Work Text:
2,000 years ago . . .
Darth Lampreis didn't like anyone, but he also particularly didn't like other Sith. They were always wandering in and taking over or screwing up his plans. He was dying and he knew it. In his final days he made a choice. He wouldn't be around to see the results, but he would ensure his revenge on all those Sith who'd consistently refused to butt out of his plans. He painstakingly drew the final runes onto the device, pouring his soul and alchemical magicks into it.
Yes, this would ruin all those Sith plans the way they'd ruined his. If he couldn't have galactic domination, no one would.
50 B.B.Y.
At last, at long last he had found it. Darth Plagueis smiled as he stepped over the dead bodies of his peons he had sacrificed in search of the final work of Darth Lampreis. It was reputed to hold the power to manipulate the fabric of the galaxy itself. It could not destroy planets or control the minds of millions, instead it was a subtle item, designed to ensure small changes. A person tripping where they would not have, sending them plummeting to their death, a misstroke of a key when typing, sending sectors into financial ruin before the error was discovered. He had been seeking this item ever since he found the long-dead Sith's notes, now all he had to do was figure out how to manipulate it.
44 B.B.Y.
On Muunilist, Darth Plagueis delicately made the final adjustments to his preparations. This should do it. His first test and it should ensure that his rival in the Banking Clans would choke on his supper, dying unexpectedly and alone in a way wholly untraceable to Hego Damask. The object glowed briefly, then the light seemed to sputter and go out. Plagueis looked through his notes and discovered a tiny little footnote among Lampreis' discussions of how it worked. The conjunctions of various planets was seemingly not auspicious.
Blast! He would have to try again.
***
On Melida/Daan a slug shot by a boy named Mawat went just wide enough to miss the girl Cerasi. She survived the assassination attempt. Peace was enforced on Melidadaan without the intervention of the Jedi, and when Obi-Wan Kenobi made it back to the Temple, he was strong enough in his convictions that he was not cowed by the Council and told them outright he had not left for attachment, but to bring peace. He never spent months on probation as his leaving the Jedi had been brought on by Qui-Gon Jinn's ultimatum, not a desire to leave the Order. Rumour of his abandoning the Jedi did not spread and Obi-Wan did not spend months silently begging forgiveness he should not have needed. Qui-Gon's censure forced his reconsideration of his attachment to Tahl and his tendency to be dismissive of Obi-Wan. The young Jedi's self-confidence was not shattered in the experience as it might have been otherwise.
Still 44 B.B.Y.
Darth Plagueis once again activated the item. The next day the news was . . . mixed. His opponent had tripped and fallen down the stairs, but was merely in a coma. They were unlikely to recover, brainscans showed permanent and serious damage, but it was not the clean death he had hoped for, and was much less advantageous than a straightforward death. He would have to alter his plans. However, that success merely meant he had to be more careful in activating it. He set himself to more calculations for greater certainty.
***
In the Stark Hyperspace mess, Master Tyvokka moved slightly left and down, instead of to the right, and the blasterfire from the droids was aimed enough off that he survived the encounter.
33 B.B.Y.
Darth Sidious used his access to his master's library and items to apply the device to the Yinchorri debacle. In a fit of pure unabated luck, Master Micah Giiett was thrown clear of the explosion, ping-ponged down a hallway and barely managed by dint of luck and the force to be blasted in a chunk of shattered vessel with still-active forcefields directly into the path of the escaping Jedi team in their small ship. He was permanently disabled from taking field missions, but was more than capable of retaining a seat on the Jedi High Council, turning his time and mind to temple administration and initiate education.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, at the age of 22, demonstrating a skill and confidence in the Force that impressed his master, was sent for the knighthood trials and passed.
