Chapter Text
The Honeymoon Op
“All right.” Yan presses two fingers against his temple, leaning into them. “Let me ensure I have this correct.”
In hologram form, Palpatine gives him a hooded look, not at all concealed by his heavy cowl. “I was eminently clear, apprentice.”
As amusing as it would be to contradict Palpatine — and relatively safe, given the light years that currently separate them — and explain to him that his past weeks spent dodging rabid paparazzi eager for all the sordid details of his love triangle with Satine Kryze and Padme Amidala have rendered him vaguely incomprehensible, Yan refrains. “I just want to prevent any miscommunications,” he says in his most diplomatic voice, which does exactly nothing to mitigate Palpatine’s glare. Naturally, it wouldn’t, since his most diplomatic voice is the one he uses when speaking to more primitive peoples, and Palpatine knows it. “I have received word that someone in my inner circle is set to defect to the Republic, and instead of eliminating this traitor, you want me to let things play out, just so you have an excuse to remove Skywalker, Kenobi, and Amidala from your presence for a time.” And, Yan adds privately, so you have a chance to further interfere with their love lives and torment Skywalker with what will never be. As the war has progressed and Palpatine’s obsession with the Kenobi-Skywalker-Amidala trio has grown, Yan hasn’t been able to help wondering if his master’s focus has come to center less on galactic domination and more on simply beating Kenobi.
Given that bringing order to the galaxy hinges on Palpatine’s power and planning, it’s not a comforting thought, though it is an entertaining one.
“Yes,” Palpatine answers.
Yan sighs. “I live to do your bidding, Master.”
# # #
Locked in one of the Temple’s situation rooms with a few other Council members, Mace stares at Tholme, mouth hanging open. “No,” he says. “No. There simply has to be a better plan.”
“Yes,” agrees Ki-Adi. “This… This is not wise.”
“I don’t know about that,” says Plo. “I think it could go quite well.”
“ Nobody asked you, Plo ,” says Mace through his teeth. He shakes his head. “I don’t care what intel you received, Tholme. I’m not sending the Whore of the Core — Kenobi , I’m not sending Kenobi — on an undercover mission.”
“Skywalker would be with him.” On the other side of the communications hub, Tholme folds his arms. “You cannot deny their record. It’s impressive. In terms of sheer miracles pulled off, can any other Jedi compare? The pair might have an unfortunate…habitual proximity to disaster, but they do manage to mitigate even the worst of disasters. Even —” here Tholme grimaces, no doubt thinking of the skeletal Senate dome, in the process of being rebuilt for the second time “— the incident with the zillo beast.”
“In terms of sheer embarrassment,” says Adi acidly, “can anyone else compare?”
There’s a long silence.
“There’s another problem,” Tholme says after a minute. “The mission needs someone accomplished in both subterfuge and possessing a deep understanding of Separatist politics — to help Obi-Wan and Anakin blend in. And the person who works best with them and is, by virtue of her past, exceptional at concealing her true intentions is…”
Horror clamps down on Mace’s throat. “No.” He shakes his head. “Please tell me you’re not talking about who I think you’re talking about.”
“Senator Amidala may be volatile,” says Plo, playing the devil’s advocate as usual, “but her record speaks for itself.”
Her record incidentally includes not one but two instances of the Senate dome collapsing — not to mention an entire droid factory on Geonosis getting blown up.
“And,” Plo goes on, “you cannot argue that Anakin and Obi-Wan are supremely dedicated to the Republic and the Order, especially after what transpired with the zillo beast and Anakin’s apprentice.”
At this, Mace side-eyes Plo. Everyone had expected him, of all people, to have an extreme reaction to Ahsoka Tano’s untimely death, but the person who had reacted emotionally was instead Luminara, which shocked everyone. Even in the face of that, Mace can’t help but regard Plo’s placidity with suspicion.
Kenobi has ruined him, wholly and entirely.
But unfortunately, he can’t argue his points. Whatever embarrassment Kenobi has brought the Jedi Order and whatever code breaking he engages in (still painfully unprovable), he is a good general, and he and Skywalker are perhaps the only pair of Jedi crazy enough to go on an undercover mission in deep Separatist space to help the defector Tholme has gotten word of escape. Senator Amidala, wreathed in scandal as she is, is certainly the only senator unbalanced enough to agree to such a plan.
And, even more unfortunately, the trio’s record only improves when they are put together. How, given the truly twisted interpersonal dynamics they must have, Mace has no idea. Skywalker must somehow be a stabilizing influence. It’s the only explanation he can think of.
“Regardless,” Mace says, turning away from Plo, “the three of them would need supervision. Besides, the plan you’ve proposed, Tholme, requires a fourth member. Who would that be?”
Tholme’s eyes track over to Adi, who freezes beneath the weight of his gaze. As Mace, Plo, and Ki-Adi also pivot to face her, she glares at them.
