconscious. Now.)

He’d been teaching her mind tricks, in their spare time. Since it was hard to find a willing test subject for this, he’d mostly been dropping his shields and letting her practice on him. As a result, it was with great skill that she reached out, enveloped his mind in her own, and commanded, (sleep.)

Obi-Wan’s last sensation was his head slamming against the durasteel railing as he collapsed to the floor, secrets perfectly safe from the intruding Sith.

--

“Don’t shoot!” The clone called instinctively, even though neither Anakin nor Quinlan were holding a blaster. It startled both of them so much that they didn’t attack him.

“I won’t,” Anakin told him, eventually.

Quinlan, who was still on the floor, breathing heavily, looked up at the clone the way a dying man looks at the friend who’s stabbed them in the back. “Why did you kill him?”

The clones had killed their Jedi? Force, no wonder Quinlan looked so desolate. But this clone shook his head desperately.

“I didn’t. They shot him in front of me, but I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do, General.”

He was unarmed. He’d come here, and hadn’t called for backup. Anakin could practically feel his protective instincts standing to attention. Padmé had accused him of being innately mothering on more than one occasion. Anakin figured that if he was anything like his mother, then that was certainly a compliment. Besides… Padmé had said that she was sure Anakin would be a wonderful person to raise children with for that very reason. In that context, it had been one of the highest compliments of his life.

“Okay.” Anakin returned his lightsaber to his belt, and extended a hand. “My name is Skywalker Anakin. This is Quinlan Vos. We’re Jedi of the Serennian sect. That means that we opposed the formation of the GAR because we thought the use of cloned troops was in violation of the republic’s laws against slavery.”

The clone ignored his outstretched hand. Instead, he leaned back against the door, and rested his head against it with a decisive thud. “Well, you weren’t wrong. But I know who you are. When this mission ended, I was supposed to defect to you. I had it all arranged.”

“I think,” Quinlan said, with exhaustion clear in his voice, “that you had better tell us everything you know.”

“And your name,” Anakin cut in. He was keenly aware of the importance of names. Tatooine and Serenno both had instilled that in him. “Your true name.”

“Rex,” he told Anakin, after a moment of quiet tension. “My name. It’s just Rex.”

“I’m Serennian,” Anakin told him, “nobody is ‘just’ anything on Serenno.”

It was half a joke about the names, for nobody could merely call themselves by a name without title, and half a statement of belief. Because Anakin did believe it. He believed in Serenno, the Serenno Dooku worked to build, with the same strength of belief he gave to all the most important things. Perhaps, Anakin thought, that belief was why he ought to be the heir to Serenno. Perhaps, that belief made him the heir Serenno needed. He would have to tell Cathaya about that some time.

“That sounds nice,” Rex told him, and then launched into a story that made Anakin’s blood curdle.

Rex had had a friend, called Fives. Two months ago, he’d come to him and confided a secret. He was convinced that the behavioural chips the Kaminoans used to help regulate the clones’ behaviour were faulty. There was something on it that was dangerous. Fives had wanted to organize a group of clones to look into it. They’d made the plan, secured this place as an unofficial meeting room, and then Fives was reassigned to the Senate Guard. He was dead a week later, in one of Komari’s bombings. His evidence, which he’d played close to his chest, had died with him. It was impossible to feel that was coincidence.

Rex has been cut loose, drifting. And then he’d had a day off on Ryloth. Ryloth was one of the Republic worlds with the closest ties to the slave trade. It was also, not coincidentally, one of the worlds with the highest population of formerly enslaved people. That meant that there were surgeons trained in removing the sort of biochips that were commonly used by slavers. It had been easy to find one of them unscrupulous enough to work on a clone.

Rex could have died. Brain surgery was hard. But he hasn’t died. He’d lived and planned to run away, to find someone to listen to his story. Then, three days ago, an order had come in.

“And they said, ‘execute Order Sixty-Six’, and everyone else just turned into a droid. They all turned around, and fired at the General. It was awful. They kept firing when he was down. It was like they wanted to destroy him, but it didn’t make any sense. He was our friend. And he was so young. He’d only been a General for a few months. I don’t understand why they did it.”

Quinlan had picked himself up off the floor. He looked at Rex with careful consideration. “You’re telling the truth. It didn’t affect you. You won’t hurt us.”

“No.”

He crossed the floor in two broad steps and wrapped Rex up in his arms. “Thank you for your courage.”

Anakin’s spine prickled with warning of another person approaching. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think we’re about to be interrupted.”

They pulled apart. Quinlan asked, “do you know where to find an EVA suit?” Rex nodded. “Go now. Get one, and bring it to the maintenance droid bay. Do you have the chip that was removed from your head?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. Would it help?”

Anakin’s fingers itched to read the code on that thing. “It might.”

Quinlan seemed calmer. He breathed deeply, focused in. “But yours wasn’t the only one on this ship. How would you feel about helping us kidnap a friend of yours?”

“I think I know just the person. I can get her into an EVA suit if you knock her out.”

“It’s a plan.”

Rex paused, half turned to the door. “No harm will come to her?”

Anakin had been helping Padmé fight to give clones the same rights he’d received when Qui-Gon had freed him for the last three years. The chip might be the only way to ensure it. But if Anakin had to harm this woman to get at it, then that couldn’t be worth it. If he did that, then he would be no better than those who saw the lives of clones as expendable on the battlefield.

“I swear it on my life, my title, and the force.”

Rex had almost left again when he stopped and turned back to them for a final time. “You should know… I could have sworn I recognized the voice that gave the order. It wasn’t disguised. If I heard it again, I think I would know him. He sounded older, male, and I would guess human. But Cici – my friend – she was on the comm station at the time. If you get her back, she’ll have seen the Ident.”

Anakin felt a sudden surge of hope at the thought of that.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka sat on her bed, and watched the spider that lived in the corner of her room. It didn’t move. She’d been sitting here, watching the spider, for what could have been minutes or hours. Since she’d been dismissed from that strange meeting with the Serennians. Everyone else seemed to have gone back to classes or training, but Ahsoka was supposed to be offworld today. She and Master Piell were supposed to be long gone, and now she was sitting here, staring at the wall, and he was dead.

The healers probably would have dragged her off if they’d known she was here, but Ahsoka had grown used to slipping through the Order’s cracks, these last three years. She hadn’t wanted them to poke and prod her and cluck with pity at the poor unclaimed padawan whose last shot at maybe having someone choose her had fallen away with dramatic irony that sounded like Komari Vosa’s laughing voice. The promise Windu had made her rang hollow in comparison. The Order had made her promises before.

She thought about picking up her stylus and writing to Barriss. To Master Plo. To Wolffe. All three of them wrote her diligently, which she was keenly aware was more than some of the unclaimed padawans got. But in some ways, it was more insulting to know that she had come so close. Most of the others her age were those who had always known they were ending up in the corps. It was only the pause on their activities for the war that had held them back. They were going to go off and do agriculture or judicial or some kind of brilliant research. They had plans. Ahsoka had her stupid little dream in shreds around her.

When Barriss ran away to Sereno, Ahsoka hadn’t heard from her in weeks. But after she was gone, she wrote almost immediately. Even though Barriss was notionally a defector, nobody seemed really to mind. So, she’d been allowed to write, and she had sent Ahsoka vivid descriptions of her new friends and peers, so real as if she could have touched them.

She’d known Obi-Wan before he’d introduced himself. He’d seemed so real to her. The Sithslayer who had run from the war, but not because he was a coward. Because he was brave. He gave Barriss hope for the person she could be. Also, Barriss might have had a crush on his padawan, so she was naturally inclined to like him. Asajj, of course, was recognizable for that reason, but Dooku had been a surprise to Ahsoka.

He looked so old. Even for a human, with their strange colour-shifting hair as some of them aged. But the way he’d held a lightsaber had seemed so natural. Like Master Windu had, before he got sick or whatever it was that had really happened to him. Rumour mill said sick, but the meeting she’d just attended said otherwise. When he had appeared to save them, Dooku, ancient though he was, had appeared just as powerful, with a steady grace that had scared her, just a little.

Yes, she should write to Barriss. Barriss might like to hear about her meeting the Serennian sect. And perhaps to Wolffe. She thought he would get how she felt about Master Piell. Wolffe was always good when things were hard. Master Plo was too, of course, but Wolffe got it.

The clinging of the door chime startled her from her reverie. The spider was unperturbed by it.

“Come in!” It was unlike her roommates to ring first, since this was hardly a private space at the best of times. The door couldn’t even lock.

It wasn’t any of her roommates. And it wasn’t Master Gallia either, who would have been her next suspect, or the healers, or even the Serennians.

Ahsoka scrambled to her feet. “Master Windu.”

He waved her back to sitting on the edge of her bed, and joined her there. His movements seemed shaky, but purposeful.

“How are you feeling, Padawan Tano?”

“I’m okay.” The words felt wrong even as she said them, and he barely had to glance skeptically at her before she recanted. “I’m not okay.”

She’d cried into his robes earlier, in a particularly surreal moment that she thought none of her agemates would believe.

“Thank you for your honesty,” he said, which was perhaps the first time she hadn’t been told to meditate immediately after admitting to negative emotions. He didn’t tell her to go to the healers either, which was the other common option. “Would you care to be more specific?”

“Why are you here?”

The admonition she expected for not answering didn’t come. “I came to ask a favor of you, but… I see now it was a foolish idea.”

“What was it?” Ahsoka found nothing made her want to know something more than someone deciding not to mention it in the middle of a thought. Their reasons why were always telling.

“Senator Amidala is here in the Temple, interviewing a… guest who is uncomfortable around Jedi. But he is a father, and so I think that there might be an advantage to reminding him that we have young of our own.”

“But not too young. Because your ‘guest’ is dangerous. And you don’t have a padawan of your own. But there’s no point in sending me if I look upset and threatening. It undermines your strategy. You ought to try Depa’s Caleb. He does youngling-eyes.”

“Adi has been teaching you well.”

The Ahsoka of that morning would have beamed at the praise. But now she found the compliment hollow. Master Piell seemed to fade under her hands once more. She should have been more like Barriss. More of a healer. A better student. A better warrior.

“Half the Jedi Council has mentioned you to me Padawan Tano, at least in passing. Why is it that none of them have taken you as a student?”

Which half? Master Gallia. Master Piell, if he still counted. Master Plo. Master Yoda. Master Ti? Maybe Master Billiba, because Ahsoka had tutored Caleb before he became a real padawan.

“None of them felt it… the thing in the force that tells you who to take as a student. I asked, you know. They tried. Some of them really did try. Master Plo especially. But him and Master Gallia and Master Ti all have other things to deal with. Master Yoda isn’t taking anyone. Master Biliba and Master Unduli picked other people.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

He was being pushy, now. But not in a way any of her teachers had ever been. It sounded like he genuinely wanted to know. She weighed her options.

Well, she was never going to be a knight anyways. “I’m really kriffing angry. It doesn’t matter, and none of it ever mattered, no matter how hard I worked, and the only person who actually tried to get me out of this temple is dead and I can’t even leave and move on with my life because of the stupid war, and Komari kriffing Vosa, and all of her cronies. Who said that someone like Komari got her best shot at being a Jedi just so she could throw it all away, and I work so hard and I get absolutely nothing?”

“I would not say what Komari got was the best shot at being a Jedi. As Count Dooku seems to be exceedingly fond of reminding me, we failed to protect her. I’m sorry that we failed to do our best by you as well.”

Barriss had given her that same speech, via letter. “What, no scolding over my anger? Shouldn’t I be releasing it into the force? Isn’t it time I get told to be happy because hey, at least Master Piell is one with the force now?”

Windu ignored the question. “You don’t have a lightsaber of your own, do you?”

One of Vosa’s smartest strategies had been to cut off all routes to Ilum and Jedha, the former through an extensive blockade and establishing a base there, the latter through outsourcing and an effective deal with the Hutts and several other criminal syndicates to ensure the death sticks they handled were high quality and not tainted with mind control drugs in exchange for increased piracy. Kyber crystals, good ones, had been few and far between recently, and most of the unclaimed padawans were stuck with lightsabers that had accumulated in the temple over the years. Mostly terrible deaths or jar’kai practitioners who’d lost limbs. Ahsoka had a good shoto, but her longer blade disliked her. She’d chosen Master Piell’s to go up against Vosa for a reason.

“No.”

She had no time to even guess why he’d asked before she found that he had lifted her hand from where it was clenched at her side, and pressed the weighty hilt of his own lightsaber into it.

It was an honour just to touch it. As Windu’s hand came away, and she was holding the hilt alone, she shifted her grip to hold it in the unusual grip which she often used when she was wielding training weapons and could have a properly matched set. This hilt was so wide it was uncomfortable, so she switched back to standard.

“Here,” Windu said, and reached over and ignited the blade. Ahsoka tried to stop her eyes from going wide with wonder as they were bathed in purple light. “Now stand up and get into a stance as if you’re going to run a kata. Any form will do.”

She eyed her roommates’ beds carefully. “I don’t think I really have the space.”