32 B.B.Y.
Darth Sidious chose to use the device again. He realised too late that he had not concentrated on a specific enough outcome. The Jedi manage to cause enmity with the Gungans while there, but not quite enough. Queen Amidala was driven away, but survived Tatooine and made it to Coruscant anyhow, despite having to purchase a junkheap of a ship to get back off Tatooine, and the droids had been efficient, but in the end a gap appeared in the defences of the control ship, allowing the Naboo fighters to win the day, though with heavy losses. Worst of all, he did not win the emergency vote for a replacement when the vote of non-confidence occurred in the Senate. He lost to the Tynnan Streamdrinker, which was just appalling, but the furry creature immediately set about dismantling so many of his personal projects that it was going to take painful effort to fix things. He was very unpleased at the death of his pawn, Maul. He set his eyes on the brilliant light in the Force that was the small boy he'd seen with the Jedi when they'd first arrived on Coruscant.
***
Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his former master Qui-Gon Jinn were dispatched to assist in talks between the invading Trade Federation and the Naboo. In a complicated series of events they returned to Coruscant with Queen Amidala of Naboo, her retinue and a small child. Masters Giiett and Tyvokka were the swaying votes on the Council, agreeing to allow the Skywalker boy to join the creche - at least while the Jedi determined whether a genuine exception should be made. Qui-Gon, relieved that he had achieved what he set out to do for the boy, get him trained by the Jedi, refocused on getting through the Naboo crisis and returning to free Shmi Skywalker as he had intended originally.
As he lay dying in his former padawan's arms, he made Obi-Wan promise to free the kind woman to whom they all owed so much.
36 B.B.Y.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had made Anakin Skywalker's proper acquaintance when he brought the boy to see his mother had been freed and was now living safely on Alderaan. They had meshed well, and once again when Anakin went with other initiates to get his first kyber crystal from Ilum on a trip supervised by still-new knight Kenobi. After four years as an initiate, Skywalker had caught up on all academic parts of his education as a Jedi, while his mother's lessons as a slave served him in good stead for many of the lessons on attachment - indeed, those lessons causing a sea change in how initiates and many knights and masters saw Yoda's lessons on attachment.
Obi-Wan asked the boy to be his first padawan and Skywalker responded with enthusiastic agreement.
They had a lot of conversations over the years about Palpatine's misunderstandings of Jedi philosophy and the best techniques to smile and nod at politicians so they think you're agreeing with them, without actually doing so.
22 B.B.Y.
Palpatine was deeply concerned as he had to ensure the war started with timing matched to the maturity of the clones, but not all his plans were in place and the Separatists were not as numerous or as cohesive as he would have liked, thanks to the early interference of that furry thing masquerading as a person. He used the device, carefully, determined to ensure that the Jedi would follow the trail to Kamino and from there to a massacre at Geonosis. He was relieved when it was the intended bloodbath, that the vote to arm went through and as his term as chancellor was not yet up, he didn't have to force the issue to keep himself in power, as yet. He frustratedly kept working away at Skywalker, who seemed to bear the potential to fall most of the time, until he'd just refuse to follow Palpatine's breadcrumbs. That was fine, he had a war to use to break the boy down.
***
Jango Fett ducked when he needed to and decided that his revenge wasn't worth sticking around in the middle of a battle with no allies to watch his back. He'd gone down at the end of Galidraan because of just such a situation and wasn't interested in reliving that. In his efforts to get away he accidentally slammed into Count Dooku, who made a small miscalculation and rattled loose the mindwiping he'd been performing on a regular basis to keep the former Mand'alor compliant.
One tenday later the only thing keeping Jango from suicide as he realised how many terrible things he'd done was his son's reliance on him. One month later he was on a tear on Kamino, doing whatever he could to figure out why he'd done what he'd done.
He and Shaak Ti were in a careful alliance two months later as he investigated where the Jedi could not.
Anakin was unhappily looking on his own into how to free a slave army that felt honour-bound to fight a war.
21 B.B.Y.
When the first rumours of Mandalore supporting the Separatists came through, Jango went to investigate. He rallied the people on Concordia, and by the time Kenobi arrived on Mandalore, Jango had rooted out Death Watch, handed over all his intel about Dooku's interference in the system to a dozen different news organisations and was in talks to co-administer the Mandalorian territories with Satine, agreeing to take on those traditionalists who wanted a Mand'alor while she took those who wanted a New Mandalorian government, with a complex treaty between the two sides. Obi-Wan took in the stabilised political situation and promptly left again, garnering respect from Mandalore for knowing when to keep the Republic's nose out of things.