“No,” she says, taking a few steps away from the communications hub. “I refuse. I categorically refuse to be a part of this.”
Looking infinitely amused, Plo says, “You could perhaps attain revenge on Obi-Wan for the rumors he started about you by uncovering proof that he is indeed breaking the code.”
Adi pauses, tipping her head to one side and narrowing her eyes. Then, she says, “I’ll consider it.”
Sometimes, Mace truly has no idea whose side Plo is on, but he’s beginning to think he’s on the side of his own entertainment alone.
“One more thing,” Tholme says. “The meeting the defector set is at a honeymoon resort on Canto Bight. To blend in, the team would need to play honeymooning couples.”
It’s at the point that Adi lets out an anguished groan and puts her head down on the top of the communications hub.
# # #
“So,” says Mace, in the voice of someone in a great deal of pain, “you, Skywalker, Amidala, and Adi Gallia will go undercover at the resort, meet up with the defector, and extract him. If you get in trouble, Tholme and a band of Shadows will be standing ready for you. All you need to do is comm them. Do you have any questions?”
Obi-Wan, standing in the center of the ring of chairs in the Council Room, has many questions. Namely, why is he one of the only people standing between Palpatine and galactic domination? It’s more trouble than it’s worth. “I…” He sighs, glancing at Anakin. Though the Council won’t see it — partly because they don’t know Anakin well enough and partly because they simply refuse to see anything negative about him, since they decided he was a victim of the blowback of Obi-Wan’s supposed promiscuity — he is practically vibrating with excitement at the idea of being able to be Padme’s husband in public, even if only for an undercover mission.
Which leaves Obi-Wan with exactly one course of action. He cuts his gaze over to Adi, who is sitting to his right. She sees him looking, correctly reads his intentions, and opens her mouth to give a furious protest, half standing.
But it’s too late by then.
“I think Master Gallia and I should work together,” he says with a wide grin. The sheer frigid force of Adi’s outrage is like a bucket of ice water thrown over his head. “We’re so compatible. Wouldn’t you say, dear?”
As Adi stares at him, speechless, Obi-Wan reflects that there might be some fun to be had amidst all this.
# # #
Later that same day, a few hours before the ship scheduled to take him, Anakin, Padme, and Adi to the secondary location where they can board a luxury starliner bound for Canto Bight with all the other honeymooners, Obi-Wan goes to his apartment to pack — or, rather, he goes to Anakin and Padme’s apartment, the guest quarters of which he and Satine have appropriated to the extent that anything useful he has to bring with him on the trip is there, not in his Temple apartment.
The purpose of his Temple apartment at this point is mostly appearances. And, if those appearances are anything to go by, to gather dust.
It’s late enough that Satine is already in the bedroom when he slips inside, curled under the covers with her datapad, reading a book Obi-Wan managed to secretly procure for her from the depths of the Archives. It’s from the High Republic era — a time thousands of years in the Republic’s past, when Jedi were in fact allowed to marry. The name itself is incriminating: What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Jedi’s Baby.
As far as Obi-Wan can tell from his brief perusal of its contents, the advice boils down to, Don’t panic if your unborn baby reads your mind, and, Mild earthquakes during birth are quite normal; seek an earthquake-proof building . Neither is particularly reassuring, but luckily all Coruscanti buildings are built to withstand earthquakes, given the stacked architecture of the city.
“Darling,” he says, pausing at the foot of the bed, “how would you feel if I went on an undercover mission that required me to pretend to be married to someone else?”
Satine doesn’t look up from her datapad. “How long would you be gone?”
“A few days, at most. Assuming nothing goes wrong.”
“I’ll assume something is going to go wrong and budget a week before I send Shmi, Bo, and Arla a hysterical comm.”
“That’s wise.”
“Are you going to have to kiss this person or share a bed with them?”
“Only if the Light forsakes me.”
“Theologically impossible. Who is your soon-to-be fake wife?”
“Adi Gallia.”
At this, Satine finally looks up. Her mouth twitches; she chokes on a laugh. Pressing her lips together, she says, “Well, now my only objection is if you don’t holocord the entire thing so I can watch it to entertain myself when the morning sickness gets bad.”
“Oh, the joys of having a sympathetic wife,” Obi-Wan snorts, trying to find where he stowed his suitcase and the modified comms he and Anakin designed together. “And I can’t; the whole thing’s classified. You’ll have to read it in the official report.”
Satine snorts. “Because that’s not classified.”
Obi-Wan finds his suitcase, remembers nothing he has is honeymoon appropriate, leaves it behind, tucks the comms in his pocket, and kisses Satine on the forehead. “I love you, and I’ll see you soon. I should be home for your next appointment with the midwife.”
“I love you too. Have fun being married to someone else.”