“You’re only going to make a single movement. Now, take that anger again. Let yourself feel it. Imagine the anger is in your veins, flowing through you. When you are ready, I want you to take that anger, and, as you make a move of your choice – aiming away from me and away from the door, please – let it be the thing that burns away to power your movement. Imagine not releasing it into the force in serenity, but consuming it as fire consumes, and letting those ashes drift away.”

She was so angry. So impossibly angry it seemed like she could never let it go. Master Piell was gone, and the Jedi had kept her here and taken her for granted. Everyone had left her and nobody had tried enough to keep her, to stay. And now Master Piell was dead, and it didn’t make any sense.

She imagine a fire roaring within her, but contained, like in an ancient cooking stove. Fed the anger into the fire at her heart, and moved to slash with the lightsaber, with some strength, and – was all the way across the room.

The blade went off in her hand before she could damage the wall by accident, no doubt interference from Master Windu, who looked sickened as he hurried over to take it from her.

Ahsoka thought by his expression that he was going to be angry, but instead he said. “It was very disconcerting for Depa the first time as well. How do you feel now?”

Impossibly, she felt lighter. The anger was still there, but something about making it hers, making sure it had to obey her, and that she didn’t have to do whatever it said, was impossibly good.

“Not good, but better.”

He nodded, and looked at her the way one looks at an artifact in a museum. “Sometimes, to take mastery over your emotions, you must make them your own. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t a task for every Jedi. But you have done very admirably. Not much, I think, like the padawan of three years ago who Yoda described to the council when we were trying to place you the first time.”

Yoda had probably said she was hasty, or selfish, or arrogant. But she’d learned the lesson of the last three years very well. “No. I’m not.”

“Padawan Tano.” He winced a little, as if in pain, “would you do me the honour of becoming my student?”

She had to contain the Ahsoka Tano of three years ago, who would have seen this as one of the greatest opportunities imaginable. She was going to learn from Master Windu. He might even teach her vaapad.

Oh, force. He’d already been teaching her vaapad, and she hadn’t even noticed.

So much of her wanted to say yes, and imagine this was the perfect fantasy she’d been waiting for, but Ahsoka had to ask. “You don’t feel it either, do you? The will of the force calling you to teach me?” It didn’t feel any different to her than with any of the others, but she supposed he would know better.

“No,” he admitted, “I don’t. But the force doesn’t tell us the answer to every decision. Sometimes we misread it. Sometimes it can be manipulated against us. And sometimes, as Jedi, we simply tell it what we want. Even those of us who know the power of the force are agents of our own destiny.”

It was, somehow, a better answer than learning that they’d been fated for each other, and he’d just passed her by in some cosmic accident. “Master Windu, I would be honoured to accept.”

The corner of his lip quirked up in a smile. “Thank you, Padawan.”

A thought occurred to her. “Do you think… there was someone else out there. Another student destined for you, another master destined for me?”

“If there was,” Windu said, “I imagine it was someone who never met you. No Jedi worth the dye in their robes should reject the calling to train a student who is willing to take up the fight against a Sith.”

“Will you teach me to win, next time I go up against her?”

The quirked lip turned into a proper smile. “Vosa is dead, but I promise I’ll teach you enough to stand and fight anyone you need to.”

Chapter Text

Sand had piled up in the Geonosian arena, nearly covering the fallen pillar Anakin had been chained to, knocked down by a blasterbolt that should have ended his life. Lizards and beetles the size of Obi-Wan’s fist scuttled across the abandoned space. There had been a whole society here, once. A civilization destroyed by Komari’s mind-controlling death sticks. Obi-Wan had read the council report. There had been no trace left of the native Geonosians whose factories she’d used to build the droid portion of her armies. It could only be hoped that they had fled somewhere beyond the eyes of either Komari or the Jedi.

“If it makes you feel better,” Komari said, from where she sat cross-legged on the fallen pillar, “they weren’t very nice people, either. They worked with the Sith perfectly happily long before I came along. I only did what I did to them to ensure I had control, rather than Sidious.”

In death, she seemed a strange combination of the Sith she had been and the Jedi Knight who had never lived. Her hair was blonde again, darker than the white she had died with, and even possessed of a few strands of copper that stood out in the harsh desert sunlight. The hand Obi-Wan had taken from her that morning was back, folded neatly on her lap, and the eyes with which she regarded him were blue rather than yellow. Yet it was the sleek grey dress she’d worn as a Sith that clothed her, rather than her robes, and her hair was still short-cropped and spiky like Obi-Wan had seen it last. She was unquestionably beautiful, but that was something she had been at all stages of her life.

“It doesn’t, really. I thought that there was no afterlife, for the Sith. Isn’t that why you need to achieve immortality in your lifetimes?”

Komari shrugged. “I don’t think there is. But himself wanted me here, and you know he always gets what he wants, in the end. The most stubborn of all of us, though you’d never know it by that sly smile. I never liked him, you know.”

For a second, he thought she meant Dooku. But there was no question Komari had liked him. In fact, she’d liked him rather too much. That was the root of all their problems.

The dream shifted, and they were on Naboo. Komari sat with her legs hanging off the edge of the melting pit. Obi-Wan considered pushing her off, but decided that would have been uncharitable. Instead, he sat beside her, legs dangling into nothingness.

Looking over her shoulder, back towards the hallway of shields that had ruined Obi-Wan’s life, she said, “are you going to tell him, or should I?”

And there was Qui-Gon. Unchanged from the day of his death. His clothes, his hair, the smile he gave Obi-Wan. But he was standing in the exact spot where he had died, and that was unbearable.

“I can’t tell if this is a dream or a nightmare.” Windu had described odd and terrible visions, hadn’t he? Maybe they were something like this.

“Neither,” Qui-Gon said, and came up to him, sitting cross-legged on the floor between Obi-Wan and Komari. “I’ve been fighting Sidious to try and get through to someone on Coruscant for months. It’s easier with those I had connections to, alive. I had a bit of luck with Yoda, and I did alright with Dooku. But you… we were always something special to each other, and this was the perfect opportunity.”

Weird dream, Obi-Wan decided.

Komari laughed, unkindly. Qui-Gon chuckled, and took Obi-Wan’s hand. “It’s an old Living Force technique. To preserve the spirit after death, in perfect harmony with the force. It took me some time to perfect it, but I’ve been with you for a long time, watching, trying to interfere when I can. And I’ve been here on Coruscant, trying to minimize Sidious’s harms.”

“Is that his name? Sidious?” It was easier to ask about that than to rail at Qui-Gon for not being there in the weeks after his death, when grief had threatened to destroy Obi-Wan. In the end, he and Dooku had saved each other from that fate, and if Qui-Gon had interfered, something truly beautiful might have been lost.

“No,” Komari said. “That’s a Sith title. Darth Sidious. The same way I was technically Darth Malyria. It’s true for all of us except Maul. He just had the one name, as far as I know.”

Qui-Gon, responded not to Obi-Wan’s words, but to his thoughts. “I wish I had been there. With both of you. I made mistakes, Obi-Wan. You and Dooku should have met years ago, no matter how busy we all were. He might have been for you what Yoda was for me. And I should have sent you for your trials months before Tatooine; it broke my heart to realize that you believed I only recommended you for them because of Anakin. You were more than ready.”

He thought of Dooku, so many years ago, assuring him of the point. It had seemed impossible to believe at the time, even seeing it written down in Qui-Gon’s hand, but now, hearing it, Obi-Wan felt suddenly and piercingly angry. “Why did you ask me to train him? I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that. Sometimes, I think I’m still not ready to be Asajj’s teacher.”

“Obi-Wan,” he soothed, “nobody is ever ready to raise a child for the first time. It’s impossible to be. You’ve never done it before. I asked you to train Anakin because I was dying, and afraid, and I knew you would do your best.”

“My best wouldn’t have been good enough!”

“Neither would mine!” That was enough to freeze Obi-Wan in place. He was so used to thinking Qui-Gon infallible, despite the myriad evidence to the contrary. “I already lost Xanatos. If you had been less tenacious, less good on your own merit, I surely would have lost you before you were twenty. I never did enough to guide you, or to protect you. I couldn’t have given Anakin the peace that Dooku – and you – gave him on Serenno. The freedom to love, and to choose his own path. You were the one to bring him to Dooku, and you stayed, to see that he was well, that he could have a relationship with you even if you weren’t his teacher. You gave some of the best years of your service to ensuring Anakin’s wellbeing. Your best was so far beyond ‘good enough’ that it could as well be in the Unknown Regions.”

Obi-Wan found himself shaking, unable to draw breath. Qui-Gon rubbed a soothing hand across his back. Komari, still swinging her feet over the edge, said, “this is sickening.”

Comeback quick as a blasterbolt, Qui-Gon retorted, “This coming from you. Your last words were ‘forgive me’.”

Well that was a depressing thought. Poor Dooku.

“Why is she here?”

Qui-Gon’s hand ran briefly through Obi-Wan’s hair, searching for the braid that was so many years gone. “Two reasons. First, she’s my sister, and I wanted to see her. Second, she has a message for Dooku. You’re going to deliver it.”

The dream shifted again, to a dark warehouse that was unfamiliar to Obi-Wan. The floor was strewn with needles and discarded flimsiplast wrappers. Komari settled on the edge of a durasteel crate, perched like a queen on her throne. “Tell him exactly the words I say: ‘I keep my end of the bargain, and avenge myself. The Chancellor.’”

Was the Sith lord, presumably. Obi-Wan’s seething feeling of unease suddenly made a terrible amount of sense. “Why Komari? Could you not have warned me yourself?”

“As I said, the Chancellor is powerful. When you wake, you will find it impossible to believe that he has done anything wrong, or you will forget, or believe that this was only a dream. But you must tell Dooku. That you know about Komari’s bargain will prove that this was a true vision.”

“I could easily guess that they were making a deal of some sort.”

“He’s right,” said Komari, begrudgingly, “very well. Tell him what Qui-Gon said, that my last words were ‘forgive me’. You could not have guessed that.”

It was true. Obi-Wan would never have realized that Komari still cared so much about Dooku’s opinion of her. Or at least, not that she would have admitted it. “Forgive me, bargain, The Chancellor. Got it.”

The dream shifted, one last time. Komari was gone, and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were standing, face to face, under the harsh suns of Tatooine. “When you realize that this was real… tell Anakin and Shmi that I’m sorry.”

“When this is done, Palpatine won’t be preventing you from manifesting to other people. Tell them yourself.”

In Qui-Gon’s life, Obi-Wan never would have been so rude to his face. But years with Dooku had trained him differently. Qui-Gon wasn’t angry at the change. Instead, he smiled sadly and touched his hand to Obi-Wan’s shoulder, looking at him closely as if for the first time. “I like the beard. You know… I’m very proud of the knight you’ve become. I never would have imagined that you would have been even more of a renegade from the council than I am, but I’m proud of you for standing up for what you believe.”

The suns overhead were growing painfully bright. “I’m waking up, aren’t I?”

“Of course. I’ll see you again, Padawan-mine. I promise.”

He gasped for air like a drowning man, breath coming heavy, and felt unfamiliar hands on him, helping him to sit up.

“Are you alright?” It was Cody, the clone from earlier. He had his helmet off, and looked weary.

“Are Senate prisoners still entitled to use a comlink?”

Cody shrugged.

“Well, find out.”

--

Amazingly, their kidnapping – for certain definitions of the word; it was really a rescue operation – went off without a hitch. Rex carried his friend’s unconscious body out into space with them, and then again off the ship back on Serenno. Barriss met them at the landing bay, with the calm aura of someone too stressed to worry about anything at all. They’d called ahead the second they’d re-entered the Serennian atmosphere.

“Master Nu is sleeping,” she said, not broken of her temple habits quite yet. “Doctor Kyrate, one of Serenno’s most advanced neurosurgeons, is arriving in fifteen minutes. Amazingly, when you can tell them that you can save the planet from an invading army, the entirety of Serenno really will jump to attention. They dragged him out of bed at 0600 just for me.”

It was morning, Anakin was surprised to realize. It was easy to lose track of time when flying, and even moreso outside of the atmosphere. Yet the facts were there; an entire night had passed. The pressing deadline of the coming attack had closed in further than ever.

“And the emergency parliament session? Are they still meeting?”

Barriss shook her head no, and as she glided over to Rex and Cici, said, “they called a recess twenty minutes ago. I told them that you would be giving an address in six hours.”

“I will?”

Barriss held her hands up to Rex to show that she was unarmed, and wrapping the force around Cici like a blanket, she took the clone woman into her arms with strength that was in contrast to her slender form.

“I can have the surgery performed and the patient conscious in four. That gives you time to interview her after she wakes up, get any information you want, and make it to Carannia. As a healer, my professional recommendation is that you get some sleep while I perform the surgery.”

Technically, she wasn’t a qualified healer; she was a teenager. But, well, Anakin wasn’t so much older. And she was the best they had. “Thank you, Barriss. Has the rest of the palace been evacuated underground?”

She nodded, and was on her way, already speaking to a concerned Rex in hushed tones about what the procedure would entail. Anakin felt a surge of pride in her. Perhaps Barriss would never be a knight as recognized by Coruscant – no more than he was – but she would have the chance to save people. Perhaps that would be enough.

