Chapter Text
“Skywalker, it has come to our attention that you have decided to discard the Jedi order and break one of our most sacred rules”
“I’m sorry master Windu, I am not sure what you’re referring to” Anakin was acting as though he didn’t know, everyone in the room knew that, and the damn smugness in his tone wasn’t making it any better.
“The order has a reason for forbidding attachments” Windu countered not willing to play Skywalker’s games,
“Yes, I am aware that the order forbids attachments” it was in the moment that Obi-Wan heard Anakin stress the s of attachments that he knew his former Padawan had found a loophole in one of the orders many rules and codes.
“And yet you not only decided to adopt every clone there is, which should be illegal in and of itself you also appear to have a wife”
“First of all, it states that attachments are forbidden, not that an attachment is forbidden as in, one attachment and to me, a person born to the outer rim system of definitions, an attachment for me would be my family, which counts as a single attachment in my book hence not breaking a single one of your rules”
Windu was speechless. No one and that means no one had ever thought of that damn loophole. No one except for Anakin Skywalker himself.
“Also Master Windu if you are going for the legality of what I have done than shouldn’t the entire republic senate and council be on trial for both encouraging and backing slavery, something outlawed by the Republic” at that many of the council members looked aghast and even insulted, others such as Obi-wan Plo Koon and even Shaak Ti appeared to understand what Anakin was saying.
“How dare you slander the order with no grounds!” Master Tiin almost shouted face scrunching up in an emotion he was not meant to feel as a Jedi,
“Really, no grounds?” Anakin sounded far too smug for his own good, but rage was bubbling under his skin, the fact that these so-called masters hadn’t even realised that they were leading an army of slaves was disgusting enough to make him want to hurl.
“Yes, you have no grounds to say that we are encouraging slavery” Windu said, this time his own feelings got the better of him and he stood from his oh so comfortable chair.
“The fact that you don’t even realise your own wrongs make me question the fact that all of you are called masters” Windu was ready to lash out his own anger getting the better of him as he stalked closer to Skywalker coming face to face with the ‘boy’.
“How dare you question our titles as a mere knight” Windu wasn’t backing down and none of the sheltered council members were going to stop him. Koon knew that Anakin was going to win the argument anyway and the negotiator was having too much fun watching the interaction to get involved.
“You call yourself a master when you don’t even realise you are leading an army of slaves?” That was the punchline, that was the only thing Skywalker had to say for every member of the council to realise that he may not have made a baseless claim after all, “I grew up as a slave, I have scars that remind me of the fact that I was a slave for the better years of my childhood. I had to follow the orders of a man that owned me and if I were to have become useless, if I had outlived my usefulness then I would have either been sold to a worse master or killed” Windu backed up.
Everyone on the council knew Anakin had been a slave, they had scrutinised him because of it, but none of them truly knew what it had meant to be a slave, now listening to his harsh words did they realise that maybe there had been a reason for his impulsiveness as a child, as an adult.
“Do you know what happens to a clone that is deemed unfit? Defective? They are sent back to Kamino to be recommissioned, to have every sense of themselves stripped from them to forget who they are only for them to become an obedient soldier again. Or they are deemed incompetent and terminated. Which by the way, you oh so great masters means that they are killed! Sentient life is murdered for the simple fact that they are no longer useful. To me that sounds an awful lot like slavery and to my Wife, a senator no less it is exactly that. So we decided that instead of letting them get treated like livestock with nothing but numbers as legal identifiers my wife and I thought that adopting a few thousand clones wouldn’t be a problem.”
At that he simply turned and walked out the room, he had force pulled the data-pad with the adoption information out of Windu’s limp grasp and decided that no one would stand between him and freeing every damn slave he could and if that meant adopting them then so be it!