Obi-Wan spares a moment to frown at her before he heads out to meet Anakin, Padme, and Adi at the spaceport.
# # #
The resort at Canto Bight is noisy, bright, and smells of different types of alcohol — many of which should probably never be mixed but, judging by the sheer amount of couples stumbling around the casino within the resort, have been regardless.
Padme cares about exactly none of that, however. All she cares about is the fact that she’s wearing her favorite gown — the backless, sunset colored one — and walking arm and arm with her husband out in public, even if the nanite veils she and Anakin are wearing have transformed their faces. She has been married to him for nearly three years now, but she thinks she’s giddier than any of the newlyweds they keep passing. Judging by the way Anakin keeps nuzzling her neck, he’s just as happy as she is.
Stretching up to kiss his jaw, Padme whispers, “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Anakin curls his arm tighter around her waist. “But do you know what I love almost more?’
Padme nods sagely. “Messing with Obi-Wan.”
“ Exactly .”
“I feel the same way.”
# # #
Arm in reluctant arm with Adi, whose tholothian heritage is unchanged but whose face is rendered entirely different by her nanite veil, Obi-Wan watches Anakin and Padme try their luck at a roulette table. They’re so close that they might as well be sewed together at the hip. When the dice lands on Padme’s number, she lets out a crow of delight and twists around to kiss Anakin in celebration, while all the other couples around them cheer.
“They’re…” Adi looks a bit like she’s tasting something bitter. Obi-Wan imagines the experience of watching Anakin and Padme be married is rather a different experience when one thinks, like Adi does, that Padme is having an affair with Obi-Wan, has possibly had one with Palpatine, and could likely be having further affairs with an unknown amount of people.
Even when one does not think that, watching the two of them reach clinical levels of star-eyed affection, is not necessarily a pleasant experience.
“Nauseating?” Obi-Wan offers, finishing Adi’s incomplete sentence.
“Deeply so. Are they doing it deliberately?”
Obi-Wan eyes the pair of them, measuring the amount of time they spend staring into each other’s eyes and the frequency of the times Anakin strokes Padme’s curls back from her. They were doing it deliberately before, but this? This is just them being unreasonably obvious about their love, mostly because they don’t know how to be otherwise. “Unfortunately,” he says, “no.”
Adi narrows her eyes at Obi-Wan. “What have you been teaching Anakin?”
Anakin takes a sip of some ungodly drink that’s a virulent green, swirling noxiously around a salt lined cup, grimaces, and immediately spits it out. Obi-Wan sighs. “Not how to hold his liquor, clearly.”
“I thought you swore off drinking.” Adi’s voice heavily implies that she wouldn’t be surprised if he broke that vow, given his lax behavior toward certain other ones.
Despite the relative truth in that — he is a married Jedi plotting against the Chancellor, after all — Obi-Wan takes offense and lets it show on his face. “And I think Anakin’s utter inability to drink proves that.”
“I just hope it doesn’t blow our cover. We need to last till tomorrow, when the defector and his wife are set to arrive.” Adi sighs and turns back to the roulette table, watching Padme as she perches on the edge of it and whispers something in Anakin’s ear. Given that it’s Padme, it’s either a sweet nothing or a detailed breakdown of the locations of all the exits in the room, combined with a list of any suspicious people and their positions.
Or it could be both.
It’s probably both.
“They’ll be fine,” says Obi-Wan.
Adi has no idea how used to this Anakin and Padme are.
# # #
Anakin may be a Jedi Knight. He may be a full blown general in the GAR. He may be an integral part of a conspiracy against the leader of the supposedly free galaxy. He may be undercover with the goal of extracting a Separatist defector from enemy space. He may have been married for nearly three years.
But he’s still going to carry his wife over the threshold of the suite the Jedi Order — through several dozen shell companies — booked for them.
Once they’re inside, with Padme’s head tucked into his shoulder, Anakin surveys the room with his mouth hanging open. There’s a balcony directly across from the door that takes up almost one whole wall, with a transparent heated pool that has steam rolling off it. The entire suite is carpeted with Pantoran wool, which feels like clouds beneath Anakin’s boots. There’s an artificial fire pit sunk into the floor of the main room, surrounded on all sides by truly luxurious lounges, and another whole wall is taken up by a massive holoscreen with a gilded frame. Adjacent to that wall is a hallway lined with reproductions of fine art that leads into a sprawling bedroom with a bed the size of a small island sunk into the floor and scattered with pillows, furs, and silken sheets. Even the ceiling is a work of art, painted with representations of all the major galactic myths — from the angels the spacers speak of to the great scarlet dragon that’s said to have its den in the mouth of the largest black hole in the galaxy.
As Anakin sets her down, Padme leans forward to peer down the hallway at the bed. “ However is a married couple supposed to sleep in that? We’ll lose each other in the night. I’ll wake up stranded on the far side.”
