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Chapter Text

Qui-Gon raced back to Melida-Daan, pushing the small shuttle as hard as it could go, fearing he might already be too late. Though he and Obi-Wan had been dispatched to this sector under the secondary mission of attempting to reconcile the differences between the Medlia and the Daan, (saving Tahl had been the primary goal), he hadn’t actually been expecting to find a way to accomplish it. He knew that the Sith had framed this mission in order to make the Je’daii order look incompetent, more focused on rescuing their own than aiding the People of the Republic. (Everyone knew the Je’daii weren’t People of the Republic – only their servants.) He had been completely prepared to follow orders, to get in and out with Tahl with no one the wiser, and feed the Senate whatever Tahl told him about the people fighting on this planet when they asked why the civil war couldn’t be stopped.

But then Obi-Wan had found the children. The Young, they called themselves, kids from both sides fighting their parents just to stay alive. Obi-Wan had been unable to leave them, unable to ignore their plight. He had all the compassion a Jedi should, and Qui-Gon had been unwilling to discourage that in his padawan. So they had split up, Obi-Wan staying with the Young to find some way of making peace while Qui-Gon spirited Tahl to the nearest safe medical facility. It had been a week away, a few days making sure she was actually in good hands, and now a week back. Qui-Gon was almost there, tracking where Obi-Wan was through their bond. At least he knew his padawan was alive, though it had been a small comfort, knowing that the bond could snap in an instant without Qui-Gon being able to do anything to stop it.

He broke through the atmosphere of the planet, heading in the direction he could sense Obi-Wan, staying high enough to avoid the planet’s outdated ground-to-air defenses, but low enough that he wouldn’t miss Obi-Wan when he got to him.

Dust rose in the distance, and Qui-Gon’s heart sank. That had looked like an explosion. He made a half-hearted bet against himself that Obi-Wan would be much closer to the center of it than he should have been. It didn’t help him swallow the anxiety rising in his chest. When he felt Obi-Wan almost directly beneath him, he was over the thick of the fighting. Winning the bet against himself didn’t help either. Muttering prayers and curses, he set the shuttle down on the edge of the fighting and jumped out, racing to help. He dodged and deflected stray blaster bolts, not knowing or caring who had shot them, until he found himself up against a building, peering around a corner to where the Force told him Obi-Wan was. He watched as a group of kids slid down a drain, one particularly ragged older boy guarding their retreat. The boy was thin, his hips jutting out of his frame, visible through the set of rags he was wearing as clothes, and the hands holding the blaster were almost skeletal, but they were steady. The boy shifted, looking behind him, and Qui-Gon couldn’t breathe. That was Obi-Wan.

He moved out from the corner, racing to where his padawan was. Obi-Wan turned at the sound of his footsteps, raised his blaster (and why was he using that barbaric weapon, not his lightsaber?), and shot at Qui-Gon without any hesitation. Qui-Gon was almost too surprised to block – but he got his lightsaber up in time, and Obi-Wan froze at the sight of it.

“Jaieh?” he whispered, his voice hoarse and impossibly weak.

Then he closed his eyes, swaying, and Qui-Gon barely reached him before his padawan collapsed. Asleep, unconscious, injured, or worse, Qui-Gon didn’t know. All he could do was cradle his boy to his chest and jump down the drain to where, hopefully, Obi-Wan’s allies could tell him what was going on.

Chapter Text

“Ah, dear boy, I’m so glad you could make it!”

Anakin smiled at the Chancellor and sank gratefully into the plush cushions on his couch, curling his legs politely underneath him. “Thank you for inviting me. I’m glad you were able to spare the time.”

“Anything for you, my boy, anything,” Chancellor Palpatine reassured him, smiling down at him fondly. “It’s nothing, after all, to set aside some time to have tea with the young man who saved my planet!”

Usually, Anakin would blush and say something about how that had been years ago, and the Chancellor would respond with something about how that was more years his planet got to exist than it might have. Today, though, the Chancellor’s words brought up a bolt of fury in Anakin. “At least someone thinks so,” he muttered, glaring at a spot on the floor.

“What? Dear boy, what did my carpet ever do to you?”

Anakin startled, looking back up at the man who had been the biggest father figure to him since coming here. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” he apologized, quickly. “I'm just… frustrated with Obi-Wan, recently. It’s nothing.”

“If it’s bothering you, it isn’t nothing,” the Chancellor said. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing! Really. He’s just – he’s been avoiding me for like, a week. And the mission board says he’s still in the Temple on leave, so it isn’t that he’s busy. And he didn’t tell me he was going anywhere. He just up and vanished on me! I knew he didn’t like me, but seriously, he could have at least said something. He’s supposed to care for me, at least, right?”

Chancellor Palpatine laid a hand on Anakin’s shoulder and he started. He hadn’t seen the Chancellor get up. This close, Anakin could see the light reflecting off of the Chancellor’s yellow eyes, which looked at him with sympathy. “I’m sorry he’s done that to you. You’ve been taking care of yourself well enough, right?”

“Of course,” Anakin said, shrugging the shoulder without the Chancellor’s hand on it. “I know how to feed myself. I knew how to do that before I even got here. I just wish he’d told me. I don’t like not knowing things, he knows this!”

“And he should tell you these things. Perhaps he would, if he cared about you,” the Chancellor said with a sigh, sitting next to him. “But he doesn’t. A lot of the Je’daii don’t, you know,” he added, almost as an afterthought.”

Anakin couldn’t deny that hearing that hurt. “What? What do you mean?”

“Oh, I didn't mean it like that! It has nothing to do with you, dear boy. It's a matter of philosophy and schisms inside the order. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Ruusan Reformation?”

Anakin shook his head slowly.

“Figures the Je’daii wouldn’t care to teach their own history.” the Chancellor sighed. “Well, do you have any interest in listening to an old man ramble for a bit? Let me pour you some tea.”

“I don’t mind,” Anakin said, accepting the cup. If it answered why he felt sometimes he and Obi-Wan were on such different pages they might as well be reading different datapads, he’d sit through just about anything.

“Well, it goes back almost 1,000 years ago,” Chancellor Palpatine started. “Back then, the Je’daii order lived on a different planet that had two moons, one light and one dark. Apparently, that corresponds to different sides of the Force? I’m not sure what that means. Anyway, those who felt pulled more strongly to the dark moon, tried to break away from the Je’daii order, to make their own rules for their own society. They were called the Sith. The Je’daii order, specifically a group calling themselves the Jedi, fought to stop them, believing only they had the right to determine the rules for society. Their conflict nearly tore the galaxy apart, such was the power these groups were wielding.”

“I have heard of that. The Je’daii order was able to pull the Sith back into their fold, which is why it is still the Je’daii order today and not two separate groups. A lot of people say you can identify who might have been a Sith by their eye color, but that’s just discrimination against people with yellow eyes.”

The Chancellor nodded. “Yes. The Republic ended the conflict, requiring all military, starship, and naval forces to disband so that they wouldn’t destroy the galaxy. The Je’daii order, reunited into one group, was put under strict watch so that they could never split into sects and attempt to destroy each other – and the rest of us while they were at it – again.”

“Okay,” Anakin said, somewhat impatiently. “What does this have to do with Obi-Wan?”

“Well, I have seen, in my years working with the order, that there are several individuals with… shall we say, certain inclinations towards one philosophy over another. I do believe that Obi-Wan is one such person, more inclined to the Jedi way of thinking – a way of superiority and aloofness – than the Je’daii philosophy, which preaches unity and tolerance. Honestly, even the Sith philosophy would be better than the Jedi one. They valued freedom and the strength to take it above all else. It pains me, truly it does, to think of you being placed with that man, but please know that his care – or lack thereof, is a reflection of his own beliefs, dear boy, and not yours. You should be cautious what you learn from him; he might not always have your best interests at heart. Him and others, within the order.”

Anakin… didn’t know what to think. Superior and aloof certainly described Obi-Wan well, though Anakin had seen him care for others with a surprising amount of gentleness. It seemed to be only him that caused Obi-Wan’s eyes to pinch around the edges, as if even just thinking about Anakin caused him pain. “Who else do you think might believe in the Jedi philosophy?”

“I can’t say for certain,” the Chancellor said, sounding sad. “Any whom Obi-Wan might be close with likely share similar views. You must be careful, my boy. If you hear anyone speaking negatively about the Je’daii Order or the Republic – and therefore the Senate, as an extension of the Republic’s will – you must be on guard. Anyone might be trying to sway you from the goals of the Order and the Republic. They want to use your power to further their goals. You mustn’t let them.”

“I’ll be careful,” Anakin said. It was an easy enough promise to make. He already knew that the Order didn’t trust him – it wasn’t like he trusted any of them, either. It would be simple enough to bring lessons he thought they were trying to teach him to the Chancellor, to make sure it wasn't some forbidden, decisive teaching.

Thank goodness he could always count on the Chancellor to take care of him.

Chapter Text

“Kenobi.”

The slow, drawn-out drawl in the low voice never failed to get every single one of Obi-Wan’s defenses up, hands reaching for a lightsaber that wasn’t there. He eyed the door to his quarters longingly. Three more steps down the hall and he would have been – well, not safe, but at least home. He could feel Anakin inside, his emotions likely leaking all over the place as he tried to focus on whatever he was doing. But if he was being accosted in the hallway, it was likely that Anakin was being purposefully excluded from this conversation. And deliberately foiling that wasn’t worth the pain that would follow. He turned.

“Yes, Maul? Here to schedule a time for our next rematch?”

Maul hissed at him, his yellow eyes flaring, as they always did at the reminder that he’d yet to beat Obi-Wan in a duel one-on-one. Sometimes, it would make him sloppy. This time, he reined in his anger and jerked his head to indicate the corridor behind him. “You’re coming with me.”

“And where are we going?” Obi-Wan asked, falling in behind the Zabarak. “My lightsaber is still in the care of the council, on orders from your master, so unless you’re wanting to lose at wrestling today...”

Maul hit the button for the lift and shoved Obi-Wan in, uncaring that his claws pierced Obi-Wan’s robe and drew blood. “I think you’ll find it won’t matter if you have your lightsaber or not when you’re going crazy,” he sneered. Then he took the bag from his own shoulder and threw it at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan caught it gingerly, a little surprised when it didn’t explode on contact. Warily, he lifted the flap and glanced in. Water bottles and military rations, enough to last at least two weeks. “What is this?” Obi-Wan asked, looking up. They couldn’t be sending him on a mission, alone and unarmed. But the number on the lift kept ticking lower and lower, deeper into the temple than most Je’daii regularly went. Was he being let out on the lower levels? Were the Sith trying to kill him?

When the doors finally opened, Obi-Wan had no idea where they were. The corridor was dark, lit only with the dim yellow emergency lights that marked the unused levels. Still, Maul didn’t hesitate, dragging Obi-Wan out of the lift and down the hall as if he knew exactly where he was going. He opened a door and pushed Obi-Wan inside.

“Darth Sidious has a lesson for your brat,” he sneered, standing in the doorway. “He needs you out of the way. Try to stay sane.” Then he shut the door, and Obi-Wan heard the lock engage.

“What?” he asked the closed door. “Wait. Wait!” He tugged at the door, but it was stuck fast. Breathing hard, Obi-Wan turned to the room. It was lit, just barely, with the same dim emergency lights, but even in the gloom, Obi-Wan could see it was completely empty. “Maul!”

There was no sound from the corridor outside. Obi-Wan was alone.

--

A datapad for writing mission reports. A spare hair tie. A piece of candy that must be from some long-ago mission. A flimsi Bant had handed him a week ago. Obi-Wan really needed to keep better things in his pockets, for the next time he got locked in a room.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, Obi-Wan thought, somewhat wildly. Darth Sidious might be done with Anakin sooner, rather than later. His lessons had never gone on for more than a day, before. And besides, he wanted Anakin more or less safe. Darth Sidious was a man with no morals and zero qualms about hurting children, but where he’d secured Darth Maul’s loyalty through fear, torture, and insanity, he seemed to be trying a different tactic with Anakin, pretending to be a trustworthy mentor figure. Hurting Anakin – or allowing him to come to harm – would defeat his purpose with that, and risk stunting the ‘Chosen One’. For all his flaws and horrors, Darth Sidious was remarkably consistent. Obi-Wan didn’t think he was changing his tactic. And while Anakin knew how to cook (it had been one of the first things he’d shown him, in case something ever went wrong and Obi-Wan was delayed or too injured to make food), there were thousands of other ways Anakin could be getting in trouble. Without even a comm to ask someone to check on him, Obi-Wan found it all too easy to imagine countless horrible fates that could befall his padawan.

It was the pack Maul had given him that freaked him out the most. Theoretically, he had rations for two weeks which could be cut in half to last him four weeks, which he knew he could stretch out to at least five with use of the Force (his time on Melidaan had been the first time he’d learned that skill, but it had come in handy several times in a temple where sadists had all the power). The Sith wanted pain and suffering and they were cheapskates. Giving him the absolute minimum amount of food for the time they thought he’d be down here was exactly their style. Or, maybe they wanted him to think that, and they’d actually come after two weeks to laugh at him for starving himself unnecessarily.

Obi-Wan didn’t want to play their games. He didn’t want to be a pawn for Sidious to drag around. He didn’t want to be locked in this room for five weeks. He hadn’t even been given a direct order to stay here, so the Sith Contract wasn’t actively keeping him here. Just a locked door, a lack of keypad to slice, and a lack of anything that could be used to dig through a concrete wall. Obi-Wan let out a laugh that turned into a sob on the way out and sunk down against the wall. At least he had nothing else to do but meditate and release his emotions to the Force.

--

In the end, only two weeks had passed, according to the timestamp on the datapad, when Obi-Wan heard the lock disengage.

“Up, you useless fool,” Maul hissed, stepping into the room. His Force presence, dark and powerful came with him, and Obi-Wan figured that meant he was actually there. Apparently, it had been mind games this time. He staggered to his feet, grabbing the leftover rations. It was even odds whether he’d need them for wherever Maul was dragging him next.

They were back in the lift before Maul spoke again. “Did you enjoy your massage?”

If Obi-Wan hadn’t been squinting in the bright light of the elevator, his eyes unused to regular light after nothing but dimness, he might have gone back to assuming Maul was a hallucination at the randomness of the question. As it was, he might need to check with Bant to see if solitary confinement could affect his hearing. “What? My what?”

“Your massage,” Maul repeated, and no, Obi-Wan was still hearing that word. “Where you’ve been, you lazy freak.”

Obi-Wan was still trying to figure out what that meant when Maul shoved him out of the lift and left without another word. In the corridor. Three doors down from where Obi-Wan lived. Cautiously, fully expecting it to be a trap somehow, Obi-Wan went to his quarters. The door slid open smoothly and, bracing himself for the worst, Obi-Wan stepped through.

Everything was still intact. There were a normal amount of droid parts strewn around the floor, an excessive amount of dishes in the sink, an expected amount of wilted plants, and one disgruntled padawan looking up at him with the coldest look Obi-Wan had seen on his face.

“Where have you been?” Anakin asked, radiating disgust and – was that hatred? In the Force.

“I. The. A massage,” Obi-Wan said hysterically, wondering how this lie made any sense. He hadn’t had a shower in weeks. His clothes were rumpled and dusty. He felt half-crazy and his Force presence had to be all over the place. He was clutching a bag of water to his chest like it was a lifeline and, though his clothes hid it, Obi-Wan knew he was much skinnier than he had been the last time Anakin saw him.

But Anakin only snorted in derision and turned back to whatever tinkering he was doing. “Figures you wouldn’t care to invite me along,” he said, and Obi-Wan’s heart sank. Whatever Sith lesson Anakin had been meant to learn – Obi-Wan’s absence was a part of it, not just an incidental consequence.

“Do you. Do you like massages?” he asked hesitantly, wondering if he had any chance of countering whatever poison Darth Sidious had surely fed his padawan in his absence.

The spike of anger that shot into the Force seemed as good an answer to his question as he’d get. “No,” Anakin scoffed, throwing down his tools and stomping into his room. “You’d know that if you bothered to exist in the same room as me. I’m really feeling the care, master.”

Would he? Obi-Wan wondered when massages might possibly have come up in their conversations. Perhaps that was Anakin’s point. Not that it particularly mattered. If Sidious was determined to teach Anakin that Obi-Wan was unreliable and didn’t care, well. He could, apparently, lock Obi-Wan in a room for weeks at a time, and Obi-Wan couldn’t exactly do anything to stop him.

Chapter Text

“Kenobi!”

Qui-Gon couldn’t help the way his fist clenched around his lightsaber as the Zabrak Sith apprentice Sidious was raising outside of the temple stalked into the salle.

“Fight me,” Maul snarled, not even waiting for a response as he brought his lightsaber out and lunged at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan, sadly used to such orders, managed to turn and block what could have been a fatal strike, turning Maul’s saber aside and sinking into a defensive stance. Around the salle, other padawans scattered, hugging the walls as they slipped towards the doors. No one wanted to be in the same room as the insane Sith apprentice. Whatever Sidious was teaching him was creating a vicious fighter with no morality, but it wasn’t doing much for his mental state.

“Maul’s been biting at the ropes waiting for a chance to rematch with young Kenobi. He does so hate losing.” The slimy feeling of oil smearing across his shields had Qui-Gon stiffening. He didn’t turn as Palpatine approached languidly from behind. “You’re training him well.”

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon said, keeping his voice calm as Darth Sidious stepped up beside him, surveying the duel in front of them.

“Of course, it would be better if you refrained from teaching him your, hmm, tendency to find loopholes. I know my master enjoys giving you a loose rein sometimes; it amuses him. I've never quite seen the appeal.”

Qui-Gon shoved the fear that wanted to race up his spine deep down into his gut. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Obi-Wan decided to disobey the mission parameters on his last assignment, did he not? You were to negotiate a treaty between the Melida and the Daan. Obi-Wan made up a whole new group, the Young, and negotiated with them while you brought the other Je’daii to a medical facility. It is a bit… on the nose, no?”

“He didn’t make them up,” Qui-Gon said stiffly. “Our information was incomplete. There were three factions to the war, and the ceasefire agreement between the Melida and Daan, as well as the treaty with the Young to slowly become Melidaan, were well within the bounds of our mission parameters.”

“Oh, I don’t particularly care,” Sidious said lazily. The room seemed to grow more oppressive, thick clouds of dark pressing in on all sides. “Your version of events matters not at all when I can see what really happened.”

Qui-Gon stayed quiet, watching Maul and Obi-Wan trade strikes and parries, a tiny part of his mind registering Obi-Wan’s Soresu stance wavering under a ferocious overhead strike and making a mental note to drill him on that more. He was recovering well from the extreme Force exhaustion and malnutrition he’d suffered while on Melida-Daan, but if Sidious was going to let Maul ‘play’ with him as a consequence for actually succeeding where he had been set up to fail, he needed to be better.

“You Jedi, thinking yourselves able to escape,” Sidious said after a while. “I suppose I can see where my master finds it entertaining, watching you claw at the sides of your cage. It doesn’t amuse me, though.” He stepped forward, and that was all the warning Qui-Gon had before Sidious lifted his hands and unleashed a storm of Sith lightning.

Qui-Gon cried out and lurched forward as both Obi-Wan and Maul let out simultaneous yells, though Maul strangled his almost immediately. After what could have been ages but was probably only several seconds, Sidious let the lightning stop. Both boys crumpled to the ground, clothes smoking. Qui-Gon raced over, blinking hard against the spots in his vision, hovering over Obi-Wan, hands fluttering as he tried to check him without hurting him further.

“Just a warning for you,” Sidious said, his voice almost pleasant, and then he was gone, the dark clouds lifting as he vanished.

Qui-Gon fumbled for his comm. “Help, please, someone send the healers to the salle,” he gasped into it.

The healers were there almost immediately, but it felt like forever as Qui-Gon tried to get his padawan to respond. They swarmed both Maul and Obi-Wan, pushing Qui-Gon gently but firmly out of the way.

Later, when Obi-Wan woke up in the halls of healing and asked what had happened, Qui-Gon could only swallow harshly and tell him it had been a lesson for the both of them.

Chapter Text

The first time Cody stepped foot onto the battlefield with his Jedi General was, in short, complete osik. There was both a ground assault and a firefight happening in the atmosphere, and, every so often, flaming chunks of debris would hit the field, causing casualties on both sides. Cody could only be grateful that he couldn’t tell whose side the ships were on – he didn’t want to know how many of his brother’s bodies he was watching burn in the atmosphere while he was slogging through a few hundred clankers down here, completely unable to help them.

Pretty much nothing about this encounter was anything like the training modules on Kamino. It was the five hardest simulations dropped into a blender and salted with extra explosions for good measure. The only thing even slightly similar was the presence of the Je’daii beside him.

Personally, Cody had doubted (rather a lot, but that was neither here nor there) that anyone could walk into a firefight completely calmly, perform a few magic tricks, and then walk off. The Je’daii in the training scenarios had all done that, programmed as blank, emotionless powerhouses that could wipe out an entire company of droids but be felled by a single shot to the back. They would sacrifice any number of troops to achieve their goal, but they could also perform extreme feats that would win the day in the end. The Je’daii beside him was… alarmingly close to that. General Kenobi had shaken Cody’s hand with a smile on his face and not a single trace of emotion in his eyes. The clones had gotten good at reading emotions from the smallest of body languages (necessary when their own emotions were both highly discouraged and mostly covered up in plastoid and their trainers' emotions could dictate whether they lived another day or were decommissioned for standing wrong), but the General showed nothing. Not even when they’d gotten to the battlefield, already well on its way to utter madness. He’d barely blinked.

“There are men pinned down about four clicks to the northwest,” he was saying now, crouched behind what might have once been a statue but now was only rubble. He might have been reading the weather off. It was uncanny. Cody expected the next words out of his mouth to be anything along the lines of let’s use them as a distraction while we make our way to the base. That was how the Je’daii in the simulations had been programmed to act. The clones were fodder for their war, and anyone with so few emotions would only see his brothers as tactical pawns to fall or move depending on whatever was most convenient at the time.

“Let’s go see if we can’t get them out from under the enemy’s fire,” he heard instead. Cody blinked and only barely resisted the urge to check if his comm was transmitting correctly. He didn’t think he’d gotten hit in the head yet today.

“Sir?” he asked, glad such an innocuous question could be interpreted so many different ways.

General Kenobi looked at him, and – was that – there was a smile on his face. Tiny, and not really a happy one – but that was a smile! The Je’daii in the simulations never did that. “They’re my men to guard and lead. I won’t leave them behind if I can help it.”

So everything in the simulations was complete and utter trash, including the way the Je’daii were programmed. Cody could only follow as General Kenobi gave orders, directing the men flawlessly, and using his Force magic-stuff to pull off stunts the training scenarios could never have begun to replicate. He somehow even managed to block the energy of a shock blast, something that could have taken out a hundred troopers, absorbed into the fancy lightsaber. He was untouchable.

When the battle was finally, finally over, Cody had an entire set of training simulation update recommendations to send to Kamino, a profound respect for the capabilities of the Je’daii, and, perhaps, just the slightest bit of understanding of this Je’daii. When he’d found General Kenobi after the debrief, he’d gotten another tiny smile, still sad and strained, but it was there. It was confirmation that the Je’daii had emotions, just like their trainers, and that could give Cody a window into his actions. If Cody could read Rex’s smugness when he was standing at attention four rows away, he could learn to read this Je’daii too. Already he was hopeful; someone who didn’t view him and his brothers as replaceable could only be an improvement over Kamino.

--

Obi-Wan finally, finally was alone in his quarters. He dropped his polite mask almost immediately, unable to keep the pain off his face for a moment longer as he reached up to test his collarbone. It was definitely broken. He’d had no other way of deflecting the shock blast, but holding his lightsaber steady without something to brace against was clearly not an ideal move. He dug through the bag of medical supplies the Healing Halls had sent out with every knight who would see frontline fighting to find a bacta patch to slap on it. It wasn’t that they didn’t have Republic-funded medical supplies on the battleships; in fact, they had a fully stocked med-bay which he intended to raid at his earliest convenience. The problem was, it was fully run by clones, and every Jedi knew the clones were a trap. Obi-Wan had been very careful with what he’d shown to his new commander today, but he wasn’t so stupid as to walk right into the medics' domain and declare his weaknesses for all to see.

In fact, Obi-Wan mused as he waited for the bacta patch to do its job, it was probably a good idea to find himself a bolt-hole. Everyone knew where the General’s Quarters were. It would be stupid to think himself safe here and be easily caught in the trap whenever it fell. Heaving himself up, he looked around for something to prod at the ceiling with. An air vent that could serve as an escape route would be best. At least he had experience sleeping rough. The next few months before the 212th Attack Battalion made it back to Coruscant were likely to be very uncomfortable.

Chapter Text

“Mister Qui-Gon!” A blond, tanned child tumbled out from between a pair of fighter jets. “It is you!” Obi-Wan tensed as the kid barreled into Qui-Gon’s waist, but Qui-Gon only wrapped the kid in a hug, his shock only coming across their Force bond.

“Anakin! How did you get here?”

Anakin pulled back and smiled up at Qui-Gon, then bounced over to give Padmé, who was looking very surprised, a hug as well. “After you left, Mom said that you set her free, but that I was still a slave. She promised to free me, though, to save her money until she could do so, but the very next day, someone came and set me free! They said they had to take me to the Je’daii temple on Coruscant to learn to be a Je’daii! We just had to make a stop here first. But Mom said to find you when I got to the temple because you would take care of me.” He said all this in a rush, slightly muffled by Padmé’s sleeves, and stopped to take a big breath.

“That’s wonderful, Ani!” Padmé said, pushing him away to gently check him over. “I’m so glad the Je’daii sent someone to set you free.” She sent a scowl over his head at Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. “Though, I wish I had known.”

“We didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Qui-Gon lied smoothly. “We never know if these things work out, and besides, there are other things to be worrying about. Ani, we are in the middle of a fight right now, to set Padmé’s people free.”

“Wizard!”

“Hm.” Obi-Wan could feel his jaieh’s reluctance and dread, but Qui-Gon only smiled as Anakin pumped a fist in the air. “It’s dangerous. If you’re going to make it to the Je’daii temple, first you need to stay safe.” He looked around, then gestured to the empty cockpit of a fighter jet. “Can you stay in that plane until Obi-Wan or I come to get you?”

“Obi-Wan?”

“My padawan,” Qui-Gon said, indicating Obi-Wan. “If anything happens, he’ll take care of you.”

“Okay,” Anakin agreed, eyeing Obi-Wan. “I’ll wait here for you, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon said, gesturing for the group to continue down the hallway.

They only got a few steps closer to their destination when a familiar red zabrak stepped out in front of them, lightstaff already lit. Obi-Wan swallowed.

“We’ll handle this,” Qui-Gon said calmly, stepping in front of the others. From the way Padmé was tensing, it looked like no one would argue. “Find another way to the throne room.”

Obi-Wan clutched the hilt of his lightsaber tightly as the queen and her attendants nodded, vanishing between the planes. Somehow, Qui-Gon managed to radiate calm peace as they approached the Sith. Obi-Wan clung to his jaieh’s Force presence like a lifeline as Maul turned and vanished back into the doors he’d come out of, leading them deeper into the palace.

They followed him for a few minutes in silence, passing power cores and energy converters as they walked along high bridges above chasms. “My master is most displeased by your actions here.” When Maul finally spoke, his tone was completely at odds with his words. He almost sounded like he was laughing? Obi-Wan couldn’t hold back a shiver. Maul was absolutely insane. “Your orders were to assist with the negotiations here.”

“Negotiations never took place,” Qui-Gon pointed out, his voice not betraying a single emotion.

“Because you stole the child queen off the planet. Interesting cover.”

“Because they were going to kill her if we didn’t, and it would be even harder to negotiate with dead bodies,” Qui-Gon returned. Maul led them down a narrow path, with red ray shields blocking the way forward every few seconds. They only got halfway down before the shields snapped on, forcing them to stop moving. Obi-Wan, trailing behind, jumped back as a shield slammed into place between him and Qui-Gon.

“A flimsy excuse.” Maul finally turned to look at them, and Obi-Wan barely managed not to flinch back at the gleeful look on his face. It was never a good sign when Maul was actually happy. “My master grows tired of dealing with you, Qui-Gon.”