Quinlan’s hand touched his shoulder. “She’s right, Anakin. You should get some sleep while you still can. Aayla and I will look after everyone.”

His rest was fitful, compounded by a feeling of impending dread in the force and the way that he could feel the fear of every other person in Serenno pounding against his mind like a Wookie playing Herglic rage-metal on the drums. They knew that these ships might invade them. They knew that the Count was away. They knew that help was lightyears away.

He could not imagine how afraid they would have been to know that the entire Republic was at the mercy of these same forces. Anakin hated knowing that he’d been proven right about the wrongness of the war. He would much rather have been proven wrong than vindicated by such terrible suffering.

But more than anything, he hated the fact that whoever was doing this had used the republic as a tool in their terrible actions. Anakin was a skeptic about the Republic – he had far more trust in planetary governments to manage their own affairs, as he had experienced on Serenno – but he knew what it meant to people like Padmé. She fought within its structures to reform it because she truly believed that it could be a force for good. She would have been willing to die to protect it, and he hated the idea that the trust she had placed in its institutions would be betrayed. Still, at least there were good people like Padmé and Jenza there as well. Anakin had to believe that they would prevail.

“It’s the Chancellor,” said the clone Cici, sitting up on the edge of her bed. Barriss and Rex were both watching her with a mother wolf’s concern. “I would swear it on my life, it was his Ident. I remember thinking it was odd that he called. We weren’t an important ship, the General was still a shiny.”

She put a hand over her mouth, and Rex, who was sitting beside her, rubbed his hand across her shoulder in a soothing motion. Of course they thought of Vebb as still a child, although he must have been years older than any clone, with their accelerated aging. Such things were subjective. Anakin was still a child to the Serennians, even if he was an adult on any other world, because they aged slower. But there was a difference between the flukes of evolution and the forced aging of the clones before the time. One was the will of the force, the other was the commuting of lifespans for the purpose of efficiency.

“I believe you,” Anakin assured her, and he did. In the force, her words had given him a sense of complete certainty. There had been no doubt, no trace of dishonesty in her. And as he reconsidered his interactions with the Chancellor over the years, that feeling of sickening sweetness that had always radiated from him suddenly made a terrifying amount of sense. The Chancellor was a Sith, had always been a Sith. He had started the war to gain the powers the Senate had conferred on him, to corrupt the Jedi order, possibly beyond repair. And now he had decided to destroy the last bastion of Jedi who had stayed out of it.

Cici seemed to be examining him, carefully. “Why? I killed one of your people. How could you ever possibly trust me?”

Her voice had a shattered quality to it. Anakin almost wondered if he’d made a mistake, sitting out the war. He’d left all the clones to be ill-used by anyone who had less scruples than he did. But staying could not have helped them either, he supposed. It was the sort of system where there was no working within it to help. Only outside forces like the Senate had a chance of effecting change on the Jedi. Or, well, they might have if not for the Chancellor.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Rex told her, but she seemed to pull away from him at that.

Anakin wondered what Dooku would have said, what his mother would have said. “Cici, what is happening here, what they did, is something far more terrible than you were ever prepared to face. This is a Sith, like a villain from a story book. He has subjugated the galaxy to his will without force. But to turn you, the only way he could do it was by invading your brain. He knew that you and yours were too good to be turned to the darkness by simple conniving or bribery, and so he forced you. I am so unimaginably sorry that we failed to protect you from that. But I promise you that no good Jedi would ever want you to blame yourself. We know the power of the Sith, and we know what they can do to people. You are a victim in this just as much as Nahdar Vebb was.”

Aayla, who was leaning against the wall beside Quinlan, her expression harsh with fury at all the universe, said, “I knew Nahdar. I worked with him and Kit sometimes. He looked at the world with delight like nobody I’ve ever known. He would be happy to know that you didn’t choose to betray him, and to know that you are free now.”

“You can’t know that.”

The force rippled. Aayla wasn’t one of the most powerful Jedi Anakin knew – no Dooku, or Yoda, or Depa Billiba – but she had care and precision that made her equal to any of them. “Yes, I can.”

There was a moment of silence where Cici gave in and leant back against Rex. He wrapped his arm protectively around her and asked, “what do we do now?”

Anakin wished, fiercely, that Dooku was here. That Padmé was here. He turned back to Aayla. “What are the odds you can get back through the communications blockade?”

She seemed to consider the proposition. “Good, if we leave before they notice Cici and Rex are missing. It’s actually easy flying; I can pre-program the course based on the route we last took. But you need me here. If they choose to attack us, Quinlan and I are the best hope you have. Barriss should go.”

The Healer shook her head. “I will not abandon you now. Serenno is my home. I need to stay and help. And you will need a healer, in all this. Rex and Cici should go. We can give them our codes to contact the council. Both of you have done more than enough.”

There was that swell of pride again. But Rex objected. “Cici needs to go testify, but I can stay. This is our fight more than anyone’s, and if there’s any way I can help our vode… they will need me, when they are freed.”

It would have been unfair to deny him that. But Cici could hardly go on her own, recovering from brain surgery as she was.

There was a polite cough from the other side of the room, and they all turned to Jocasta. “I may not be much of a pilot,” she told them, seeming impossibly aged by what they had heard, “but I was made by the force to be a preserver of information and a teller of tales. Let me do this.”

And so it would be. Anakin checked the time. He had an hour and a half to decide how he was going to tell the people of Serenno the truth. Just enough time to make the commute to Carannia, and make a decision.

--

Dooku had a restless night. He ended up sleeping in the Jedi temple, in the master-padawan quarters he’d been assigned with Anakin but had never used. Asajj stayed in the other room, staring down at a monitor long after the rest of the temple had gone to sleep. From years of raising Anakin, Dooku could tell that she’d sliced her way deep into the Senate’s systems.

“Obi-Wan is a good Jedi,” she’d said during his last check-in before going to bed, with loyal confidence, “he wouldn’t be so vulnerable to a mental attack on his own. But if Komari’s darkness-bomb proves anything, it’s that she was trying to use the force in unprecedented ways. If the drugs in her death sticks could be administered in a more covert fashion…”

Dooku had patted her on her shoulder, and left her to her work. He trusted her to find anything there was to be found.

His dreams were disturbed, with the sight of Komari’s dead body, by the memory of Anakin saying goodbye, and Obi-Wan collapsing to the floor of the Senate as boneless as a baby’s doll. It had been such a terrible day. But there was potential there, too. Dooku was circling around the identity of the Sith Master, like a firaxa with blood in the water. He woke with the dawn to the buzzing of his comm. The ident was Quinlan’s, again. In the hope it might be Anakin, Dooku answered quickly, but instead it was Jocasta, looking as worn as Dooku had ever seen her.

“Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, grimly. “Listen well. We haven’t much time. I’m jumping to hyperspace in fifteen for Coruscant. The Senate needs to see my evidence in person. The Chancellor is the Sith lord. There is a chip placed in the clones that, when activated, will subjugate them to his will. The ships around Serenno are there on his orders. He is prepared to destroy the entire Jedi Order, and to use the executive powers awarded to him by the Senate during the course of the war to enact a Sith Empire.”

Somehow, the fact that it was the Chancellor wasn’t a surprise. Dooku remembered the strange sensation he’d felt in the force, when standing in Palpatine’s presence. Perhaps that had been its oblique way of trying to warn him. And all of Palpatine’s behavior over the years fit perfectly with the profile they’d described. He’d come to power after Naboo, as its Senator. He’d met Anakin then, discovering the opportunity to use him. But Palpatine must have been keeping his options for apprentices open, because he had contacted Dooku so frequently in those first few months after Qui-Gon’s death. Trying to cultivate the relationship, no doubt.

The part that didn’t make sense was Jocasta’s explanation of the Sith plan. It seemed too vast, too awful to even contemplate. “How could he destroy the Jedi? Surely there would be other worlds that would remember what good the Order did for them, would come to their aid?”

Worlds like Serenno, blockaded from the rest of the galaxy, which was probably the last place where more than one or two Jedi lived without any nearby clones. Jocasta was right. Palpatine must have been planning a massacre. That explained why he’d fought so hard against Padmé’s efforts to free the clones, why he had tried to assassinate someone as relatively unimportant as Satine Kryze. And if he were spying on Padmé, he might even have realized her plans to use Jango Fett in service of that aim. It might have been why he’d set Fett against Komari. That way, whoever survived, he would benefit. Dooku hated, viscerally, to know that this was the truth.

“He’s been undermining the Order for years,” Jocasta reminded him, “he was the Chancellor for a decade before the War. We had less initiates every year, less knights. We lost people and never investigated. And now we are soldiers only, not healers and diplomats. All it takes is one push, to have us change from being seen as soldiers fighting for the Republic to soldiers working against it.”

One push. Like Obi-Wan confessing to the Senate that he was steeped in darkness. Palpatine had seen that as an opportunity to further distort their reputation. It was brilliant and terrible. But he had been discovered now. Dooku only had to go to Mace Windu, relay their findings, and together they would kill him.

An idea rose in Dooku’s mind then, so terrible that he knew it with a certainty. If he told Windu that Palpatine was the Sith, they would go to arrest him. And attempting to arrest the Chancellor of the Republic without a warrant would be seen as evidence of a coup against the popular and heroic chancellor, destroying the last vestiges of the Order’s reputation as a lawful institution. Yet if they made the efforts to get the warrant, than Palpatine would be given enough warning to activate the clones and decimate the Order. They were at a stalemate. He would win no matter what they did.

So Palpatine had to die. There could be no arrest, no trial, no justice. The thought would have curdled the blood of a good Jedi like Anakin, who had never killed, or Obi-Wan, who still regretted the death of the Sith on Naboo, all these years later. Windu might have done the deed willingly if provoked, but he had been so obviously unwell, teetering close to the darkness, that Dooku could not ask it of him. The second of hesitation where he tried to deliver justice rather than death would surely condemn him in turn. Yoda might do the deed, if Palpatine was clearly and demonstrably a Sith, but he would need to see it revealed first, and would not place the innate faith in Jocasta’s word that Dooku did.

On Geonosis, Dooku had braced for Anakin’s death, and made a decision. He had decided that he would rather take the darkness onto himself than he would see it stain anyone he cared about. To kill for them, especially to kill one who had brought such suffering on those he loved? Well, that was no hardship at all.

“Anakin was right, wasn’t he?” In all their many years of friendship, Dooku could count the number of times Jocasta had cried on one hand. But she was weeping now, voice choked. “I was trying to be strong for him, to tell him it might not really be goodbye, but…”

Dooku wished he could have held her, one last time. He wished he could have done a lot of things. He’d never gone back with Jenza to their mother’s grave. He had never introduced Anakin to Rael. He would never again see the beauty of Talarma, or walk Carannia’s pearly streets. Dooku had expected the unnaturally long life that was his due as both Serennian and Jedi. He had expected that he would live to see his agemates buried, even those who were one but not the other, like Jenza and Jocasta. He had hoped that one day Jenza might remarry, and he might be able to attend this time, to see her and Shmi’s joining. He had expected the same for Anakin and Padmé, some day, and had dreamed of living to abdicate in Anakin’s favour, to see the duty of rulership passed down to one who had worked honestly for it, rather than a usurper like Dooku himself.

“You know what I have to do.”

“I do. I do, and I hate it.”

A woman cut into their call, sounding rather embarrassed. Jocasta’s pilot, presumably. “General, we have to move to hyperspace now.”

There was so much left to say, but in the end Dooku only raised his hand to her. “Farewell, Jocasta Nu. May the Force be with you.”

“May the Force be with you, Count Dooku of Serenno, Master of the Jedi.”

Dooku stood, calmly, and hung his cape around his neck. Then, as an afterthought, he removed it. It seemed wrong to go to do this terrible thing dressed in the garment that symbolized Serenno. He was acting in his own name, not in theirs. Instead, he took out the box he’d left in storage when he’d left the Temple decades earlier. In it, there was a cream-coloured robe, trimmed with silk in a fashion that was uncommonly ostentatious for a Jedi. But even decades ago, when he had been given this garment, it had been known that Dooku had inappropriately fine tastes for a Jedi.

There was a faint stain on the right sleeve from an occasion where he’d been particularly drunk. Jocasta’s knighting, he thought it might have been. He’d been upset at himself about that at the time. After all, the robes had been a gift from Yoda, far beyond the means of a newly minted knight like he had been. Now, their well-worn nature was comforting. Dooku dressed himself in this, pulled the hood over his head, and secured his lightsaber at his belt. Finally, he took a piece of flimsiplast from his desk, and marked it, in his most legible handwriting, with words he wished he could have said aloud.

I, Dooku of Serenno, do nominate Heir Anakin of Serenno to the position of Count. He exemplifies the dedication, integrity, and loyalty of all our greatest leaders. Let my wishes be known.

On another, he wrote,

I, Dooku of Serenno, do nominate Senator Jenza of Serenno to the position of Count. She possesses the wisdom, courage, and quality of judgement that I believe will serve to protect the future of Serenno. Let my wishes be known.

And on a third,

Choose between the two of you what you want. Burn the rest.

Let Anakin make his path in the world. Dooku would neither deny him the position, nor condemn him to it.