Anakin follows her gaze. “I think it’s a metaphor for how we’re supposed to always find each other, no matter the obstacles in our way.”
“Even if those obstacles are pillows made from Alderaanian silk?”
“Especially then.”
Padme turns on her heel and directs a dazzling smile at him, face flushed. “I love being undercover.”
Anakin cups her face in both hands. “Me too.”
“Do you want to get some of those complimentary His and Hers bathrobes?”
“I really do.”
# # #
Obi-Wan stands next to Adi, frowning at the honeymoon suite that was booked for them. In every way, it screams, “Begin your newly married life with luxury and wonderful memories!” Maybe he’s just been married for too long, but all he would like right now is to curl up next to Satine in their bed — well, in Anakin and Padme’s former guest bed — and mock one of the stunningly inaccurate Senate-sponsored documentaries about the Trade Federation crisis or the Mandalorian civil war.
Instead, he’s with Adi, who is eyeing the bed in the next room like a law enforcement officer might eye a suspected shoplifter. “So.” She clasps her hands in front of her. “Where are you sleeping?”
Obi-Wan narrows his eyes at her and almost tells her he’ll be taking the bed, thank you very much, but his better instincts win out. Sighing deeply, he says, gesturing to the truly massive lounge that runs much of the length of the room, “The couch, of course.”
“Are you sure?” Adi straightens out her silver dress — a flounced affair that poofs about her calves and slips off her shoulders — and returns his narrow-eyed look. “I’m sure there’s all manner of women here, regretting their marriages already. Easy pickings for you.”
Obi-Wan takes a deep breath and curses Anakin, Padme, and Versé all in one go. “You know, passive aggression isn’t one of the tenets of the Order.”
“Neither is promiscuity.”
“No, attachment is what’s forbidden. I can be as promiscuous as I like.” He smiles sunnily at her. “It’s a fine little loophole, isn’t it?”
“How does it feel to hinder years of relational progress and reassert gender stereotypes just by existing?”
“I wake up happy and fulfilled every day, thank you for asking..”
At that, Adi spins on her heel and stalks to the bedroom. Left alone in the living room, Obi-Wan raises his eyes to the ceiling and sighs. “I hate being undercover.”
# # #
When Padme, wreathed in a nightgown of blue silk with drooping sleeves formed from strings of pearl, wanders out onto her and Anakin’s balcony to drink in the moonlight and sees Obi-Wan climbing over the railing like some incompetent facsimile of a home invader, she jumps so far that she almost falls into the pool. As he drops onto the balcony floor, she clings to a deck chair and presses a hand to her chest, ashamed of herself for being so startled.
Of all the things that she should be used to by now, Obi-Wan entering her and Anakin’s private quarters by creative means is at the top of the list.
Wearing — with a grudging air — the red silk pajamas the resort provided, Obi-Wan straightens up and gives her a desperate smile. “Adi’s asleep. I am losing the last fragile scraps of my sanity. You and Anakin don’t have any plans, do you?”
Padme just looks at him and shakes her head. “No. No, we really try to leave our evenings open and our balcony doors unlocked. Because of you.”
“That’s so good of you,” Obi-Wan says, forging past her into the living room. “Do you have any food?”
Padme follows him inside. “No, we haven’t ordered anything yet.” They both wander down the hallway to the bedroom, where Anakin, also in the same red pajamas, is sprawled across the bed with a contemplative expression, stroking the fur blanket beneath him.
He barely stirs when Obi-Wan enters. “Hi, Obi-Wan. Escape the old ball and chain — I mean, Adi Gallia?”
Obi-Wan gives him a flat look. “You’re hilarious, truly. Move over. The couches in this place aren’t nearly as comfortable as they look. I’m about to slip a disk..”
Anakin raises an eyebrow, looking past Obi-Wan at Padme. “Do you remember when we had boundaries?”
“No,” Padme says.
“No,” Obi-Wan repeats.
“No,” Anakin agrees.
In another few seconds, all three of them are stretched out on the bed, with Obi-Wan in the middle. Resigning herself to the new course of events, Padme curls up next to Obi-Wan and lays her head on his shoulder, yawning as she listens to him and Anakin argue over thread counts and what animal they think sacrificed its skin for the blanket beneath them.
“You know,” Padme says when the two of them finally fall silent, after reaching an impasse when Obi-Wan was unable to convince Anakin that the fur was from a Hoth wampa, “I’d like to think I imagined Anakin and my honeymoon going differently when we finally did get one, but if I’m being honest, this is exactly how I pictured it.”
“It’s our own fault,” Anakin says. “We should have started excluding him much earlier than we did. It’s all about training.”
“Mm.” Padme props herself up on her elbow. “Do we want to order room service?”
Anakin turns hopeful eyes on her. “Ice cream?”