Obi-Wan sucked in a sharp breath. His jaieh was a maverick, continually doing things that, while fulfilling the letter of his missions, often sidestepped the outcome the Sith intended. Plaguis’s amusement with Qui-Gon’s cleverness had often softened most of the consequences of his actions, but if Sidious had succeeded in his assassination, that was no longer a protection they could count on.

Qui-Gon merely dipped his head, accepting the statement calmly. “I apologize for any shortcomings I may have had recently. Is there something in particular I can do to correct my failures?”

“Tell me about the boy, Anakin.”

Obi-Wan knew Qui-Gon’s face was completely impassive, but he could feel the spike of dread in the Force. Dutifully, Qui-Gon recounted what had happened on Tatooine, including how he had met Anakin and gambled on him winning a podrace to earn the parts they needed. It was a much-simplified version of the one Obi-Wan had heard, without any of the speculations Qui-Gon had made about Anakin’s midi-chlorian count, but accurate still.

“Did you not suspect he was Force-sensitive?” Maul was pacing in front of the ray shield, twisting his lightstaff through various katas. The happy look on his face was still entirely unnerving. “When I picked him up, he was gushing over how much he’s always wanted to be a Je’daii.”

“Many younglings in the world dream of being a Je’daii when they hear tales of our fancy weapons and magic powers,” Qui-Gon said. “That does not mean they have the ability to connect to the Force.”

A switch had flipped. Maul turned on Qui-Gon, his teeth bared in a snarl, practically growling as he stepped close to the ray shield separating him from Qui-Gon. “Don’t give me that banthashit. I could feel how disgustingly bright he is in the Force from a klick away. You had to know.”

“I do not claim to know anything,” Qui-Gon didn't flinch as the light in front of him sizzled and popped as Maul’s spit of disdain splattered against it.

The ray shields snapped off, forcing Obi-Wan to blink as the red light that had been washing over everything vanished. He stepped forward cautiously, trying to shove his dread down, as Maul pivoted and kept walking, Qui-Gon only a pace behind him.

“At least you can admit to your stupidity,” Maul snapped. “Not that it matters, anymore. Your ‘shortcomings’, as you call them, have been deemed too short. There is only one type of correction.”

Obi-Wan froze for a heartbeat at that and cursed himself immediately as the ray shields snapped on just in front of him, a single impenetrable beam separating him from his jaieh and the Sith.

Maul turned to Qui-Gon, a joyous, sadistic grin on his face. “Your death cleanses the Force of your light pollution.”

It was like staring through a horror filter. Red washed out Obi-Wan’s vision as Maul turned his lightstaff and sank one end into Qui-Gon’s chest.

Pain bled into the Force, but Obi-Wan couldn’t tell whose it was, Qui-Gon’s or his. He only dimly realized that the scream ringing through the room was his and not the Force itself shrieking out its pain. Maul smirked and pulled his staff away. Qui-Gon crumpled, first to his knees, then to his side, hand coming up to curl over the hole in his body.

“Gonna fight me, Kenobi?” Obi-Wan hadn’t seen Maul move, but there he was in front of him, stance loose and ready as the ray shield hummed between them. “My master decided only his death was necessary. I could recommend more, though, if you want to make a fuss about one pitiful soul. I have this brilliant plan I’ve been just waiting for the right time to implement. See, I think the Crimson Dawn could benefit from some operations on Corellia and Thyferra. That would mean Dryden would blockade all shipping lanes from those systems until they submitted to their new rulers – who knows how long it would take those stubborn Corellians to bend? Of course, the Je’daii, gracious as they are, would be willing to donate all of their supplies to any planets affected by such a blockade. I might even lead the mission to ‘free’ the systems myself.”

Obi-Wan could barely hear, let alone focus on Maul around the scream still ringing in his head. But he knew what Maul was getting at. Corellia supplied 16% of the galaxy’s basic food staples. Thyferra produced almost 47% of the galaxy's bacta. Donating all food and bacta would mean the creche would suffer the most from the lack of food, and who knew how many knights might die from wounds bacta could heal. And the Je'daii's meager supplies would barely even make a dent in the number of people affected.

A gentle brush in the Force. Qui-Gon, reaching out weakly, clearly trying to warn Obi-Wan against the fight he so badly wanted to have. Choking back a sob, trying to pull his jaieh’s calmness over him one last time, Obi-Wan dropped his hand from his lightsaber.

“Pathetic,” Maul said, tracing the movement. “So determined to care about faceless, selfish nobodies that you throw away the people you actually know. My master really has trained you fools at the Je’daii temple well.”

The ray shield finally dropped, and Obi-Wan wasted no time in racing past the Sith to drop to his knees next to Qui-Gon. His jaieh was still breathing, just barely. Obi-Wan knew he didn’t have much time. He pulled the Qui-Gon's head into his lap, focusing on siphoning off some pain, and Qui-Gon opened his eyes a crack.

“Obi,” he gasped out.

“Shh, don’t try to talk, I’m here,” Obi-Wan said, pressing comfort down their bond, ignoring Maul’s scoffs behind him.

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon said, contrary to the last. “Be safe, Obi-Wan.” His chest stilled, his eyes went vacant, and his Force signature, which had been Obi-Wan’s safety net and comfort blanket for the past 11 years, vanished. The Dark Side pressed in around Obi-Wan.

Maul didn’t allow Obi-Wan any time to grieve. He grabbed Obi-Wan around the throat and shoved him back, heedless of Obi-Wan’s wheezes, and then, with a careless kick, sent Qui-Gon’s body over the edge of the bridge they were on. Obi-Wan had to stop himself from grabbing for Qui-Gon’s body as it tumbled down into the depths of Naboo, only just managing to not fall down after it.

Dark, sadistic glee and amusement filled the Force around him as Maul watched him. “Pathetic,” he scoffed again, his face once again split with a wide grin. “You don’t get to die today, unfortunately. My master has a new task for you. That boy your master found on Tatooine, the one he tried to hide from us, he’s your new padawan. Ah – hang on.” Maul rummaged around in his coat for something. Obi-Wan could only stare blankly as he produced a comm, opened some sort of message, and began to read it off. It was a list of orders, clearly written by Sidious with the intention of closing any loopholes Obi-Wan might try to find, that boiled down to ‘don’t let Anakin know Qui-Gon is dead, don’t tell him anything about the divide between the Sith and the Jedi, never contradict something Sidious said to him, and keep him alive at all costs.’

“...And usual consequences apply should you try to exploit a loophole, of course,” Maul finished, clicking the comm closed. He smiled even wider at that. “And Darth Sidious is actually going to enforce those in full. You Je’daii got too many bad ideas under Plaguis’s weak rule. Now that we actually have a strong Sith in charge, you’ll soon remember where you belong. Anyway, report back to the temple with the new fool as soon as you’ve finished negotiating this treaty with the queen. We’ll have the fight you’re dying for later. Now, I’ve got some security footage recordings to destroy. Unless you want to come with me and see your useless master alive for the last time?”

With a laugh, Maul turned and vanished into the shadows of the palace, leaving Obi-Wan feeling as if his heart had been ripped out. It felt like hours before he was finally able to move, turning his gaze away from the chasm Qui-Gon had vanished into. He retraced his steps, mind absolutely blank, and found himself in the ship hanger. It was only when he saw a starfighter with Anakin sitting inside it make a rather poor landing that his thoughts started to move again, one in particular cutting through everything else.

He had a padawan now.

Chapter Text

“Two armies. Only Kenobi could go assassin hunting, find two armies, and then go radio silent.” Mace’s frustrated venting was a thin veneer for the worry everyone was leaking into the Force. He paced the narrow, filthy alleyway, barely avoiding stepping on Yoda where he was hunched over next to the wall. “One of which is made up of literal clones of the Je’daii-killer, who also happened to be the assassin and has a proven track record of going out of his way to kill Je’daii. He karking better still be alive because I am going to murder him.”

Mace punctuated each word with a vicious stomp. Yoda whacked his shins in warning, causing Mace to let out a string of swears that went unnoticed by the people darting down the street outside of the alley. The lower levels of Coruscant were notorious for being home to some of the poorest scum of the galaxy (though at least they would admit they were scum; everyone generally agreed it was the upper levels that held the true scum of the galaxy), and everyone minded their own business. It meant that four Je’daii huddling in back alleyways in dark clothes, carrying frequency scramblers, and speaking a mostly indecipherable language were assumed to be regular criminals and ignored, which was perfect for discussing things they’d rather not be overheard.

“He’ll be okay, Mace.” Plo laid a hand on Mace’s shoulder, forcing him to stop moving. “You know Sidious has had a reason to keep Obi-Wan alive since assigning Anakin to him. And even before that, he always had a knack for getting out of tricky situations.”

“Anakin is chafing against Obi-Wan’s authority; there’s only going to be so much longer before Sidious subtly encourages the idiot that he wouldn’t have to listen to Obi-Wan if he were dead.” Mace wrenched himself out of Plo’s grasp and continued stalking the alleyway. “And before he had the oblivious Sith apprentice, he had Qui-Gon watching out for him.”

“And now he has you,” Plo said with a sigh. “You’ve kept him safe and supported him as best you could, Mace. Qui-Gon would be grateful. But if you want to help him now, you need to calm down so we can make a plan. A war isn’t something we can ignore; that imkai’an.” It was odd to hear the normally mild Plo swear so viciously, but no one in the alley could disagree. The Force swelled for a moment with their derision.

“We knew he would try something.” Adi scowled at the ground. “Unfortunately, Sidious didn’t make it to Darth Master by being stupid. The terms of the Ruusaan Reformation expire in three years, and with it, that sii-damned contract. But a war on this scale? He’s obviously been planning this for a while, sowing dissension and amassing power. Those emergency powers he just got are no joke. He can’t be forced out of office, and he essentially has absolute veto power. Whatever he is going to try when the contract expires to force us to fall back in line like good little slaves is going to be devastating if he’s trying to throw the entire galaxy into conflict for it.”

“A war would be quite poetic of him,” Mace said darkly. “But this one isn’t going to end the same way. Our Giinaa is adaptable. We won’t let him have access to our people for a day longer than the contract stipulates.”

“What do we do about the Chancellor’s order to “destroy the droid army on Serenno” by force? A couple hundred Jedi against that many battle droids… Senator Organa is right. We don’t stand a chance.” Plo, always pragmatic, pointed out. Mace sighed and finally slumped against the wall with the others.

“Use the clones, we will have to,” Yoda said. “Start the war, he intends us to.”

The alleyway quieted at the rightness of that statement, each Jedi turning it over in their head, bitterly acknowledging the trap for what it was.

“I’ll start drafting contingency plans for what to do if the Je’daii get branded as warmongers or war criminals,” Adi finally said, her determination filling the Force and pushing some of the hopelessness out. “What sort of resources we will need if that becomes the case, who would still help us, and who we will have to constantly reevaluate on a case-by-case basis. If Sidious is putting the Clone Army under our control, they’re definitely a trap; they’re Je’daii killers. Whoever goes to collect the clones and start the war will need to be prepared for anything. And we need more information on the clones, as quickly as possible. Without knowing what they’ve been trained for, we don’t know the best way to guard against them.”

“To Kamino, I will go,” Yoda announced, thumping his stick on the ground.

“I will lead the confrontation on Seremno. Jango Fett might be there. He might be able to answer some questions, if he’s forced to talk,” Mace added.

The Jedi looked at each other, grim, but resolute. “May the Force be with you all,” Plo finally said, and melted away into the shadows.

--

Being suspended in a Force-nullifying field was rather boring, Obi-Wan thought idly as he rotated around the room. Nothing to do except worry over all the information he’d found and sent off to the Je’daii council (thank the Force Mace still counted), and that got old fast.

“Ah, if it isn’t the little snub-nosed master himself. How’s your Sith apprentice these days?”

Being bored suspended in a Force-nullifying field was much preferable to engaging with a Sith, though. Especially this Sith. “Hello, Count Krell,” Obi-Wan said mildly when he had rotated back around to face the Besalisk. “Anakin remains ignorant of the existence of the Sith despite all hints to the contrary and is currently falling hopelessly in love with a Senator, I believe, if the sighs and sneaking out are anything to go by. If this is part of Sidious’s grand plan, I must say, I’m thoroughly unimpressed. Your master is asking for too much if he expects Anakin to stick to any sort of plan you come up with. But enough about me. How is your planet coming these days? I did wonder what Sidious was up to when he forced Master Dooku to cede leadership rights of Serenno to you. It seems you’ve collected a nice little group of cannon fodder to throw at Sidious in whatever sick game you’re playing.”

“The CIS is poised to separate from the Senate,” Krell boasted. “The discriminatory policies and failed reparations bills have been enough to convince hundreds of core, mid, and outer rim planets to raise support for an entire army of droids, ready to forcibly take our freedom.”

“Of course. The very policies you helped Sidious push through the Senate, so you could play your little war games. An army of droids to fight an army of clones, neither of which should be needed, because Sidious hasn’t actually overturned any laws saying planets can’t leave the Senate. You do realize you’re going to lose to Sidious, right? And I thought you became Sith because they were the side that always won.”

“You know nothing!” Krell snarled, his affable mood instantly gone. “Sidious thinks we’re playing a game, him and I, but when the end comes, it’ll be me standing on the empire he’s built, ripe for the taking, ready to shape in my image. You could join me, you know. I will be the winning side.”

“That’s the worst invite I’ve heard. Maul does better, and he can barely string together a coherent sentence every other day because he’s still spitting mad that my padawan pushed him out of the spot of favored apprentice. You could at least make the offer interesting.”

“You’re a fool, Kenobi, and you’ll remain one until you see things my way.”

"No thanks, not interested. Yellow eyes are so unflattering.”

Krell snarled, then turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Obi-Wan to rotate, bored once again, suspended in a Force-nullifying field.

Chapter Text

“Kenobi!”

Anakin stood up straighter as the zabrak who’d freed him sauntered into the training room where Obi-Wan was walking him through the beginner lightsaber forms. He was followed by a tall human with completely white hair, even though he didn’t look very old. Mom had told him that although he was being freed, he needed to watch out for depuvellta, and he thought that maybe this zabrak was one. He walked with a sense of entitlement and hadn’t really given him a choice about coming to the Je’daii temple, even though it was what he wanted. Qui-Gon had been much kinder. And Mom had told him to stick by Qui-Gon, but he hadn’t seen him since Naboo. When Obi-Wan had collected him from the ship hanger there, he said Qui-Gon had been sent on an urgent mission that would take him far away for a long time, and he was sorry he hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Anakin thought Obi-Wan was telling the truth, but there was also something he wasn’t saying.

Beside him, Obi-Wan stiffened, his hand dropping to his side where his own lightsaber hung, and stepped away from Anakin. His Force presence, which he’d been teaching Anakin to read, vanished completely, which Anakin hadn’t known he could do. He… kinda wished it would come back, though. His presence had been warm, like the early Tatooine suns, and for some reason, the room was much colder without it. Anakin shivered. It felt like a dangerous kind of cold.

“Maul,” Obi-Wan said, his voice strangely flat. “What do you want.”

“Bruck and I thought it was a good time for a spar,” the zabrak, Maul, sneered, not even giving Anakin a second glance. “Move your brat.”

Anakin wanted to protest at that, but if Maul was actually a depur, he might not appreciate it. He glanced over at Obi-Wan, hoping for guidance. “Go start your cool-down stretches over against the wall, please,” Obi-Wan said. “Be aware of your surroundings.” He didn’t look at Anakin, which was strange, but there was something off about Maul and his friend, Bruck, so Anakin only nodded and went. He barely made it to the wall before they were fighting.

It wasn’t a pretty fight, or a fair one, unlike the other spars Anakin had seen between the Je’daii who lived in the temple. Maul and Bruck had lunged forward simultaneously almost before Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was ignited, both of their red blades screaming through the air. But Obi-Wan seemed to be expecting them, meeting their blades with his own, even though it was two against one. He was constantly in motion, forcing one Je’daii to stay in between himself and the other, which clearly frustrated both Maul and Bruck.

Anakin gasped when Maul ignited a second blade, creating a light staff, but Obi-Wan didn’t even falter, despite having three blades to contend against. He pushed Maul back, forcing Bruck to parry as Maul’s lightstaff almost hit him instead, and for a second, Bruck seemed to turn on Maul, attacking his blade in retaliation.

Bruck was the first person to start fighting dirty, which surprised Anakin. He’d been told it wasn’t allowed in spars, but again, Obi-Wan seemed to be expecting it. He jumped backwards to avoid the headbutt, nearly tripped over Maul’s lightstaff, and backflipped out of range just in time. From then on, the lightsaber attacks were paired with punches, hair pulling, biting, and any other tactic Maul and Bruck seemed able to think of. Obi-Wan responded in kind, though less frequently, more focused on blocking their attacks with his saber.

Anakin was definitely rooting for Obi-Wan, but by the time half an hour rolled around, he was beginning to get bored. Most spars didn’t last this long; what was the point? Someone was just going to get hurt, and Obi-Wan said if you got hurt in a spar it meant you couldn’t train anymore, so it was all for nothing.

“Enough of this, Kenobi.” Maul’s snarl brought him out of his thoughts and back to the fight in front of him. “We get it, your Soresu is good. Switch to something else.”

Obi-Wan stumbled, just slightly, at the words, his stance faltering for the first time Anakin had ever seen, and the other Je’daii pounced on the moment of weakness. In the first instance of teamwork that he saw, Maul flipped Obi-Wan, while Bruck grabbed his sword arm and wrenched. Obi-Wan landed on his knees, his saber skittering across the floor, wrist oddly bent where it was held in Bruck’s grasp. Both Bruck and Maul had their sabers leveled at Obi-Wan’s neck, the blades sparking and spitting where they were crossed beneath his chin.

“Solah,” Obi-Wan finally said after a long moment in which the three combatants held their positions, studying each other. Maul and Bruck looked triumphant, while Obi-Wan just looked blank.

“Pathetic,” Maul sneered, stepping back and holstering his lightstaff. “As expected. Come on, brat, the Chancellor wants to see you.”

Bruck snorted, tossing Obi-Wan’s arm away – and Anakin really thought the wrist might be broken, but Obi-Wan tucked it behind his back as soon as Bruck dropped it, and he couldn’t tell, not with Obi-Wan’s completely blank face – and turning his own saber off. “Special kid,” he said, sounding vaguely bitter. “Gets to meet with the leader of the entire kriffing Republic. Of course you’re training him, Oafy-Wan.”

“Well? Let’s go,” Maul said from the door, sounding impatient. Anakin didn’t move, glancing at Obi-Wan uncertainly.

“Go on, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, his voice just as devoid of emotion as his face. He was still kneeling on the ground, hands behind his back, but his chin was lifted and he was looking at Anakin steadily enough. “It wouldn’t do to keep such a busy person waiting. Remember to be polite.”

Anakin followed Maul out of the salle, looking back once before Maul snarled at him. He didn’t know what to think. Who even was a Chancellor?

Chapter Text

“You’re a Je’daii, aren’t you?” Anakin’s eager question made Qui-Gon freeze. He swallowed harshly against a suddenly dry throat, staring straight ahead to stop himself from glancing over his shoulder. Anakin didn’t seem to notice how tense he’d gotten. “I saw your laser sword earlier. Only Je’daii carry those. Are you here to free slaves?”

Anakin’s face was so bright, looking up at him. It almost matched his presence in the Force, a presence which Qui-Gon had been steadfastly ignoring as best he could. “I’m afraid not,” he managed to get out. Those of the Je’daii order who followed the Jedi philosophy did occasionally try to free slaves and push back against the darkness in the Galaxy, and he liked to think he was one of those. But to do so here, with the Sith shadow he knew wasn’t far away, would bring more disaster than any help he could hope for. Shakily, he redirected the conversation back to the parts he needed to acquire to repair the ship and prayed to the Force that Anakin dropped it.

Anakin did not drop it.

“I had a dream I was a Je’daii,” he said the next day when they were preparing a simple fare for breakfast. “I came back here and freed all the slaves. It was wizard!”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes. “Did you?” he asked, his voice coming out even despite the churning mess of emotions sitting in his stomach. Fear and desperation and hope and horror were, sadly, a mixture he had plenty of practice dealing with.

“Yeah! I’m going to be the strongest Je’daii in the galaxy so I can set everyone free!” The words rang true in the Force and sent chills down Qui-Gon’s back. Setting people free should have been a good thing, yet all Qui-Gon could picture was the Sith sinking their claws into this bright boy and telling him true freedom was, in fact, the strength to take anything he wanted. He barely listened as Anakin continued to chatter about the dream he had until he was called away to help his mother.

Shmi approached him later when their work was done for the day and the second of Tatooine’s suns were falling beneath the horizon.

“You should be proud of your boy,” Qui-Gon told her when the silence had stretched. “He is a very generous child.”

Shmi nodded, her brow furrowed. “He knows of the effects of greed.” When Qui-Gon said nothing more, she shifted and turned to him, lifting her chin a little. “He deserves better than the life of a slave. Can you help him?”

Qui-Gon stared at her and felt his heart break for this woman who had such courage, to ask such a daring thing of a stranger, whom she had taken in and shown nothing but kindness to. “I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking, unable to project his usual calm. “I’m sorry. He would – The Je’daii – We. Our freedom comes at the cost of our soul. I know Anakin deserves far better, but the Je’daii temple would be walking into – into a Krayt dragon’s mouth. Please, believe me.”

Shmi stared at him, for a second, lips pursed. “You’re vellta-depuan.”

Qui-Gon had never heard that word before. For a second, he thought she was calling him a liar, but then she stepped close and wrapped him in a hug.

“I see the chains your depur has draped around you,” she murmured. “For all their beauty, they are still a fetter. You are a child of Ar-Amu, and though Depur has a thousand cruelties, Ekkreth has a hundred thousand tricks.” She stepped back and looked up at him. “Let me tell you a story.”

So Qui-Gon, feeling more seen than he ever had before, listened. “I will remember,” he said when it was finished.

The next day, as he was finalizing the deal for the parts with Watto, he casually suggested gambling for the freedom of the slaves, while he was at it. When the dice rolled, he waved it to land on Shmi’s green and pretended he was disappointed it wasn’t the boy. Hopefully, she could find some way to free her son as well and find a better life for them both. Now, they just had a pod race to win.

Chapter Text

“Obi-Wan! My favorite customer.” Dex’s greeting boomed through the diner, as it always did when he walked in. “Sit! Hermione’ll be right over to take your order.”

Obi-Wan nodded his own greeting, made sure the pleasant expression didn’t fall off his face, and walked over to the booths he knew Dex kept scramblers at for when certain people preferred not to be overhead. Hermione bustled over, all smiles, even as she handed him a glass of water and pushed in the keycode that would start the disrupting device. Dex already knew his order, so when he walked out to greet Obi-Wan formally, he was carrying a plate stacked with food.

“What brings you around this part of town?” Dex said, sliding the food in front of Obi-Wan and squeezing himself into the seat across the table. “I hardly ever see you these days!”

“Oh, you know, I got a padawan, you know how much work they can be,” Obi-Wan said, sure that Dex would get a lot more out of that statement than anyone else in the diner would. He had, after all, known how much work Obi-Wan was for Qui-Gon. “And the Senate is as busy as ever! The amount of missions we’re given seems to increase more and more each day.” That was also very true, though it was affecting Obi-Wan and Anakin more than most. Sidious didn’t seem to want to give Anakin any time to settle or make friends at the Je’daii Temple, and so Obi-Wan had been assigned mission after mission in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy and given no choice but to bring his padawan along, even though Anakin was much too young for most of them. Such as the one they were supposed to be leaving for later that day.

Dex, familiar, at least broadly, with the divisions between Sith and Jedi in the Temple frowned slightly. “They work you too hard, my friend,” he said, serious beneath the jovial tone. “I miss seeing you come this way.”

“I’ll have to prioritize it in the future,” Obi-Wan said, and he really meant it. “No other place has nerf steaks like you have.”

“Of course they don’t!” Dex crossed his arms, mimicking affront. “Well, since you’re here, tell me, where are you off to next?”

“Senator Orn Free Taa, a good friend of the chancellor, has requested the Je’daii’s aid in quelling some terrorist attacks on Ryloth,” Obi-Wan said casually, as if this wasn’t the whole reason he was here in the first place. “Of course, Ryloth’s trade and economic contribution to the Republic are exceedingly important, so we will be doing our utmost to put an end to these disruptions.”

Dex’s slight frown grew slightly deeper, but not enough to draw attention. “Sounds like you Je’daii are doing good work out there.”

“It’s worth it if we can save the lives and economy of Ryloth,” Obi-Wan agreed. “It’s what we’re here for.” If the words came out slightly bitter, only Dex would hear it. “I shouldn’t take up too much more of your time, I know you’re busy.”

“I’ll always make time for you, friend,” Dex said, but he heaved himself out of his seat regardless. “And the meal is on the house! I couldn’t possibly charge someone who does so much good in the galaxy.” And he knew that Obi-Wan didn’t have any spare credits with which to pay him. Obi-Wan bowed his head in thanks, and gladly dug into his meal. When he’d eaten all he could of the massive place Dex had brought out, Hermione approached with a box, slid the leftovers in, and popped it into a bag full of other boxes, each one likely stuffed with food. She pushed it into his hands and cheerfully saw him off at the door.

Dex was a blessing in so many ways, Obi-Wan thought as he made his way back to the Temple. As an information dealer, he could afford to accept tidbits instead of credits. And since Dex hated corruption and oppression, Obi-Wan trusted that the information he gave would be passed along to the appropriate people. Such as the Ryloth 'terrorists', which were in all likelihood pockets of freed slaves attempting to set others free by attacking their master's places of residence. It would make his Senate-ordained mission infinitely harder if they were warned that the Je’daii were coming, but it might also mean more people got saved in the long run.

When Obi-Wan arrived at the Temple and passed the bag of food over to the kitchens, the wookie Je’daii in charge of dividing up the rations almost teared up. Yet another way Dex was a blessing. Though the Sith made sure that the Je’daii had enough for everyone to be healthy (future Sith apprentices couldn’t be weakened by malnutrition in their childhood years), it was only the bare minimum. Dex’s food – or anything that wasn’t a perfectly calculated ration bar – was a rare, treasured treat.

If Obi-Wan ever asked, Dex would have a hundred different ways for him to fake his death. If it were just a matter of running, Dex would have tried to smuggle the entire Je’daii population off Coruscant. If it weren’t for the chains of the Dark side wrapped around each and every one of them, Obi-Wan would have taken him up on that. Sii-damned contract.

--

The mission to Ryloth was just as awful as Obi-Wan knew it would be.

“How did these sleemos know we were coming?” Anakin fumed, watching as yet another cargo ship hit atmo and vanished, their speeders still klicks away. “We haven’t told anyone we’re here yet!”

Obi-Wan sighed. “The Senate knew we were coming, Anakin,” he said, like he had the last five times this particular complaint had come up. “There are many possible people who could have leaked our plans.”

“No, no one in the Senate would do that,” Anakin said, sounding just as impatiently sure as he had been the last four times he’d given this rebuttal. “They know that these terrorists are stealing people to be slaves. They wouldn’t get in the way of us destroying slavers.”

“We still don’t know what the goal of the rebels is,” Obi-Wan said. “And you know that just because someone is in power doesn’t mean they are immune from the lure of wealth and greed that is the slave trade. Governments can be corrupt too.”

Anakin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, obviously, like the Hutts. But Sheev said Senator Taa is a good constituent, so we have to help him. And we’ve found chains at all of the bases so far! You don’t just keep those lying around unless you have people you’re preventing from escaping.”

“Do you even know what ‘constituent’ means?” Obi-Wan carefully kept his tone mild. He’d learned the hard way that trying to rebut anything ‘Sheev’ said to Anakin would result in a painful affirmation of it instead, and though it was just as painful to watch his padawan blindly wander deeper into the Sith’s manipulations, he didn’t know what else he could do.

“Uh -” Anakin pulled his speeder to a halt. “Oh look, we’ve arrived!”

They were at the base the cargo ship had likely left from, if the recently scorched flora was any indication. Obi-Wan sighed, but let Anakin slip out of answering. They parked their speeders in the open hanger and slipped through the door, lightsabers at the ready. Whoever these rebels were, they had left some nasty surprises at their other bases. This would likely be no different.