He sealed the papers in an envelope, marked it with Shmi’s name, and locked the door behind him. Then he went to Asajj’s room. She was asleep at her desk, the employee roster for cooks open before her, with all the names crossed off except for three, and a list of clone identification numbers written on flimsi, with all crossed off except for two.

Dooku left her work be, and, with the force to assist him, lifted Asajj to her bed. She shifted in his arms, but didn’t wake.

There was so much Dooku had wanted to teach Asajj. He had wanted to see Obi-Wan cut her braid, and to feel that pride in both of them.

He hoped they both knew that he was proud of them anyhow.

Dooku slipped out of Asajj’s room, and, in the living room, pulled out his comlink and tapped out an ident number. “Hello, this is Count Dooku of Serenno. I’m looking to make an emergency appointment with the Chancellor this morning, in regards to the Kenobi-Vosa matter. Does he have time to slot me in for fifteen minutes or so before the Senate resumes at 0900?”

It was 0730. Palpatine’s secretary, after a silent moment of checking the books, put Dooku on hold. She returned after a couple minutes to tell him, “You can have ten, at 0830. He’d been hoping to hear from you.”

“Of course. Thank you both very much.”

An hour then, to settle the rest of Dooku’s worldly affairs. He spent the first five minutes of it on a selfish thing, welding the doors to his and Asajj’s shared quarters shut with his lightsaber. If he failed, and the clones were turned, they were not going to come upon Asajj asleep and unable to defend herself. The temple was so empty, with all the masters off at war, that nobody saw him doing so. He walked the hallways where he had grown up, as if they were catacombs and he a spirit haunting them. Jedi rose early, but on this day, he did not see another soul out of their quarters. At least, until he reached the entry hall.

Dooku, as a padawan, had been ill-behaved, but not in any of the conventional ways. He had rarely drunk to excess, never tried other intoxicants, or gambled. He hadn’t run around having sex with every moving thing like Rael, or falling madly in love at the age of ten like Anakin. But he hadn’t been entirely devoid of interest either. Yoda had caught him, sneaking out of or into their quarters more than once. The worst time, he’d been sopping drunk, leaning on Sifo-Dyas, and he’d thrown up all over his master’s slippers. It was this exact moment that Dooku instantly found himself transported to when, about to walk out of the temple for the last time, he heard the tapping of a stick on the floors behind him.

“Master Yoda.” He’d dropped the title almost entirely from his vocabulary, but somehow, as a last goodbye, it felt important to imbue it with the respect of millennia. He was Serennian, after all. Titles were self.

“Master Dooku. Wearing your cape, you are not.”

“I’m going out today as a worried grandmaster, not as the Count of Serenno. I’ve dragged my world into more than enough trouble.”

“Hmph.” Yoda came up to him, slow and careful. He seemed as much aged by the years of war as anyone, and a blasterbolt had taken a chunk out of the tip of his left ear. “Hidden from me, your future is.”

“I have a meeting at the Senate. I don’t intend to be gone long.”

“Then mind me accompanying you, you will not.” He laughed, at the paralyzed concern on Dooku’s face. “Lie to me, you cannot. But walk your own path you must. Trust you, I must.” Dooku knelt before him, and let his master’s clawed hand close upon his shoulder. “Much grief I sense in you. And anger, too. But there is calm over it all. Accepted the will of the force, you have.”

Yoda had outlived all his padawans. Dooku was the last of them. “How do you go on, when the children you raised have died?” It suddenly seemed a monstrous thing, that he was going to do to Yoda what losing Qui-Gon and Komari had done to him.

“You go on,” Yoda told him, as if that was an answer. Perhaps it was the only answer there was.

There was so much more he wanted to say, and yet every second he dallied here was a second he lost at the Senate, sorting out the rest of his affairs. Saying the rest of his goodbyes.

But a question that had arisen in his goodbye with Anakin rose, unbidden, to his lips. “Do you believe Qui-Gon was right? About Anakin being the Chosen One?”

He believed that Anakin was the most wonderful child ever born, as he suspected most parents did of their own, but there was a galaxy of difference between that and being prophesied to bring balance to the force.

“When he came to us, clouded, Anakin’s future was. Qui-Gon saw hope clearly in it; I did not. But on Geonosis… too distracted, you were, to feel the power he exerted over the force. An accident, it is not, that all the Jedi who were there would follow Knight Skywalker – Knight Anakin – into any danger. Peace, he gave to you. Balance. Bring balance to the force, he did. The force in you.”

“The Prophecy of the Chosen One cannot possibly mean the saving of one life.”

Yoda gave him such a skeptical look that Dooku might as well have said that gravity didn’t exist.

“In everything, the force is; in the force, everything is. Only through the balance of the self may the balance of the force exist.”

Dooku could only hope that the old troll was right. “Thank you for all your wisdom. I know I haven’t always listened, but I am more grateful for it than you can ever know.”

“Listened, you have not,” Yoda agreed, “but learned, you have. That is enough, hm?”

“I hope so.”

“It is.”

He had planned to spend the remainder of his time with Jenza and Shmi. But to Dooku’s surprise, they weren’t in the office yet. Getting some much-needed sleep, hopefully, but more likely getting up to mischief elsewhere. Dooku stood outside the locked door of their offices, and considered his options. He could let himself in and leave a note. He could call.

Perhaps it was better not to say goodbye at all. Jenza had been there for his farewell to Anakin. She understood that this might be the end of their time together.

“Jedi?” He turned automatically at the title, and was as startled to see Padmé standing there, caf in hand, as she was to see him. She laughed, a little strained. “I don’t think I’ve seen you without your cape before, Dooku. The cream suits you.”

Not as well as it had in his youth, when his hair had been dark and lucious. But it suited his purpose today, and that was something. “Jenza and Shmi aren’t here yet. We ought to call ahead, you and I.”

Switching her drink to her other hand, Padmé offered Dooku her arm. “I thought they might not be. They were sneaking the Duchess in to meet with some of our clone acquaintances last night.”

It was as good a reason for their absence as any. “I wonder if my sister ever sleeps.”

Padmé grinned. “Not that I know of. Did you need her for something?”

They were walking, slow and deliberate, in the direction of Padmé’s office. “I have a meeting with the Chancellor in half an hour. I thought I might see Jenza first.”

Padmé’s hand tightened, ever so slightly, on his arm. Dooku wondered if she felt the same crawling distrust of the Chancellor that Dooku always had. Perhaps the force was trying to warn her, even if she had not enough power to truly understand its meaning.

Voice mild, she said, “in my experience, the Chancellor thinks to spy on us in our offices. He doesn’t imagine we might be so foolish as to discuss private business in public hallways.”

“Private business?”

They passed Padmé’s office and continued their meandering path. “You would never leave off your cape unless you had a good reason. I won’t ask what, but… I worry, you understand. Anakin loves you very much.”

“Anakin understands this.” Dooku hoped that his words were true. More than anything, he wanted them to be true.

“Yes,” Padmé said, after a moment. “Anakin is strong enough to survive losing you. But I wish he didn’t have to.”

“Better than me losing him.” Whatever Yoda’s words, Dooku did not think he could have borne living long enough to see a world without Anakin in it. “Do you think it’s forever, you and he?”

“Nothing is forever.” Her shoulder brushed against his arm, a brief moment of comfort. “We haven’t spoken of marriage, or children. But after this week, I think I will have had a lifetime’s worth of senate politics. I want to see my bills signed into law, the end of the war, and then… Serenno would be a beautiful place to retire to, I think.”

“Could you be happy giving it all up for him?”

“Can he be happy giving up the Jedi Order for me? It won’t be any time soon, not with the way the Senate is now, but in five years? Yes. I think we could be very happy. Anakin… let me phrase this as well as I know how. When we first met, he thought I was an angel. I don’t think I could have been happy with a man who thought I was an angel. But Anakin learned to see me as the girl I was, and the woman I am. An equal, and a friend, and an ally. He likes my beauty, but loves my intellect. He likes my charm and loves my anger. We’ve been partners in work, and in crime, and I think we could very happily go on being partners in everything for the rest of our lives. Does that answer your question?”

He could almost picture them, ten years from now, in a portrait hanging on the walls of Castle Serenno. There was a portrait like that of his parents, with Ramil seated between them, baby Jenza on his lap. Dooku could picture Padmé and Anakin like that. Children cradled close, but unlike Dooku’s parents, they never would have left their middle child to die in the woods. Shmi and Jenza would be there too, with the grandchildren. It would be a happy moment.

“Thank you, Padmé. For everything. And if you would tell Jenza that I love her, and am truly proud to call her my sister?”

She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Make good choices, Dooku. May the Force be with you.”

Padmé settled back on her heels, and shifting her posture, assumed a regal stature. In spite of the fact that she was dressed as a Senator, Dooku could see the image of the queen she had been, and the countess she would be.

She raised her hand to him in a silent, final, farewell.

Chapter Text

“Heir Anakin.” Cathaya offered him a formal bow, recognizing his new status. “My congratulations, in spite of the trying circumstances.”

Her eyes seemed to dissect him, taking in the borrowed cape, weary expression, and barely-combed hair.

“Just Anakin is fine.” She nodded. “How has my… ascendancy gone over?”

“It was hardly unexpected,” Cathaya pointed out. She was wearing a trim black suit with a red bowtie, and her hair was pinned under a dapper red hat. It was the very opposite of her house’s colours, and made a powerful statement of her independence. “Early word… people are nervous about not having the Count or the Senator here. No fomenting of rebellion that I’ve heard, but with my father…”

House Carannia had the next best claim on the title, since Dooku’s mother had been of their line, and Cathaya’s maternal grandfather had been from a cadet branch of House Serenno.

“You understand why I want you beside me, with this?” Everyone was liable to think they were going to be married, but that was an acceptable risk. Cathaya’s presence at his side would be reassuring for the people, and might provide the nobility with a sense of normalcy.

“I do. I read your draft on the way here, and… if Serenno survives this, I can tell you that you could very well go down in history as one of our great politicians.”

“It’s a good speech?”

“It’s a great speech. Who taught you to write like that?”

Anakin grinned. “My mother.”

Dooku had taken Anakin to view both of the branches of the Serennian parliament meeting on more than one occasion. He knew many of the representatives personally, and a fair percentage of the council, although not all of them on good terms. Some didn’t remember the arrest of Lady Castores very kindly. All of them, uncommonly crammed into one room with the Council sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives, watched Anakin closely as he, Cathaya, and Quinlan came to the stage. As Anakin had requested, a news crew stood before them, lens pointed directly at Anakin’s podium. He had seen Dooku speak here many times, in the annual Count’s Address. Standing behind the carved wood, with the sigil of the house carved in front of him, a strange glyph almost like a twelve-pointed star, Anakin felt the unbearable weight of all those members of House Serenno who had come before him. Ramil, whose blood stained Dooku’s hands, and Dooku himself. Gora, who had tried to destroy his own son for the simple crime of being born with a gift, and Anya, who had tried her best.

In the stillness of the room, he could hear the wood creak slightly in his nervous grasp. There was a brush of warmth in the force as Quinlan attempted to be encouraging, but it only made Anakin more keenly aware of all the eyes on him.

“My name is Skywalker Anakin, but I am also Knight Anakin, and Heir Anakin of Serenno. I am honoured to stand before you in the place of Count Dooku, but would that it were for any reason but this. There are ships in the sky overhead, threatening to attack us, and isolating us from the outside world. I am here to tell you why.

“At the beginning of the Civil War that threatens to tear our galaxy apart, Serenno made a choice not to fight, but to help. We were brave in our resistance to the pressure of both sides to compromise our choice. Some felt that this was cowardice, but there is no cowardice in standing for your beliefs. As proof of this, I tell you now that what we chose was seen as a threat. It was a threat to the Sith Lord that instigated the war. Until now, his name has been unknown. But yesterday, when we Serennians were attacked, I wanted to know why. With my allies Jedi Vos and Secura, I infiltrated one of their ships. What we discovered there was a terrible shock to all of us. The master of Komari Vosa, the one who directed her to do as she did, is none other than Sheev Palpatine, the false-hearted Chancellor of the Republic.”

The shock and outrage was instantaneous, and Anakin let it marinade. There would be such fury at the deception, such disbelief. From the gallery, someone called, “where’s the proof?”

It was what Anakin had been waiting for. He pulled a datachip from his pocket. “When I am finished speaking, a testimony provided by my new friend, Trooper Rex, of the fact that the clones used as Republic troopers were given chips in their brains that allowed the Chancellor to control them at will, just as Komari Vosa controlled her soldiers with poisoned death sticks, will be transmitted all over Serenno along with images of one of these control chips that was removed from another trooper. I cannot spread this information off planet due to the blockade, so the duty falls to you. Watch closely. Listen well. We on Serenno know the most important information in the Galaxy, and we must fight to share it.