# # #
When Adi wakes to a silent suite, she’s almost ashamed that her first action is to leap from the bed and run down the hall to the living room, solely to see if Obi-Wan has indeed left the apartment, as the emptiness in the surrounding Force seems to indicate.
She skids to a halt just in front of the couch in the living room. Rumpled blankets on it testify that someone had at least tried to sleep on it, but it is deserted, along with the rest of the apartment. Obi-Wan is nowhere in sight.
Adi looks from the couch to the open balcony doors, mentally calculating the distance between their balcony and Anakin and Padme’s balcony, a single floor above them. It would be a feat of agility for a normal person, probably, but for a Jedi, it was the equivalent of a hop, skip, and a jump.
And Anakin, for all that he could be counted on for other things, could hardly be depended on to block any of Obi-Wan and Padme’s more amorous endeavors. Knowing him, he was more likely to simply make himself scarce. That was the sort of loyalty that Obi-Wan took for granted on a daily basis.
Balling her fists at her sides, Adi stalks across the room and out onto the balcony. Not tonight. Not if she has anything to say about it. If Obi-Wan is stupid enough to blatantly disregard the code and endanger the mission with a Council member along for the ride, then he's asking for this.
Balancing atop the balcony railing, the night wind whipping at her head tails, Adi tips her head back toward the balcony above her, eyeing the distance between her and the lowest part of the railing. Then she jumps, hands extended, and catches hold of it. From there, it’s a rather ungainly scramble until she rolls over the new railing and onto Anakin and Padme’s balcony, nearly falling into their pool — they got a pool ? — in the process.
The living room just beyond the balcony is quiet and dim, but light spills down the hallway from the bedroom. Shaking her head and bracing herself for what she might find, Adi strides down the hallway and bursts into the bedroom at the end of it, exclaiming, “Ah- ha! ” as she bursts through the doorway.
Then she freezes.
Whatever she expected to see, it wasn’t this.
Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme are all sprawled side by side on the bed, in a posture that could only be described as platonic . Obi-Wan is at the center of the trio, half engulfed in a mound of pillows and wearing a cosmetic face mask of a truly heinous shade of green.. Anakin is on the right, buried in a fur blanket whose thickness affirms that even after leaving Tatooine so young, he still gets cold easily. Padme is on the left, leaning against Obi-Wan while she demurely rests her hand on a pillow on his lap so that he can finish painting her nails. Judging by the expression on his face, he is not pleased by the endeavor.
All three of them are slowly working their way through massive ice cream sundaes in crystal dishes.
As Adi stutters to a halt, Obi-Wan lifts his gaze from Padme’s nails to Adi’s face, unfurrowing his brow to raise his eyebrows at her. “Yes?” he asks in the sort of voice one uses on particularly dense people. “What are you ah-haing about, Adi?”
“I…” Adi no longer has the faintest idea what she is ah-haing about. “What are you doing?”
Obi-Wan makes a vague, patronizing gesture at the bottle of clear topcoat, bottle of dipping powder, bottle of gel polish, the handheld curing light, and Padme’s half done nails. “I should think that would be obvious.”
“But…” Adi tries to gather herself. “ Why? ”
Padme wrinkles her brow and uses her finished hand to get a scoop of her sundae. Swallowing it, she says, “My manicure chipped.”
“It was very tragic,” Anakin puts in, nodding.
“No,” Adi says. “I mean why…” She gestures helplessly at Obi-Wan.
“Why is his ice cream boring?” Anakin shrugs. “Because he eats like an old man. Can’t handle a flavor that isn’t vanilla.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Obi-Wan jabs an elbow at his ribs, but Anakin expertly blocks it. Then Padme directs a truly venomous glare at them both when the jostling almost ruins the intricate design Obi-Wan was in the midst of painting in gel polish on her middle nail. They both settle down after that, sheepish.
“ No , I mean —”
“The face mask?” asks Padme.
“For the last time,” says Obi-Wan through his teeth, bent over Padme’s hand again, “we are in a resort full of young —”
“Which you are not,” Anakin offers helpfully.
This time Anakin does not manage to dodge the elbow to the ribs. “Full,” Obi-Wan repeats, “of young, thriving couples, and —”
“His eye bags don’t match the atmosphere,” Padme finishes, as if Obi-Wan doesn’t hold the power to ruin her manicure in his hands. Despite this, Obi-Wan just gives her a hooded look and begins curing her middle fingernail.
Adi would love to make assumptions about this and perhaps turn Obi-Wan’s demeanor toward Padme into proof of their romantic connection, but she’s too lost to do anything except stare at all three of them. All she can manage to do is sputter, “But — but — but…”
Anakin gives her a concerned look. He holds out one of the extra sundaes set up on the ornate tray table beside him. “Ice cream?”