“You watch the sides, I’ll take the front,” Obi-Wan instructed Anakin, putting his padawan behind him. He’d always felt safe and honored when Qui-Gon did that to him, both protecting him from whatever might come in front while also being trusted to shield him from behind. From Anakin’s exasperated groan, he suspected his padawan did not feel the same.

The first few rooms they passed were empty, both of traps and of anything that might give them a clue as to where their prey had fled to. It was only after they had stepped into the main room that the trap they had been expecting went off. Explosions rocked the underground base, throwing both of them forward. Obi-Wan twisted, curling around Anakin to prevent him from getting hurt, wrapping them both in the Force as best he could while the world shook around them and debris fell from the ceiling.

When it quieted, Obi-Wan sat up, quickly pulling Anakin up so he could check him. “Are you hurt? Did you land alright? Did anything hit you?”

Anakin shook him off with all the impatience of a fourteen-year-old boy. “I’m fine. What was that?”

“Delayed charges, I’d guess,” Obi-Wan said, scanning his padawan and finding nothing obviously wrong with him. “Either set to go off on a timer or set to go off when someone entered this room.” Satisfied Anakin wasn’t hurt, he pushed himself to his feet and peered down the way they’d come. Though there was some of the corridor left, he could see that rocks were completely blocking the way they’d come. Looking down the other exits of the room revealed similar situations. “It appears they didn’t want us to look further at what they had in this base.”

“Just like slaver sleemos,” Anakin said with a scowl. “How do we get out now?”

Obi-Wan considered. If there was rock filling all three of the rooms they had passed on their way in, it would take much too long to move, especially since he didn’t know if there was airflow to this room. “We might need to call for help,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his comm. “And start digging ourselves out from this end.” In his hand was a tangled mess of plastoid and wires. Obi-Wan sagged. He must have landed on it when the explosions had started.

“Do you have the Senator’s comm code?” he asked Anakin, ruefully showing him his broken comm. “Otherwise we might be in here for much longer than we want to be.”

“No, but that’s alright,” Anakin said, much too cheerfully as he pulled his own – thankfully unbroken comm – out of his pocket. “I’ll just call Sheev and ask him to pass on a message.”

Ah. Obi-Wan was glad Anakin was too busy doing just that to see the grimace he couldn’t keep off his face. “You do that,” he said, clapping Anakin on the shoulder. “I’ll go start moving rocks.” He briskly walked down the corridor to the edge of the rockfall, out of sight of Anakin as he made the call, but still within hearing range, and listened as Anakin explained the situation.

“Oh, my boy, I’m so sorry.” Sidious’s voice was slimy with the fake sympathy Obi-Wan could hear oozing off him. “I’ll call Senator Free Taa right away.” There was a hesitation. “Have you – does Obi-Wan believe you, now, that these terrorists are also slavers? I know you said he wasn’t sure.”

Anakin made a disgruntled noise. “He keeps saying he doesn’t know, that maybe the terrorists have a different reason for having chains and medical droids everywhere, as if they aren’t chipping people to sell.”

“I’m sure you can convince him,” Sidious said soothingly. His voice grated down Obi-Wan's spine. “After all, you are the best person to recognize slave masters, having been in these sorts of places before. He probably just doesn’t want to admit that you’re right. I hope he is able to swallow his pride soon.”

The worst part, Obi-Wan reflected bitterly as he hauled another rock away, was that if Anakin didn’t have a web of lies woven around him in the Force, he probably would be the best person to recognize what was really going on here. And he’d probably be just as viciously eager to help the so-called ‘terrorists’ free people as he currently was to destroy them for supposedly enslaving them.

But no, the list of things Obi-Wan was forbidden to teach his apprentice grew longer every day, and spending months at a time practically stranded on the outer rim, well away from anyone in the Temple who might be able to get around the Sith contract and explain it to him, meant Anakin was completely oblivious to the trap he was caught in. Instead, Obi-Wan could only listen as Sidious fed his padawan lies and false reassurances and utter bantha shit.

Maybe it would have been better if both their comms had broken.

Chapter Text

Another dozen Sith were dead.

“Do you see what I mean? At this rate, the Jedi will win, even if they never engage in another battle again. One Sith can take out scores of those weaklings, but we never give ourselves the chance because we’re too busy murdering each other.”

The shadowy figure Darth Nadd was addressing shifted, the Dark Side coiled around him with such precision that Nadd was almost jealous. But he had just as much control, in a very different way. Darth Bane should feel just as jealous of him.

“I don’t see how this is my problem,” said Darth Bane, voice slithering out of the darkness. “The other Sith can fight each other, fight the Jedi, fight no one. It doesn’t bother me.”

“It should,” Darth Nadd snapped. “You think you’ll be spared the infighting? You think the other Sith won’t view your control as a threat and hunt you down as well? You thought no one would find you here, sucking up remnants of their power and never drawing attention to yourself. But if I can find you, so can everyone else.”

“Is that a threat?” There was anger, wielded with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel under those words.

“If that’s what it takes to stop this nonsense, then yes.” Darth Nadd couldn’t defeat Darth Bane, but it was mutually assured destruction at this point. The same trap all the other Sith fell into. He reined in the dark side that was rising up to meet his emotions and tried again. “I don’t want it to be. We both know that if we fought, we would end up like those greedy fools, dead at each other’s hands. I won’t start a fight with you if you don’t start one with me. I have a plan. It would ensure the Sith survival, hobble the Jedi fools, and put the Republic under our control, but it can only reach such heights if we assist each other.”

The darkness clouding the other Sith swayed back and forth, like a snake being charmed on the sands of Tatooine. “I don’t care about the other Sith,” Darth Bane finally said. “Only one person can embody power at one time. Everyone else must crave that power.”

“So you were hoping the rest of us would die, so you could claim to hold all the power of the Dark for yourself.” Darth Nadd scoffed. Oh, Darth Bane probably could have pulled it off, he clearly had a plan, but it was narrow-minded and limited. Darth Nadd wanted so much more than that. “The Dark Side increases with suffering. If the Sith even mostly die out, that gives the Jedi all the freedom they need to increase the Light, watering down the Dark with peace and happiness. If you want to actually have the power you claim to embody and not some pathetic, weak, Light-infused power, you’re going to need to stop the Jedi. I have a plan to do just that and increase the Dark Side while I’m at it.”

The quiet stretched longer this time. Darth Nadd could be patient. Darth Bane knew a good idea when he saw one.

“Tell me your plan.”

With a smile, Darth Nadd did so.

--

The trap was easy to lay. The Jedi were, theoretically, winning the war, their work made so much easier by the Sith idiots who kept attacking each other instead of the true enemy. The belief that they had their foes on the run made slipping into the office of the popular Chancellor Valorum easy. Darth Nadd had spent long hours practicing and perfecting the technique of Qâzoi Kyantuska, the powerful form of thought suppression, so wrapping his mind around Chancellor Valorum’s was as easy as breathing. Planting the idea of a contract, signed by the Je’daii Temple at the end of the war wasn’t even overriding thoughts so much as bringing certain ideas to the forefront.

As Darth Nadd held the Chancellor’s mind in place, crafting the terms of the Reformation Bill - an auspicious name, Darth Nadd thought – Darth Bane was writing their own contract, sii sinking into the page underneath the Chancellor’s quill making it so that all who claimed the Je’daii Temple as home would be bound to the will of the Sith, then hiding the entire thing under several layers of misdirection. It was tricky work, harder than Nadd would have been able to accomplish on his own, but Bane hadn’t expected to live through the war for nothing. His control over the Dark Side was precise and fine, blending in perfectly under the actual, legalistic contract Valorum was quickly drawing up. Nadd barely even needed to nudge the ideas into place, Valorum all too eager to impose extra oversight on the Jedi Temple, for at least one thousand years following the contract’s drafting.

When they were finished, Valorum had a fully composed bill to present to the Republic Senate the next day that was really two contracts under the guise of one. Satisfied, Nadd pulled out of Valorum’s head, removing all memories of his and Darth Bane’s presence as he did so. The man slumped over the freshly drafted bill, looking for all the world as if he’d fallen asleep at his desk after a long night of hard work. The Sith slipped into the night.

--

Watching the Jedi walk into their captivity was thrilling. With the Brothers of Darkness all but wiped out and the pitifully few remaining cloaking themselves deep in the shadows and refusing to draw attention to themselves, the pressure on the Jedi to conform to the laws of the Republic grew every day. The bill Valorum presented, named the Ruusan Reformation, was an almost instant hit, calling for the Jedi to lay down their arms, disband their armies, and compose themselves as peaceful citizens of the Republic. The Jedi had no choice but to cede to the will of the Republic, laying down their lightsabers in a ceremony broadcast throughout the galaxy, celebrating the end of the war by having the leaders of the Temple sign the Reformation bill. It would be the end of the war, alright, though with very different winners than history would record.

Darth Nadd, watching from halfway across the galaxy, still felt the binding sink smoothly into place. On-screen, he could see the Jedi representative's eyes begin to widen, all of them too familiar with the feel of the Dark Side to not feel it wrap around them. But it was too late for them.

“It’s nothing,” he murmured, knowing it wouldn’t matter if they could hear him or not. “You won’t say anything about it. It’s a normal reaction to such a monumental day. Forget why it troubles you.”

“Is everything alright?” Chancellor Valorum prodded the Jedi. “Master Jedi?”

“Oh – yes,” the Jedi said, turning back to the Chancellor with a tight smile. “I apologize. Just thinking about what a monumental moment this is.”

There would be time, later to reveal the brilliance of their trap, when the Jedi had finally started to relax their hyper-vigilance from the war. By then, the Senate would refuse to believe the Jedi even if they were able to bring the contract to their attention, claiming they were just trying to start the war again. There would be time to impress layers and layers of orders on the Jedi, so that any Force-Sensitive in the Temple would be trapped into the same contract, and anyone who was Sith could have power, tantalizing power at their fingertips, just waiting to be grabbed. The Jedi would be forced to watch and despair as all their apprentices fell, unable to bear the chains of Dark without succumbing to the temptation to use the Dark. Darth Nadd could already picture several of the knights who just needed the right prompting to fall a little further. They would make magnificent students.

“There is a certain… beauty, to it, I suppose,” Darth Bane said, next to him, as the ceremony wound down. “All those strands of darkness, falling perfectly above Coruscant to create a cage for the Jedi. And so many opportunities that might have been missed, otherwise, if we’d been forced to hide in the shadows.”

“Glad we didn’t kill each other?” Darth Nadd asked, feeling more lighthearted than usual. The power he could already see himself amassing from this was making him giddy.

Darth Bane ignored the question. “I think it might be time to see what the requirements are for becoming a senator,” he said, turning away. “Working with you was… not unpleasant.”

It was as close to an acknowledgment of respect Darth Nadd was ever going to get from the other Sith. “I could say the same,” he said, but Darth Bane was already gone. No matter. Darth Nadd turned to watch the final remarks of Chancellor Valorum and then flicked the holoscreen off. He had his own plans to make. He couldn’t wait to see what the Dark Side could accomplish with the Jedi fools’ suffering increasing its power.

Chapter Text

The third night Cody walked to the bridge to collect the late shift reports and found his general hunched over a desk in the corner with datapads strewn everywhere, he decided he was going to ignore whatever reassurances of going to bed soon that Obi-Wan was going to give him. The last two late shifts had reported clocking off before the General had left, which meant he’d not been going to bed. Cody wasn’t about to let a pattern form with three nights in a row. Luckily, he had a plan.

“It’s late, sir,” he said, as he’d done the last two nights.

Obi-Wan peered up at him blearily, even more so than he’d been the night before. Cody narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, Cody.” He looked back down at the datapad he was holding. “I’ll be going to bed soon, don’t let me keep you.”

“That’s what you said last night,” Cody said, levelly, keeping all accusation out of his voice. “The men say you didn’t.”

“Mm.” Obi-Wan was clearly not paying attention to this conversation. That was all right; he probably thought it was the same as last night’s. Cody would humor his assumptions a little longer. “I admit, I got a little carried away. I’ll be done soon, though.”

At least he didn’t try to say it wouldn’t happen again, Cody reflected. For all his faults, he had yet to catch the General in an outright lie. They just had varying definitions of soon. “Is this something I can help with?” he asked instead, resting a finger on some free space on the table, as close as he would come to touching Obi-Wan’s datapad without permission. The first time he had done so and Obi-Wan had stiffened up, he had thought he was going to be decommissioned for some rule he hadn’t known he was breaking. He knew better, now, that Obi-Wan’s reaction came more from having any and all of his personal effects tampered with by Sith at any time, but that just meant it was even more important to get permission before grabbing Obi-Wan’s things.

“No, that’s very kind, dear,” Obi-Wan said, not even registering the hand on the table. “It’s nothing; I can handle it on my own.”

“Mm.” This was where Cody was deviating from the conversation Obi-Wan thought he was having. Looking around, he spotted one of the uncomfortable plastic red chairs they kept around for the rare occasion they had guests on the bridge. Dragging it over, he sat at the table next to Obi-Wan. “I’ll just stay up with you then.”

“What?” Obi-Wan jerked his head up, the first real reaction Cody had gotten from him since this whole thing had started three nights ago. “No, no, you don’t need to do that. Really, Cody, I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you actually slept?” Cody asked, ignoring the entirety of Obi-Wan’s protest like the nonsense it was.

“Ah -” Obi-Wan looked vaguely disconcerted. How wonderful to have a general who would talk around the truth until his face turned blue, but drew the line at actually lying. “A Je’daii doesn’t need as much sleep, we can use the Force to increase our energy.”

“Sounds like inappropriate use of the Force, but I’m not a Je’daii, so I wouldn’t know,” Cody returned calmly. “But it doesn’t matter; we’re engineered to keep up with the Je’daii on all levels, I’m sure I can stay up with you until you’re finished.”

Something in his tone must have clued Obi-Wan in that Cody was serious. He sat back, actually looking at Cody for the first time in three nights. “You’re… worried,” he said, sounding faintly bewildered. Cody idly wondered if ripping a Sith’s head off was as satisfying as ripping the head off a battle droid. “This won’t affect my ability to lead the men; you know I rely on you for the best calls.”

“And when your exhaustion causes you to stumble on the battlefield and get hurt, making you unable to protect the men?” Cody asked, making sure nothing in his tone could be read as anger. “When you are growing noticeably crankier each day? When a shiny was able to startle you today, and you scared him so badly with your response he thought he was going to be decommissioned?” Obi-Wan looked startled, then abashed, opening his mouth as if to answer, but Cody didn’t give him the chance. “And those would only be my reasons if I were worried about the men. I might also add that you getting hurt in any way is unacceptable because I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t like seeing whatever this is bothering you as much as it clearly is. I don't like watching your lack of sleep damage your connection to the Force. Yes, I’m worried, sir, but I’m mostly worried about you.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan sat, clearly processing that for a second. Cody let him. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a while. “I didn’t know you were… worried. About all that. I -” He broke off, glancing back down at his work, then over at Cody, as if chewing over his words. Cody let him, feeling briefly like he was back on Kamino, letting a vod’ika figure out how best to phrase his problems.

“I can’t sleep,” Obi-Wan said, after a while, staring down at the table. If Cody didn’t know his General as well as he did, he wouldn’t be able to see the way Obi-Wan braced, as if admitting a weakness was going to get him killed. For all Cody knew, in the past, it might have.

“Okay,” he said, trying to project as many harmless, no-big-deal vibes as he could. “Have you gone to Bones yet? He might have something for insomnia, if you think that’s the problem.”

Obi-Wan clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white over the datapad. “It… isn’t insomia,” he grated out. “I suppose a more accurate statement would be that I don’t want to sleep.”

“Ah.” Cody studied his General. Nightmares a problem he was less familiar with, but one he felt made more sense than insomnia. Frustratingly, though, he didn’t have any sort of solution. “Is there any way I can help? And don’t just say no because you don't want to inconvenience me,” he added, as Obi-Wan immediately shook his head. “I want to help if you’ll let me. I'm already up; I'm already here. Is there anything I can do?”

Obi-Wan looked trapped, gripping the datapad so hard Cody wondered if he was going to break it.

“Only if you want,” Cody said after he’d been silent for too long. “If you just want to keep working, that’s fine too. I’ll sit here with you.”

With a hoarse chuckle, Obi-Wan finally put the datapad down, scrubbing at his face instead. “Truly, you are a good friend, Commander,” he said quietly. “It’s just a bad dream. I’ve had it my whole life. It’ll pass soon.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cody offered.

“I really would rather not,” Obi-Wan said firmly. “I just want to forget it.”

Cody didn’t point out that if Obi-Wan had been having the same dream his whole life he wasn’t likely to forget it. He just nodded. “Staring at datapads until your eyes bleed doesn’t seem to be helping,” he said instead. “Do you want to spar?”

“What?”

“Spar. It helps, sometimes, when I get anxious about, well, everything.”

Obi-Wan stared at him for a beat longer, then blew out a breath. “Okay,” he said, surprising Cody somewhat. He kinda thought Obi-Wan would protest on principle, at least. “Now?”

“Now,” Cody said, standing up. “Unless you think this absolutely needs to get done now?” He raised an eyebrow at the mess.

Huffing a laugh, Obi-Wan stood. “It’ll keep. Thank you, Cody.”

Chapter Text

“I just got back from a meeting with the Chancellor,” Anakin announced, barging into their quarters. Obi-Wan barely held back a flinch. That was the third time in as many days since they’d gotten back from their last mission. At this rate, Sidious was on Anakin’s schedule more than Obi-Wan was. “I like spending time with him; he’s nice. And he likes spending time with me too! He told me that making time for me is the least I can do since I saved his planet.” Anakin scowled, throwing himself onto the couch in their quarters, which sent up a puff of dust. “I was hoping Qui-Gon would do the same, you know, since I saved his butt back there on Tatooine, winning the pod race for him, but he seems to just be another sleemo. Sidious checked the mission boards for me, and he isn’t listed as being anywhere! Why’d you lie and say he had a mission if he doesn’t?”

The tea Obi-Wan had been drinking slipped out of suddenly numb hands, the mug shattering on the hard floor of the kitchen. Having to hide his grief around Anakin was hard enough, now Anakin was slandering his jaieh? He bit back the automatic defense that wanted to come out, knowing if he didn’t, the contract would. “Some missions are too secret to be listed,” he said instead, which wasn’t a lie, but also didn’t apply to Qui-Gon’s death.

Anakin only scoffed, all the huffiness of a ten-year-old boy who knows he’s right present in his voice. “Duh, obviously we checked those too,” he said. “It was really cool! The Chancellor has access to all sorts of information. I know now that the Quinlan you’ve told me about is undercover on Christophsis right now, and there were lots of other people listed. But Qui-Gon wasn’t there.”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long he sat there before his mouth opened of its own accord. “Qui-Gon -” is dead, he desperately wanted to say. Was a wonderful person who cared about you so much, would also have been acceptable. Is an uncaring monster who abandoned you, was more likely to come out. Obi-Wan clenched his jaw shut. Anakin believing the worst of Qui-Gon was one thing, but Obi-Wan would. Not. Besmirch his jaieh.

The Dark Side rose around him, cold and vicious, chains pulling tight around him. Give in, he could almost hear it hissing, prodding at his throat with burning knives of ice.

Never, Obi-Wan thought back at it, savagely. He brought his memories of Qui-Gon’s love to the forefront of his mind, shoving Light into the Force, trying to wedge it under the darkness that had its hooks in him. He vaguely registered stumbling, then falling, as the fiery cold spread to other parts of his body. It would all go away if he just opened his mouth, and let the Dark have its way. Obi-Wan ignored everything in favor of pressing his mouth shut. The claws at his throat dug in, harder, and then he couldn’t breathe. Still, he kept his mouth closed until darkness washed over him.

--

“But what’s wrong with him?” Anakin’s shrill, scared voice cut through the fog in Obi-Wan’s brain. “Does he have an infection? That’s what my mom said happened to Kitser one time. He was burning up, just like Obi-Wan is now.”

An infection. Of the Dark side. That was one way to describe it, Obi-Wan thought. Or tried to think. His thoughts seemed sluggish.

“He’ll be alright.” That was Bant’s voice. Was he in the medical Halls? Obi-Wan didn’t want to be there. “He… tried to do something forbidden. That’s why he’s like this.”

“What was he trying to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was just standing there! Is that forbidden? Why would that be forbidden?”

“It was likely he was trying to do something with the Force. It’s forbidden so that we don’t end up like Obi-Wan is,” Bant said. “We have rules to keep people safe.”

“So he’s an idiot, then? Did he know it was forbidden?”

“He probably had a reason. Sometimes, we feel it’s worth it to break the rules. I can feel you waking up, Obi-Wan. Want to tell me if it was worth it this time?”

“Mmph.” His eyelids must have weighed a hundred kilos, but Obi-Wan pried them open. Thankfully, he was met with the sight of his own quarters, instead of the sterile Halls of Healing.

Bant made an understanding noise. “I see. How are you feeling now?”

Everywhere ached. There was still fire in his very bones sapping his strength. His throat felt like there was a weight wrapped around it. There were still words fighting to come out. “No,” he slurred, barely able to speak around the Dark still hanging cloyingly thick in the air.

“You know, usually all I hear from you are 'I'm good,' or 'I'm fine'. It's rare I hear a negative from you,” Bant said, clearly able to see something was still affecting him. “Here, drink this. Anakin, would you be so kind as to run down to the healing halls and grab a med kit? Obi-Wan will be fine, but I’ll give him a scan just to be sure.” She waited as Anakin left the room, Obi-Wan barely able to focus. “Alright, the kid’s gone. Finish out whatever the compulsion is, he won’t know, and I won’t believe a thing you say. I never do.”

“Qui-Gon is ignoring you. I just saw him the other day, he doesn’t even remember you. He’s always been like this, fascinated by one thing, until the next thing attracts his attention. You should be grateful he didn’t take you on as an apprentice; he never cared about me either and being his padawan was awful. You should stop idolizing him.” The poison poured out of Obi-Wan as he stopped fighting, each word taking with it a little piece of fire from his body. When they stopped, the weight that had been sitting on his throat was gone and his heart felt like it would splinter into pieces.

“Oh, Obi,” Bant said softly, watching as he sat up and handing him the water glass again. “That’s awful.”

There wasn’t much Obi-Wan could say to that, so he shrugged and sipped the water, grateful for the coolness soothing the memory of fire.

“Do you want me to try explaining?” She asked. “Do you know how far this rule applies?”

Obi-Wan shrugged again. “Maul read off a list just after-” he choked on the words, the raw grief inside him rising up once again. He moved on. “I don’t remember what he said.”

Bant tilted her head, her large eyes narrowing in determination. “Anakin, Qui-Gon is d-” she choked, her words twisting in her mouth. “-oing some research in the archives, he doesn’t want to be disturbed by you. Stop looking for him.” She coughed as soon as she stopped talking. Obi-Wan wordlessly offered her the water glass. “Wide application, it seems,” she said after gulping some down. “Would it help - Do you want me to see if there is someone who can figure out a way around it?”

Obi-Wan could only shrug, yet again. Fighting a compulsion to unconsciousness left him feeling rather wrung out. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” he said dully. “Mission to Pantora.”

“What? But you just got back a few days ago! And Pantora? The only missions there involve spice and slave trafficking, right? What are they thinking, sending you there with a padawan that’s still initiate-aged?”

“Sidious’ orders.”

“Oh.” Bant fell silent, watching Obi-Wan. “Oh, Obi.” She leaned forward, tugging him into a hug, one that Obi-Wan fell into gladly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. It didn’t change anything. But Obi-Wan felt a little better all the same knowing she was there with him.

Chapter Text

“Ah, Master Je’daii, we’ve been expecting you.”

Obi-Wan blinked at the tall, slender being in front of him and got a large slow blink in return. “I rather thought you might be.” For what, he had no idea, but Sidious had sounded all too pleased when he’d assigned Obi-Wan and Anakin the mission to protect Senator Amidala. Obi-Wan had initially assumed they’d gotten the assignment because of the ridiculous crush his padawan was sporting, but the assassin hadn’t actually attacked her in a way that mattered, so Obi-Wan suspected there was more going on. He had a bad feeling about this.

“This way, please.” Obi-Wan followed the Kaminoan to the prime minister’s office and was granted permission to stay in the city in order to perform quality checks on the two thousand units already produced. His bad feeling growing, he followed Taun We deeper into the facility. Hopefully whatever these ‘units’ were would be easy to inspect, if he was to do the entire thing by himself before actually tracking down the assassin he had come here hoping to find.

“How many units did you say you were producing?” Obi-Wan asked as they wound through blank hallways, the Force in them resonating with misery and desparation. It set his teeth on edge. “And what issues do you see needing to fall under the quality check?”

“You will find all three million of our product is impeccable,” Taun We said stiffly. “This clone army is the finest product we’ve ever created. All of the requested improvements to the original were successfully designed and implemented. We are very proud of our work.”

“I… look forward to seeing it.” Obi-Wan was very much not looking forward to seeing whatever clone army the Kaminoan was talking about. The alarm bells that had been ringing in the back of his head since he’d been greeted by title at the door grew louder.

His bad feeling about the whole situation only increased when Taun We led him to an observatory deck. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people, each a Light shining brightly and uniquely in the Force for all that their faces looked identical, moved in rigid, ordered lines beneath him. Was it not enough for Sidious to have the entire Je’daii order enslaved under him? Did he really have to go and order slaves to be created for him?

He choked down his horror enough to turn to Taun We and ask, “Can I see the list of improvements you made? They look very impressive.”

The list of genetic and behavioral modifications was almost more horrifying, not the least for the dehumanizing language present everywhere on the document, but nothing screamed ‘Trap!’, except for the entire document. Obi-Wan carefully copied the list onto a datastick so he could more thoroughly peruse it later. Anything Sidious 'ordered' for the Je'daii was nothing but a dagger ready to stab them in the back, even if they were people. Then he turned back to Taun We, giving her his best bland smile.

“This all looks very satisfactory. Is the original here? I’d very much like to meet him so I have something to compare the upgraded versions to.”

Taun We bobbed her head and led him back through the white hallways (and oh, the negative feelings probably came from the clones. That was awful.) to a door that was opened by a human male, whom she introduced as Jango Fett.

Something about that name rang a bell in Obi-Wan’s mind, but he couldn’t place it immediately. Fett gave him a cool once over, then stood back to let him in, turning away and calling something in a different language. A small head popped up over a couch, and the young boy heaved an exasperated sigh before stomping away. Obi-Wan, amused that kids' antics were the same across the galaxy, watched him go with a small smile that froze on his face as the boy opened the door to a room and there, obviously in the corner, was a stack of armor that looked suspiciously familiar. As in, the armor he’d chased through Coruscant not even a week ago, familiar. The boy glared at Obi-Wan and pointedly shut the door.

When he turned back to Fett, expression still frozen, it was obvious Fett knew what he’d seen. Fett gave him a sharp, predatory smile. “I hope my contract with the Je’daii order has been fulfilled to your satisfaction.”

That – Obi-Wan had no idea what this man was talking about. Obi-Wan had no idea what game Sidious was playing. Obi-Wan was dreading learning more about either of those things. “It does seem to be,” he agreed, as neutrally as he could. “I would like to review the terms with you, if that's alright, to make sure that all parties are satisfied. I’m afraid I didn’t bring my datapad with me, though; I didn’t want it getting water-damaged in the storm, so if you have a spare copy of the contract I could borrow that would be appreciated.”

Fett looked like he wanted to sneer at the request, but Taun We interjected before he could. “I would be happy to provide such a thing, Master Je’daii,” she said, reaching into one of her billowy pockets. It is very important to keep Trainer Fett satisfied if you wish for your product to perform to its maximum capacity.”

So Obi-Wan sat down at the table with the assassin he was pretty sure he was supposed to be tracking and read through the legally valid contract listing Jango Fett as a subcontractor of the Je’daii order, given as many permissions as he needed to train an army of child soldiers with no rights or protections into a functioning army. The only reason it wasn’t the worst thing Obi-Wan had ever seen was because he had a list of modifications to said army sitting in his pocket.