“I know you must be asking yourselves this question: why us? Why Serenno, of all worlds? Were we not decent? Did we not choose to stay out of this fight of Sith and Jedi? Who brought this violence to our skies? There is only one person to blame, and that man is Sheev Palpatine. The Sith seek control, power only for themselves. They have no cause, no people, no integrity. That we would not be controlled is what he hates about Serenno. That Count Dooku chose to do his duty and walk his own path. Serenno is a place where people can make and remake themselves. I am Skywalker Anakin, and Knight Anakin, and Heir Anakin, because Serenno has allowed me to be all of those things. Our titles, the way we evolve in our own lifetimes, is unique in the galaxy. We could never choose to simply be what we were born. A planet full of ‘Baby’ and ‘Child’, ‘Son’, ‘Daughter’ and ‘Firstborn’.” There was some awkward laughter. “We have an extraordinary gift to forge our destiny, and that is what Palpatine could not abide.

“We never asked for any of this. Nobody ever asks for the hand of destiny to rest upon their shoulder. But we will triumph in it, because we are Serenno, an ancient and powerful and united world. We will save ourselves and our Republic. We will fight to save the clones who have been made as much victims in this as anyone. If needed, I will lay down my life for it. This, I pledge to you. No Serennian will shed their blood before I do, and, if I can help it, not a drop of their blood will be shed at all.”

“The Sith wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you Jedi!”

That was one of the Representatives, though Anakin couldn’t match a name to his face. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Do you think every world touched by the war was home to a Jedi? Study your history books. The Sith empire was a power in this galaxy for centuries. They do not tolerate the freedom of others to make their own destinies.

“But the Representative is right. Here and now, the Sith have sent their forces for me.” Cici had known enough to confirm that. “And now, before the network takes you to our evidence against the chancellor, I will now address them, in my own name and the name of my house.”

He waited for the signal from the holojournalist behind the camera. This bit of theatre, to be seen not just by the people of Serenno, but by the ships circling overhead, served a different purpose.

Anakin wasn’t as skilled at mind tricks as Obi-Wan was. But he knew how they worked, how to soothe and smooth over the rough edges of a mind. And he knew, from Barriss’s research, something of how this chip worked. It was another of Komari’s brilliant innovations; she really was clever, with bombs that knocked Jedi unconscious and chemicals that subjugated people to her will, and, apparently, chips that subjugated them to the will of her Master.

But because Komari was clever, she would never have been fool enough to build this kind of technology without a back door, lest it be used against her. Anakin only had to figure out what that was, and subvert it accordingly. Perhaps it had been coded simply to her voice, to her sense in the force, but that would have meant that Komari never could have taught it to someone else, and Komari had never been as lacking in the ability to love as Sith in stories were. She might well have wanted to protect people other than herself. So it had to be something difficult, which neither Palpatine nor the Jedi would ever suspect, ever attempt.

Komari Vosa was the only person in the last millenia to have been trained extensively both as a Sith and as a Jedi. Her command of the light side had once been as impressive as her command of the dark. And, as Dooku himself had shown, touching one did not prevent touching the other. Not by any stretch.

So Anakin reached into the light, where he had been rooted for thirteen years. And then, tentatively, he tried to imagine the tenants of the Sith. Dooku had never hidden the Sith or their teachings from Anakin. That would have gone against his personal code, and the number of writings on the subject in his library were extensive. There was only one line in all of it that appealed to Anakin, that made him understand the attraction of the Sith. ‘Through victory, my chains are broken’.

Perhaps it was projection, but Anakin had always believed that Komari had fallen to the dark side because she was seeking her own freedom. After all the Bando Gora had done to her, Anakin knew that she understood what it was to truly be chained more than a wealthy, powerful man like the Chancellor ever could have. In some ways, she was the mirror of Anakin himself. She had lost Dooku and her freedom where Anakin had found it. They had travelled in opposite directions, paths crossing like lightsaber blades with sparking fury, she towards the darkness and he towards the light.

Komari had been raised by Dooku. She would have surely shared Anakin’s inherited love of drama, irony, and symbolism. She had chained the clones on Palpatine’s behalf. But what better way to undermine him than by simply… removing those chains, at a time that was convenient.

Anakin let the darkness brush against his metal fingertips where they rested against the podium. “The Sith Palpatine has stolen your liberty from you. He has stolen your self from you. It is a terrible violation of everything that is right and good in this galaxy.” Anakin let himself feel the terrible anger of the fact, let it burn through his veins. Dooku had taught him how to release such feelings into the force, but now, he was going to try something he had never seen done before. He shaped his anger, his fear at the reminder of his own violated childhood, and turned them into a blade.

“The Force shall set you free,” he said, and reached out in the force and slashed through the chains that held the clones in place.

The galaxy thrummed like the inside of a drum. Quinlan raised his hands to his ears in pain, as, more surprisingly, did Cathaya. The wave of power surged, and Anakin knew that this darkness could only be used for harm. Harm against Palpatine, yes, but the darkness would never be satiated with righteous use.

Like on Geonosis, like he had above Serenno, Anakin smoothed it over, stopping the reverberations of the drum with a gentle hand across its skin. It was a moment where he felt such unimaginable power that he knew, with the certainty of the force, he could never wield such a thing again. He felt the galaxy stretched out beneath his hands, star systems, comets flashing through the void. Trillions of lives. The veins of the hyperspace lanes that connected the Republic, the vast bubbling stew of the unknown regions and all the life contained within them, good and terrible alike. He saw Coruscant, and Naboo, Tatooine and Geonosis. Across all of it, he reached out his hands, and smoothed away the darkness, the anger, and the fury. Then he slumped to his knees, and wept. After a moment, the camera cut away.

--

Dooku wasn’t answering his comlink. Even though Obi-Wan was only entitled to one call, Cody let him try three times, and, when it failed on the third, he said, gently, “is there anyone else you can call?”

Something in the back of his mind was pushing him, desperately saying that Dooku needed to know about his strange dream, but obviously, that wasn’t possible.

He tried Jenza. No response. And then Shmi. No response. And Asajj. No response. Satine, no response. Padmé, no response. He supposed it didn’t matter that he had no opportunity to tell Dooku about the dream that was already going fuzzy, but by now fear had taken root in him. Why were none of them responding to him?

“It’s very early,” Cody said, soothingly, “could they still be asleep?”

Asajj liked to sleep in, but it wasn’t like the others not to answer him. Dooku especially.

Weighing his options, Obi-Wan said, carefully, “I don’t like this. Something is happening out there. Something terrible.”

“Can you sense that?” Cody was looking blatantly at the cuffs on Obi-Wan’s wrists, preventing him from touching the force.

“No,” he admitted, truthfully. Cut off as he was from the rest of the universe, Obi-Wan had no way of receiving the little nudges from the force that normally helped guide him along his path. “But something big is happening here. I knew that before I was ever arrested.” Not arrested, technically. This was all extrajudicial banthashit. “And now that Komari is dead… the Sith must have something terrible planned, to decide he no longer needed her.”

Cody was listening attentively, focused on Obi-Wan’s words, and that was temptation enough for him to confess. “I had a dream, last night. I know it wasn’t real, because the cuffs were on, but I dreamed it anyhow. Komari came to me, and Qui-Gon, the man who raised me. They told me that Palpatine is the Sith. I know that’s foolish, but perhaps it has some basis in truth? There might be some reason not to trust him, even if he obviously can’t be the Sith.”

As Obi-Wan was speaking, he’d been looking out of the cell, not quite at Cody. The image of Qui-Gon and Komari had been emblazoned in his vision. So it was something of a surprise when Cody’s hands, holding the key to Obi-Wan’s cuffs, came to his wrists and unlocked them, one at a time.

“I don’t understand.”

The clone gave him a smile. “I… may not have been entirely honest, before, when you asked me if I knew Amidala and Senator Jenza.”

“You’re one of their sources?”

They must have had many clone sources, of course, but it made sense for most of them to be from the Senate guard. And with Cody’s effusiveness yesterday, Obi-Wan had suspected as much.

“I’m trying,” he said, as if even the act of speaking to them wasn’t courageous in and of itself. “I don’t know what to do, how to help, but…” He seemed to be considering whether he could trust Obi-Wan, the same way Obi-Wan had debated trusting him with the foolish dream earlier. “I was posted with Pong Krell, before my transfer here. I know what happens when people see us as droids.”

Even on Serenno, they’d heard about how Krell had fallen. Anakin had been paying attention to him for some time; it was hard to miss the Jedi with the highest KIA rates in the entire GAR. Any need to take action on Anakin’s part had been resolved by Krell’s death. Allegedly, one of the clone troopers had killed him. The first Jedi on scene afterwards had been Depa Billaba, and supposedly, whatever evidence she’d seen had been so shocking that she’d refused to say which of the clones had done it because ‘he was right in doing so’.

Obi-Wan wanted desperately to ask if Cody had done it, but he restrained himself. Instead, he asked, “what are we going to do now?”

Cody slipped his helmet back into place. It clicked as it locked on to the rest of his armour. “I’m going to escort a prisoner to the senate building.”

In point of fact, that wasn’t where they went. Since Jenza and Shmi were both failing to answer their comlinks, Obi-Wan led Cody to their apartment. It was between the jail and the Senate anyhow, and they received surprisingly few stares once Obi-Wan was uncuffed and walking like a free man. He wondered how many clone visitors had to come to this building on a regular basis. Probably more than the GAR would have approved of.

To his surprise, Cody knew the access code for Jenza’s apartment, and when he entered, Shmi said, loudly, “Satine! This is Cody, who I was talking about.”

It was very gratifying that Satine ignored Cody entirely in favour of wrapping Obi-Wan in a tight embrace. “They released you? Obi-Wan, you scared me half to death.”

She was wearing an overcoat, likely against the fact that it had been raining on their way here, which made it obvious that the three had been on their way to the Senate to begin the second day of his questioning. News of his escape must not have become public yet.

“Not quite,” Cody said, mildly. “Shmi, he may need to borrow that change of clothes you keep lying around.”

Nobody every would have expected the prisoner who had escaped from the Senate to go directly there, and so they transferred locations to Jenza’s senate office with minimal interruption, although they did take the long way round. When they arrived, they found that Padmé had let herself in and was perched nervously behind the desk.

“I think something bad is happening,” she said, without preamble or even acknowledgement of Cody and Obi-Wan’s presence. “I know we said no jammers, it would make Palpatine suspicious, but we have bigger fish to fry so I set one up. Something happened, Dooku knows something we don’t. He’s in a meeting with the Chancellor now, and he isn’t wearing his cape. I need to know what he learned.”

If none of them knew, there was only one person who could help. He typed in Asajj’s ident again, this time to Jenza’s office comlink, and received an immediate response. It probably helped that, with the cuffs off, he could prod her into wakefulness via their training bond.

“Count kriffing Dooku!” Everyone winced away from the sound of her yelling blowing out the microphone, “has welded me in my damn quarters. Pretentious asshole!”

What the krifff? “Are you hurt? What’s happening?”

He could still tell that Asajj was releasing her anger into it before she spoke. “Dooku left what I think is a suicide note, Obi-Wan, and then he welded the door to our quarters shut with a lightsaber. I think he figured out who the Sith is, and is going after him on his own. He left his cape.”

The cape of the Count of Serenno. Obi-Wan could hardly picture Dooku without it. It was a testament to both Padmé and Asajj’s exposure to Serennian culture via Jenza and Dooku that they had both immediately picked up on the detail. “Stay where you are, Asajj. Please. This is not a fight you should be anywhere near.”

If Obi-Wan would be the last Jedi Padawan to go up against a Sith for vengeance, he would be very grateful.

“But I figured out something important! You were poisoned. It must have been the same compound Komari uses to make people susceptible to force suggestion, but it was in your noodles, I sliced into the cameras to confirm, it couldn’t have been anywhere else. One of the kitchen staff has a brother who was just arrested for possession of death sticks, that might be why.”

But Cody was shaking his head inside his helmet. Obi-Wan looked at him, silently willing him to speak. “It wasn’t a civilian,” he murmured, voice tinny under the bucket. “I got it from one of the vode.”

Kriff. “You’re sure?”

“No,” Asajj cut in, “I saw hands on the cameras. The person who did this wasn’t wearing armour.”

“The Chancellor’s personal guard doesn’t always have to. He can give them an exemption for certain types of work where it would be intrusive or offensive to diplomatic sensibilities.”

His dream had insisted that the Chancellor was the Sith lord. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it made sense. Why did the clones report directly to the Chancellor? Why had he ordered Obi-Wan’s arrest? Why had it only been his questioning that had triggered the drug? What had Dooku seen that had scared him so much he had tried to trap Asajj?

Palpatine had been here on Coruscant during the Siege of Naboo. Palpatine had benefited directly from the vote of no confidence against Chancellor Valorum. That explained why Naboo had been part of the Sith plan at all. Palpatine had met Anakin then, and had changed his mind.

Qui-Gon’s voice seemed to brush at the back of his mind. (Trust in the force, Obi-Wan).

Obi-Wan’s mind warred with itself, as the Chancellor’s guilt and innocence pounded against each other. This must have been what Windu had felt for years, the reason he had constructed a place for himself where neither light nor darkness could reach. The Sith had stifled everything, every trace of himself.

Obi-Wan fought to assert himself, to hold onto the truth that he had seen. He pushed back against the darkness, clinging to his certainty. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Asajj – call Windu, Yoda, Gallia, and then keep calling consular Jedi. Tell them what you told me, and what Cody said.” If Asajj figured out the whole truth, she would certainly refuse to stay in place, one of the others might be able to piece it together from this.