“I…”
“Or, we’ve got cocktails.”
“Mocktails,” Padme corrects, examining her finished hand with evident satisfaction. “We’ve all sworn off alcohol to support one of Obi-Wan’s lovers, since she’s pregnant.”
Adi chokes on her own inhale and almost lists into the door frame. “What?”
Obi-Wan doesn’t stir. “It’s a joke, Adi. I don’t have any lovers.”
“But those are mocktails,” Anakin adds. “Want one?”
Feeling rather faint, Adi feels her way over to the foot of the bed and sinks onto it. “I think I might.”
# # #
“All right, my turn.” As Padme settles herself more firmly against him, having switched sides with Obi-Wan, and draws a truly confused look from Adi, Anakin swirls his mocktail in its glass. “Never have I ever…crashed a speeder.” Predicting what Obi-Wan is going to say based on his sharp inhale, he holds up a finger and says, “Landing creatively is not crashing, Obi-Wan.”
Glowering at him, Obi-Wan takes a sip of his mocktail, and so does Padme. Adi does not.
“Unsafe pilots,” Anakin says. “Both of you. Master Gallia’s turn.” He slumps back against his pillows and stirs his spoon around in the puddle of melted ice cream at the bottom of his sundae dish. How Adi got roped into what amounted to an adult version of a crecheling game, he doesn’t know, but it’s better than her standing in the doorway of the bedroom, completely thrown off by having not run in on Obi-Wan and Padme trysting.
Adi gives Obi-Wan a shrewd look. “Never have I ever… kissed another Jedi.”
Obi-Wan snorts. “It’s not good form to use this as an investigative technique, Adi.”
“Aren’t you going to drink?”
“No. Aren’t you ?”
Adi draws back, indignant. “And why would I?”
Obi-Wan sets his chin in his hand and smiles at her. “Just a certain little moment between you and Kit Fisto that Siri and I saw once.”
At this, Adi blushes a dark blue and takes a hasty sip of her drink. “I’d forgotten that.”
“Isn’t it lucky that commitment is against the code, but kissing your colleagues isn’t?” Obi-Wan nibbles on the stem of the cherry in his drink with a contemplative air. “I could’ve reported you if it were.”
“You wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.”
“Ah-ha, but unfortunately murder is against the code, so I believe I’d come out on top.”
“Hush, both of you,” Padme says, sitting up straighter so that she doesn’t spill her bright red mocktail down her nightgown. “It’s my turn.” After pausing to think, she says, “Never have I ever… lost control of a giant ravenous beast and accidentally turned it loose on the capital city of the Republic.” She looks expectantly at Adi, who grudgingly takes a sip of her mocktail.
“I voted against it,” she mutters.
“Oh, but you’re on the Council, so…” Padme shrugs. “Responsibility is so pesky, isn’t it?”
“That was a low blow,” Anakin says, in the most approving voice he can muster, which causes Adi to give him a look full of sheer betrayal. He just shrugs in response. Whose side does she expect him to pick?
“My turn.” Obi-Wan tries to sit up, finds that Padme’s legs are weighing down his lower half, and gives up. Awkwardly worming further up his mountain of pillows, he says, “Never have I ever… outright lied to the press.”
Anakin takes a long sip of his drink, and so does Padme. Adi just stares at Obi-Wan. “There’s no way ,” she says. “No possible way.”
Obi-Wan lays a hand on his chest. “Why, Adi, I would never break the sacred code of honor of Never Have I Ever. How could you think that of me? Speaking of…” He gives her glass a significant look.
With a sigh, Adi takes a drink, eliciting a crow of shocked laughter from Padme.
“And you’re the Senate liaison!” Padme says, almost spilling her drink again. “Oh, for shame, Master Gallia. For shame!”
Adi gives her a look Anakin is becoming familiar with — it’s the look of someone who has been personally victimized by the rumors they’ve spread about Obi-Wan. “Oh, shut up.”
# # #
“All right.” Adi faces the dance floor, full of happy couples whirling to lively music or escaping the dancing in favor of the nearby buffet table. “We don’t know what he looks like, but he’ll be wearing Separatist Parliament regalia. You walk up to him, say the code phrase, and if — and only if — he returns it, find somewhere private and signal the rest of us.”
Obi-Wan, who has managed to acquire a headache proportionate to a hangover without touching a drop of alcohol, grimaces. “That’s half the people here, Adi.”
“No one said it was a perfect system.”
“I’m remembering a certain system meant to contain a zillo beast…” says Padme, surveying the dance floor with an innocent air.
Adi takes a deep breath, but her irritation in the Force is like sandpaper. Obi-Wan hides a smile. “Just go,” Adi says. “We’ve a limited time.”
Obi-Wan shakes his head. “How hard could it be?”