After he finished the meeting, his bland smile brittle and strained as he bowed goodbye to Fett and Taun We, Obi-Wan retreated to his ship and commed the Temple. Mace picked up, sitting in his favorite meditation room with Yoda.

“The Je’daii’s order of a clone army for the Republic is almost complete, jaiehs,” he said when the comm connected. Both Mace and Yoda stared at him.

“The… pardon?” Mace asked blankly. “I thought I heard you say the Je’daii ordered a clone army.”

“We did. The contract is in order, the funding is pulled from the Senate account in our name, and a Je’daii Council member’s signature is on the paper. A Master Sifo-Dyas, I believe. The genetic donor and head trainer for this army was recruited by Darth Tyrannous and seemed especially eager to see the army perform to the best of its abilities. The contract we have with him gave him full permission to do whatever he saw fit to train them in warfare.”

“You were hunting an assassin, Kenobi,” Mace said after a lengthy pause, rubbing his forehead. “And you found an army?”

“Ah. I strongly suspect the donor, Jango Fett, is the assassin I was hunting. He is a bounty hunter, in his free time. Our contract with him does not forbid him from taking other jobs.”

Mace sighed. “Of course. This is all just a game Sidious is playing with us.” He stiffened. “Wait, did you say Jango Fett?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Is he someone we’ve run into, before?” he asked. “The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

Yoda’s ears drooped. “A Mandalorian, he is. Grievances against the Je’daii, he has.”

“He’s known as the Je’daii-killer!” Mace looked like he was quickly developing a migraine. “And he has a contract with us? How did Krell talk him into this? Is he trapped in a sii-contract too?”

Obi-Wan wondered if Mace’s headache was contagious. “I didn’t sense anything of the sort. He seemed to be participating in the farce willingly; I saw no signs of compulsion.”

“More to discover, I sense there is,” Yoda said, looking his age. “Not yet revealed, the trap is. Find out more, we must.”

Which meant following the clues Sidious had laid out for him to discover. Obi-Wan sighed. “Since Fett is the assassin attacking Senator Amidala, my mission was to capture him and discover who set the bounty. I suppose I’ll keep doing that then.”

“I don’t like this,” Mace muttered. “Be careful, Obi-Wan.”

“I always am,” Obi-Wan said, with a somewhat exhausted sigh. “May the Force be with you.”

Retracing his steps, he made his way back to Fett’s quarters and found the door ajar. Stepping inside, he found the room entirely empty. “So you’re going to keep leading me on this wild goose chase,” Obi-Wan said aloud, glaring at the room. “For once, I’d like someone who would just be willing to pretend to play Sidious' game over a cup of tea.” Stomping over to the computer terminal in the rooms, he sliced through the pitiful security Fett had set – yet another weak attempt at misdirection, as if Obi-Wan wasn’t supposed to do exactly that – and pulled up a map of Tipoca to find where Fett’s ship was parked.

“If I’m lucky, they’ll be gone when I get there,” he said to himself as he made his way through the maze of white, miserable hallways, not bothering to rush. Fett needed some way to ensure Obi-Wan followed him to the next riddle. So of course their ship was powered up, landing lines unhitched, and engines prepped, decidedly not going anywhere.

Obi-Wan stared out at the ship, feeling exhausted just thinking about the chase to come. What would Sidious do if he just… didn’t go after Fett?

“Took you long enough, jetti.” The doors to the landing pad opened, letting in a blast of cold rain. Fett didn’t enter, merely stood there, one of his blasters out, aimed at Obi-Wan. “One might almost think you didn’t care about your mission at the rate you’re going.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to stage a fight just to pretend to convince me to follow you,” Obi-Wan said wearily, stepping out into the rain. “I can just stick a tracker to your hull if I’m not supposed to complete my mission now.”

Fett gave him an odd look, a mixture of confusion and rage before settling his blank mask back over his face. “Thought you Jedi were all about fighting. It’s why you ordered an army, isn’t it?”

Obi-Wan pulled a tracker out of his belt and chucked it at the ship. Fett watched it go past him, confirming Obi-Wan’s suspicions that there was more to this goose chase after all.

“If we could never fight again, every one of us, we would celebrate,” he said aiming for calm and probably revealing a touch too much bitterness. “We much prefer to be all about peace.”

“That’s a pathetic claim coming from someone who slaughtered every last one of my people. You jetti started this fight, but it’s one I’m going to finish,” Fett spat, and Obi-Wan closed his eyes. One of those.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, sincerely, then ducked to avoid the armored fist Fett aimed at his head and opened his eyes. “I don’t suppose you would be amenable to coming to the temple to register your complaint? We would hear your grievance.” And hopefully ask more questions about why, exactly, he had been hired to donate his genes to an army for the people he clearly despised.

Fett’s response was a whistling bird, which Obi-Wan chose to dodge rather than risk exploding into shrapnel on his lightsaber. He rolled as the explosion threw him further backwards, coming up in a guard position.

“If I could, I would send you back to your temple in pieces, that’s how I’d register my complaint,” Fett snarled, stalking towards him, blaster leveled right at him. “You’re nothing more than the attack dogs of a failed Senate, needing to be put down.”

“Then why are you working for Darth Tyrannous?” Obi-Wan asked, backing up and sending a wary glance at the landing pad edge he was rapidly nearing. “He’s a Je’daii too, you know, and likely had more to do with the fate of your people than most of the Temple.”

“The darjetti promised me everything I need to take my revenge,” Jango said, stepping forward. “And he’s already delivered my worst enemy into my hands. You know this is a trap, jetti, but you’ll have no choice but to follow me anyways, because what is coming for you is far, far worse, and I can’t wait to see it. So I won’t hurt you too much, here, but once you’ve delivered your message, be on your guard, because I’ll be coming for you.”

With that, he fired, not a blaster bolt, as Obi-Wan had been expecting, but a red flare that exploded in a flash of light when he caught it on his lightsaber. The force of it pushed him back, sending him over the edge of the landing dock, straight down fifty feet into the lashing, freezing ocean.

Wrapping the Force around him could buffer his fall, but it could do nothing for the cold that sank into Obi-Wan’s bones. He reached the surface sputtering, and almost immediately took another wave to the face, inhaling even more water as he tried to get his bearings among the choppy waves buffeting him from every direction and rain blinding him. Above him, Fett’s ship was lifting into the air, ready to lead Obi-Wan to the next hint in this sick scavenger hunt Sidious had set up for him. Obi-Wan didn’t bother to watch it go, swimming for the base of the city ahead of him. Whatever game Sidious was playing, if Obi-Wan was that important a piece, he would have to wait to make his next move until Obi-Wan was a little bit less of a drowned tooka.

Chapter Text

The Je’daii were… extremely odd, Cody mused as he watched General Kenobi vanish into the depths of the Star Destroyer. His first impressions of his general seemed to be holding true: every engagement they had with the enemy, General Kenobi was determined to take the route of least fatalities. He was absolutely unstoppable on the field, defending the men from the frontlines and taking out scores of droids. He’d balked completely at calling Cody by his designation number, saying Cody was more than a product with a serial number, so he had emotions.

It was Cody’s second and continued impressions that were baffling him. General Kenobi refused to visit the medbay, even when Cody was almost certain he’d been hit by a stray blaster bolt somewhere. He merely gave Cody a bland smile and said something about Force osik anytime Cody asked if he needed medical attention. The head medic, Bones, was getting increasingly cranky with worry because they didn’t even have a baseline for what the General’s stats were when he was healthy, so if he did need to be treated for something, they would be flying by the seat of their pants. It would reflect very poorly on them if their General died of completely preventable causes. If Cody didn’t know better, he’d say the General was refusing to report to the medics out of fear of being decommissioned, but they weren't on Kamino.

General Kenobi was also rarely in his quarters. Whatever Force osik that let the General perform extraordinary feats of defense and offense on the battlefield presumably also let him know any time he was needed, because without fail when Cody knocked on his door, the General would appear from behind him within a few seconds, ready to assist. The one time the General had grabbed something from his quarters while Cody was standing there, they had looked spartan and dusty, as if General Kenobi spent as little time in there as possible. It was strange, though, because the vode never reported seeing him anywhere else on the ship, so wherever the General spent his time must have been very hidden. And it wasn’t Cody’s place to judge, but. It seemed odd.

Cody had also noticed that, though General Kenobi never called him CC-2224, he seemed equally wary of calling him Cody. His vicious defense of the men on the battlefield and the way he reassured them of their personhood (Cody knew several vod had received the same impassioned insistence that they were not products to be replaced that General Kebnobi had given him) seemed completely at odds with the way he kept himself apart from them. He wore the aloof, emotionless Je’daii mask every conversation they had that wasn’t about keeping men safe on the battlefield, and there was an odd look in his eyes every time Cody approached him, a look that gave Cody horrible déjà vu to the way some of his vode looked any time the longnecks singled one of them out.

It was a look the General was likely going to be wearing very soon, Cody thought, pausing in the corridor. Up ahead, around the corner, he could hear General Kenobi’s voice, low and indistinct. Or, not indistinct, Cody realized listening for a few seconds longer. It was a different language, one that didn’t sound like any he was familiar with. But when Cody rounded the corner, General Kenobi was standing with his hands folded into his sleeves, not another person or comm in sight.

“Ah, Commander, did you need something?” General Kenobi gave him one of those bland smiles that made Cody want to tense up and ask where the longneck was.

“Was just on my way to the mess, sir,” Cody said, dropping into parade rest to try to get rid of the unease slipping down his spine. The vode spoke mando’a, despite the longnecks attempts to scare it out of them. They hadn’t stopped, but they had learned how to cut off conversations and pretend like they hadn’t been talking. General Kenobi should not be reminding him of that. “Have you eaten, yet, sir?”

The General’s smile went, if possible, even more brittle. “I’m fine, thank you, Commander.”

All of Cody’s instincts were screaming at him that this was a vod desperately trying to avoid demotion and decommissioning, but that was ridiculous. This was his Je’daii General. He moved things with his mind. He had a laser weapon that outclassed any Cody had seen. He’d saved them time and time again on the battlefield. He had yet to seem fazed by anything the Seppies had thrown at them.

Cody nodded and continued down the hall, leaving General Kenobi behind. He refused to linger to see if he would start speaking again. The Je’daii Order had commissioned them. They wouldn’t be scared of them.

Right?

--

Obi-Wan waited until his Commander was at least two hallways away before giving in to the pain and hunching over, trying to relieve the pressure on his ribs. Bant had been – alarmed was putting it mildly, when Obi-Wan had shown her the gash on his leg and the bruising all across his chest from the last battle. He could see her biting back every Healer instinct that was demanding to get him to a medbay. Honestly, even though he hated medbays, Obi-Wan rather thought he wouldn’t mind going there, just this once. The bacta patches he had been able to sneak out from under the medic’s noses were too small to really make a difference on his ribs, and Bant had warned him against using any more on the gash; she said it looked infected and bacta couldn’t fight off a bacterial infection. If she was right, Obi-Wan didn’t know what he would do.

The medbays had been deemed an absolute last resort by the Jedi who the Temple viewed as leaders, even if they weren't an official Council. The clones had grown up in a medical facility that clearly had no qualms about human experimentation and genetic/behavioral modification. For all they knew, the Sith had trained the clones to do the same. No one wanted to be the first person to walk in to the medbay and come out a different person. Being under the sii-contract was bad enough, but if the clone medics could modify their brain chemistry to feel happy about it? Obi-Wan fought back a shudder. He still wasn’t convinced the clones themselves weren’t somehow genetically modified to feel happy in a Je’daii’s presence. The way almost all of them lit up in the Force, radiating joy and awe when they saw him was horrifying. He was their slave master; they should despise him. Obi-Wan had taken to avoiding them as much as possible.

Which, for now, meant getting out of this hallway where anyone could find him. Obi-Wan checked his surroundings to make sure he was actually alone, then pulled open the air vent in the ceiling and jumped up, wrapping himself with the Force more than usual to avoid jarring his ribs as best he could when he landed. It was a futile effort, though. The vent was small, forcing him to practically curl into a ball, which agonized his ribs just as much as standing straight did. Still, it was here that he could keep his stash of bacta patches and personal rations and know they hadn’t been tampered with. He gingerly placed another tiny patch on his ribs, where the bruising seemed to be the worst, and pulled out the tunic that had been ripped somehow in some battle or another and then sacrificed to make bandages to wrap his leg.

That done, he stretched out as best he could, eyeing the rations and knowing he should eat something but unable to work up the energy to do so. It was exhausting, having to constantly be on guard against such a large number of unknowns. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold up under the stress. If this went on much longer, he might not have another choice but to risk the medbay, which was likely the Sith's entire goal. Obi-Wan closed his eyes and let himself slip into a doze.

--

Well, the medics had finally managed to get General Kenobi into medbay. The thought was oddly detached from the fury Cody was feeling as he watched the man float in a bacta tank, eyes moving restlessly under his eyelids as if searching for a threat that wasn’t there. Of course, it was only because he was literally moments away from death when they’d finally reached him, and collapsing into their tender care was literally the only thing he had been able to do at the time, but they’d got him. He was out of the danger zone. For now.

Cody scowled at the tank. When Bones had briefed him on Kenobi’s injuries, he’d been professional on the outside, but Cody could tell he’d been spitting mad. Cody was too, after hearing the report. Kenobi’d had injuries from the last several encounters on him, most barely treated, including a dangerously cracked rib that was almost puncturing a lung and an infection setting in on a rather long gash in his leg. It had really been a miracle he’d been upright at the beginning of the battle, let alone after fighting for almost three hours straight, stopping a LAAT from crashing to the ground, and having a building collapse on him that he evidently couldn’t do anything about without also dropping the LAAT.

“Are you trying to die?” Cody asked the tank. He could acknowledge to himself that part of his anger came from the fact that his General had almost died and Cody hadn’t noticed, but that didn’t explain why Kenobi had let it get this bad in the first place. “You know our medics have been trying to check on you. Ten minutes in the medbay a week ago, and none of this would have happened. We know you’re some mystical space wizard who can do all sorts of impossible things, but obviously that doesn’t give you invulnerability! Why did you act like it did?”

Floating in the tank, his General gave him no answer. Cody would have to wait until he came out. With a sigh, he dropped into the chair Bones had been glaring pointedly at for the last several minutes and pulled out his datapad. There was a clusterkark amount of paper after the fiasco that had been this latest battle, and it wouldn’t do to have General Kenobi anger the medics immediately after waking up by trying to stress about it.

He’d been working quietly for almost half an hour when the tank beeped, signaling the treatment was done. Bones was there immediately, pulling General Kenobi out of the bacta and getting him dry and comfortable on a nearby cot, so Cody put the paperwork aside, to see how the General was doing.

General Kenobi woke up slowly, at first, and then all at once. And then he completely panicked.

“No, don’t!” General Kenobi lashed out, and Cody jumped to his feet as Bones was shoved away from the Je’daii, skidding across the floor with a look of complete bewilderment on his face. “Don’t!” General Kenobi repeated, ripping out the IVs that had been keeping him oxygenated and hydrated while he was in bacta. Then he was off the bed and through the door, faster than anyone could react, leaving behind a room frozen in surprise.

“Haar’chak!” Cody swore. He shouldn’t have dismissed the niggling feeling of déjà vu the General kept giving him. He’d recognized the look General Kenobi had worn when he’d woken up, his aloof mask gone for the first time.

General Kenobi was absolutely terrified of the vode. And Cody had no idea why.

Chapter Text

“Dai widen,” Qui-Gon breathed the words, both a prayer and an exclamation, as he pulled the door open, and Obi-Wan lurched off the couch as a cloud of darkness spilled into their quarters.

Standing in the doorway was Tholme, one arm wrapped around Quinlan, who was just barely upright enough to stagger forward. Obi-Wan sucked in a quick breath of air and rushed to help, catching Quinlan’s other arm and hauling them both forward as Qui-Gon quickly shut the door behind them all.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” Obi-Wan asked frantically, pouring Quinlan onto the couch and grabbing his chin to look at his eyes. “What did that imkai’an make you do now?”

“Language, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon chided from somewhere in the kitchen, where he was probably pulling out the makings for tea.

Quinlan huffed out a laugh at that, swatting Obi-Wan’s hands away weakly. “They aren’t yellow,” he muttered, his voice low and hoarse, as if he’d been screaming. “Jaieh already checked.”

Obi-Wan sat back, shooting a glare at his jaieh and grumbling under his breath about Sidious deserving to be called all the bad names, more because he knew it would make Quinlan laugh than because he actually cared about defending his use of the word. Everyone in the Temple knew Sidious was an imkai’an. Sure enough, Quinlan’s lips twitched. “What happened?” Obi-Wan asked, prodding at Quinlan in the Force, both to annoy him and to try to sweep away some of the Dark hanging in the air around his friend.

“The usual,” Quinlan sighed, finally opening his – thankfully, brown – eyes and rolling his neck so he could look at Obi-Wan without lifting his head from the back of the couch. “Brutal murders happening across the galaxy, violent criminals who aren’t on Sidious’ payroll to find. Best investigating duo in the Temple on the case.”

Obi-Wan inhaled and refused to let his unhappiness add to the Darkness in the room. “Was there just nothing other than the bodies you could use to track the culprit, or was there some Sith demanding you figure it out as fast as possible.”

Quinlan shrugged, leaning into the Light Obi-Wan was determinedly pouring into the Force. “Little of column A, little of column B,” he muttered. “Zan Arbor decided psychometry was the ability of the week. I got the pleasure of being her test subject, but she wanted me to use it on a variety of things.”

Obi-Wan sat and breathed through his anger, doing his best to fill the Force around them with hope and peace, washing away the residual pain and suffering that was clinging to his friend. “How’s your training with Mace coming?” he asked when Quinlan didn’t say anything else on the subject. If he needed to get more off his chest, he would.

Quinlan shrugged a shoulder, looking slightly more alive than he had when he’d first gotten in here. “It’s not the same,” he said. “Mace channels his own darkness, is constantly aware of it, and somehow turns it into something positive. My own darkness… Well, you can feel it. It isn’t just mine; it’s mixed up with all the pieces that I pick up from my psychometry. Mace doesn’t think Vaapad will work for me as well as it does with him. He’s able to walk through all his negative emotions; I keep getting dragged off course by the ones that aren’t mine.”

“You’re doing very well, Quinlan,” Tholme said quietly, walking out of the kitchen with a tray of tea, Qui-Gon following with a tray of snacks. “I know Mace has been encouraging you to experiment and find your own technique of using the Dark that hangs around you, and I know you’ve been thinking hard about this.”

“What?” Obi-Wan sat up. “You’d use the Dark side?”

“Not like a Sith,” Quinlan said, sighing. “It’s… they’re right, you know, when they say the Dark side is more powerful. Anger, fear, desperation, pain – the marks those leave on the Force are stronger, at least in short bursts, than the more enduring hope, joy, and peace of the Light side. And I so often find myself in the well of those emotions, drowning in fear leading to anger leading to hatred. Not all of us can be a walking talking battery for the Light side, you know?” He nudged Obi-Wan with his elbow. Obi-Wan stared at him until he sighed and kept going.

“I’m not going to Fall,” he said firmly. “I'm not going to be a Sith, using negative emotions to create more negative emotions. I won’t become the type of person who gladly orchestrates awful things like the ones I keep experiencing, just so I can get a short-lived power boost. But I also can’t afford to ignore the fact that the Sith are going to keep pushing me into worse and worse situations, trying to get me to lose my head and do just that. So I need a way to safely manage the Dark side, to feel all those emotions and still keep my head. For Mace, that’s channeling his darkness into physically outperforming literally everyone else. For me, it might be some other technically Dark technique. But I’d only ever use it to relieve suffering, never to cause it purely for suffering's sake.”

Obi-Wan studied his friend, seeing the bags under his eyes and the way he held himself, tense, as if waiting for Obi-Wan to judge him for being unable to wash away the darkness like Obi-Wan could.

“That sounds like a wise plan,” Qui-Gon said, placing a cup of tea in Quinlan’s hands and curling his fingers around it. “Figuring out your limits in a safe space, before getting thrown into something over your head, is always a good idea. And it isn’t like there aren’t a plethora of Dark techniques you can study here in the Temple. Mace might claim that he developed Vaapad after studying the vaapad on Sarapin, but I knew him growing up. He saw the prowess of the Sith in the salles, and he hungered after it, if only so he could always have some way of defending against them. Darth Bulq, I believe, was his opponent almost as often as Maul is yours, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan glanced at his jaieh, then back at Quinlan. “I just don’t want you going where I can’t help you,” he said, softly. “How will you know if you’ve gone too far?”

“That’s what I’m here for, for now,” Tholme said, leaning over and tugging on Quinlan’s dreadlock that was decorated with his padawan beads. “It’ll be tough, but we’ll get him through it.”

Quinlan grumbled, tilting his head as if that would dislodge Tholme’s hand, and took a sip of his tea. “I’ll be careful, Obi,” he said. “I know the stakes are high. I won’t fail.”

Obi-Wan gave a firm nod. “I believe you,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.”

“You know I will,” Quinlan agreed easily. “It’s why I’m here now, after all. This" - he gestured around at Qui-Gon’s and Obi-Wan’s shared quarters, full of plants and datapad and tea - “helps, the Light you so easily draw around yourself and others. If the first few practices don’t go as planned, I’ll just come here until I can try again.”

“You mean, have Tholme drag you here,” Obi-Wan said, finally reaching forward to grab his own cup of tea. “Have you ever walked through that door under your own power when caught up in the Dark side?”

“Hey!” Quinlan protested, but he was laughing, and finally, the last sickly chains of suffering vanished from the Force around them. Obi-Wan grinned over his cup and settled in for an afternoon of forgetting that the world outside was awful.

Chapter Text

Well, that mission to rescue the togrutans from Zygerria had been nothing but absolute osik, from beginning to end, Rex thought, stepping off the shuttle and nearly falling over from exhaustion as – oh, everything, from the last week, hit him all at once.

“Whoa, vod’ika, I got you.” Cody was suddenly there, wrapping an arm around him, taking some of Rex’s weight and helping him stay upright. Rex tilted his head, knocking his head against Cody’s in an awkward Keldabe kiss to show his gratitude. “Come on, let's get you seated before you fall on your shebs and see if we can’t get that collar off you.”

Rex gave a small hum in acknowledgment, letting Cody do most of the heavy lifting as he hauled them over to where the medics were doing triage on the rescued togrutans. He and Obi-Wan had managed to damage the collars enough that they couldn’t shock them, but there hadn’t been time to get them fully off their necks. As Cody began rummaging around through a supply kit – it looked like he’d grabbed a mechanics' toolbag to find some bolt cutters – Rex looked back the way they’d come, where Obi-Wan was still standing with General Skywalker, looking just as exhausted as Rex felt.

“And then she said, get this Obi-Wan, the Queen of Zygerria totally said that the Je’daii were slaves to the Republic! See, I told you, if a slaver can see that we’re nothing more than glorified blood slaves, that just makes my point all the more obvious. The Je’daii shouldn’t have to answer to the Senate, you have to agree! We should stop letting them hold us back, and just end this war, no matter what it takes!”

Anakin’s belief that he was the only person who understood and could eliminate slavery baffled Rex, but he’d long ago decided it wasn’t worth it to argue. “You gonna take care of your general after this?” he asked Cody, watching as Obi-Wan listed to the side, then straightened up. General Skywalker didn’t seem to notice.

“Of course I agree, Anakin, whatever you say,” came out of Obi-Wan’s mouth, and if Rex had the energy, he would have stiffened in shock. “But perhaps we can pick up this conversation another time, really, the reports won’t write themselves.” Glancing down out of the corner of his eye to where Cody was working the bolt cutters gently between his neck and the collar, Rex saw his lips were pressed together so hard they were almost white, but he didn’t look surprised.

“Yeah, yeah, you can deflect all you want, but I’m right and you know it. One day I’ll get you to swallow your pride and admit I know best when it comes to slavery.” General Skywalker clapped a hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulders, not noticing how Obi-Wan flinched away from his touch.

“That’s a new development,” Rex whispered in horror, watching as Skywalker went up to accept the togrutan leader’s thanks and assurances of joining the Republic. “When did that start happening?”

Cody shook his head. “Just before this mission,” he said. “Why do you think the plan was so karked? I’m sorry I couldn’t get you alone to tell you. You’re really the only one who can even try to reign Skywalker in now.”

“Well, we’re karked,” Rex said, watching his general puff up with pride at the torgutan’s fawning. Then he glanced down at Cody and added hastily, “No, I mean, I’ll figure something out. I’m sure there’s some way to slip suggestions into his head so he thinks he’s the one that came up with them.” He paused his reassurances, trying to get his thoughts to cooperate with him and figure out what he really wanted to say. Spending a week enslaved in a hard labor camp made his already mostly nonexistent speaking skills vanish entirely. “I’m sorry. For Obi-Wan.”

If he hadn’t known Cody as well as he did, he would never have caught the slight narrowing of the eyes that meant Cody was really, truly angry. “Me too,” was all he said. Then, “There, that’s done.” Cody set the bolt cutters down and reached up to the collar, which he had cut in half. The pieces fell away easily from Rex’s neck, leaving Rex feeling like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“I’m going to go fetch Obi-Wan, stay here,” Cody said, a hint of warning in his tone. As if Rex had the energy to move anywhere. He leaned back, resting his head against the wall to watch as Cody marched up to where Obi-Wan was clearly failing at listening to a report one of Wolffe’s men was trying to give him. He couldn’t hear what Cody said, but the trooper saluted and moved away, and Cody gestured at Rex. Obi-Wan nodded and began to walk towards him, Cody hovering over his shoulder, waiting to swoop in should Obi-Wan begin to fall.

It seemed like it took forever, but then Obi-Wan was sitting next to him and Cody was crouching in front of him, bolt cutters at the ready. Obi-Wan tilted his head to the left, then the right at Cody’s quiet orders, but otherwise held completely still. If he’d had his robes, Rex was sure he would have been burying his hands in his sleeves. As it was, Rex could see them shaking where he was just barely not clenching them into fists around his knees.

Gently, remembering Obi-Wan flinching away from his former padawan, Rex reached out and brushed a finger along the back of Obi-Wan’s hand. He heard Obi-Wan’s startled inhale, and, not looking over at him, rested his own hand on the back of his knee, open, an offer if Obi-Wan wanted something to hold. For a few seconds, he thought Obi-Wan would ignore it, gently refusing the comfort, but then Obi-Wan released his knee and put his hand into Rex’s. Rex lightly curled his fingers around Obi-Wan’s hand, loose enough that he could pull away if the touch got too much, but tight enough that Obi-Wan could feel the pulse in his thumb.

Cody finished with the bolt cutters and set them aside before reaching up to pull the halves of the collar off of Obi-Wan, eyes once again going tight with anger as the new burns left by this collar threw the old scars around his throat into sharp relief.

“You both are going to sit here until a medic can come and clear you,” Cody said, in his older brother voice that every vod knew meant Cody meant business. “You will eat whatever food they give you, drink whatever they give you to rehydrate your body, even if it tastes like bantha poodoo, and then you will find a bunk and if you get less than twelve hours of sleep, I’m assigning you to latrine duty.” He pushed himself to his feet and loomed over them. “I will handle the debrief and figure out departure logistics with General Koon. You are not. Needed.” he looked pointedly at Obi-Wan as he said this, “and will leave us alone to work, because you. Will. Be sleeping.”

Obi-Wan’s lips turned up in a smile. “Yes, Commander,” he said. “Message received. You know where to find me if I need you.”

“I won’t,” Cody said, turning and marching away, not letting Obi-Wan get another word in.

Rex sat in silence after he left, his eyes closed, counting the beats of Obi-Wan’s heart that he could feel in his hand. He was almost asleep when Obi-Wan spoke up, his voice soft enough that if Rex could dream, he would have taken a minute to wonder whether he was actually asleep or not.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan murmured. “For what you did down there. For helping those people when I could not. For not leaving me alone.”

Rex opened his eyes so he could see Obi-Wan. Cody was lucky he actually got assigned to a Jedi, not the bumbling, confused, hotheaded Sith/Je’daii shabuir Rex had. “Of course,” he replied. “It’s what I’m here for.” He was quiet for a second. “Also, Cody would have kicked my shebs so hard if I’d done anything else, so really, it was self-preservation.”