“I can help,” she insisted, and Obi-Wan knew that she could, but he had no desire for his padawan to watch him die as he had watched Qui-Gon.

“You have helped. I promise. But this is important, Asajj. Everyone needs to know.”

“What about Dooku? Where is he?”

Obi-Wan let his hand drift down to the hilt of his lightsaber. Cody had retrieved it from him, and he would have felt naked without it. “Let me worry about that.”

He turned the comlink off, so Asajj could begin her task, and felt five pairs of eyes resting upon him.

“Dooku wanted to do this alone,” Padmé said, after a moment. Satine had placed a hand over her mouth to keep from saying anything at all.

So had Qui-Gon. He had chosen to face a Sith alone, and he had failed. “I’m not letting him.”

He turned to go, hating himself for not saying goodbye to Asajj, but refusing to call back and say it because to do so would be an acknowledgement that this was a death sentence. He had barely made it two steps before he stalled at the sound of heavy boots on the floor behind him.

“You can’t.”

Cody shook his head. “I’m not letting you go at it alone, either.”

Well, Obi-Wan supposed it would have been hypocrisy to do anything else. He reached back, and took Cody’s arm. “Come on. I can feel it beginning.”

--

Palpatine made Dooku wait for his meeting, which seemed like one of the sadistic forms of torture that the Sith were known for. Mas Amedda, the Vice-Chancellor, ultimately showed Dooku in from the waiting room fifteen full minutes after they were supposed to begin.

“My dear Count” Palpatine called him, “I really must apologize for my lateness. It’s been a very eventful couple of days, as I’m sure you know.”

Dooku waited until he was sure that Amedda had shown himself out and the door was locked before he said, “you have something that I want.”

Innocently, with a musical lilt to his voice, Palpatine asked, “what do you mean by that?”

“They say that the Sith have achieved mastery over death. Is that true?”

His expression turned into a sneer. In a matter of moments, as muscles and skin shift, and his posture changed, the Chancellor vanished beneath the guise of the Sith. “I thought the ‘good and upright’ Master Dooku could never be tempted by such trivialities.”

It was true, in a way. Immortality hadn’t been what had drawn Dooku to the Sith. He had wanted power, the certainty to always be master of his own destiny. “Not for me. I know you have my son. Freedom and long life for him.”

Palpatine shifted in his seat. “I’m not an angel. I don’t grant wishes.”

Any good politician should know how to bargain when he was on his back foot or on his lead. There was always advantages to compromise either now or later.

“You want something from me too, don’t you? Or you did, once. Komari was always meant to be a stopgap apprentice, and it was not only Anakin you had in mind. You wanted me. I remember all your calls to Serenno, back then. If I had not taken on Anakin, you might even have had me.”

Those early days had been so brutally lonely. Palpatine could so easily have taken advantage of that loneliness, especially since he had been possessed of the knowledge that Komari had survived. If Dooku had learned about that then, it would utterly have shattered him.

“Roads not taken,” Palpatine said, diplomatically. Perhaps he was still keeping his options open, trying to play the field. He seemed to design strategies where he could win no matter the outcome. In this case, Anakin dying on Serenno or Dooku dying on Coruscant, the outcome remained the same. One fallen, one out of the way. But Dooku had to place more faith in Anakin than that.

“I think you made a mistake, choosing him over me. Anakin is far more powerful than I ever have been.”

“That,” Palpatine said coolly, “is exactly why I am choosing him.”

But that was a stupid plan. No good Sith would ever choose an apprentice more powerful than themselves, and Palpatine was a very good Sith. “No, you underestimate him. You think that you can manipulate him, the way you’ve manipulated the Jedi. You are succumbing to the delusion that Padmé and I are the intelligent ones, and Anakin is weak. But Anakin is so much stronger than you know, and he will never, ever fall for the trickery of any master. You would have been much better off with me. I have been known to be a fool for such things.”

Palpatine conjured a scarlet lightsaber, seemingly from thin air, as if he were a circus magician rather than a Sith, and flew across his desk towards Dooku. Perhaps he’d grown bored of monologuing, or perhaps he had finally sensed the way that Dooku had been methodically picking away at the darkness in the room with the back of his mind.

Palpatine had covered the entirety of Coruscant in a network of spells, all of them radiating from this very room. Now that Dooku knew who and what he was, he could sense them, the cloying things that were slowly killing Mace Windu. It was no surprise, given his sensitivity to shatterpoints. Hopefully, they would unravel upon Palpatine’s death. Coruscant, and the vergence that the Jedi temple was built upon, had been so beautiful in Dooku’s memories. They deserved to feel that way again.

For a man of his age and unthreatening physical condition, Palpatine was terrifyingly fast. Like Dooku himself, he poured the force into his movements, rendering them inhuman. But, Dooku thought with some arrogance, he lacked grace and a sense of proportion. Dooku, holding his blade comfortably, found it easy to turn Palpatine’s force against him, sending him stumbling into furniture. It must have been a very long time since the Sith had actually found an opportunity to spar, where Dooku trained with Obi-Wan, Anakin, and now Asajj all on a regular basis.

As they clashed, Dooku lured back, pretending to slowly lose ground towards one of the walls of the room, until the Sith became lulled into a false sense of security. Then, mission accomplished, Dooku deflected his blade and Palpatine’s downwards, leapt cleanly over them both, and shoved the Sith against the wall with his other hand. He performed a disarming in the sense of a swordsman rather than a Jedi, and listened to Palpatine’s weapon clatter to the floor. It was always a pleasing triumph to win without a scent of sizzling flesh.

Dooku felt real hope. He’d won. Somehow, miraculously, he’d won. He was going to see Anakin again, and Jenza, and Jocasta. He was going to have to apologize for putting them through all that emotional stress for nothing. Asajj was never going to forgive him for welding her in her room when it hadn’t proved to be dangerous at all.

The bolt of lightning to his heart nearly killed him there and then. It was only the most base jerking of muscles that brought his lightsaber up to stop it, and gave him the time to deflect the blow. But it was a near thing. Palpatine laughed, like a man who had just pulled himself back from the edge of death, and called his lightsaber back to his fingers. Dooku wished, now, that he had cut off the hand. His chest felt like it had been flayed.

It was the most pain and fury at himself he had ever felt, until the door opened and Obi-Wan and a clone burst into the room. Then Dooku felt blindingly worse, as Palpatine began to chuckle menacingly. Obi-Wan’s lightsaber ignited, and the clone raised his blaster. They seemed to stand together with instinctive trust, as if bound by the force in a way too fundamental for any person to understand, but that couldn’t save them.

“CT-2224,” Palpatine said, still with humour in his tone. “Execute Order One-Oh-Four, and shoot Knight Kenobi if he disobeys any direct order from me.”

It was like watching a man be replaced with a droid in an instant. Dooku had seen Komari’s possessed men on Geonosis, but this was a thousand times worse, because Dooku could feel the distinct presence of a life in the force being replaced by total absence.

Obi-Wan, who had no idea about Jocasta’s warning, looked terribly betrayed. Dooku wanted so badly to reach out to him, but instead he could only clasp his lightsaber against the lightning being blasted towards him.

“Kenobi,” Palpatine said, pleasantly, “put the lightsaber down.”

After a breath, Obi-Wan did as he asked, and Palpatine called it to himself, attaching it to his belt with the hand that was already holding his own lightsaber, as if it was a trophy in a museum case.

“Komari left me with a great number of innovations,” continued Palpatine, though, when Dooku pushed back against the lightning in the force as well as with his lightsaber, he gritted his teeth to keep concentration. “She was highly effective. Turn her to a problem, and she would bullheadedly try everything until she had a result. Never looked to books or history. Always made her own.” Komari never had the proper respect for the classics. Dooku wished she could have turned that strength to the light rather than the darkness. “She came up with a way to increase sensitivity to force suggestion via poison, although this adaptation of it, as a brain implant designed only to activate for me, was one of my own innovations. It would have been my favourite of hers, if not for the little toy her and Maul came up with together. You know, I believe they thought it would enhance their power enough to challenge me. They had no idea, of course, how it would enhance mine.”

The Sith turned his lightsaber off, and pulled from his pocket an unmemorable grey device, with several buttons and a few exposed wires at the back from where a durasteel cover seemed to have been removed to examine it. There, nestled among the wires, Dooku thought he saw a glimpse of kyber.

It could only have been whatever Komari had used in her attack at the Jedi temple. Dooku could taste death embedded in the crystal.

“What did you do to him?” Obi-Wan asked, apparently ignoring the Chancellor’s attempt to monologue in favour of watching the clone who had accompanied him with a look of horror and fear. Dooku didn’t think he’d ever seen Obi-Wan become so quickly attached to anyone before, except for Asajj.

The Chancellor ignored him back in favour of sneering at Dooku. “They thought to enhance the power of the darkness, to transmute pain and death into pure energy. But they failed to understand. Killing quickly and bloodily… that can only create so much pain. Komari’s love of bombs was weak. A slow death… watching the slow death of a loved one. Now that is where power is. And of course, the pain of a Jedi is weak as the Jedi themselves. Pain that comes from attachment is so much stronger. CT-2224, shoot Knight Kenobi in the stomach.”

A stomach wound at this range was almost always fatal, even here on Coruscant where medical wonders abounded. But they were a far slower death than a shot to the head or the heart.

Dooku let the darkness rise in him, the desire not to allow Obi-Wan to die, the attachment and the desire for power that Anakin had almost washed out of him. In between one breath and the next, Dooku rendered years of Anakin’s work irrelevant by seeking out the darkness and freezing the blasterbolt in the air.

To do so, he had to drop the concentration he had been using to stop the lightning, and even as Obi-Wan drew in a stuttering breath, amazed he was still standing, and Palpatine laughed, electricity course through Dooku’s veins. He could feel darkness building in the room, radiating from the kyber crystal. Palpatine stroked the bare jewel with his thumb, as if it were a favoured piece of heirloom jewellery.

His death, Dooku realized abruptly, was going to fuel the destruction of the Jedi. Obi-Wan, Anakin, Asajj, Yoda, Jocasta – everyone was going to die because of him. Dooku, in his arrogance, had believed that he could defeat the Sith by matching him in his cowardly, slimy behavior. An asassination like a Sith, not like a Jedi. His grip on the bolt almost slipped for a moment, and Dooku was forced to tap into his persistent anger at his father’s abandonment of him to keep hold.

He could feel Anakin’s presence in the back of his mind then, a rising sea spreading out across the entire galaxy. The darkness in the room seemed to flicker, being challenged by the coming dawn, and the clone trooper flinched back, turning his visor towards the blaster in his hand as if it was a foreign object.

Whatever Anakin was doing on Serenno, presumably in an effort to stop the attack of the clones, was working. In the same second that Dooku understood the change in their circumstances, Obi-Wan and Palpatine did as well.

“CT-2224. Execute Order Sixty-Six.”

Whatever that order did, they never had a chance to find out because Obi-Wan had tackled the clone to the ground, wrestling him for the blaster like an Eriadu veermok over a bunch of bananas.

Anakin’s effort was already fading, but it allowed Dooku to release the darkness and his anger as the blaster bolt slammed into the wall.

He could feel his own heart stuttering. The electricity had been too much. If he just brought up the lightsaber, he could live. If he just raised it, he would have a chance.

This Sith tore the weapon away from his weakened fingers as if it were nothing, and extended his other hand to redouble the lightning for a killing blow. He intended, Dooku realized, to make Dooku die as Obi-Wan struggled for his life. After all, it didn’t matter which of them died first, only that the other had to watch, helplessly, and feel their pain in the force. That would power Palpatine’s device for whatever terrible purpose he intended.

But Palpatine was using a device of Komari’s. Palpatine didn’t understand how it worked. He thought that it amplified the darkness of death, the pain of loss. That was a very Sith way of thinking, after all. Who said that the death of a Jedi had to be painful? For that matter, who said that a Jedi could truly die?

(There is no death, there is the Force.)

The words were Qui-Gon’s. Dooku could feel his presence in the force as if he had never died. Perhaps he never had, and Dooku would awake on a ship in the mid-rim to a call from him about his upcoming mission to Naboo.

Had he ever been enough of a Jedi to rejoin the force perfectly as a Jedi did after death? Perhaps he carried too much darkness in his heart. Even now, Dooku carried both with him. A good Jedi never would have made the choices Dooku had made. With his last action in the universe, Dooku reached up and prepared to strike like a loth-cat raising a paw as he awaited prey.

How is a Jedi supposed to die? Time seemed to stretch out before him as Palpatine’s second bolt of lightning ignited, and Dooku dropped his shielding, channeling the very last of his energy out, forming a loose fist. He had to deliver the blow at exactly the right moment, or else this would all be for nothing. Even then, it might fail. This last act of killing might make him too dark, might power the device and strike against the Jedi.

He could only hope it would not. Perhaps a Jedi could only die hoping that he was doing the right thing.

Qui-Gon had died in battle, though Obi-Wan assured Dooku that he had settled his affairs in meditation first. Perhaps a Jedi was supposed to die in this way. Komari had been no Jedi, but she had died begging for forgiveness. Perhaps forgiveness, regret, was part of death. Dooku had many, many regrets.