# # #
Anakin slips up to a young twi’lek man’s side as he chooses food from the buffet table. Clearing his throat, he says the code phrase. “Some say Wookiees are poor losers.”
The man turns to look at him, squinting in confusion. “Yes… I suppose? What does that have to do with me?”
Anakin sighs. “Nothing. Carry on.”
He spins to head back onto the dance floor and perhaps find Padme, but he collides with someone thick, tall, and hairy. Backing up, he peers up into the furious eyes of a seven foot tall Wookiee with dark fur, barred with taupe.
He roars something in Shyriiwook. The exact translation eludes Anakin, but the general meaning is eminently clear. He takes a hasty step back. “No offense meant obviously —”
# # #
Padme is just about to give a pau’an man the code phrase, when she catches sight of a giant Wookiee bearing down on Anakin. Sending a hasty smile in the pau’an’s direction, she books it across the dance floor to rescue him.
# # #
Adi watches Padme usher Anakin away from the angry Wookiee, calling apologies over her shoulder. “How,” she asks Obi-Wan, “did he manage to say the code phrase in front of the only Wookiee in here?”
Obi-Wan just shakes his head. “He has a gift.”
# # #
Fifteen minutes later, Obi-Wan has made exactly no progress, but he has gotten accomplished at repeating the code phrase in the blandest voice possible, while entertaining himself by reviewing potential baby names to run by Satine when he gets home.
All baby names, of course, flee from his mind when he hears Padme yelling in her most strident voice, somewhere near the edge of the dance floor. Spinning around, he strains his ears to make out her words and tries to locate her at the same time.
“You thought you could make a move on me?” she yells. “With your new wife ten feet away? And you thought I wouldn’t tell her? Are you blind, or did your parents drop you on your head too many times when you were a child?”
Ah. There she is.
Going toe to toe with a man twice her size.
And though he is only half as angry as she is, Padme doesn’t get angry like a normal person, so it’s already impressive that he’s managed to match half of her rage.
It’s also concerning.
Obi-Wan coughs and disengages himself from the latest Separatist politician he was preparing to give the code phrase to. “Excuse me.”
# # #
“It was disgusting ,” Padme snaps, after Anakin and Obi-Wan manage to get her away from the man and his new wife, leaving them to dismantle their marriage in peace, and corner her by the buffet table. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Ideally,” Obi-Wan says tiredly, glancing at the crowd, “not make a scene.”
Padme crosses her arms and huffs at him, blowing loose curls of hair away from her face. “How long have you known me?”
“Too long,” Adi supplies helpfully, also watching the crowd.
Padme opens her mouth to give a presumably cutting response — Anakin would expect nothing less — but a slender Nemoidian woman comes up behind her and taps her on the shoulder before she can.
“Excuse me?” says the woman, as Padme turns. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“Please,” Adi says fervently. “Do.”
“I was just wondering what you’d been saying about Wookiees?”
Anakin heaves a gusty sigh. “For the last time, I’m not trying to offensive —”
“No.” The woman presses her lips together. “I mean exactly. ”
Adi steps forward a little, blocking the woman from the view of the crowd. “Some say Wookies are poor losers?”
“But the armless know the truth,” the woman responds immediately, before wincing. “That is horribly racist, no wonder that one Wookiee —”
“I’m sorry,” Adi says. “Our intel said we were looking for a man.”
“Then it was wrong, or someone made an assumption. I don’t know. But I’m the wife of one of the foremost members of Parliament, and I know all that they’re doing — I can’t stand by and watch. Please, can you help me?”
Anakin exchanges a look with Padme. “You mean to tell me this whole time, you knew we were here, and you let us make fools —”
“Of course we can help you,” Obi-Wan interrupts.
Anakin does have to admit they’re lucky he is able to keep his head in the game.
The woman smiles, her shoulders relaxing. “Thank you.”
That is, predictably, the moment someone in the crowd opens fire on all of them.
# # #
Five hours later, after an animated chase through the resort, a panicked call to Tholme’s Shadows, a brisk jaunt through Canto Bight’s sewers, and a mad run across a landing field, pursued by Separatist assassins, Obi-Wan manages to pelt onto their escape ship just behind Anakin, Padme, Adi, and Thina — the defector. The Shadows stay behind on the planet to cover their escape as Adi hurls herself into the pilot’s seat and sends them surging up through the atmosphere.
There’s a tense moment when all the targeting alarms blare at once and Thina is moved to scream, but then Padme curses Adi out for not getting to the hyperspace control fast enough and all but throws herself across the lever.
Then they jump to hyperspace, and everything’s fine.
Until Adi puts the ship on autopilot, limps back into the passenger area, and asks, “What intel do you have for us?”
# # #
Clutching mugs of hastily made caff, all of them huddle in the ship’s tiny galley and listen to Thina’s story.
All of them, unfortunately, includes Adi Gallia.