He was rewarded when Obi-Wan huffed out a laugh, a tiny one since neither of them had the energy for large ones, but it was something. Rex felt the knot in his chest begin to unravel just a little bit more. They’d be okay. They still had a little over a year until they could escape, but until then, they’d be okay. Together, they’d make sure of it.

Chapter Text

“The Republic has laws against the torture of individuals,” Obi-Wan said, resisting the urge to rub his forehead. “As Je’daii, we’re bound to uphold all tenants of the Law.” Literally, not that Anakin ever believed him.

“Obi-Wan, this slaver sleemo doesn’t deserve to be protected by those laws! Don’t you want to rescue the togrutans?” Anakin turned away from the cell with D’Nar in it and immediately rolled his eyes with a groan at whatever expression was on Obi-Wan’s face. “Come on, Sheev said the laws against torture are just to protect people’s reputation, anyways. Anything that happens behind closed doors is fine.” He turned back to the cell, crossing his arms. “Which is still stupid. On Tatooine, everyone just beat each other up in the street. It’s pathetic how squeamish people in the core are about a little blood. If it just happened they’d get used to it pretty quick.”

Which was probably Sidious’ plan. He’d glorified Anakin’s childhood to the point that Anakin would hear nothing bad against it, even about the objectively awful parts. “People want to be able to trust that the people in power are the same behind closed doors as what they see in public,” he said wearily, knowing it wouldn’t make a dent in Anakin’s worldview. “The laws are there to ensure that no one gets power through unsavory measures.”

“Well it isn’t like we’re doing this to get power,” Anakin said, impatience clear in his voice. “Ugh, this is the best option, Obi-Wan. Saving those togrutans is the most important thing now, and to do that, we need this information fast. I’ll do it if you don’t have the guts to. Sheev mentioned there might be ways to pull information from someone’s mind using the Force, so I won’t even leave a mark on him, if I can figure out how to do that. Just don’t tell anyone, since you're so worried about reputations.”

With that, he stepped into the cell and ripped the blindfold off the Zygerrian. “Alright, sleemo, here’s how this next part of your interview is going to go…”

Obi-Wan let himself out of the room. Leaving was the coward's way out, but he couldn’t stop Anakin and he couldn’t condone torture, especially torture using the dark side. What else could he do? In the hallway, a pair of troopers, Chipper and Stout, were guarding the door. They straightened as they saw him.

“Everything all right, sir?” Stout asked. “Is General Skywalker coming out as well?”

“No, I believe Anakin is going to–“ interrogate D’Nar for a little while longer, is what Obi-Wan intended to say. Fire raced up his throat before he could, and what came out was “join me shortly.” It was only because of long hours of practice that Obi-Wan didn’t double over coughing as the Dark Side vanished. Instead, he gave both men a smile and moved past them, shoving his trembling hands into his sleeves. When he made it to his quarters, he barely got the door closed behind him before he sank back against the wall and allowed himself to acknowledge his horror.

He knew what it felt like when the Sith Contract was engaged, the Dark side of the Force preventing behavior that some Sith at some point had forbidden, or (even worse) forcibly moving someone to act upon a Sith’s directions. It had been a near-constant experience, raising Anakin and stumbling into all the various things Sidious didn’t want him to show or tell the boy. This was the first time he’d ever felt it in response to a command Anakin had given him.

Obi-Wan blinked and then he was on the floor, his legs aching where he was sitting on them for some reason. “Just don’t tell anyone.” The command Anakin had unknowingly given him was running through his head. He must have finally crossed whatever threshold of understanding the Dark Side – or maybe willingness to use it? – the Sith used to decide who got to give orders and who was forced to obey. How long would it take Anakin to notice? He’d never been very observant, thank the Force. If he started giving Obi-Wan orders, though, Obi-Wan would have to obey. Even if they were the stupidest, most reckless thing in the galaxy.

Oh Force, what was his commander going to think of him if he suddenly started agreeing to all of Anakin’s harebrained schemes?

A knock came at the door. “Sir,” Chipper was standing there, his back ramrod straight and posture completely perfect. A sure sign he was nervous; most of Obi-Wan’s men knew he didn’t mind if they relaxed a bit. “General Skywalker is reporting that the prisoner has died from unknown causes, but he says he knows where we’re going next.”

Obi-Wan was only able to muffle his horrible, hysterical laughter by reminding himself that Chipper would be very alarmed and possibly tattle to Bones if he thought Obi-Wan was having a breakdown. He was probably already concerned that Obi-Wan was sitting on the floor. Unknown causes indeed. There was no denying Anakin was a Sith now. Obi-Wan had officially raised a monster.

Chapter Text

“I don’t get it,” Anakin complained, pushing his book away with a huff. “All this stupid ‘homework’ you keep making me do says Je’daii can’t have any attachments, but the Chancellor says that since I was a slave, I deserve to have things I’m attached to. And then there’s all this nonsense about letting go and not feeling any emotions, but the Chancellor says that all my emotions are valid, especially feeling anger and hatred towards slavery. Which is it?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes at the sink where he was washing the dishes they’d used for dinner and tried to not shove his bitterness and pain into the Force where Anakin could feel it. Every time the words of the Sith master came out of his padawan’s mouth, they were harder and harder to brush off, especially since if he tried to disagree with anything the Chancellor said, what would come out instead would be something praising the Chancellor’s wisdom. He was quickly turning into a fickle, fainting-prone, capricious teacher as Sidious kept changing the rules of what he was allowed to do.

“You can have things you’re attached to, Anakin,” he said, striving to keep his voice as calm and steady as Qui-Gon’s had always been. He shoved away the pang of pain that thought brought him. “Caring about things so you don’t break them is important. But the assigned reading for your Force Theory class is talking about obsessiveness, where you care about something too much, to the point where you are unable to function if you don’t have that thing.” He glanced around their small quarters, looking for inspiration. “It’s like if you decided you could only ever sit on that couch, and so tried to carry that couch to all your classes and on all our missions. That would be obsessiveness, and it wouldn’t be very practical, would it?”

Anakin looked at him like he’d suddenly started growing a second head. “That would be stupid!”

“Exactly.” Maybe there was still hope for this conversation after all. “And all of your emotions are valid, Anakin,” which wasn’t even a lie, even if it did agree with Sidious, “and your book doesn’t say you can’t feel them. Why do you think it does?”

“No, it says so right here, ‘there is no emotion’,” Anakin said, flipping through his book to find the right page. “I’m not as stupid as you clearly think I am; I know how to read.” He pointed at the page, which listed various mantras initiates used to connect themselves to the Force. It was a translated text, since Anakin didn’t understand Dai Bendu most Je’daii used to say the mantras, and Obi-Wan had been forbidden from teaching him.

“That’s – Anakin, that’s not talking about you not being able to have emotions, it’s referring to a way to connect to the Force,” he said, dreading where the conversation was going already.

“The Chancellor said it was the Je’daii code,” Anakin argued, crossing his arms and glowering at him. “A code is something you live by, something you have to do. He said you were teaching me to suppress my true self.”

Obi-Wan turned back to the dishes so Anakin couldn’t see him grit his teeth in frustration. “It is a code,” he said, “that some Je’daii choose to live by. We let go of our emotions to better see what the Force is trying to tell us. When we have no emotions, the peace of the Force is easier to see.”

“I like having emotions, though! I like being able to show the world what I’m feeling!”

“That’s good.” Obi-Wan managed a somewhat strained smile. “Your feelings are valid. Just be careful you don't hurt anyone with your emotions, right? If you’re feeling angry, it can be easy to want to hurt someone, but that’s not the right thing to do.”

“Of course not!” Anakin said. “I’d make sure only the person who made me angry gets what they deserve. The Chancellor said that was important. The first mission we get that takes us to Hutt space, I’ll have the perfect targets for my anger at being a slave.”

Obi-Wan choked down his horror, glad he was still facing away from Anakin, and bit back several instinctive responses to shut that thought down. They didn’t need him fainting yet again from refusing to condone something Sidious said Anakin could do.

Searching for something to change the subject before the wrong thing came out of his mouth, he blurted out, “Do you want things to get attached to?” and immediately cringed. Hopefully Anakin would say no – they didn’t have any credits to spare for frivolous things – but if he wanted something, Obi-Wan would have to do his best to procure it. Otherwise, Sidious might find out and make him get it for Anakin anyway.

It did successfully distract Anakin, though, as he paused to think. “Not really. I don’t really see the need for so much stuff. I just like working on droids. Can I keep the toolkit I borrowed from the maintenance room to keep tinkering with that mouse droid that broke down?”

Obi-Wan wanted to sag in relief and carefully set that emotion aside to release later, when Anakin wasn’t right next to him and might possibly read it in his presence. “You’ll have to be willing to lend it out if other droids need repairs. Or be willing to help with more droid repairs. I don’t know how many maintenance kits we have, and it wouldn’t do for the temple to be unable to fix things because we can’t find the right tools.”

“I can do that!” Anakin said eagerly. “I’d love to help fix droids!”

Obi-Wan blew out a sigh of relief and finally turned to face his padawan again, giving him a genuine, if small, smile. Anakin didn’t deserve to be groomed into the next Sith apprentice. “I’ll let the maintenance room know, then.”

Chapter Text

After the incident in the medbay, Cody expected Bones would be sent back to Kamino. General Kenobi had clearly been scared, and, in his experience, whenever the clones scared someone they got ordered to report to the labs for reprogramming. Cody had never really understood why certain things scared their trainers and others didn’t, but he was working really hard to squash the disappointment he was feeling. He’d thought General Kenobi was different. Still, he had the dreaded Request for Reprogramming forms filled out before he went to track down the General wherever he had fled. Bones, scowling, had told Cody that the infection on the General’s leg still needed to be treated, so he was also carrying a hypospray that Bones had filled with an antibiotic. Cody wasn’t going to risk his own reprogramming by forcing the General to take it, but he had to at least try to prevent his commanding officer from collapsing from his injuries a second time.

Cody knocked on the General’s quarters, figuring that the General wouldn’t be in them, but hoping he would show up behind him like he usually did. After a few minutes, he sighed and turned around. That would’ve been too easy. He checked the other places he could think of that General Kenobi often hung around, then realized that he was being stupid. General Kenobi had fled the medbay in fear, he wouldn’t be making himself easy to find. Putting out a request to alert him the next time any of the vode saw the General, Cody went to the bridge to work on requisition forms. If the General asked, it was because he was too busy to walk down every single corridor in the massive star destroyer. The delay in sending Bones for reprogramming was coincidental.

No one reported any sighting of the General the entire rest of the day, or the majority of the next day either. Cody was starting to wonder if he’d somehow managed to get on a shuttle and leave the spaceship entirely when he showed up on the bridge, with absolutely no warning from anyone despite the alert still very much being active. Everyone startled.

“I apologize,” General Kenobi said, in the awkward silence after several men had hastily bitten off their swears. “Commander, you’ve been wanting to speak with me?”

“Yes, sir,” Cody said, willing his heart rate back to normal. “It might be best if we had a bit of privacy, sir.”

“Of course.” General Kenobi gestured, and Cody followed him off the bridge and to his quarters. Stepping inside them for the first time, Cody noticed that even the bed was dusty. It was also folded perfectly according to military regulations, which could just be how the General preferred to make it each morning, but which also made it look as if it had never been slept in.

“If this is about yesterday, I do apologize for my reaction,” General Kenobi said, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “I hope your medic wasn’t hurt when I pushed him back; I’m afraid I rather lost control for a second there.”

That – Cody blanked on everything he was supposed to say for a second. That was not at all what he had been expecting. “It’s alright,” came out automatically. “I brought you the reprogramming forms so you can let Kamino know what he did wrong.”

“The what? Reprogramming?”

“For when a clone behaves outside of acceptable parameters,” Cody said. “The labs can.” He didn’t want to say this. “Adjust them. To correct the mistake.”

“I – what was the mistake?” General Kenobi asked, taking the datapad Cody was holding out to him and reading over it, his eyebrows drawing together as he did so. “I was under the impression he was doing what he was told to do.”

Cody aborted the unsure gesture he wanted to make. “Whatever scared you.” General Kenobi froze at that, so Cody hurried to explain, standing up straighter as if perfect posture could make up for whatever mistakes he might be making in this conversation. “Or, not scared, but whatever he did to cause such a reaction. Given how extreme it was, I assumed there must be something Bones did wrong. If the Kaminoans are alerted, it won’t happen again.”

“Commander,” General Kenobi started, slowly, then hesitated. “Cody.” It was the first time Cody could remember the General using his name. “What, exactly, was your medic doing?”

What sorts of experiences had General Kenobi had in medbays that he needed to ask that question? “Treating your injuries, sir,” Cody said, almost as slowly. “You had a dangerously broken rib and an infected leg, as well as several minor burns and a few other things Bones noticed. He treated you first with a bacta immersion, because the rib was nearly puncturing a lung, and had you set up on an IV because he was concerned about your weight. Oh, and he filled this for you, but you left before he could administer it.” Cody held out the hypospray. “It’s an antibiotic, for your leg.”

“Really,” General Kenobi said, eyeing the medicine and not taking it. “That’s all?”

Cody was so lost. “That’s all I remember, sir,” Cody said. “Bones would have the more complete report, if you need to give it to another medic so they can finish treating your injuries.”

General Kenobi was silent for a bit. “That’s alright,” he finally said. “I think I’ll just go back and let Bones finish treating me.”

He walked out of his quarters, and this was such a change from the General that had driven the medics crazy by avoiding medbay for months, that Cody could do nothing else but trail after him, typing out a quick message to warn Bones they were on their way.

Bones, rather grumpily, confirmed everything Cody had said about General Kenobi’s treatment and added a few other injuries the bacta had healed that Cody had forgotten about. He explained the contents of the hypospray once again, and, when General Kenobi let him, administered it to the leg. General Kenobi perched stiffly on the edge of the cot the entire time, and Bones made a face behind his back in a way Cody knew meant he was judging the man for being scared of medical treatment, but he didn’t say anything about it.

General Kenobi sat quietly as the hypospray did its work, and then for a few long minutes afterwards. Then he straightened up, a look on his face that Cody recognized from the battlefield, one he often saw before the General did something completely impossible and stupid but effective.

“You’re not being reprogrammed, Bones,” he said firmly. “No one under my command will ever be sent back to Kamino for that. You are people, not droids to be changed around at whims. You did everything right, yesterday, and my reaction is not on you. But I never want to see this form again, Commander, and if anyone ever tries to make you submit it, let me know. I will do everything in my power to prevent any of your brothers from being sent back to Kamino for reprogramming.”

Then he walked out of the medbay, leaving both Cody and Bones gaping at his back.

--

After that, Cody noticed the General would bring up Kamino more in his conversations. He asked questions about how the clones had been raised, what they had been taught, what punishments they experienced, and what actions they were supposed to perform during the war. Cody had debated with himself whether the General was trying to catch them in some sort of trap, but he figured if it was one, he’d rather step into it on purpose than let some of the shinies accidentally set it off if the General deemed his answers unsatisfactory.

He decided it wasn’t a trap when General Kenobi learned about the decomissionings that were happening on Kamino, and, horrified, had immediately excused himself to comm the General stationed at Tipoca City. His trust grew when he started hearing reports from Commander Colt that decommissionings were stopping, vode with physical abnormalities were being personally protected by General Ti, and the Kaminoans were actually backing off when she told them too.

Over the course of a year, Cody slowly revealed more and more of what life was like on Kamino. He admitted that most of the clones had never even seen Jango Fett; only the Alpha class had gotten his personal attention. He mentioned that the Alpha class had scorned the learning modules on the Je’daii order, saying Fett had told them differently, but that most of the clones were raised to believe the Je’daii were practically perfect in every way. He admitted that it hurt, so much, to know that his brothers were dying every day, but that he didn’t know what he could do. They were raised for war. What else was there?

General Kenobi absorbed all this information with a troubled look on his face but thanked Cody for telling him. Slowly, recreation time aboard the ship began to change, from the strict training routines the Kaminoans had expected them to keep to actual recreational activities that the General introduced. He’d managed to scrounge up materials and resources from the temple archives, including educational modules that weren’t war-centric, entertaining novels and holofilms that anyone could access, and oddly shaped balls that were apparently used for sports, which Cody personally didn’t understand but which some of the vode got strangely competitive over.

Ghost Company, the elite squad that was specifically designated to guard the Je’daii on the battlefield, reported that the General began engaging with them outside of combat, asking after their hobbies and preferences, getting to know them. They became even more protective of their General, and he proved himself willing to protect them just as much. They raved about him to any who asked - and several who didn’t - and could be found following him even when they weren’t on a mission, asking to eat with him or checking on him for the medics. The General had looked bemused (and possibly scared? Cody hadn’t trusted his interpretation at the time, but it was likely, with the medbay fiasco) the first time it had happened, but he never stopped them, and slowly he began to relax in their company.

For his part, Cody figured that sticking close to his General was the best way to get work done – whether they were on the ship, doing paperwork they both needed to sign off on together, or on the battlefield, where General Kenobi was liable to change the plan on the fly and the best way Cody could adapt the troops to match was to be there with him when he got that gleam in his eye that meant he was about to pull some crazy stunt. Over time, Cody learned to read several of the General’s ticks that betrayed his emotions. There was the way his hands curled into fists of rage whenever he heard about another atrocity the Separatist army was committing. There was the way he would clench his jaw when he was injured somewhere and ignoring the pain with some Force osik. There was the way he would press his lips together disapprovingly whenever General Skywalker proposed some reckless plan that completely forgot to account for the fact that none of his troopers had the Force and so couldn’t simply walk through a storm of blaster shots. And, most commonly, there was the way he would shove his hands into his wide Je’daii sleeves and paste a smile on whenever he was scared. It was what, exactly, that was scaring General Kenobi that Cody couldn’t quite figure out. And having gone through some genuinely terrifying things with his General, and, admittedly, feeling a bit protective of him as well, Cody was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Learning that the Je’daii order hadn’t, in fact, commissioned the clone army went a long way to explaining what General Kenobi was scared of. Cody had to research in his own, decidedly little, free time to find the name Sith, and then play horrible, high-stakes games of Twenty Questions with Obi-Wan when they were planet-side on campaigns with no comms around them to possibly overhear the treason that was the truth Cody was searching for: It was the Sith who had ordered the clones, and every single one of the Je’daii who knew anything about the Sith believed the clones were a trap just waiting to stab them in the back.

“You think they’re planning on using us to force you into another contract, somehow. Or get rid of you entirely,” Cody guessed. “We would never, sir. The vode – we all adore you. Any clone that has served in the field with an actual Jedi would never.” Cody had already figured out not every Je’daii General was a Jedi – and there were plenty of brothers he suspected to be serving under Sith Generals who would likely be happy to stab their generals in the back.

General Kenobi shrugged. “You’re genetically modified to be able to keep up with a trained Force user. You have several behavior-modifying chips in your brains with unknown coding on them. You can apparently be reprogrammed in the labs of Kamino. You’re clones of the most famous Je’daii-killer in recent history. We don’t think you’ll have a choice. They’re not exactly the type to leave things up to chance.”

Cody went hot all over, then almost immediately cold. “Why are you still around us?” he demanded. “You let us into your temple. You let us hold your tubbies. You’ve befriended us. Why haven’t you shunned our company? Why do you stay on the ship with us?”

The smile General Kenobi wore was bitter and full of pain. “We did shun your company, at first, as much as we could. Don’t you remember? We never wanted to be Generals. We didn’t want to fight in this war at all. We have as much choice in the matter as you do, and we took as many precautions as we could to protect ourselves from you, including avoiding medbay and sleeping in air vents. I seem to recall you being equally upset about those things, though.”

Cody remembered that. That… made horrifying sense, actually, now that he thought about it.

“It’s an exquisite trap, Cody,” General Kenobi mused, tilting his head back against the rock of the cave they were hiding in. “Even if you don’t have any choice, even though we know you’re a trap, without being commanded otherwise you are some of the dearest friends we have found. And that’ll make it hurt all the more when it snaps shut around us. It already does hurt, to be so connected to you and then to feel it when you die.

“See, most of the galaxy shuns us, views us as strange, emotionless robots, or, now, labels us as warmongering savages who are just slavering for combat glory. But you, all the vode, so many of you actively brighten when you see us, as if you actually like us. You come for us when we’re in danger, even when it might be safer to write us off as dead – even if the army leadership would have made that call, did make that call. You have welcomed us into your family, giving us the same protection and care you give each other. To stay aloof in the face of such earnest, genuine offers of friendship… impossible. How could we not care for you, love you? Even friendships in the Temple come with the risk that the person you trust today might turn and betray you tomorrow. The only difference is Je’daii have a choice, one I dearly wish I could extend to you.”

That sounded like… “You’re trying to make it so we do have a choice.” Cody’s mind was racing. If the clones were made to trap the Jedi and the Jedi knew this, if the other Jedi were anything like his General they wouldn’t just be content to let it play out. General Kenobi’s story had gaps in it, places where escape plans rested but couldn’t (wouldn’t?) be spoken. If the Jedi escaped on their own and the General’s story was true, it was likely the clones would be the ones sent after them at all costs, even against their will. What General Kenobi was offering could be true freedom. “When does your contract expire?”

General Kenobi smiled.

They had a little less than two years to find and disarm all the traps the Sith had left in the clones. Two years to come up with an escape plan. Two years for Cody to somehow spread the word to whomever he deemed trustworthy, without the Sith knowing about it.

Cody was a Marshall Commander of the most cohesive army the galaxy had ever seen. The Sith would regret ever touching their Jedi.

Chapter Text

“Master, you always get hurt in the worst spots.” Anakin laughed as he waltzed through the flap of the command tent, where Obi-Wan was ineffectively trying to reach the back of his shoulder to apply another bacta patch. If the medbay tent hadn’t been so full, he would have gone to Bones, but as it was, there were so many others who needed the medics’ attention more than he did. “Here, let me help; don’t move.”

Obi-Wan had thankfully already brought his hand down, anticipating that order after the last several times Anakin had found him bandaging his own injuries, and waited for the Dark to curl around him, restraining him better than any cuffs ever could. He hated being given this order as much as all the others Anakin unknowingly gave him, but this one, at least, made things a little easier for him. Anakin wasn’t the gentlest of healers, and now that Obi-Wan didn’t have to work to hold himself still, he could better focus on other things. Like siphoning the pain off into the Force.

Sure enough, Anakin ripped the old patch off Obi-Wan’s shoulder with little care for the skin he was pulling away with it, and Obi-Wan – flinched.

Obi-Wan had flinched. Anakin was saying something, but Obi-Wan couldn’t hear him over the surprise ringing in his head. He’d just moved. When he was told not to. There was no Dark holding him frozen. Did that mean…

Then Anakin slapped the new patch on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and Obi-Wan, completely unprepared for it, went sprawling, sliding out of his chair and onto the floor.

“Whoa, did you faint again or something? Come on, Obi-Wan this is ridiculous!” Obi-Wan pushed himself up off the floor, spinning around to look at Anakin, barely able to stop himself from jumping up and down just because he could.

“No, sorry, you just surprised me is all!” Obi-Wan said, unable to keep the smile off his face. It wasn’t a fluke. He was completely able to move without Anakin needing to set him free. The contract was over. The chains that had been wrapped around him all his life were gone, and Sidious hadn’t immediately set off whatever trap he was planning. Obi-Wan needed to comm Mace immediately. This was their chance, this was what they’d been waiting for. They could finally Giinaa.

“What are you so happy about?” It was an honest question, but it made Obi-Wan’s smile shrink, just a little. Any interactions anyone had with a Sith who knew they were a Sith over the next couple of weeks were going to be extremely dangerous. They would have to act as if they were still being compelled to follow every order a Sith gave, so they didn’t realize the contract was up, if, in fact, they hadn’t figured that out. Obi-Wan really needed to comm Mace immediately.

“Just glad you’re here today,” he said, almost belatedly to Anakin when he realized his former padawan was still watching him. It was even true. He might not have known the contract had ended if Anakin wasn’t around to give him orders. He would have to be careful to follow orders Anakin gave him, too – it wouldn’t do to have Anakin complain to Sidious about him. Though, his fainting problem was going to mysteriously vanish. Maybe Anakin wouldn’t notice.

He gave a fake yawn and rolled his shoulder, feeling out the patch Anakin had slapped on. “Thank you for your help. Now, I’ve got some forms that need filling out – I don’t suppose you came here to actually start doing your share of the paperwork this war has generated?”

“Ah -” Anakin immediately started sidling for the door, like Obi-Wan knew he would. “Actually, I think my Commander has some paperwork for me, so I’m going to do that, first.” Rex probably did, in fact, have paperwork for Anakin to sign, but Obi-Wan highly doubted his former padawan was actually going to find him to do it. “Just came to make sure you weren’t bleeding out on the floor or anything. See you!”

And then he was gone, and Obi-Wan let himself close his eyes and just breath, for a second, relishing in the feeling of freedom in the Force. He would do everything he could to protect this freedom, for himself and the other Jedi, he vowed. And, maybe, just possibly, if he were lucky enough, for Anakin, too. Obi-Wan would find a way to leave a message explaining as much as he could.

But for now, Obi-Wan reached for his comm and selected Mace’s code. There was lots to do and little time to get it done.

Chapter Text

Their ship landed on one of the many Senate hangers on Coruscant. Obi-Wan followed Qui-Gon off down the ramp behind the queen and her handmaidens and almost immediately stiffened when he saw their welcoming committee. Qui-Gon shot him a warning glance, pressing comfort down their bond, and he tried to relax. It was hard when the foremost Sith apprentice was right there.

Senator Palpatine was stepping forward with Chancellor Valorum, a kind smile on his face. He had his Force presence masked, so Obi-Wan felt safe enough to glace at Mace, who was standing near the entrance to the hanger, as Palpatine greeted the queen and her entourage. When he caught Obi-Wan’s eye, he grimaced and shook his head ever so slightly, a deeper-than-normal scowl on his face.

“It was so brave of you to go through all that to bring the queen here!” Palpatine suddenly turned to him and Qui-Gon. “We cannot thank you enough for your protection of our queen.”

“Just doing our duty,” Qui-Gon returned calmly. “We are happy to see her safe and wish her the best of luck in negotiations with parties not trying to kill her.”

“I’m sure,” Palpatine said. “The Senate is ever so blessed to have such… loyal servants.” For a split second, he dropped his shielding.

All of the Je’daii on the platform barely refrained from flinching as the paincolddarkbitingsadism of his Dark Force signature washed over them, punctuating his statement with a threat as sharp as a lightsaber held to the throat.

“You’re too kind,” Qui-Gon managed to say, his voice steady enough to those who didn’t know him. He gave Darth Sidious a short bow and waited until the man turned back to the Naboo group before striding across to Mace, ushering Obi-Wan in front of him as if to protect him from the Sith behind them.

“Are you alright?” was Mace’s first question when they reached him, eyes raking over them. He glanced back at the Naboo party before guiding them to a speeder nearby. “What happened?”

“We’re fine,” Qui-Gon said, voice heavy as they left the Senate building behind. “It was another warning for me. These negotiations weren’t supposed to happen, if the murderous welcoming party we got was any indication. Maul was there, too, likely to watch us. He made a paltry attempt to assassinate the young queen while we were on Tatooine, but didn’t actually order us to let her die.”

“So you found a way around your mission assignment,” Mace finished, with a sigh. “Again.” He fell silent for a moment as he piloted them through the late evening Coruscant traffic. “You need to watch out. You might not get away with that much longer,” he warned. “We think… well, we think Sidious has made an attempt to become the Master.”

Obi-Wan caught his breath. “Plagueis is gone?”

“Demask was reported critically injured in a speeder accident,” Mace said. “His condition is still unstable. We’re waiting to see if his alchemy dabbling has paid off for him once again before recognizing his death.”

Obi-Wan sat back, processing that. Darth Plagueis had been the Sith master for longer than he’d been alive, using his application of Sithly sciences to heal from fatal wounds and strike down his apprentices in retaliation. According to Yoda, who had been alive through many centuries of Sith masters, Plagueis was one of the longest surviving Sith Masters, with almost 33 years as the Sith in control. Apparently, most Sith Masters in the past were killed off by one of their apprentices after 15 or 20 years.