Even Piell, killed in Komari’s test of this device, had thrown protection up around a student he didn’t even know. It had been an act of pure selflessness, and the darkness of the device had not even touched her. Perhaps that was a good death. Perhaps it was not his shielding her from an explosion, but his choice to have his death be a meaningful one, that had robbed the device of its power.

Dooku could only hope that would be enough. He closed his eyes and thought of Anakin, on the sands of Geonosis, steadying the force. He thought of Shmi, wrapped in his cloak in the pre-dawn glow, and Jenza, burrowing into his chest as if he were a person who could offer comfort. He held all of these emotions, and was calm, and radiant.

And as the lightning killed him, he tapped into his white-hot fury at the pointless deaths of Qui-Gon Jinn and Komari Vosa, and he snapped the neck of the Sith with a single, powerful blow of the force.

Chapter Text

The force was glittering like the sun reflecting off an ocean, and Obi-Wan felt as if a cloth had just been pulled away from his eyes. In between one breath and the next, Palpatine’s influence over the galaxy had faded, and Dooku had released into the force… well, Obi-Wan wasn’t quite sure what to name the feeling, but it was beautiful.

He reached for Asajj’s training bond, and reassured her that he was alive, before turning his attention to Cody.

“Are you alright?”

Cody shook his head, but since he wasn’t reaching for the blaster, Obi-Wan thought that was trauma rather than an indication of possession.

“Do you want to take your helmet off?”

That got a nod, so Obi-Wan reached carefully for the clasp, and pulled it free. Cody’s eyes were wild, his face covered in sweat, and he stared at Obi-Wan like a drowning man at a life raft.

Obi-Wan clasped his hand. They were still lying entangled from where they had wrestled earlier, on the floor of the Chancellor’s office. “It’s going to be alright,” he said, although he didn’t quite believe the words himself. Dooku was dead. He’d killed the Chancellor, and he was dead, and the Chancellor had almost forced Cody to kill Obi-Wan.

“It’s going to be alright,” he repeated, until he believed it himself.

Padmé and Shmi came to find them, blasters raised, before Cody’s brothers could burst in and arrest them for killing the Chancellor. Padmé, on the authority of her position as Palpatine’s co-Senator, barricaded the door with legal technicalities, while Shmi knelt with Cody and Obi-Wan. Her face was streaked with tears.

“I felt it,” she told him, noticing his staring. “I felt him die and it was so… beautiful. I never thought anything in the universe could be so beautiful.”

She’d felt it. “Shmi, are you force-sensitive?”

“I think it may be… a bit genetic. Jenza and I have always been prone to uncanny circumstances.”

Fascinating. Obi-Wan wanted to kick himself for never noticing before. “What’s happening out there? Does everyone know he’s dead?”

In the end, Mace Windu and Adi Gallia came to rescue them. They both looked younger. Windu in particular could have lost a decade in the time between yesterday and today, with a youthful glow to his skin and a smile on his face that only faded as he took in the empty form of Dooku’s cloak on the ground.

“Is he…”

Adi relieved Padmé at the door, and she trailed over to stand at Windu’s side, staring down at all that was left of the man who would someday have been her father-in-law.

“He knew this was coming,” Padmé told him. “But he chose to do it, and to do it as a Jedi. Your order should be proud of him.”

“We are,” Windu assured her.

The Jedi hadn’t showed pride in Dooku’s actions in a very long time. “No,” Obi-Wan said, “but we will make him proud, eventually.”

Shmi, eyes shining with a passion Obi-Wan knew far too well from Anakin, said to Windu, “you had better.”

She and Jenza left for Serenno that evening, to decide the matter of the succession. There was, after all, no body to be dealt with. Losing Jenza’s vote in the Senate would be a tremendous wound, but Anakin needed his family, and there was nowhere in the universe that they would rather be than with him. If Padmé were to be believed, the Senate wasn’t likely to appoint a new Supreme Chancellor any time soon. They’d been burned far too badly to trust each other for a while.

Obi-Wan and Asajj stayed on Coruscant. Technically, they still had a mission protecting Satine. Even with Palpatine and Komari dead, the war wasn’t over by any means. Padmé was opening negotiations with the Trade Federation and the Techno Union for a ceasefire, but the idea was controversial. After three years of war, there was far more hatred and bad blood between all parties than there had ever been before. Many people wanted vengeance more than they wanted peace.

On the other hand, the war had been costly, and there were those like Padmé who had never supported it. They were more or less in charge of the Senate now.

As all of this happened, Obi-Wan was mostly unawares. He’d gone back to the temple, and, after a blessedly short debriefing with Windu, he ended up sitting in the healers’ wing with Asajj, waiting for a physical to be done.

Asajj hadn’t spoken much since their reunion. He thought that she was viscerally, shakingly angry. At Obi-Wan for going into danger without her. At Dooku for trapping her. At Dooku for dying.

He was still contemplating what to say to her when, to his surprise, Satine joined them.

“I thought you would still be at the Senate?”

She shrugged. “I was there with Padmé for a while, but… well, I don’t have a vote. And now that we know the extent of Palpatine’s violation of the clones, I don’t think people are going to be particularly inclined to make them fight any time soon. So I called in to find out where Cody was. Apparently after his questioning, they brought him in for surgery.”

Good. Cody deserved to have that thing out of his head immediately. He deserved never to have had it in at all, for that matter. Obi-Wan stopped, and checked himself. The strength of this feeling was surprising. Now that he wasn’t wearing force-inhibiting cuffs, he could tell that there was something drawing him to Cody. Being with him just felt… right

Well, perhaps something to investigate later. Much, much later. Or perhaps it was time to have a mortifying discussion with Anakin about dating as a Jedi.

Abruptly, the memory surfaced in his mind of the fact that Dooku had once offered to have Rael give Obi-Wan the sex-and-relationships talk, and the Healers’ halls rang with laughter, and then, finally, with muffled sobs as it finally set in that Dooku was gone. Obi-Wan curled in on himself, and let Asajj and Satine hold him steady while he choked on his tears, and failure, and guilt.

--

It took Dooku a long moment to recognize this world. He was standing on a white beach that seemed to stretch for miles, against the shore of a tropical ocean. It was a conventional beauty, not like the harsh beauty of the forests of Serenno, or the odd majesty of the city of Coruscant.

It was also a place Dooku recognized.

“Shurrupak,” he said aloud, and the figure standing closer still to the sea, waves lapping over his boots, turned to him.

“Our first mission together.” A battle. Now, Dooku never would have let a padawan the age Qui-Gon had been then be sent into a warzone. How he had changed from those days.

It was, quite literally, a lifetime ago. Two, in fact. “You met Rael here. He thought you were scared, but that was only natural.”

He stepped up to the water’s edge, and let Qui-Gon press a hand to his shoulder. The touch was startlingly familiar, and Dooku understood.

“You were trying to warn me about Palpatine.”

The hand on his shoulder became an arm around his form, and Dooku realized, abruptly, that he wasn’t any younger in death than he had been at the end of his life. Perhaps it was because this was the truest and most peaceful version of himself he had ever been.

“I did succeed in warning Obi-Wan, eventually. With some assistance from Komari. I think it will be easier to touch the living, now that the Sith are gone.”

Gone. They’d done it. Seven kriffing Sith hells. “Komari helped you?”

Qui-Gon made a vague gesture with his left hand that could have meant anything, really. “She’s not quite a Sith, not quite a Jedi. Maybe it was just where she was when she died. Maybe the force was merciful, given the circumstances of her falling. I would have been. But I don’t think most spirits choose to hang on like this, even if they can. She was only here for a little while. She wanted you to know that she heard you.”

“And how do spirits hang on like this? Is it unfinished business, like in a ghost story?” Even the children of the Jedi temple told each other ghost stories.

“If anything, the opposite, I think. I had to study to learn how to do this. I’m helping you like I helped Komari, of course, but the way you died was a factor. You died at one with the force.”

He had wondered for so many years what Qui-Gon would think of him. “In spite of all my darkness?”

And then they were on Serenno, staring out Dooku’s window towards the forest. As a part of the force, Dooku could sense every life form there, trees and beetles and wolves alike. He imagined the child he had once been, stranded there in the woods, and wished someone had been there to watch over him in this way.

“There is no light or darkness,” Qui-Gon murmured, breath seeming almost a violation of the uncommon silence of this place. His office, it seemed, had become a tomb. “There is the force. The darkness, if it is evil, is evil because it causes pain, and comes from suffering or from selfishness. The light, if it is good, is good because it helps people, and comes from selflessness and peace. Nobody is entirely one thing.”

“Do you believe you can forgive me?” As I forgave Komari?

Qui-Gon turned him, slightly, until they could meet each other’s eyes. “Forgive you? Dooku, you saved Obi-Wan and Anakin. I can’t thank you enough.”

No thanks were needed. The opportunity to know both of them had been a gift. “I’m sorry Obi-Wan had to see that. He didn’t deserve to have to watch a loved one die again.”

Qui-Gon winced, guilty, but recovered. “He’ll be alright, eventually. You helped him build a place where he is loved, and supported. Anakin too. They’ll be alright.”

“I wish–”

He wished a lot of things. For himself. For his family. The galaxy, Serenno, the Jedi Order.

“You’re a good man, Dooku of Serenno,” Qui-Gon said, and the words meant more than he could ever have known. “And I’m proud to know you.”

“I was so immeasurably proud to be your–”

“Father,” Qui-Gon interjected, sending a burst of radiance through his chest.

“I am proud to be your father. I am proud of every part of you.”

And he was. He was proud of Qui-Gon’s obstinance, and his individuality. His skill and his philosophy and dedication. Even the ways in which they were incredibly different from his own. Especially those.

“I love you.”

And they were not Jedi. They were ghosts, and that meant they could say those words, because they were true. “I love you too.”

“Come on,” Qui-Gon said, and showed him the universe.

--

The funeral was closed casket. There was a bitter irony in the fact. Dooku had broken the tradition to hide his murder of his brother, and now the tradition would be broken again because Dooku had no body to show at all. Still, there was some efficiency to it. They could have him lie in state for two months, as they chose to do, without worrying about decomposition.

“Count Anakin?”

For the first time in his life, people not longer called him ‘Skywalker’. It felt strange, somehow, to leave the name-turned-title behind. His mother still had it, of course, and there were probably dozens of slaves on Tatooine with the same, if not hundreds, but it was no longer his to bear. He was Count Serenno, from now until his death. After his speech, and with Jenza’s backing, he had taken the title with shockingly little resistance. Far less, in fact, than Dooku himself had received at the time of his coup.

“Lady Gwennia. It’s time?”

She nodded. Her black dress, with a long sash of braided burgundy for her house, was a far more pleasing concession to the demands of morning attire than Anakin’s own black suit and cape, which made him feel like the leader of some griefcore band from the mid-rim.

The cathedral was covered in vines, real and sculpted. In ancient Serennian mythology, the vine that climbed towards the stars had some sort of religious significance that Anakin had never totally understood. Padmé said that the flowers that followed the sun had similar meaning on Naboo. At the front of the room stood Jenza, in a black dress and her familiar red cape, embroidered with the crest of House Serenno. She was presenting the ceremony, as was her duty as the last remaining member of her biological family. Anakin, who had stepped outside for a breath of air as the last of the guests settled in, took his place in the front row, between his mother and Padmé. The rest of the front was largely reserved for Serennian nobility, not those who were closest to Dooku, but Anakin was grateful to have them beside him. In the force, he could feel Obi-Wan and Asajj sitting three rows back and offering him steady assurance that it would all be alright.

Jenza was speaking, traditional words in both standard and the slippery tongue of Ancient Serennian. Anakin checked the notes for his own speech, written on a fragment of flimsi he’d hidden up his sleeve, until Padmé’s hand settled across them.

Her unspoken meaning was clear even without force telepathy. You will do well. It distracted Anakin, for a moment, from the severity and grief of the situation, and made him remember the ring – gold band, step-cut Serennian emerald stone – that was sitting in a box in his sock drawer.

Jenza had reached the customizable, personal part of her speech.

“Dooku of Serenno was a child born with the force flowing through his veins. As are we all, in one way or another. That gift has often been seen on Serenno as a flaw. A corruption. A challenge to authority. Dooku was certainly the latter, as both his Jedi instructors and Chancellor Palpatine could certainly attest.” Anakin had to laugh at that. He was certain Dooku would have raised an amused eyebrow at the joke. “Our father left Dooku to die of exposure as a child. Yet in spite of that abandonment, in spite of all the ways Serenno, both house and world, had betrayed Dooku and cast him out, he always loved us anyways. He loved House Serenno not just for our past, but for our future, what we could be, and do. How we could shape the Republic for the better. And he loved the Serennian people just the same. Because he could see, writ large in the culture and the literature and history and every other aspect of ourselves, the things we could do. Where there lay flaws, he saw the ability to improve upon them. Where there lay tragedy, he saw the potential to grow and heal. Where there lay fear, he saw an opportunity for wisdom.

“He was that rarest of things: a good man who is thus not because it is easy but because it is hard. Would that all of us could carry a piece of that in ourselves. So thank you, Dooku, for reminding me that no matter how much suffering there is in the universe, it never drowns out the good, only exists alongside it.”