19 B.B.Y.
When Fives fled his office, Palpatine pulled out the device that he felt had so helped him, and focused on using it again. He just needed to be sure that Fives died. The clone was drugged and out of his mind, there was no way anyone would believe him as he rambled.
***
Kix did not believe Fives. He did believe that Fives had undergone something and was being pursued by Guard forces that had been given bad intel. He knocked Fives out, dragooned his fellow 501st soldiers into dragging their vod back to their ship and set him up in the medbay with an IV and everyone waited until Fives was no longer out of his head. No one believed the ARC, thinking him grief-stricken by losing first Echo, then all those vod'e on Umbara and then Tup too. One person believed him, and that was General Skywalker. Skywalker had long had the ear of Palpatine, but that didn't meant he thought the career politician was a friend, no matter how much affection Padme had for him. He believed Fives and made a deal with Dex to stage Fives' death, using one of the dead of the 501st to stand in for Fives.
Anakin pushed for removal of the chips from the 501st, despite the concerns from all his medics that it was an unnecessary brain surgery. The fact that Anakin could feel a whisper of the dark side where no one else could, telling him not to believe the clone only made him more stubbornly insist on it.
Later in 19 B.B.Y.
Palpatine decided that Skywalker was too much of a wild card and chose to declare his tempting status as a Sith to the impetuous Kit Fisto, who responded by comming the Jedi High Council and then launching himself in an attack. Palpatine delayed long enough for the three Jedi Councillors to arrive and see him cut down the Nautolan, then ordered the clones to execute Order 66 as the Jedi Masters launched themselves at him. They were blindsided by the deaths of so many Jedi at once.
Palpatine dealt with them, then swanned into the Senate to declare himself emperor. The Delegation of 5,000 was unhappy and Palpatine moved to deal with them in a series of arrests. Many of them nonetheless slipped through his fingers.
***
Anakin had prevailed on some of the 212th to remove their chips, meaning there was a small mutiny when Cody forwarded the order to the rest of the GAR. Cody, the general and a small number of clones escaped from Utapau. Anakin had convinced the Guard that there was something wrong, because they lived with the constant drain of the Senate's presence, so when their brothers turned, the Guard converged on the Temple and evacuated most of the Jedi children. Scattered throughout the GAR were clones who had listened to Anakin, the 501st or the Bad Batch, which now ran with both Echo and Fives (their token reg), and those clones grabbed their Jedi and ran, swearing as they left behind their brothers.
14 B.B.Y.
As Palpatine's army was bleeding clones, losing them to raids by the Jedi-led rebels he reached for the device, intending to use it to deal a blow to the Rebellion.
He activated it and was greeted by hysterical laughter. The bluish-tinged appearance of a holocron image shimmered before him of a sick-looking Chalactan man. "I am delighted you've decided to use it this often," he cackled. "But let me give you exactly what you deserve!"
***
A coincidental trip and fall in the kitchens in the Imperial Palace caused a collection of various chemical items to fall into the heaters, leading to an explosion that rattled the building just right to shift one of the ships in the docking bay to fall at precisely the right angle to hit a metal support and cause it to vibrate down to the base of the building while the two events in close succession cracked a single pillar, delicately enough that no one noticed. While Palpatine investigated what the device was actually supposed to do, the shifting pillar undermined the stability of the building a centimetre at a time before abruptly collapsing and bringing the whole of the former Jedi temple with it at two in the morning.
13 B.B.Y.
The Rebellion re-established the Republic and the Jedi established themselves free of the Ruusan Reformation tying them to the Republic and with a new support structure of freed clones.
***
Smugly, Darth Lempreis settled into his device waiting for the next Sith he could screw around with. They'd come back, they always did. He twitched the fabric of the galaxy to make sure that any evidence he did anything to ruin Sith plans would be lost again.