If Plagueis did actually die, Sidious would become the new Sith master, which was a terrifying thought. Obi-Wan shuddered. Sidious was by far the worst out of all the current Sith apprentices. He was cunning, ambitious, and had an impeccable façade in the Senate. They adored him for his kindly, grandfatherly manner, completely unaware of his sadistic leanings. If he took over… Obi-Wan didn’t know how that would affect the Order. In recent years, Plagueis had grown somewhat lax, in controlling the Je’daii order. He’d focused more on his Sith experiments (which were still plenty horrifying, especially when he snatched children out of the creche to experiment on them) than on micromanaging the Temple, which had allowed the Je’daii just a little bit of extra freedom. It was because of that Mace had been able to get a spot on the Je’daii Council. It was the least important spot, because no Sith who actually sat on that council would let a non-Sith tell them what to do, but it spoke to Mace’s incredible organization skills that the Sith were even willing to let him get that far. That, and Plagueis doing absolutely nothing about it.

Sidious would be a whole new threat to learn – and it likely would not be pretty. He was far more engaged with the day-to-day operations of the Temple, and he'd tortured Maul into the insane, power-hungry apprentice he was. He had a much shorter fuse, so all the carefully cultivated freedoms the Je'daii had managed to sneak into daily life under Plagueis' leadership would likely vanish. Obi-Wan almost hoped that Plagueis, for all that he hated the guy, didn’t die, just so Sidious wouldn’t be the next Sith Master.

Chapter Text

“The Je’daii order is so restraining! If I had the freedom to do what I thought best, I could have ended this war by now,” Anakin said, glowering down at the field of droid bits underneath him. “These battles are pointless.”

Obi-Wan gave a neutral hum. He definitely agreed about the pointlessness of it all, but for very different reasons. “The Je’daii order is bound to the Senate’s will. Maybe you could convince your friend the Chancellor to come up with a better plan of attack. A diplomatic conference would be a good start.”

Anakin perked up. “Yeah! We could use that as an ambush to assassinate the CIS leaders! Without them, the war efforts would fall apart.”

Obi-Wan carefully kept his face blank and didn’t let a sigh escape him. Anakin didn’t yet revel in killing, not like many other Sith did, but he did readily believe that it was the solution to all his problems, without ever seeming to realize the hundreds more problems it created for everyone else. It was also, unfortunately, a solution his friend the Sith Chancellor liked to encourage. Anakin hadn’t quite Fallen, yet, but Obi-Wan could see him doing so easily over the course of this war if he decided to keep leaning into the Darker techniques to defeat his enemies.

“Why can’t the Je’daii just break away from the Senate, though?” Anakin asked, kicking another droid part. “You’re – honestly, with this war the Je’daii feel more like slaves than ever before. I know I’m the only person here with experience in slavery, but that just means you don’t understand and should listen to my perspective more! We’re the most powerful people in the galaxy! We shouldn’t have to take orders from anyone.”

This rant again. It was bad enough for Anakin to claim he was the only one who’d been a slave to Obi-Wan, who had shown him the scars Bandomeer had left around his throat, but he also had to claim the clones didn’t count as slaves, despite checking every single box of whatever checklist Anakin likely considered counted as ‘experience in slavery’, including having chips of some sort. Not that Anakin or the clones knew about those.

“Slavery means different things to different people,” Obi-Wan said. “It doesn’t always have visible chains, and it’s not always -”

“Unwillingly chosen, yeah, yeah, I know, you've only said it like, a million times before. The Je’daii choose to subject themselves to the will of the Senate because it’s best for the galaxy, blah blah blah. But you can’t actually believe that the Senate knows best, do you, Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan took a breath and tried to remain calm. “The Senate is full of flawed people,” he started, another statement he'd said to Anakin probably countless times before, and Anakin clearly thought so too. He turned with a scowl.

“It’s a yes or no question, master! Why do you always do this, turn everything into a moral complexity? Sheev at least gives me straight answers. Can’t you see there are more important things happening than debating philosophy?”

Is it too much to expect you to think for yourself for once? Obi-Wan thought, watching as Anakin stormed off without waiting for an answer. He’d hoped, back when he was naive and Sidious was still a new Sith Master, that he would be able to show Anakin ‘Sheev’s’ manipulation before he grew up into a Sith. But it had been a futile hope. Sidious had wrapped him in orders so thick he still occasionally stumbled into ones he hadn't realized were there, and then on top of those orders, Sidious had pretended to be a wonderful ‘friend’ to Anakin, taking him out to illicit pod racing, giving him an ear for all his long-winded rants, agreeing with his every complaint, and making Obi-Wan out to be the bad guy. Anakin wouldn’t hear a negative word about his friend and was instead incredibly vicious in his defense of the Chancellor.

It was an interesting tactic Sidious was using to manipulate him into Falling, encouraging Anakin to protect his own freedom and that of his friends at all cost. It was, in fact, a reason many Je’daii had Fallen for, so focused on attempting to gain their own freedom or preserve the freedom of someone else that they failed to notice the suffering their actions brought to others and began increasing the pain and hatred in the Force. It was a cruel trap, which the Sith certainly intended, but watching Anakin tread closer and closer to the shadows of the Dark side without even realizing he was in danger was probably amusing for Sidious. Obi-wan could only wonder if this entire war was manufactured by Sidious just to force Anakin into more and more situations where protecting himself would mean suffering and death for others.

“Are you alright, sir?”

Obi-Wan refused to jump or give any indication he’d been startled as he turned to face his Clone Commander, the one he was certain he only had because he'd been assigned as Anakin's combat partner at the beginning of the war. All the other Je'daii with such a high-ranking Commander were definitely Sith. “Yes, of course,” he said, pasting a smile on to cover any wariness he was feeling. He eyed the clone standing next to his commander, armor marked with the medic’s distinctive orange symbol as well as the regular 212th gold, and added. “There’s no need to let me delay you from assisting other troopers.” The medics had been particularly persistent in stalking him after battles, so Obi-Wan had taken to slipping away into his vents as soon as the debrief was over. Talking with Anakin had delayed him enough that one of them had found him.

“I’d rather be the one to determine that myself, sir.” The medic sounded gruff, more demanding than most of the other clones. Oddly, he reminded Obi-Wan of Bant, who would take absolutely no backtalk from anyone when it came to their health.

“I’m sure you have others who need it more,” Obi-Wan said and bowed. “I have a report that must be made to the Council immediately. I’m sure you understand.” Then he walked away before they could get another word in.

Chapter Text

If the clones were a trap – of which Obi-Wan had been sure since he first learned about them, and that wasn't changing – he was becoming increasingly certain that they didn’t know they were a trap.

He’d suspected as much the first month or so of working with the clones and feeling nothing but honesty in the Force, but it had really only been after the first time he’d been in the medbay that he gave the idea any consideration. He remembered waking up, completely terrified he had been modified in some way. He’d spent the next sixteen hours meditating and talking with Mace and Quinlan and had come to the conclusion that nothing had happened. He’d been completely at the medic’s mercy, and they had only treated all of his injuries, including the low-level Force exhaustion that had been plaguing him since he’d started using the Force to ignore said injuries. The matter-of-fact way Bones had described what was wrong with him and the actions he’d taken to treat him felt almost exactly like something Bant would say, when he found himself in the Healing Halls, and the genuine worry and exasperated confusion that Obi-Wan could feel in the Force hadn’t been what he’d expected.

Now, he was almost certain of it. His Commander, who had been braced for the worst and used to be visibly relieved every time Obi-Wan shot down a plan that would get too many troops killed was more relaxed than ever. Obi-Wan would swear that the man snarked him, sometimes, with the most deadpan delivery. He had regular checkups with the medics, and their care and treatment never changed, nor did their emotions in the Force. The few missions that had gone spectacularly south and ended with Obi-Wan captured or otherwise indisposed, the squad his Commander had specifically assigned to keep him out of trouble had come for him, fussing over his safety, and generally being trustworthy and reliable, no matter what. The first time they’d come for him when he’d been left for dead, he’d been deliriously convinced Sidious had ordered them to bring him somewhere, but he'd been unable to stop them – and then they'd brought him back to the ship, back to the Republic. Afterwards, he’d learned that the Army leadership had, in fact, assumed he was dead and had not authorized any sort of rescue mission, and that Ghost Company had come up with the plan to rescue him on their own. He'd been baffled.

“We have to try, Mace,” he hissed into his comm. “If the clones could be freed, or defused, and brought to our side, it would mean that much more protection. I know Jaieh Koon is getting close to his group of men, no matter our policy, and you have to admit, it’s hard not to feel some sort of connection to your battalion when you save each other’s lives with such regularity. I know Sidious is using this to force us to form attachments that might drive us to Fall, but what if we could steal this trap from him? It could mean our safety promised. We have to try.”

Mace scowled. “We have no idea how many layers of a trap the clones are, Kenobi. If we aren’t absolutely certain, we could also condemn us all. The clones outnumber us, by a lot. If you’re wrong and they do know they’re a trap, even a hint of our plans could go straight to Sidious and end them all before we’ve even begun. We have two years to figure out how to get the entire Jedi order out of Republic Space, Kenobi, while simultaneously fighting a war that is leaving us more depleted and stretched thin than ever. How would we even begin to drag 3 million clones with us?”

“The clones could help us. They have starships, they’re well organized, and they understand subtlety better than most of the Je’daii. Besides, if we don’t free them, they’ll likely be the ones sent after us, possibly alongside an army of droids. We can’t fight all of them; it might be safer to pull them with us.” Mace had a look on his face, one that was part constipated, part exasperated, and part proud. Obi-Wan had seen it several times, over the past decade, whenever he’d done something that reminded Mace of Qui-Gon. “Think about it, at least.”

“No, you’re right,” Mace said, wincing against what was likely a shatterpoint breaking at the admission. “Just. Give me a few days. I’ll see if I can’t get the other Jedi on board, or at least figure out a way to have a conversation we can be sure is private so you can convince them.”

--

“The brain modification chips in their heads are the most likely source of the trap,” Healer Vokara Che finished, wrapping up her report on which genetic modifications the Kaminoans had made to the clones might be most dangerous to the Jedi. “There are at least three different ones listed on the modification guidelines Kamino provided to Obi-Wan when he first showed up, which is still the most comprehensive list we’ve been able to get our hands on since the beginning of the war. Either Darth Sidious or Darth Tyrannous must have agents on the inside that are actively blocking our attempts to find more information, so there might still be more we don’t know about. Each chip is wired into a different part of the brain, and supposedly regulates things like emotional expression, strategic thinking, and team orientation.”

“Is it possible to take them out?” Plo Koon looked upset just hearing everything. Obi-Wan rather agreed.

Vokara shook her head. “Brain surgery, even with our advanced tools, is still not feasible on a scale of 3 million people. It would be an invasive procedure, likely with high risks, given the way the brain has rewired itself around them, and would certainly be noticeable to the Senate if we did some mass dechipping process throughout the GAR.”

“Can we break it somehow? Can you tell if a chip is active?” Obi-Wan asked. When Vokara gave him a questioning look, he clarified. “Anakin had a slave chip with a bomb in it. It had a pretty obvious active/inactive state and a remote control key he said his master usually carried. If the chips have activation switches we can flip, maybe we can break them and avoid having to do mass brain surgery.”

“I’ll certainly look into it,” Vokara promised. “I’d need a technical assistant to work on creating something that could deactivate the technological side of them, though, to pair with my healer expertise as I work on the biological component.”

There was silence as the few Jedi Mace had been able to route into this call looked at each other. Obi-Wan sighed. If only they could trust Anakin with this project. He was generally completely on board with all things anti-slavery, but giving him even the slightest hint was a guaranteed way to reveal their plans to Darth Sidious. And Sidious had somehow managed to convince him that the clones weren’t slaves, so he probably wouldn’t even agree that breaking the chips was necessary. (So much for his so-called ability to recognize all things slavery.) “I probably have the most experience here, having run into several different types of slave ships on Anakin’s various slave-freeing quests over the years.” And trying to quickly learn how to defuse them in a desperate attempt to mitigate the damage the slaves experienced when someone loudly declared a rebellion against slave owners and then took out the world’s entire leadership overnight, but couldn't reach nearly as many slave owners. So many planets had been plunged into chaos, and so many slave owners had predictably responded with fear. He still wondered if Anakin realized just how many slaves he’d supposedly been helping had died in the madness he’d sparked off in the name of freedom, and how many of those planets had fallen into even worse straits than before since he’d supposedly saved them. Sidious had been all too pleased to shoo various criminal empires into the power vacuums Anakin had created.

“Have you worked with biochips before?” Vokara asked, skeptical. “And Anakin sees you most frequently. Are you going to be able to avoid telling him anything?”

“No. But if anyone else has, I’d love to delegate to them,” Obi-Wan said. Maybe Dex would know someone. He had helped them smuggle slaves away before. “And I’ll avoid telling Anakin, somehow. I can pass it off as an interest in Geonisian brain worms again if it comes to that.” Which had been genuinely fascinating, and had also involved brain control. Maybe he should look into how they worked.

--

“What are you working on, Obi-Wan? That doesn’t look like war paperwork.”

Obi-Wan startled as Anakin popped up by his elbow and peered at the hologram Obi-Wan was staring at, a colored glob on a back background.

“You’d be partially right, partially wrong, dear one,” Obi-Wan said, burying his dread far beneath a welcoming smile. “This is a preliminary brain scan from one of the people who were affected by that Geonisian brain worm – you remember that encounter, right?” He pointed to the red splash of color. “Here is the area affected by the worm. Healer Che lent me some datapads on brain functionality and development, what is similar and different across the various sentients, and we were hoping to develop a viable recovery method for assisting those missing parts of their brain and the associated functionalities. So, it isn’t really war paperwork, but a side hobby still assisting in the war recovery efforts to work on when things are slow.” He frowned at the image, stroking his beard as if absent-minded as he considered the image. “The worm seemed to leave behind an odd secretion, though, that seems to be spreading over time. We need to reverse engineer a vaccine of some sort, to prevent any more brain loss.”

“Ugh, it's just like you to get involved in gross medical stuff instead of tinkering with the much superior machines,” Anakin complained, already wandering away, which was Obi-Wan’s goal. He blew out a sigh of relief. Anakin had bought his story, and if he considered it boring, it was less likely to make it to the Chancellor in one of their chats.

Of course, it helped that it was partly true – Obi-Wan had actually looked at the similarities between the Geonisan brain worm and the clone’s chips, but the image he had in front of him was of a clone’s brain. One of the clones on Coruscant, in fact. It had been a stroke of luck when Vokara had been treating one of the Corrie Guard and had noticed the small blood vessel ruptures in the back of the eye, giving her reasonable cause to order a scan. Seeing the activated state of the chip… was horrifying, but also immeasurably useful in figuring out how to disrupt it.

--

It was Tup, though, who managed to find the key to cracking the chips, and that completely accidentally. After the mess that was the Battle of Umbara, where General Aalto – either on Sidious’ orders or attempting to break away from him, nobody knew and nobody cared – had tried to sabotage the battle in order to prove to Darth Tyrannous he was worthy of being added to the Separatist cause and Dogma had shot him for it, of course Sidious had decided Dogma had to be sent back to Kamino. He couldn’t have clones going rogue and deciding to shoot Sith, after all.

Tup had absolutely refused to let Dogma go back alone. Obi-Wan didn’t know how, exactly, he’d snuck there and back, but he could only be extremely grateful that he had, even if he’d had to witness his vod’s death to get it, because the information he’d brought back was crucial. He’d managed to overhear and record a conversation between Nala Se and Darth Sidious, which contained as much medical jargon as Nala Se could reasonably fit into the conversation, likely attempting to get a bluff her way out of being in trouble with the Sith.

When Tup had made it back to the 501st, bewildered, grieving, and unstable, Rex had managed to get the full story out of him, and warned him not to tell General Skywalker any of this information. Instead, he’d reached out to Cody, who’d brought it to Obi-Wan, who had instructed Rex to have Tup give it to Healer Vokra Che when they made it back to Coruscant, where they’d been given shore leave to deal with the mess General Aalto had made by neglecting his paperwork in preparation for his defection.

Vokara, when she was able to listen to the recording, understood all the medical terms Nala Se was spitting out. She modified the biovirus she and Obi-Wan had created that was designed to target chip-like additions to the brain mass while leaving regular brain matter alone to match with the specifications Nala Se had listed, and then Tup volunteered to be the test subject.

“It has to be me,” he insisted. “Everyone else who knows about this has to receive a cure that actually works, so they can organize the distribution throughout the army. If this goes wrong, I’m a liability anyway for knowing about this secret. And they killed Dogma for this. I don’t want to live with it in my head a second longer than I have to.”

Everyone had been reluctant, unwilling to risk another vod, but that night, when Rex went to check on Tup, Fives had only looked at him, confused, and said, “I thought he was with you.”

Rex, dreading what he would find, all but sprinted to the Temple to find a very pissed-off Vokara monitoring Tup, who had, of course, gone and administered the experimental dose to himself as soon as he could do so. Vokara had managed to get a brain scan up and running to observe what was happening, and it seemed like it worked. The virus made its way through the neural pathways, seeking out chip matter, and corrupting it. Then, the brain’s natural defenses, noticing something was wrong, worked to remove the biovirus and the corrupted chip from the system, further breaking down the chip.

Though Tup woke up within an hour of administering the dose to himself, seemingly fine and acting normal, Healer Che kept him under observation for another month while she ran every trial she could think of before agreeing that he seemed to be suffering no ill effects. They only had seven months to go before the contract expired, so she, reluctantly, riskily, gave the go-ahead for the clone medics to begin to administer the cure. Cody, working with Bones, had identified a few medics who could be roped into the truth of the matter and come up with a way to make the virus look like a regular vaccine that was also kept a secret from the longnecks and the Je’daii Generals who weren’t already in the know (which was most of them, but especially the yellow-eyed ones).

Obi-Wan could only breathe a sigh of relief when Bones confirmed that the entirety of the 212th and the 501st had been given their dose. It might not be the only trap the Sith had left in the clones, but knowing that the foreign chemicals had been removed from their heads was the first step in defusing the bomb that was the clones. And Bones was actively searching for other traps, as was Vokra, performing scan after analysis after experiment to see if there was anything else the clones couldn’t control.

Hopefully, when it came time to Giinaa, the clones would be as free as the Jedi.

Chapter Text

Barriss stalked through the halls of the Je’daii temple, aware of the Dark side clinging to her only because of the way wide-eyed initiates and scowling elders were scrambling to get out of her way. The Republic was a barrel of rotten fruit, and it was dragging the Je'daii down with it. Oh, she knew that it was entirely the Sith’s fault, for playing their whimsical little war games, stringing the Je’adii along like the good little puppets they were, but it just meant that all the signs and shouts of the protesters outside of the Temple were absolutely right. The Je’daii were warmongers. They were responsible for this war. They were an army fighting for the Dark side, the villains in every conflict they participated in. They should have stopped the Sith a thousand years ago, not allowed themselves to be enslaved, this entire situation was their fault, and a trial was the least –

“Barriss, you’re back!”

A white and orange missile launched herself at Barriss, grabbing her waist and spinning her around in the hall, completely uncaring of the miasma of Dark hanging around her. It jolted Barriss out of her downward spiral.

“You absolutely reek of the Dark, let me see your eyes,” Ahsoka demanded, pushing her montrals into Barriss’ face. “You’re no Sith, I know that much, but hmm, they’re greener than usual, not a good sign. Come on, you’re in luck today, Jaieh Luminara is still on shore leave after the fiasco that was her last battle, seeing her would do the both of you some good.”

“Ahsoka, that’s not – Ahsoka, you can’t – Ahsoka, wait!” Barriss gave up as the initiate grabbed her arm in a firm grip and began to haul her down the hall, ignoring all her protests. She could have broken the hold if she needed to, but she wasn’t quite so far gone as to be willing to fight her friend. And besides, with Ahsoka’s bright presence in the Force nearby, actively pushing away some of the anger and pain she’d been carrying, it was easier to think.

Ahsoka led her to Jaieh Luminara’s quarters, and Barriss relaxed further, surprising herself with how much her shoulders hurt when she lowered them. She must have been carrying more tension and rage than she’d realized. Her jaieh opened the door, and the Force lit up with joy and gladness.

“Come in, please,” Jaieh Luminara said, reaching out to briefly squeeze Barriss’ shoulder in what was, for her, an exuberant greeting. “I’m so glad to see you’re okay, Barriss. I heard your last engagement was…”

“Sii-karking-awful,” Barriss summed up, letting herself be led into the quarters that were as familiar to her as her own and taking a seat on the couch. It seemed appropriate to be here again, ready to spill all that was troubling her to her jaieh. Ahsoka bounced into the room after her, throwing herself onto the couch and sprawling with all the satisfaction of a tooka cat. Barriss swatted her leg where it landed on her, then gave her friend an imperious look when Ahsoka puffed up, ready to pounce.

“Tell me about it,” Luminara swept into the room with tea and a fruit Barriss didn’t recognize on a plate. Ahsoka sat back, as if she’d never been acting like a wild animal at all. “What brought you so much pain and darkness? You can’t let it fester, or it will turn to hate.”

“I think it might be too late for me not to hate the Sith,” Barriss said, bitterly, the Dark side spiking in the room.

“Oh everyone does, it’s why I’ve been spending my free time imagining different carnival games the Sith should sit for,” Ahsoka agreed cheerfully, the sheer absurdity of the statement distracting Barriss from her thoughts yet again and smoothing away some of the jagged Dark edges.

“What?”

“Like, Dunk-a-Sith,” Ahsoka said, completely serious. “You know, the one where a Sith sits on the little paddle above the pool of water and they fall every time you hit the release button with a ball. It’d be great training for the younger initiates, in minute control of the Force. Or Pie-a-Sith, where, if you hit the release button, a hand holding a pie slaps the Sith across the face. Or Draw-a-Sith, except they’re all caricatures. Or –“

“Thank you, Ahsoka, those sound quite creative,” Luminara said, a laugh in her voice. She turned back to Barriss expectantly.

“Those are stupid,” Barriss informed her friend. She glanced to the side, a bit. “Though I’d love to pie a Sith across the face.”

“I know,” Ahsoka said gleefully, because she was an absolute chaos monster, but she also didn’t continue on her train of thought (though Barriss could see she had more to say) because she was a good friend who knew when Barriss needed to actually talk about the things contributing to the Dark swirling around her.

“It wasn’t just the campaign,” she started wearily. “There are protesters outside of the Temple. And the problem is, they’re totally right. They don’t – obviously no one knows we have no choice in our actions, and no one knows about the Sith they’ve so happily installed into the highest possible office who is actually causing 99.9% of their problems, but just, from the way it looks to the public, they’re right. We’re not the Je’daii order we should be. And sometimes, I just get so tired of these lofty spires proclaiming us to be something great when we’re the biggest frauds in the galaxy. We can’t even get rid of our own chains, let alone help with anyone else’s! I wish the Temple didn’t exist. There are enough people out there who’d love to see it go, see everything the Je’daii represents torn down. The Republic is an absolute cesspit of everything Dark, and it’d be better to just let it fall, at this point.”

She leaned back against the couch, exhausted. There was so much more she could say, but she didn’t need to. Ahsoka and Luminara knew. They all did. And there was nothing she could do about it, which was the most frustrating thing. There was just an endless future of this in front of them, slogging through hollow victory after pointless loss, until they fell – either to the Dark side, or simply fell down dead. The Sith had woven their trap too well.

Only, Luminara looked thoughtful. It wasn’t the usual look Barriss saw when she ranted about the hopelessness of it all. She looked like she did on a mission where she saw the way out and only needed to figure out how best to relay her plan to Barriss.

“You may be onto something, there,” she said, slowly. Abruptly, she stood. “Take a walk with me. Both of you. It’s too lovely a day to be spending it cooped up in here. Some fresh air will do you good, Barriss.”

Bewildered, Barriss glanced at Ahsoka. She shrugged, grinning her pointy, mischievous smile, and somersaulted off the couch. Barriss was even more confused when Luminara grabbed a few spare robes from her bedroom before going, and then they didn’t go outside, or even to the Room of a Thousand Gardens. Instead, Luminara led them down, deeper into the Temple than Barriss had ever willingly gone, and through a labyrinth of mazes that eventually led outside, if the deep underbelly of Coruscant counted as outside. With the stale, putrid air, buildings vanishing into smog above them, and the walls pressing in on them on all sides, it didn’t really feel like it. The spare robes made sense now, as Luminara held them out and waited for them to slip into them, before winding her way through the alleyways around them. It was clear she knew the area.

“The Temple might actually be better off gone,” she said, picking up right where she'd left off in her quarters. “What I’m about to tell you is a complete secret, and it must stay that way. You can’t tell anyone. I’d imagine if anyone found out I was telling you, they’d try to ship us both off to Kamino to get our brains wiped if they could. Many Jedi see how close you always are to the Dark side, Barriss, and have always cautioned me against trusting you too much. But I’ve seen how determined you are to keep yourself centered in the Light. I know you’ve been working hard with Quinlan to master yourself. I’ve always believed the best of you, Barriss, and I have complete faith that you won’t let me down now. But this has to stay between the two of you. It goes no further.”

She waited until they had both given her verbal agreements and then began to explain. Barriss couldn’t believe her ears. They had a chance to escape the Sith. There was a plan (though her jaieh had refused to explain it) to do just that in less than a month. And Jaieh Luminara wanted the Temple gone.

--

“This is, without a doubt, the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Ahsoka breathed through the comm in Barriss’s ear. “This absolutely makes up for not being able to help with the war efforts. This is so cool.”

“This is also extremely dangerous and we might not even make it out of here alive,” Barriss muttered back, slapping another brushful of the carbon mixture she and Ahsoka had made with some of Letta Turmond’s incorrectly programmed nano-droids. It had been easy enough to infiltrate the ranks of radical protesters, especially when her own anger at the way the Je’daii had been involved in this war was not faked in the slightest. It had been slightly harder, though not by much, to convince the woman to let them use her nano-droids, when the lady had brought up bombing the Temple even before Barriss had suggested it herself. What was harder was figuring out the best places to put the nano-droids so that the entire Temple would collapse inwards, without falling down on Coruscant’s underbelly who, though they might be scum, were mostly the poor sort of scum who couldn’t afford to be otherwise. They certainly didn’t deserve the literal remnants of the old Je’daii order falling on their heads. Thankfully, Ahsoka was in some of the advanced engineering classes, and so she’d understood most of the architectural terms they’d come across when figuring this out, and Turmond’s husband was a munitions expert who had been all too happy to give one of the famed ‘Je’daii Generals’ advice on how to best plant explosives.

What was definitely hard was letting herself be seen on the security feeds that weren’t going to be blown up, flashing a hint of red sabers and dramatically twirling her cloak. Barriss didn’t particularly care which Sith the Republic (those of it that weren’t Sidious, at least) decided was under the masked getup; there were enough of them that had ‘sided’ (meaning: ordered to by Sidious) with the Separatists, including Sidious’s insane zabrak apprentice (using his criminal empire to supply droid parts) and some business man from some Outer Rim planet somewhere (who was providing funding, somehow), that it would at least throw suspicion onto the Separatists for a little while.

“Done,” Ahsoka hissed in her ear. “Heading for the evacuation point now.”

Barriss glanced at her chrono and stifled a curse. She was running out of time; the nanobots would finish reconfiguring the carbon into an explosive soon, and she still had a quarter of her checkpoints to hit. “Haj dai,” she acknowledged, picking up her pace. The Temple was entirely still and quiet around her, almost eerily so. The evacuation of everyone who had called the Temple home had gone surprisingly smoothly, and now all that was left was an empty shell. Soon there wouldn’t even be that.

“Time’s a ticking, how’s it coming?” Ahsoka asked, her voice cheerful, but Barriss caught a hint of strain.

“Done, moving now,” Barriss said, not even bothering to use the brush as she hit the last checkpoint at a dead run, the fluid spilling over the hallway as she chucked the bucket and kept going, racing to get to the door Jaieh Luminara had shown them just a few weeks ago. They weren’t bombing the entire Temple, just the uppermost levels, the grand towers, and some central structures that would (if they’d done it right) collapse inward and bring more down. Hopefully, that would be enough to prevent the Sith from ever using the structure in a sii-contract again.