And then there was the Prime Minister, and Lady Gwennia in her new role as Council Chair, and then Jenza called on Anakin.

At only four speeches, it was terribly short for a Serennian funeral, but Dooku had no other family, save for the Carannias along his mother’s line, and Cathaya’s father was still a despicable human. They could have invited Jedi family to speak, and extended the ceremony beyond reason, but Jenza was exercising some measure of tact. Besides, Dooku’s legacy, the manner of his death, was such that they could have offered no speeches at all and he would still have been remembered in glory.

He got up on stage to discover that Padmé had placed a slip of flimsi in with his notes, the slight of hand no doubt evidence of Asajj’s influence on her.

It read: You can’t get your own feelings wrong.

Yeah, he was definitely proposing.

Anakin stared up and out over the assembled crowd, which packed both the body of the cathedral and the balconies, held up by vine-covered columns of white marble. After the nobility, he could see rows of people who actually knew Dooku. Doctor Jaila, Obi-Wan and Asajj, Jocasta Nu. There were dozens of Jedi there, mostly from the Serennian Sect, but also those from the Coruscant temple, including the entirety of the High Council, which was nearly the first time every one of them had been together since the breakout of the war. Among the Jedi he recognized Barriss’s friend Ahsoka, who was apprenticed to Mace Windu, and who even Obi-Wan found slightly intimidating in her force of will. Intermixed with the Jedi sat the clones, Rex and Cici and Obi-Wan’s friend Cody, along with many of his mother and Padmé’s associates. There, on one of the balconies, were a section of the past and present servants of Castle Serenno, the very eldest of whom had known Dooku his entire life, from birth to death. And then, and through the open doors of the cathedral, lay the holocameras, and a pressing sea of people, whose presence Anakin could feel in the force. All of Carannia, it seemed, had arrived for the funeral.

Because of Dooku’s joining with the Force, there were no bones to be sent to the Mausoleum on the moon of Mantero. There would be no ceremony there to compliment this one, as was usual. Instead, this was the only chance the Serennian people would have to say goodbye to the man who had led them, for good or ill, for thirteen years.

“Dooku of Serenno was my father,” Anakin said, plainly, “in every way that mattered. He taught me what it meant to be a good man, a good Jedi, and a good Count. He would not have believed that he was any of those things, in spite of his fierce dedication to the values of each. But he was. He willingly dedicated his life not to the pursuit of power – and such power he could have had – but to the pursuit of justice, balance, and wisdom. He never let his own privilege blind him to either the strengths or the suffering of others.

“When I was nine years old, I met Dooku’s second apprentice, a human named Qui-Gon Jinn, who Dooku loved in the relentless, unconditional way any parent loves their child. I was enslaved on Tatooine, and I helped Jinn earn his escape from the planet by supporting me in podracing, a local sport that essentially involves jury-rigging speeders out of desert scrap, racing them at maximum velocity through a gorge while everyone else in the race cheats and tries to murder you. Unbeknownst to me, Jinn made a side-bet that, if I won, I would be free. I thought, at age nine, that Jedi were all heroes who were coming to Tatooine some day to free the slaves. When I finally understood, when I was about twelve, that the Jedi didn’t stop slavery in the galaxy not because they couldn’t but because they weren’t trying, I had a real crisis of faith.

“Dooku sat me down in his office. We always had meetings like this in there. And he said to me: ‘if you think the Jedi are wrong, if you think the Republic is wrong, then there is only one thing to do.’ I said, in a sullen pre-teen’s voice, ‘leave’, and he said, ‘no; change them’, and then he went, and got me a massive tome on proposing legal reforms to the Senate, and another one on the history of policy changes in the Jedi council. Dooku taught me that it was possible to believe in the good of something and still believe that thing is broken. He taught me that I had the power to see evil in the world and fight to change it, to stop it.

“Dooku had doubts. About everything, all the time. Most of all about himself. But he never succumbed to those doubts or allowed them to make him jaded. If rules were wrong, he would ignore them or fight to change them. If people were wrong, he sought to allow them to be otherwise. If beliefs were wrong, he fought to reconcile them with reality.

“I loved him. And I miss him, and I regret more than anything that he can’t be here, to see the extraordinary things that we are going to build with the opportunity he gave us. Goodbye, Dooku. May the Force be with you, and may you be with the Force.”

Jenza returned to the stage, after that, explaining how Dooku’s Jedi robes – the only thing left behind when he vanished – would be placed in the mausoleum, so that he could be honoured as other Counts had been. She continued speaking, about events for the remainder of the week, about how the guests would be going back to Castle Serenno for the reception, but Anakin’s ears were roaring as he watched the honour guard – the heads of each noble house, as was customary – step up to carry the empty coffin away. Mom reached a comforting hand up to his shoulder, sensing how disconnected he had become from the event.

Dooku was gone. Anakin had said goodbye, but nothing felt like it was over.

Everyone was standing up, beginning to mingle, coming up to the front and wanting to shake Jenza’s hand. Some had eyes on Anakin too, eager to make a good impression. As if anyone could have made a good impression at a time like this.

He tried to breathe, but his chest was tight, and he felt like, at any moment, he was going to burst into tears and make a scene.

Padmé’s hand grabbed his, and, before Anakin could fully process what was happening, they were standing in the garden behind the cathedral. There had been a cemetery here, according to the plaque on the wall, before Serenno had moved all dead bodies to Mantero millenia ago for sanitation reasons. Now it was just a public park accessible through the currently closed-off cathedral building. There were hedges higher than Anakin’s head, along with tall trees that were turning orange at the tips of leaves with the cooling temperatures.

They were alone, secluded from the crowds outside by the high garden walls and from the crowds inside by the hedge Padmé pulled him behind to sit on a bench. Anakin settled himself into the familiar breathing patterns of meditation, closing his eyes and allowing the force to swirl around him. Every emotion, good and bad, was valid and part of the force. Anakin let the grief rise to the surface, and, gently, be washed away by the tide. The wound would ache for a long time, but it would eventually scar over, as all wounds did, and cleaning it carefully would greatly lessen the odds of infection.

“Excuse me,” Padmé said, just a hint of danger beneath her courtly politeness, “Skywalker Anakin and I will rejoin you at the reception, and I’m sure he would be happy to speak to you then, Mr…”

The intruder laughed nervously. His voice was unfamiliar. “Jedi Averross. But I would prefer if you called me Rael.”

Dooku’s first apprentice was surprisingly short, with brown skin and dark black hair just going grey at the temples. It was no wonder that Padmé hadn’t recognized him as a Jedi. There was no lightsaber at his hip, although Anakin thought he caught the lines of one beneath the black overcoat he was wearing. His costume, which had the tailored air of nobility, didn’t belong to any culture that Anakin recognized.

Padmé might still have told him to go away if not for Anakin’s hand on her knee as a silent communication of acceptance. “Rael. I’m sorry the circumstances of our first meeting are so… unpleasant.”

An ironic smile brought the corner of his mouth up. “That was my fault, I fear, not yours.” Without prompting from Anakin, he explained, “I thought… I had come to believe that the Dooku who trained me was long gone, that he had fallen into the darkness. But he hadn’t. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for any of you.”

It had never crossed Anakin’s mind that things could have been otherwise. But of course, with Komari presumed dead and Qui-Gon dead, there had been a time when Rael had been the last living of Dooku’s children. And he hadn’t been there.

It didn’t make Anakin angry, but there was something tragic in the fact that Rael and Dooku had never had a second chance the way Dooku and Qui-Gon had.

“Why did you think he was gone?”

At this, Rael’s expression suddenly grew grim. “There were some hints from things Qui-Gon mentioned, some things I felt on my own, but… do not think I am discounting my own role in this when I tell you honestly that I was ranked by healers in the top 5th percentile of Jedi likely to have been subject to direct manipulation either by Palpatine or by Komari. The months after Qui-Gon died… somehow, I never felt the energy to contact anyone about it. It always slipped from my mind when I tried. I loved Qui-Gon like a little brother, and somehow it never… I should have known that something was wrong with me, not with him, but over time it was easier to just imagine that the real reason we never spoke was entirely his fault.”

It would be a very long time before all the damage that Palpatine had done to the Jedi – individuals and the collective – had healed. If it could ever heal. It was no surprise to learn that some of it had been targeted at those who surrounded Dooku, since he had been such a focus of both Komari and Palpatine’s plotting.

Two more pairs of footsteps came into the garden then, and Anakin could feel the familiar presences in the force.

“Rael?”

The Jedi turned, and furrowed his brow just a moment before his eyes lit with recognition. “Little Obi! Look at you, all grown. And this must be Padawan Ventress.” He offered her a slight bow. “Rael Averross. I was Dooku’s first padawan.”

Obi-Wan looked torn between embracing Averross and slugging him. Asajj returned his bow with practiced care.

There was only one living member of their lineage missing, now, and Anakin could feel his presence as well, away within the cathedral.

“I’m glad you could make it out for the funeral, Jedi Averross,” Asajj said, probably trying to stop Obi-Wan from acting on either of his emotional impulses.

Rael thanked her for her words, and then looked back to Anakin. “Actually, Skywalker, I didn’t just come here for the funeral. I lived away from the Coruscant temple for many years before the war, serving the Pijali. But the child I was protecting there is an adult, now, and has been for many years. I don’t know if there is room in the Serennian order for a code-bending duellist whose best years are behind him, but if there is…”

There should have been a code-bending duellist. It should have been Dooku. But the truth was, they needed more Jedi in the Serennian order, because potential students were coming out of the woodwork. People who never would have gone for training on Coruscant were coming to them. Children whose families didn’t want to give them up. Those who would normally have been destined for the corps but still needed training to understand the gifts they had. People who only discovered their abilities when they were older. Even a couple of force sensitive clones. The problem was only going to get worse next month, when Quinlan and Aayla left to go on Search in the outer rim, beyond where the Jedi usually looked for students. Rael Averross would be a tremendous asset to them.

“We wouldn’t turn you away no matter what,” Anakin told him, “but especially in this case… Dooku would be proud to have you here.”

Obi-Wan and Asajj took Rael back inside, and in time, Anakin could feel the number of lives in the Cathedral decreasing as everyone left for the reception.

He had meant to say to Padmé that he was well enough to go inside now, but something stopped him, a trailing of hands in the force, and he watched as, under the branches of one of the trees, two figures shrouded in blue light appeared.

Dooku was instantly recognizable as the same man who Anakin had lost just two months ago, save for the fact that some of the grief that had lined his face in the years after learning Komari was alive seemed to have lifted. The figure standing behind took a second longer. It had been years since Anakin had last stared into the face of Qui-Gon Jinn.

Padmé, by the confused look on her face as she glanced at Anakin’s awestruck expression, could not see them.

“Obi-Wan thought he’d spoken to you. But he wasn’t sure if that was real.”

Qui-Gon nodded, long hair falling forward slightly as if gravity still had any effect on it.

Dooku stepped before him, looking all wrong without a lightsaber at his belt. It was fascinating, Anakin thought, that even though he had died in Jedi’s robes, in death he wore the cape of the Count.

“You’ve done well, Anakin,” he said, voice sounding just the same. “Very, very well.”

He found the words to ask the question that had been lingering with him, all this time. But he knew he could not direct it at Dooku. “Qui-Gon… you thought I was the chosen one. But when I feel the force now, it is at balance, and I know I didn’t do that. Was it wrong?”

He was surprised to find that, as an adult, Qui-Gon’s voice still carried the same implacable wisdom that Anakin remembered from when he was a child.

“No, Anakin. It was right. But prophecy is a difficult thing. You were meant to bring balance to the force, and you have. You balanced attachment and selflessness, love and duty. And, of course, the light and the darkness have fallen again into balance as well. The ancient regimes and the Sith have been washed away at last, and whatever darkness rises in their place will be a better thing. And as for the Jedi… well, I think they will be made new as well, but I suppose that is for you to see to.”

“I didn’t even leave Serenno.”

Dooku said, “I felt what you did, when you freed the clones in orbit. I felt it from Coruscant. Cody did, too. You saved Obi-Wan’s life, and, in doing so, freed me to do what I did. And, of course, you had been bringing balance to me long before that. But… never live your life as the chosen one, Anakin. Leave that be. Live a good life, and let the force do what it wills. Do not dedicate yourself always to pursuit of power, even the power to do good.”

“I won’t,” Anakin assured him, thinking of the ring again. Dooku, reading his mind, looked at Padmé and gave an approving nod.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do all of this without you.” There was so much that needed to be done that it was staggering.

Dooku looked at him as if he was a little stupid. “I am with the force, Anakin. I am always with you.”

Qui-Gon drifted off, presumably in search of Obi-Wan, but Dooku stayed, and stood with Anakin and Padmé as the sun began to dip beyond the tallest of Carannia’s buildings. The night life of the city, raucous in celebration of the life and death of her count, began to stir. Tomorrow, they would turn to the future, and Anakin would sit in his father’s office and lead them there, Jedi rebels and Serennian traditionalists and everyone in between. But tonight was for the past, and they revelled in that. In all of it, there was the force.