In hindsight, they should have predicted this being a problem.
“He’s playing both sides of the war,” Thina says, hunkering low over her caff cup. She’s so absorbed in her own story that she doesn’t notice that the only one watching her in rapt horror is Adi. Anakin, along with Obi-Wan and Padme, is fighting the urge to shout, “This is old news!”
That would start a conversation he isn’t ready to have.
“But it’s more than that,” says Thina. “He’s planning to end it soon. It’s all coming to a head, and he’s going to use it to name himself emperor.”
“ Emperor ?” repeats Adi in a hoarse voice.
Thina nods.
“But how?”
This Anakin is interested in.
“He’s going to orchestrate a Separatist ceasefire. He has it all planned with Count Dooku. They’re going to use Grievous as a patsy and have him kidnap Chancellor Palpatine under the guise of forcing a Republic surrender. But Palpatine and Dooku are going to leverage everything by having Palpatine’s “rescuers” take Dooku hostage right back. Then he will negotiate a miraculous ceasefire with the Separatists.”
“And name himself emperor?” Adi shakes her head. “No, he’d need a crisis for that.”
“Exactly.” Thina looks down. “He’s going to use the Jedi. There’s been all that propaganda, remember? On both sides, about the Jedi being warmongers. He’s going to refuse to relinquish his emergency powers and trick the Jedi into trying to remove him from office — because they will , won’t they?”
“We’re sworn to protect democracy,” says Adi, with a dawning sort of terror. “If he broke the Republic’s charter by keeping his emergency powers, we’d be forced to…”
“And then he’d frame all of you for an insurrection.”
“But the evidence would —”
“No, you don’t understand.” Thina grips her caff cup more tightly. “There’s not going to be a trial or any sort of inquest. He’s going to use the fact that the war is on the cusp of reigniting to act swiftly and without mercy. He’ll wipe the Jedi out, and he’ll use the military to do it.”
“The clones would never —”
“He’s sure,” says Thina. “Very, very sure. I wouldn’t underestimate him.”
Anakin does not underestimate Palpatine, but thankfully Palpatine is overestimating the cohesion of his plan. It’s good to know he doesn’t know that the chips have been deactivated. That could be very useful.
“I don’t…” Adi is pale and swaying a little. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” Padme chirps out, utterly unmoved by what she has heard. As Adi twists to look at her, she adds, “In three… two… one…”
As soon as the last number leaves her mouth, Adi’s eyes roll back into her head, and she slumps to the floor, sliding off her seat in the breakfast nook.
There’s a long stretch of silence. Thina’s eyes bug out wide.
“Padme,” Obi-Wan says, peering over his caff cup at Adi’s prone form, “what did you do?”
“I drugged her caff,” replies Padme, as though she thinks it should be obvious. In all fairness, it was rather obvious. Obi-Wan should have been quicker on the uptake, Anakin feels. “Don’t worry, she won’t remember anything that’s happened since we got onboard. We’ll just tell her she got stunned on the way in, and that it’s a crying shame that a rogue shot hit Thina.”
“Wha — wha — wha —” Thina’s eyes get wider. She starts the stand, hefting her caff cup as she does.
Seeing it is about to become a projectile, Anakin holds out a staying hand. “It’s all right, Thina. It’s all right.”
She turns wild eyes on him. “ How ?”
“We already knew all about Palpatine,” he says. “We’ve been fighting him for more than a decade, and we’re going to help you.”
Slowly, Thina sits back down. “How?” she repeats.
“Well, step one is faking your death,” Padme says cheerfully.
“Don’t worry,” Anakin assures her, reaching across the table to lay his hand over hers. “We’re very good at it.”
“Oh stars.” Obi-Wan pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is not going to be a pleasant report to write.”
“At least we don’t have to explain anything to Adi or the Council,” says Padme. “Be grateful.”
“We’re going to have to soon, though,” Anakin says, tipping his head to one side as he considers Adi’s unconscious state.
“Come again?” Obi-Wan raises both eyebrows. “And when did we decide this?”
Anakin turns to grin at him. Everything is clicking into place wonderfully in his mind. “Oh, about fifteen seconds ago, when I figured out how we’re going to beat Palpatine.” His grin widens. “It’s going to be funny .”
Obi-Wan puts his head down on the table. “Why me, Light?” he asks in a muffled voice. “Why me?”
# # #
“Well,” Palpatine says over holocall, “at least you managed to kill her before it was too late.”
Yan still isn’t sure how his assassins managed it, given that the initial reports were that they didn’t, but he isn’t about to argue. “Yes,” he says. “It’s very fortunate. Our plans can continue.”
“Is Grievous on his way?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good.”
Yan hangs up and slumps in his desk chair. Sometimes, he has to wonder if there is a third entity controlling this war.
But that seems far fetched, so as always, he dismisses it.