“Hurry, come on,” Ahsoka muttered as Barriss ripped the door off a lift and threw herself down the shaft, catching herself with the Force when she reached the right level. If Ahsoka was worried, she probably only had a minute left on the clock, but she didn’t bother to check, merely pushed herself harder. “Barriss, where are you, thirty seconds left!”

Left, right, right again. There, this corridor. All she had to do was make it to the door. Barriss didn’t bother responding, sprinting as fast as she could. She could see the door, could make out Ahsoka’s black-shrouded form hovering anxiously in it, and then the explosions started.

Ahsoka reached out, as if she could pull Barriss toward her, and Barriss threw her own arms above her head as dust rained down around her. Then rocks were falling, and Barriss skidded to a halt, actually focusing on using the Force to keep debris off her. She locked eyes with Ahsoka, who was staring at her in horror, and then the doorway collapsed, blocking her view of her friend. She curled herself down into a ball, wrapping the Force around her as best as she could.

It seemed like forever before the noise of the Temple exploding stopped, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before Ahsoka’s voice filtered back in over the comm. “Barriss? Barriss Offee! You’d better respond right now! You’d better still be breathing!”

“I am,” Barriss said, blowing out a loud sigh to prove it and sitting up. The corridor was surprisingly clear of large debris, but there was a wall of rocks blocking her exit. She was buried inside. “How do things look on your end?”

There was a relieved breath, then some scrabbling noises. “The doorway caved in, but it doesn’t seem connected to our explosion. It might have been a leftover security measure from whenever this part of the Temple was built. I think I can shift these rocks without too much danger.”

“No using the Force,” Barriss warned. “You do not get to endanger our entire mission now.” She picked her way down the corridor, listening carefully to the Force for any warnings, and examined the rockfall from her end. She didn’t want to accidentally mess up whatever Ahsoka was doing, so she settled back and waited for her friend to clear a path.

“I know, I know,” Ahsoka said, a hint of growl in her voice as she strained against the rocks. “I have been working out, you know. Or do you need me to throw you over my shoulder again as a reminder?”

Barriss huffed a laugh. “I’m good. You make an incredible Jedi, ‘Soka,” she added, after a few minutes of listening to Ahsoka scrabble at the rocks. “I can’t believe you’re still an initiate.”

“Oh, you know,” Ahsoka puffed. “I really didn’t want to fight pointlessly on the frontlines when I had much more important work to be doing here, brightening your spirits. Also, I made it a game to avoid the Sith so they don’t realize they have an unassigned initiate going on seventeen in the Temple, and I definitely won that game. They were almost too busy with their war games over the past few years to even make it difficult for me, but that just meant I was able to help all the other Jedi here when they came back from the front! It was definitely for the best.”

She paused; Barriss could hear her breathing heavily. “Besides, I think I know who my jaieh is supposed to be, and he really wouldn’t have wanted to take me on before this Giinaa.”

Barriss felt a brush of air on her cheek. She’d be getting out of here soon. She really would have to stop insinuating Ahsoka was a weakling after this; she’d have no leverage anymore. “Why do you think so?”

“Because he’s got too many Sith eyes on him,” Ahsoka said matter-of-factly. “Which is what happens when you raise the foremost Sith apprentice for a decade, as well as being a rival to the apprentice of the previous foremost Sith apprentice-turned-master for the decade before that. He wouldn’t have wanted to drag me into that nonsense, and I’m okay with that.”

Barriss considered that. There really was only one person Ahsoka could be referring to. “You’d want to learn from him?” she asked, not judgemental, just curious. “He has, as you said, only raised Sith.”

“He hasn’t been given a choice, otherwise,” Ahsoka said. “And I think he’ll need me, the Light I so easily carry, just as much as I’ll need him. He had the strength to hold onto his Light throughout twenty years of the Sith telling him to bend, and I want to learn that. The next few years won’t be easy. But he’s the person I see teaching me to get through them.”

“Alright, then.” The rocks above Bariss vanished, and the dim light from the street outside filtered in for a few seconds before a pair of blue and white montrals blocked it out again. Ahsoka, dirt-smudged and proud-looking, brushed a few more rocks away, then beckoned Bariss to come up.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” she said, grinning down at her.

Barriss clambered up and out through the hole Ahsoka had created for her, then dusted her robes off and glanced around pointedly. “I believe it is pretty blown,” she said, before her own face curved into a small smile, entirely without her permission. “We did it. We blew up the Temple.”

Now they just had to lay low for a few days before making their way to the coordinates Luminara had given them. She’d been unable to tell them who would be waiting for them, unable to even tell them who the coordinates had come from, but if they could get there, they might have safe passage off Coruscant.

Barriss walked out of the Je’daii Prison for the last time, turned her face up to the smog, and breathed in the awful, polluted underbelly air as a free Jedi for the very first time.

Chapter Text

“You look awful,” Cody commented, finally finding Obi-Wan hours after the battle, sequestered in a little copse of trees behind the med tent. His General still had mud and dirt streaked across his face from the fight, his robes were half scorched off from blaster burns, and he was typing messages into his comm with a frenetic look in his eyes. “Have you actually visited Bones yet, or is this as far as you made it?” They’d finished a ground campaign with the 501st on Ringo Vinda in record time, Obi-Wan pulling off a strategic part-stealth part-offensive attack that Cody hadn’t seen in a while (certainly not since General Skywalker had somehow become even worse of a person, started controlling Obi-Wan with some Force osik, and then completely failed to notice). It definitely hadn’t been the plan they’d hashed out with General Skywalker and Rex a few days ago, but Cody wasn’t going to complain that fewer of his vode had died.

“Cody!” Obi-Wan spun around at Cody’s voice, nearly toppling over before Cody was able to grab his arm and steady him. Obi-Wan didn’t seem to notice. He shook his comm at Cody with a wild light in his eyes, but his voice was so quiet Cody had to lean in to hear him. “It’s over! The sii-contract! The Jedi are free. We’re running and we’re taking you with us. Assuming you want to come. It's up to you! But either way, we need to pretend that we’re still obeying Sidious’ orders for as long as possible, so we have time to evacuate the Temple. I need you to contact whichever other commanders or captains you know have had the virus and can keep this a secret if they don’t have a Jedi general. I have a list of ten different planets, you can have different commanders meet up with us at each one. We’re not telling anyone our final destination in case the Sith somehow get wind of this. There will be a signal when it’s time to actually move, but until then, everyone needs to maintain their position and try to defeat as many droids as possible. Also, I wanted your opinion on which smaller battalions would be the best to send after the droid factories. Sidious told us we couldn’t target them, but we can disobey now, so if there’s anyone you know who can run a stealth mission and blow up as many production facilities as they can in about two weeks, that’d be great. Oh, and we need to figure out how to-”

“General. Sir. Obi-Wan.” Cody finally interrupted, when it became obvious Obi-Wan wouldn’t be losing steam anytime soon. “That’s amazing. Yes, I can help with all that. No, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Has Bones cleared you yet?”

Obi-Wan blinked at him. “Ah. Right. I couldn’t say any of this before. It was the Sith, you were absolutely right, Cody, you understood all my vague hints and figured out that they were controlling us somehow, but the contract ran out, and now we’re going to Giinaa, and I need to reach out to-”

“Has Bones cleared you yet,” Cody repeated, cutting off Obi-Wan once again. This time, though, he didn’t wait for an answer before he wrapped an arm around his General and began to haul him to the med tent. “This all sounds incredibly important, but you won’t be able to help at all if you bleed out from some injury you’re currently ignoring or keep losing your train of thought because of sleep deprivation. I know for a fact that you didn’t sleep the last several nights.”

“I, I believe I’m fine, Cody, dear, Anakin patched me up in the command tent. There’s too much to do. I don’t have time.” Obi-Wan tried to pull away from him, swayed dangerously, and didn’t protest when Cody reeled him back upright. His blinks were getting slower and slower.

“Bones will clear you, you’ll take a power nap, and I’ll be back with a cup of caf in two hours,” Cody promised, slipping through the tent flap and giving Bones a pointed look. “In the meantime, I’ll get started on what you’ve already mentioned, and get the men ready to pull out.”

“Pull out? What? Why?”

Cody hesitated. He had intended to find Obi-Wan to pass this message on, but he’d rather the General sleep. “We’ve been recalled to Coruscant, with the 501st.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan’s eyes grew huge. “That’s. I don’t even know what that is. That could be huge. What game is Sidious playing, though? Why us? Why now? I need to make a plan.” He swung his legs off the bed as if to stand up. Cody pushed him back down.

“Power nap, cup of caf,” he reminded him. “There will be time for planning afterwards. I’ll make sure of it.”

It was a testament to how far they’d come over the past three years that Obi-Wan relaxed at the promise. “I’ll hold you to that, Commander,” he said, sinking back down into the bed. He was out a moment later.

“What was that all about?” Bones demanded, redoing a bandage on Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Cody said. “But I bet it’s going to be important.”

--

Two hours later, the men of the 212th were making steady progress as they prepared to pull out from Ringo Vinda, but Cody had made sure a few men would slow things down enough for Obi-Wan to have time to plan whatever he needed to. He hadn’t even needed to lie, merely spill to Ghost that the General was sleeping and perhaps a little less efficiency wouldn’t go amiss, so as not to rush him. It was as good as telling them that whatever shenanigans they got up to that might delay their departure would be easily forgiven. Rex would understand, too, when Cody next saw him.

After a power nap and a cup of caf, Obi-Wan was looking much more composed.“Thank you, Cody,” he said warmly, still sitting on the medbay cot. “I apologize, I remember speaking with you, but I don’t remember what I said or what you got from it.”

“I think you mean info-dumping on me, sir,” Cody said. “Not a lot of it made sense, but what I understood was the Je’daii are going to be deserting soon, and they want the clones to desert with them. I have several commanders in mind who I believe will be amenable to such a plan, but I haven’t contacted them yet, because I wasn’t sure what specifics I should or shouldn’t tell them. I have also identified a few battalions who should be on missions to planets known to produce droids and can pull off some attacks on the factories. I will admit, the way we’ve avoided them until now has never seemed quite like the wisest war strategy.”

“You’re quite right, I’m afraid. That was the Sith, restricting our actions. The Je’daii order has been bound to follow the will of the Sith for the past millennium, since the Ruusan Reformation was a Sith contract in disguise.”

“And now the contract is up. Why haven’t the Sith done anything? I thought they weren’t the type to leave this up to chance.”

“According to Yoda, about 800 years ago, just before he was born, the Senate was updating old contracts to adjust for linguistic drift and the Je’daii consulting fudged the numbers to give us an extra two weeks before the Sith think the contract is up. So, according to Senate records, the Ruusan Reformation runs out in two weeks. Honestly, we weren’t sure it would work. There was every chance in the world that the Sith noticed the discrepancy, or would plan for us to try something, or would prevent us from taking advantage of it somehow. We do think the entire war is an attempt to trap us, and we’ve also been expecting the Sith to set off whatever trap the clones are for the past month. But it seems Sidious is arrogant enough to set it off at the last minute, to let us get our hopes up so it’ll hurt even more when he crushes them.”

“So we need to prepare for whatever the Sith trap is, as well as end this war, and vanish from the face of the galaxy in the next two weeks.”

Obi-Wan grinned at him wryly. “If it isn’t too much to ask. The Jedi – which are those of the Je’daii who do not subscribe to the Sith philosophy and avoid using the Dark side – are being alerted of our plan now. Everyone has a slightly different role. Since we’re going back to Coruscant, apparently, we will be helping with the evacuation there. We need to get all our younglings and elders out of the Temple. It’ll be the hardest and most important part of our Giinaa, but we’ll get them out, dai widen. We've been planning this for years, and now the time has come. There's so much to do.”

“I imagine so.”

At Cody’s bland tone, Obi-Wan gave him a slightly sheepish smile. “I’m rambling again, aren’t I? I’m sorry, Cody, there’s just – you have no idea how good it feels, to suddenly have the chains I’ve been living with all my life gone. I can say whatever I'm thinking and my words are my own, for the first time ever. I'm not used to it.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Cody said, his voice softening. The clones might have been slaves as well, but the Je'daii - or Jedi, was the proper term - had very different experiences with their enslavement. “We’ll do our best to get you all out in one piece. What can I help you with right now?”

Chapter Text

The thing was, if General Kenobi had told Cody, to his face, that he wasn’t scared of the clones, Cody would have dropped it.

Almost a year into the war, Cody had learned a lot about his General. More than he’d ever imagined he would learn about someone who wasn’t a vod, to be honest, but practically living out of each other’s pockets as they were, Cody wasn’t terribly surprised, either. And one of the things he’d learned was that General Kenobi didn’t lie. He could dance around the truth, deflect people’s questions with ease, or skillfully weave a story that somehow managed to leave out any sort of details, but he never outright lied, at least that Cody heard. It wasn’t a Je’daii thing, as Rex often overheard General Skywalker talking to some senator and he said General Skywalker lied like he was commenting on the weather, so Cody figured the truth was something General Kenobi considered important.

That was why Cody, summoning his courage by reminding himself that no one had been reprogrammed or decommissioned since the Je’daii had found out about those things, decided if General Kenobi could look him in the face and say the words “I’m not scared of the clones,” Cody would believe him. Or, at the very least, he would drop it and try to pretend he believed him.

What happened instead was, in response to the rather blunt “Why are you scared of me?” Cody managed to force through his teeth when they happened to be away from the other troopers for a bit, scouting ahead through the dense foliage the current planet the Separatists were blockading had, General Kenobi had merely hummed, not looking back and him, and asked, “What makes you say that?”

Which wasn’t a no. Kriff. “The whole incident in the medbay a few months ago, if I’m recalling correctly,” he said, dryly. “And the way your shoulders rise to your ears anytime Ghost asks to hang out with you. And the fact that when I said I was coming with you on this scouting trip, I had a strong urge to explain that I was coming in order to make sure you were safe and not falling into any gundark nests as seems to be your habit because the look on your face made me wonder if you thought I was going to eat you.”

“I didn’t think you were going to eat me,” General Kenobi responded, with the slightest bit of a huff. “I’d never think you were so uncivilized, my dear.”

“But you thought something.” Cody wasn’t going to let his General distract him from the point. “You didn’t want me to come because you are scared of me.”

The General hesitated for just a beat too long. “Your determination to make sure your men don’t walk into a trap is admirable, Commander; I couldn’t deny your request to come along.”

“I really think you just completely ignored the fact that I said I was coming along specifically to keep you in one piece, General,” Cody said. “And not for whatever horrible scenarios you just thought of. Why do you keep looking at us like we’re kaminii’se? The Je’daii ordered us. Why are you scared of something you wanted?” Because it wasn’t just his General who was scared. Cody had been asking around the other CCs, and though there were a few Generals who were notably not scared of their troopers (but who also happened to have the highest death rates of clones under their command, so maybe they just managed their fear differently), the majority of the Je’daii in the field reportedly had the same skittish, wary behavior as General Kenobi.

“You’re people, not things,” General Kenobi corrected, almost automatically, but didn’t respond to any of the rest of Cody’s questions.

“You’re scared, and yet you say things like that. Is it that hard to believe that we might actually care about you?” Cody asked, frustrated because while he had no doubt now that General Kenobi was scared of him, he was no closer to finding out why and resolving the issue. “You always defend us, remind us we’re people, protect us on the battlefield, kriff, you even made the decomissionings stop. You have earned the devotion and loyalty of the entire 212th – and yet you seem entirely ready for one of us to stab you in the back.”

General Kenobi stiffened, almost imperceptibly, and Cody narrowed his eyes. If that was truly what the General thought, this was beyond ridiculous. The clones would never. Why on earth did the General have such a ludicrous idea in his head?

“Have you ever heard of the old wars that came before the New Republic’s creation?” General Kenobi asked, so completely off-topic that Cody blinked for a second. “They were a long time ago, but I am curious as to what sort of military history you got on Kamino.”

Cody opened his mouth, intending to drag the conversation back to the topic at hand, but he paused. Something about the question felt… less like a deflection than it should have. “Not very much, sir,” he said. “There have been plenty of conflicts since the creation of the Republic,” which was like, a thousand years ago “that we studied to get an idea of what sorts of fighting abilities the Je’daii had and to learn strategies and tactics from.”

“Hmm.” General Kenobi didn’t sound the slightest bit surprised. “History is such an odd thing. They always say the victors get to tell the story, you know. What sorts of history do you think gets told when the victors don’t want to be remembered at all, let alone as the victors? Oh look, Commander, I think those are our droids.”

Shelving all thoughts to be pursued after the mission was over – and they would be pursued; something about the way the General was musing over ancient history seemed specific and relevant – Cody nodded and fell back into the role of Marshal Commander.

--

Getting General Kenobi alone to follow up on the many, many questions his research into the Sith Wars was harder than Cody anticipated, and it took an embarrassingly long time before Cody realized that his General was purposefully derailing him if he tried to bring it up when there were other people around. Thankfully, they’d been assigned to another ground campaign, so waiting until they had a lull in the assaults to approach the General alone was only a matter of time.

“The Sith sound like real pieces of work,” he started with, watching his General closely. “I had no idea the Force could be used for such awful things.”

General Kenobi gave a small noise of agreement, not looking away from the forest he was scanning for threats. “It certainly isn’t something we like to advertise,” he said.

“I’m glad that the Je’daii order defeated them, then.” And there, a tightening of the shoulders – so carefully not a flinch that Cody was almost sure he was chasing the right train of thought.

“As I’m sure most of the rest of the Galaxy is.”

“If they remember them, even,” Cody said. “Before I started looking, I thought there were only Je’daii, not Sith and Jedi.”

“That’s true. Those who won the war got to choose how the history was written.”

And General Kenobi had hinted last time that the history that got written down was untrue. “So, the Sith won the war but have been in hiding ever since,” Cody guessed. “And the Je'daii couldn’t find them.”

“Oh, no. It is very probable that someone using the Force could have hidden their abilities, but you give the Je’daii order too little credit, Commander, dear.”

Cody frowned. That was… his General wasn’t denying the fact that the Sith won the war, only that they were in hiding? But there were no Sith in the galaxy, at least, no more than there were Jedi, anymore. Only Je’daii.

“If they didn’t go into hiding, where did they go, then?”

“Did you ever cover art history in your classes on Kamino?” The topic change was once again so jarring and purposeful that Cody didn’t even try to get it back on track. “It is quite interesting what pieces can last a thousand years and which have long since fallen to ruin.”

--

“So I found some pictures of what were reported to be Sith or Sith-like beings,” Cody started the conversation again, the next time they were planet-side, doing a joint campaign with the 501st. “There doesn’t happen to be any sort of correlation with the burning yellow eyes the Sith had and some Je’daii who happen to have yellow eyes and specialize in wreaking a large amount of destruction that also results in a much higher than average fatality rate for clones, right? They seem to be the only ones to remember that death is, after all, what we were made for.”

General Kenobi looked up at him sharply. “You are more than what you were made for, Commander,” he said, voice almost stern. “Your lives matter so much more than your death.”

Cody waved him away. As nice as it was to hear, it wasn’t what he was looking for right now. “Am I right? That the Sith do still exist, within the Je’daii order? Even though the Republic’s records state that they were all wiped out during the wars?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” General Kenobi said. “What makes you say so?”

Cody frowned at him. That wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t helpful, either. Was it too much to get a straightforward answer? This whole thing had started because he’d just wanted to know why the General was scared of him. Did it really need to be a half-assed history lesson?

“You think that the Sith were the winners of the Sith Wars, and for some reason, they rewrote history to make it seem like the Jedi won. Spies can hide a lot better if no one even knows they should be looking for them. But the Je’daii should know what a Sith looks like. You obviously haven’t forgotten that history. So why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

General Kenobi only looked at Cody, a blisteringly fake smile on his face and his eyes full of sorrow. “I can’t discriminate against the yellow-eyed individuals of the galaxy.”

Cody stared at his General, who was making no sense, who wasn’t answering any of his questions, and walked out of the tent in frustration.

--

Cody was glad to be working with Rex. He hadn’t shared any of his thoughts over comms, not even sure what he could share with Rex that wouldn’t make him sound half-crazy, but maybe being able to talk it through with someone else would help. Though, Rex’s General, General Skywalker, was one of the Je’daii who didn’t seem to be scared of the clones. His casualty rates weren’t as high as some of the yellow-eyed Generals Cody had noted in his research, but they weren’t low, either. And, strangely, General Kenobi seemed almost as wary of the other General as he was of the clones.

They were in the command tent, going over their plans for the assault the next day when General Skywalker motioned to a small town marked on the holomap.

“Sheev had intel that this entire town are Separatist supporters, so it doesn’t matter too much if we bring the firefight to these plains here.” He motioned at the bluffs surrounding the small dot. “These would be perfect for setting up some explosives, luring the droids to, and blowing them all sky high.”

“Just because the town is Separatist doesn’t mean they deserve to have that kind of destruction wrought on them,” General Kenobi said, sounding tired. “The Republic is trying to keep civilian casualties low, on both sides.”

“Yeah, but if we have to make some sacrifices, a few less Separatists in the world never hurt anyone,” General Skywalker argued. “You’re too soft-hearted for war, Obi-Wan.”

Cody could see his General grinding his jaw together, but General Skywalker didn’t seem to notice. “I like the idea of setting up traps, but wouldn’t here be a better location?” General Kenobi pointed at a different spot on the map, one without any towns, but had mountains with narrow passageways between them. “We can set traps in some of these canyons, or up on these cliffs, and the droids will have no choice but to go past them, if we set up camp here.” He pointed at where the canyon opened up onto a field. It was a good choice, tactically defensive, with the ability to pick off a large number of droids and not lose men pointlessly in a firefight.

“Oh, yeah, that’d work brilliantly!” General Skywalker jumped on the proposed plan so fast it almost gave Cody mental whiplash to see. “Maybe we could just drop some bombs on the town anyway, though, just so they know how powerful we are, though. Sheev says if more people knew the strength of the Republic, the Separatists would be clamoring to join us again. There is certainly something appealing about knowing you’re the strongest and best.”

Cody shot Rex an alarmed look. Did General Skywalker usually go out of his way to cause civilian fatalities? But Rex looked as baffled as he felt, so it couldn’t have been a common occurrence. And General Kenobi certainly wouldn’t stand for it – he always went out of his way to avoid as many deaths as possible, no matter whose they were. He looked to see what General Kenobi would say – just in time to see the General’s eyes roll back into his head and he dropped.

Cody let out a sharp yell, jerking forward to catch his di’kut of a general before he could hit the ground and injure himself, Rex jumping forward almost simultaneously. Only General Skywalker didn’t move.

“Oh, come on, again?” he said, sounding almost bored. “Don’t freak out so much, Commander, he does this all the time; you can’t tell me you haven’t seen it before. It’s like he can’t help himself.”

“Sir,” Cody said, for lack of anything else. He didn’t know where even to begin with that statement. He had definitely never seen General Kenobi collapse like this. Bones would have his head. “Is he going to be okay?”

General Skywalker waved a hand dismissively. “Of course he is. He keeps trying to pull off forbidden Force techniques, and the strain is too much, so he collapses. He won’t even tell me what technique he’s trying to do,” the general grumbled. “I could probably help him. I’m so much better at Force stuff than he is. Anyway, he’ll be fine, he’ll probably wake up in a few minutes, you don’t need to worry about him.”

With that, he walked out of the tent, completely leaving the other Je’daii sprawled on the ground. It could have just been that he trusted Cody to take care of him, but that wasn’t the feeling Cody got from him. He glanced at Rex.

“He’s like this with everyone who isn’t the Chancellor or the Senator he’s enamored with,” Rex said in an undertone. “If they’re not visibly bleeding out in front of him, nothing is wrong. But he also has mentioned this before, as something General Kenobi does, so he might be right in that it isn’t a huge deal.”

“I’m not going to take his word for it,” Cody said, already comming Bones. “The General’s down,” he said when the medic picked up. “Cause unknown. Get to the command tent.”

There was a swear on the other end of the line, and then it went dead. Cody did the best he could, arranging General Kenobi in a shock recovery position, during the three minutes it took for Bones to burst into the tent and start running scans. It was only a minute or so after that that General Kenobi let out a small groan, shifting on the ground.

“General?” Cody asked, leaning forward to see his face. “Are you awake? Don’t move, we don’t know if you’re hurt.”

“Mmph,” General Kenobi said. He cracked one eye, looking like it was a struggle to do so. “No.” The word seemed strangely slurred. Then he managed to get his other eye open, and his eyes were darting around, as if looking for someone, almost frantically.

“General Skywalker just went…” Cody trailed off, very unsure as to where, actually, the other General had gone. “I can go get him, if you need him?”

“No,” General Kenobi gasped out, as if spitting the word through a mouthful of marbles, and then words began falling from his lips.

“The Chancellor is right, strength is the only thing that matters, and bombing villages is the best way to prove how powerful the Republic is. Likely, if we bombed them, they’d come begging for our protection. Strength and power are best shown through displays of force.”

Cody stared at him, then glanced at Rex and Bones, who were looking equally bewildered. That was nothing like the General Cody had been following for the past year. He had never expressed any sort of desire to show off the strength of the Republic, and would never have agreed to use civilians to do so. He had, in fact, just in this conversation argued against putting civilians in danger. Had he been lying? Or was he lying now? And why the focus on agreeing with the Chancellor? Though, come to think of it, didn’t the Chancellor have yellow eyes? He wasn’t a Je’daii, but… Several things clicked in Cody’s brain.

“Anakin said you experience these fainting spells often,” he said, staring at his General.

“What?” Bones whirled to stare at him, then gave General Kenobi a furious look. “Why is this the first I’ve heard of it?”

General Kenobi gave him a look that was as bland as any he’d seen on him and completely ignored Bones. “Well, Anakin does see me do it more often than just about anyone. He does so like to talk about the Chancellor. But it is very circumstantial, and despite what Anakin may think, I am perfectly able to control it. Really, it isn’t a medical issue. It’s more of a Force thing, and I promise it won’t affect my ability to protect the men on the field.”

“There doesn’t happen to be a Sith trick to, I don’t know, manipulate people’s minds, is there?” Cody asked, ignoring the increasingly confused looks Rex was giving him and the way Bones was trying to interject into the conversation.

General Kenobi’s eyes widened in surprise, then closed entirely. “Why do you think I would know? According to history, they were all wiped out a thousand years ago.”

“If you tried to give me a more direct answer than that, would you faint and then start spewing osik?”

At that, Bones stopped allowing himself to be ignored. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Commander,” he said, stepping in between the two of them, “but you will not pursue that course of action, whatever it is you think you’re doing. This might be normal for you, General, some Force osik the rest of us don’t have to deal with, but it still isn’t healthy. You will avoid passing out again, since you can supposedly control it, and if you do pass out again, I want to know, immediately.”

“Should I pass out again, I’m fairly certain that choice will not be left up to me,” the General said, shooting Cody a faux-betrayed look mixed with – it could have been Cody’s imagination – but there also seemed to be a bit of hope there too.

--

“So the Sith still exist. They make up parts of the Je’daii order, individuals with yellow eyes. For some reason, the Chancellor is also a Sith. And somehow, they’ve got some power over the other Je’daii.” Cody summed up what he thought he knew for Rex, who was sitting quietly at Obi-Wan’s desk while Obi-Wan sat on the bed – he was supposed to be resting, but he kept trying to insist he was fine – and Cody paced the room. “And, let me guess, some of that power is going into making sure you don’t try to tell anyone this.”

General Kenobi hummed. “Interesting conjectures,” he said, which wasn’t a karking no. “I am, of course, obligated to try to dissuade you from having such treasonous thoughts against the Republic’s Chancellor.” And then he fell silent and pointedly did not do that. Rex squinted at him.

“I was just trying to figure out why he was scared of me,” Cody told his vod, rather despairingly. “I don’t know what I stumbled onto.”

“It does sound like treason,” Rex agreed, warily. “Especially if the Chancellor is involved, one way or the other. Probably best to keep it to yourself, whatever you find.”

Cody sighed and leaned up against the desk next to Rex, watching the General where he was watching them. “Yeah. Your General isn’t scared of you, right? Any idea why?”

Rex shook his head. “He’s not scared, but he also doesn’t care. You said that was also a common behavior displayed by the other yellow-eyed Generals, the ones who weren’t scared of their men.”

“Which, in this hypothetical scenario, are Sith,” Cody said. Rex didn’t even know what that meant. He hadn’t been reading the histories Cody had managed to scrounge up on the recesses of the holoweb. “Force-users who like to cause as much pain, destruction, and suffering as possible, so they can get high off it.”

There was a choked noise from General Kenobi, but he didn’t say anything, even when Cody glanced at him.

“Right,” Rex said, slowly. “You know, the leader of the CIS, Count Krell, has yellow eyes too, if I’m remembering correctly.

“What?” Cody turned and wracked his brains. Had he seen a holo of the Count? “He does?”

“Yeah, I saw him, on Geonosis.” That’s right, Rex had been there for that initial battle. “So, is this war really between two Sith?”

They both glanced at General Kenobi, but he merely looked at them, his face carefully blank. "I can't discriminate against yellow-eyed people."

“So, yes,” Cody interpreted. “But why? Two powerful leaders, each striving to do what’s best for the people under their rule… that doesn’t sound like very Sith-like behavior.”

General Kenobi made another choked-off noise but actually interjected in the conversation this time. “Several Separatists argue it was the Chancellor’s policies that drove them to take such drastic actions. Of course, the Chancellor is always working to further his goals, so such policies obviously are for the benefit of the Republic and the Separatists should see that.”

Rex and Cody shared a look. Neither of them were really familiar with the policies the Separatists cited as their reasons for the war – they’d been bred to fight it, not stop it. “I’d have to do more research,” Cody said, feeling frustrated, but not as much as before. Knowing his General was forbidden from saying something but was trying to tell him anyway made him even more determined to get to the bottom of this. “But a galaxy-wide war does seem to be the perfect way to brew pain, suffering, and destruction. But then, both Sith would likely want that, not just the Chancellor.” And it would explain why they were bred to fight a war, not stop one. Haar’chaak why had Cody never realized that before?

“Ugh, don’t say that, next you’ll be suggesting they’re working together,” Rex said, shuddering. “That would be the worst, if they were just feeding each other battle plans…” he trailed off. They both looked at General Kenobi. He stared back at them.

“Haar’chaak,” Rex swore. “But then, if the Sith want this war and the Je’daii order want to stop them, why did they order a clone army? Isn’t that just giving in to the inevitable?”

General Kenobi looked frustrated. He opened his mouth, and closed it again, then again. “I,” he started slowly, as if feeling out every word. “Followed an assassin to Kamino. I was expected, in order to review the product units. I thought I would be reviewing things.”

But the General had told them, repeatedly, that the clones were people, not droids or machines or things. Why would he – “You didn’t know about us,” Cody said, thinking he was finally seeing where this was going. “You – the Je’daii order didn’t order us. The Sith did. Under the name of the Je’daii order. That’s why you’re scared of us. You think we’re working with the Sith.”

--

“Sir, there is something I don’t understand.” The rain made for a miserable ground campaign, but even their men were unlikely to overhear this. “All of the other Marshal Commanders are placed with what I’m assuming are darjetti, based on physical appearances and high loss of clones on the battlefield, so why did I get placed with you?”

It had been something Cody had been thinking about for a while. He, Neyo, Bacara, Bly, and Fox had all earned their ranks as the leaders of different units in the GAR. Bly was leading the 327th Star Corps under General Nahdar Vebb, Neyo was leading the 91st Reconnaissance Corps under General Bruck Chun, and Bacara was leading the 21st Nova Corps under General Sora Bulq. Fox, technically the Coruscant Guard and not serving under a Je’daii General, still reported to a darjetti – Chancellor Palpatine himself. (And talking with Fox, subtly, about his experiences in the Senate seemed to further confirm Palpatine’s nature as a darjetti. While they weren’t suffering loss of life, they had it worse than many of the brothers did on the front.) Many other of the highest ranking Clone Commanders were also placed with darjetti Generals, though it was obvious there weren’t enough darjetti for all the battalions.

But Cody was the de facto leader of the Marshal Commanders, even if they were all equal in rank, and he’d been placed with General Kenobi, who was so far from a darjetti that he was helping to set the clones free, even when he’d been absolutely terrified of them. It made no sense, if the darjetti strategy was to make sure that they held all the cards.

“Ah.” General Kenobi looked frustrated. He worked his jaw, clearly trying to figure out what to say that would both answer Cody and not trigger whatever darjetti osik might knock him out. “How is Rex doing?”

Cody thought that through. “Are you asking about Rex, the 501st, or General Skywalker?” he mused out loud. “I’d guess General Skywalker, as we are talking matters of the Je’daii. He’s not a darjetti, though? At least, his numbers don’t match what the other darjetti'se have, nor does he have yellow eyes. But you do tend to mitigate the worst of his plans when we’re together. Was I supposed to be assigned to him?”

“Many in the Senate believed Anakin is too young for full command, which is why we work so closely together a lot of the time,” General Kenobi said. “But there were others in the Senate who wished to see him grow into a leadership role, so he is being given the best opportunity to do so.”

“So the Chancellor wanted me assigned to him, but someone with more power – a higher darjetti? – convinced him otherwise. Is Anakin some sort of darjetti student, that the Chancellor favors him like that? Is he hoping to cultivate his bad decision-making or something?”

General Kenobi clenched his teeth together. Cody waited for him to figure out what he wanted to say. Then he frowned as his General spasmed a little, like he was going to throw up… or like he couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t you dare faint on me,” he said, hurrying to grasp his General’s elbow in case the man refused to listen. “Spit out whatever you need to say. I know you won’t mean it.”

“Anakin always makes the best decisions, especially under the excellent guidance of the esteemed Chancellor,” General Kenobi gasped out, the words tumbling over themselves. “To question him is to question the will of the Republic and is treason of the highest order.”

Cody stared. “Yeah, that's not even slightly believable,” he muttered. “You aren’t allowed to pass out again, General, not when the fact that you feel you need to is as good of an answer as I need. Can you flash a hand signal when you feel it coming on?”

“I’m afraid there is very little I can do, Commander, aside from correct your misconception of Anakin,” General Kenobi said, still breathing hard. No, then. Kark.

--

“There simply aren’t enough Je’daii, Anakin, you know this,” General Kenobi said wearily. “There is only so much we can do as stretched thin as we are already.”

“Well, maybe you should call Master Qui-Gon back from wherever he is,” General Skywalker said, a sneer Cody rarely saw crossing his face. “Or, no, let me guess. It’s nighttime on whatever planet he’s on, and you still can’t wake him until it’s past my bedtime?” When General Kenobi didn’t respond, General Skywalker scoffed. “Figures the man would be just as inconsistent and unhelpful now as at every other time. It isn't like the galaxy as we know it is at stake or anything.” He walked away, still muttering under his breath.

“Sir?” Cody stepped up to where his General was looking distinctly more ragged than usual. “Are you alright?”

The smile General Kenobi gave him showed, rather clearly, the answer was no, but he said, “As much as I can be.”

Cody would have to accept that. “Who is Qui-Gon, sir? If you don’t mind me asking. General Skywalker has mentioned him a lot.”

“Ah. Qui-Gon was my jaieh,” General Kenobi said, softly, a look of sorrow on his face. The term was not unfamiliar from various times Cody had heard his General speak with the other Je’daii. “He’s… unavailable for the war efforts.” When Cody tilted his head, sensing there was something more there, General Kenobi bowed his head. “He’s. Marching on a journey that can never end. Night has fallen on him.”

He was dead, then. Why on earth was General Kenobi prevented from saying that? And how was General Skywalker so oblivious as to miss the obvious metaphors? “I’m sorry,” was all he said. What else could he say? “I’ll remember his name.”

--

The last person Obi-Wan had spent a large amount of time with who wasn’t in the know about the Sith leadership in the Je’daii order was Anakin, and even after nearly a decade of being practically glued at the hip, Anakin never figured it out. Not that it was his fault, exactly – Sidious went to great lengths to keep it that way, for reasons Obi-Wan truly couldn’t comprehend. Outside of Anakin, most of the people Obi-Wan interacted with had no cause to doubt the Je’daii Order was anything other than perfectly fine, functioning normally, if a bit incompetently, given the large number of failed missions. There was the rare senator who seemed to see a little more, look a little deeper – even now, Obi-Wan had no idea how much Bail Organa knew or suspected – but they were few and far between. There were also people like Dex, who knew something was wrong, but not what, or even how.

And then there was Commander Cody. Commander Cody, who hadn’t even been part of Obi-Wan’s life for a year, but who somehow seemed to see him better than Anakin ever did, who was asking all the right questions, and who, even more incredibly, seemed to actually see Obi-Wan’s non-answers for what they were: hints at the answers he was forbidden from speaking aloud to non-Je’daii, areas to research, and clues to solve the mystery. He dug into the history of the Je’daii order, found the areas that made no sense, and asked Obi-Wan about them. He tried to figure out why his brothers were fighting in a pointless war and how to stop it, and he trusted Obi-Wan to work with him towards that goal.

It was a gift Obi-Wan never would have expected, especially not back when they’d all assumed the clones were willing participants in the trap the Sith had created them for. Even just a month ago, he’d thought he’d failed completely to help his Commander understand when he’d walked away rather than engage in Obi-Wan’s desperate deflections. He’d resigned himself to his Commander ignoring all further signs that there might be something wrong and fully committing to whatever trap the Sith had planned. He hadn’t expected to faint after refusing to tell Anakin that Sidious was right about yet another atrocious idea within days of giving up on the Commander. He absolutely hadn’t expected the Commander to actually figure out why he fainted, without even the slightest of hints. And he certainly hadn’t expected his Commander to be so quick to figure out ways to ask questions and interpret his answers in the weeks that followed.

All in all, Obi-Wan was feeling very hopeful. So of course they had the grand luck of running into Xanatos on the very next campaign.

--

The problem with ground campaigns was that it meant you could get captured and tortured, not merely blown out of the sky.

Cody paced the small cell he and his General had been given to occupy, grateful, at the very least, that General Kenobi had insisted that Ghost stay behind, in case they needed to pull an extraction maneuver. The General’s plan had needed two people to make it work, so Cody had insisted on going with him. It had gone sideways, like all missions that the darjetti’se arbitrarily seemed to decide just didn’t get to be a success, and now they were here, in the dungeon of the castle they were supposed to be infiltrating, Cody stripped of his armor and the General with a Force suppressing collar around his neck.

“Do please sit, Commander,” General Kenobi rasped out. “You’re making me tired just watching you fret. Ghost will come for us; they’ve gotten me out of worse situations before.”

“I know, sir,” Cody said, throwing himself onto the ground with a huff. “They can’t get here soon enough. Let me see your collar. Maybe I can pick the lock.” It hadn’t worked the last few times he’d tried, but there was nothing else to do.

The General obligingly tilted his head. “You can just call me Obi-Wan, you know,” he said. “’Sir’ seems a little formal for these accommodations.”

“Only if you call me Cody.” He’d only been examining the collar for a few minutes when footsteps sounded down the corridor.

“Well, if it isn’t little baby Obi-Wan, all grown up!” A rather plain-looking, though impeccably dressed man stopped in front of their cell, lounging against the door as if he needed to make it clear just who held all the power in their situation. Cody glanced at his General, who was the picture of calm. “This picture looks familiar; you’re only missing the bomb on top of that collar! Don’t worry, I brought something to rectify the situation.” He held up another collar. This one had a blinking red light. “Only, I thought, you already have such lovely scars, wouldn’t it be fun if your precious Commander had a matching set?”

That made his General tense up next to him. Cody narrowed his eyes at the man.

“Don’t move,” the man said, almost lazily, and then he stepped into the cell. Of course, Cody immediately charged him, or tried to, but the man held up a hand and then Cody was choking, an invisible hand wrapped around his throat, holding him in place. Wait, no, it was a band. No – Cody crumpled, as whatever pressure holding him still suddenly vanished, and reached up to clutch at his throat. The bomb collar now around his neck somehow was less constricting than whatever Force osik that had been.

“Grab him,” the man ordered. “Let’s find out what intel the 212th has.”

--

Obi-Wan threw himself against the Dark holding him in place yet again. It hadn’t worked the countless times he’d tried before, but what else could he do, stuck in place as he was? He’d been completely useless when his Commander had tried to escape, held fast by Xanatos’ order, and the Sith hadn’t bothered to release him. Now he could only sit and speculate as to what torture his Commander was undergoing. That and throw himself against the chains of the Dark wrapped around him until he heard footsteps returning.

“Still such a good little Jedi pet.” Xanatos sneered from outside his cell. Behind him, dangling between two guards, was his Commander. “You Je’daii are pathetic weaklings, every last one of you. Should I leave you frozen like this, only able to watch as your flesh droid suffers?” He beckoned, and the two men heaved Cody into the cell. Obi-Wan strained even harder against the chains of ‘don’t move’ as Cody landed hard on the ground and lay limp, the bomb collar around his neck forcing his head to rest at an awkward angle.

“Whatever.” Xanatos turned away. “See to him, take care of him, slap him across the face, I don’t care.”

Obi-Wan almost fell over as the restraint keeping him frozen suddenly vanished. He scrambled up on numb legs, almost fell over again, and collapsed into a graceless heap at his commander’s side.

“Commander? Cody? Can you hear me?” He turned Cody over as gently as he could, carefully arranging his head on his lap so the bomb collar wouldn’t dig uncomfortably into his neck, then slapping his cheek as gently as he could as Xanatos’ last order sank its hooks into him. “Are you alright?”

“Gn’rl.” Cody didn’t open his eyes, but he turned his head slightly. “Di’nt say an’thng.”

“That’s” not important, pointless, incredible “good,” Obi-Wan settled on. It might not matter if Cody spilled anything to Xanatos, since Sidious knew it all anyways, but if they wanted Sidious to think Cody didn’t know about him, they’d need to pretend like Obi-Wan hadn’t told Cody all about the Sith and Cody still thought withholding intel from the Separatists was crucial. “You don’t have to say anything, just rest. Ghost will be here soon.” He hoped. With the Force suppressing collar on, they could be halfway across the galaxy or the next hall over for all he knew.

“Mm.” Cody lapsed into silence, and Obi-Wan let him, eyeing the bomb collar strapped around his neck with distaste. Xanatos definitely had his preferred tortures, though, in Obi-Wan’s experience, he was tame compared to some of the other Sith. How much of that was some lingering pity – if it could be called that – for the lineage they shared, Obi-Wan never knew. Certainly, those in Yoda’s lineages got enough targeted hatred from all the other Sith without needing to heap extra on each other. Obi-Wan had always figured the Sith feared Yoda because he was so ancient, he might have untold secrets in his head, and they wanted to make sure he had no one trustworthy to pass them on to (which had definitely failed). Or maybe they were angry he never fell. Or maybe he was just the most consistently available Je’daii to torment. Whatever it was, most of the Je’daii who had been trained by Yoda or Yoda’s padawans just seemed to have it worse, for some reason, so maybe Xanatos couldn’t be bothered to add to it.

Or maybe he had a completely different reason for being marginally less awful than all the other Sith. It was pointless to speculate, not that Obi-Wan had much else to do while Cody rested from whatever Xanatos had done to him.

“Ge’rl.” Or maybe Cody wouldn’t rest.

“Obi-Wan might actually be easier to say,” he told his Commander. “Cody. Look, I’m using your name and everything.”

At that, Cody opened his eyes and his lips quirked into a tiny smile, even as he winced. “Ob-Wn. Know ‘ow t’pick locks?” He tilted his head further into Obi-Wan’s lap, revealing a simple keypad keeping the bomb collar around his lock shut. Obi-Wan wasn’t a whiz, but he actually maybe could slice through this and defuse the bomb. “Don’t wanna wait f’Ghost.”

“I shall do my best, dear,” he promised. After all, it wasn’t like he wanted to be sitting on his shebs when Ghost finally made it to them. They would add it to the tally and mock him relentlessly. No, much better to already be on the way out when they finally caught up.

Chapter Text

Sidious had been kidnapped. Taken right from his rooms in the 500 Republica and held hostage by Count Krell and General Grievous in the Invisible Hand which was anchored in the atmosphere above the Senate District. It was a spectacularly bold move, and Obi-Wan legitimately could not tell if it was all part of Sidious’ grand plan or if Darth Tyrannous had gotten bored of the war games after three years and was attempting to undermine Sidious. Either way, there had been no ransom, no threats, no word of any sort from the Invisible Hand, which hung in the sky causing panic by its very presence among any who knew whose ship that was.

“We have to save him!” It was the first time Anakin had set foot in the Temple since they’d been recalled to Coruscant, and he was entirely too focused on his friend’s kidnapping to notice that there were only a quarter of the people in the Temple who should have been. The Jedi had been slowly but surely evacuating over the past week and a half, but some of the archivists and elders could only go so fast. They were determined to be the last out so they would have time to figure out a way to bring the knowledge the Temple held with them.

“Come on, Obi-Wan, I’ll take the Resolute, you take the Negotiator, we’ll engage with full force and get him free in no time. Then we shoot down the Invisible Hand, and take out Count Krell and General Grievous! This is going to be the worst mistake the Separatists make.”

Obi-Wan hesitated, trading a skeptical glance with Mace. He could see his own desire reflected there, to leave Sidious to the plan of his own making, to abandon secrecy and run – but the Invisible Hand was perfectly positioned to open fire on the Temple and any trying to leave it. And they wanted to give the battalions wiping out droid factories as much time as possible, so the war would falter even after they were gone. Last Obi-Wan had heard through the grapevine, there were a couple of attacks planned for later in today’s cycle. They couldn’t afford to risk being found out now, not when the path forward was obvious.

“Of course I’ll go with you to rescue the Chancellor. But a frontal assault might not be the best move. The Invisible Hand is right above the Senate apartment buildings. If we engage in a firefight right above, it will put a lot of Senators who live here in danger, as well as countless people on the lower levels, should any large debris not be burned up as it comes through the atmosphere.” Which Anakin knew was likely from the many, many firefights he’d been a part of, and he wouldn’t risk anything landing on Padmé like that.

“A better option would be to have the Resolute look like it’s preparing for a standoff, then use the distraction to slip inside the Invisible Hand’s shields on a smaller craft and get the Chancellor out that way. If we can pull this off without a fight, no one on the surface will be in danger.” And Obi-Wan wouldn’t have to reveal that the Negotiator had a lack of available troops to engage in a fight, nor put the people who were on it in danger. And if the 501st pulled off their distraction, they hopefully wouldn’t lose any more brothers either.

Mace looked grumpy, but he didn’t argue with Obi-Wan. “Take a shadow ship. There are a few that have decent enough cloaking that if the Resolute is providing a distraction, you might be able to get close enough to slip through the shields unnoticed.”

“You go comm your Commander to get ready, I’ll comm mine, and we’ll meet at the hangers,” Obi-Wan suggested. “Pick out the best ship for the job.”

“On it!” Anakin was already racing away, still so easy to manipulate, even with his eyes a Sithly yellow and his entirely questionable methods. He'd never do anything to endanger the senator he was obsessed with, even if he would rather pretend the Je'daii temple was made up of oblivious fools who couldn't see the heart eyes he made any time he talked about her.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mace said once he was gone. “We can go now.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said, closing his eyes and centering himself in the Force, still relishing the lack of Dark he’d never even realized had always been wrapped around him. “But we aren’t ready yet. You need more time to get the last of the Jedi out, and going along with this gives us that time. It’s also a chance to put a stop to both Krell and Grievous before they chase us to the ends of the galaxy. It’s the right thing to do.”

“If Sidious did plan this, and that is why he recalled you and Anakin to Coruscant, he might try to push Anakin to sacrifice you in this fight and take over as High General. Those in the Senate who blocked it the first time saying he was too young might be forced to take his rescue of the Chancellor as proof he can handle the burden.”

Obi-Wan nodded. The committees with senators from Alderaan, Corellia, Chandrila, and other planets who had objected strongly to making a barely knighted Je’daii the High General of the GAR likely didn’t even know how much it mattered that Obi-Wan had received command instead. “I know. I don’t think it’ll come to that. Even if Sidious tries to get Anakin to let me die, for better or worse, he is still attached to me. I don’t think Sidious knows how often we saved each other over the past year, and you know what that does to your emotions; you felt it with your troops.”

“What if that’s not a risk the rest of us are willing to take?” Mace clearly wasn’t reassured. “You’ve been the most involved in organizing things between the Jedi and the clones. The rest of us either don’t have commanders of a high enough rank to do anything or still don’t trust them.”

“Cody knows what to do, and he’s already spread that information to those he deems most able to work with it,” Obi-Wan said. “Mace. I need to do this. This is time I can buy. This is my choice.”

Mace looked torn. It was no easy thing, to watch someone walk into danger, but Mace wouldn’t take his choice away from him. “I’m calling it, then,” was what Mace finally said. “The Temple will be empty by the end of the day. You will come back safe and then we’re leaving.”

Obi-Wan nodded. If all went well, they’d really truly be free Jedi by this time tomorrow. But when had anything ever gone as planned?

--

“Why did I not know these existed?”

Obi-Wan found Anakin practically drooling in the hangar over the few ships that were present. “You are about the furthest thing from a shadow,” he said dryly, running his fingers over the sleek lines of metal Anakin was standing next to. “They’re designed for stealth, and I’ve seen you fail to sneak up on a deaf kel dor elder.” That, and most of these ships were unregistered with the Je’daii order, because what the Sith didn’t know about they couldn’t ask for. There had been several more that had taken several clans of younglings already, and whichever ones they didn’t take would likely be leaving the planet in the next hour, then abandoned as soon as possible. Anakin would certainly tell Sidious about them, and that meant they couldn’t stay with the Jedi.

“Well, we’re wasting time,” Anakin said, clambering into a ship. “Captain Rex said he’s good to provide a distraction, he’s got the Resolute and the Negotiator appearing very busy, as if scrambling all our resources and getting ready for a firefight, but it’ll only be effective for so long.”

Obi-Wan followed, choosing a different shadow jet and taking off after Anakin. He kept waiting for something to go wrong: for them to be noticed and shot at, for the Invisible Hand to get tired of the standoff and shoot first at the Resolute, for Anakin to decide on his own that he’d be better off without Obi-Wan and turn to shoot his ship down – but nothing happened. They slipped through the shields of the Invisible Hand with no engagement whatsoever and landed in the hanger without any alarms going off.

“Wow, that was so much easier than I thought it would be!” Anakin gushed, jumping out of his jet. “I can totally do stealth, master, obviously you were wrong to keep me from these beauties all this time.”

Obi-Wan was trying not to let the lack of alarms alarm him. He gave Anakin a half-hearted smile. “Clearly I was. You’ve come a long way since your days of trying to hide from me, at least. Think you can sneak your way to wherever the Chancellor is being kept?”

“After that great performance, how could you doubt me?” Anakin shot back, already out the door.

The Invisible Hand was terrifyingly quiet. Obi-Wan followed Anakin as they made their way through gray corridors lit by red emergency lights, listening for any sound of metal on metal that meant a droid (or certain cyborg) was coming their way. He heard nothing. Where was the trap Sidious had planned in this?

“This goes on too long!” The grating voice of Pong Krell rang out down the corridor. They were obviously getting close, and there hadn’t been even the slightest hint of opposition. “This war will end and I will have my freedom!”

Anakin abandoned stealth at that, running down the corridor and onto the bridge of the Invisible Hand. “The war will end when we take you down!” he declared, launching himself over the various consoles in between him and Count Krell, igniting his lightsaber as he went. “Release the Chancellor this instant!”

Obi-Wan sighed but followed. In front of him, both Sith seemed to have an expression as close to surprise as they ever had on their face – their stealth approach hadn’t really worked, had it? - and Count Krell raised his blades to defend against Anakin’s assault.

“You pathetic worm,” Tyrannous hissed. “You could never replace me. You think you can defeat me?”

Behind him, sitting on a throne with his hands bound to the armrests, Sidious cackled. “I told you the Je’daii would come for me,” he said. “Your death threats are meaningless in the face of my defenders.”

“Death threats!” Anakin threw Tyrannous backwards with a furious look. “You’ll never kill him. You’ll have to go through me first!”

“That’s the plan!” Tyrannous struck again, lashing out with his four sabers almost faster than Anakin could defend against. Obi-Wan slipped in to help him. “I’ll prove I’m more worthy than you’ll ever be!” He threw Obi-Wan backwards and sliced down at Anakin, who flipped out of the way before reengaging with quick, powerful blows.

“Stay out of this fight.”

Obi-Wan, in the middle of pushing himself back to his feet, froze. He glanced over at Sidious. “You can’t be serious.”

“Have I ever been anything but?” The look Sidious gave him was punctuated with the Dark side pulsing around him, a cruel threat Obi-Wan had heard too often to doubt its potency. He wavered, more uncertain than he’d ever been. There was something almost more terrifying about having choices. On the one hand, he could disobey, launching himself back into the fight to protect Anakin, who was clearly struggling to defend against the four-armed besalisk. He could try to launch himself at Sidious, revealing him as a Force-user potentially before he was ready. But both of those options would reveal the Je’daii order’s deception, and he’d come here to buy time. Obi-Wan let himself drop back down to the floor. It wasn’t really a choice. He couldn’t defeat Sidious by himself, and if he revealed that the Sith had no power over him anymore, Sidious would likely give up whatever facade he kept up around Anakin to figure out why.

He listened to the fight going on around him, pretending to be unconscious. Sidious’ order had been vague, but there were only so many ways to retain his dignity and obey. He heard Anakin’s triumphant shout when he defeated Krell, and Sidious’ smooth tones ordering him to end the threat once and for all. He felt more than heard the death in the Force. At least one thing they’d been hoping for had been accomplished, though it did make his blood run cold. What was Sidious planning that he was willing to sacrifice his foremost apprentice? Was he finally going to force Anakin to step into the role he'd been grooming him for?

“Thank you, my boy. I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Sidious said, and Anakin must have been releasing him because his voice came from much closer, tinged with exhaustion and exhilaration.

“Of course, we’d never let them keep you! You’re much too important to the Republic to let the Separatists have. And now we’ve defeated their main leader, so all that’s left is General Grievous and the Separatist Council!”

Obi-Wan decided he was done playing possum. He let out a small groan, one he’d heard many men make when they were waking up in medical, and shifted, shaking his head out. Then he jumped to his feet, as if ready to go running to a fight he didn’t know had ended.

“Oh, master, you missed all the best parts!” Anakin beamed at him from where he was helping Sidious down the stairs of the throne he’d been sitting on. “Count Krell is dead!”

Sure enough, the head of Darth Tyrannous had been cleanly removed from his body, along with several of his limbs. It was excessively violent, and likely just what Sidious had been hoping for. “Well done, Anakin,” he said, meaning it. “Count Krell was no easy opponent. I’m proud of you.”

Anakin puffed up, as he always did when Obi-Wan praised him, and Sidious sent a sour look his way and quickly redirected the conversation. “The war is almost over, with this most crushing victory. I believe I overheard General Grievous say he would be heading to Utapau. It is important to follow after him right away. And someone needs to take out the Separatist Council, which Krell said was on Mustafar. If those two things can be done, the Republic will be whole again.”

“I can do those!” Anakin volunteered, as he always did when Sidious had tasks to be done. "Between Obi-Wan and I, they won't know what hit them."

“Perhaps, with the Count dead, the Separatist Council will be willing to start diplomatic talks,” Obi-Wan said, knowing it was futile. “He was the loudest voice calling for the war.”

“No, they all called for the war, and none of them are going to stop just because one person is dead,” Anakin scoffed. Next to him, Sidious nodded, a sad, sage, entirely fake gesture and gave Obi-Wan a doubtful look.

“Perhaps you should go to Mustafar, dear boy, since General Kenobi clearly doesn’t have what it takes to end the war properly.”

“Yeah! You can track Grievous to Utapau, Obi-Wan. And I’ll practice my stealth on Mustafar, so you can take the 501st with you. You’ll need them against the clankers.”

Obi-Wan shoved his amazement and hope deep down and only let his surprise and disbelief show in the Force. “Are you sure? You won’t need them to back you up?”

“I believe you can do it, Anakin. You clearly are the strongest Je’daii, if the way you defeated Count Krell is any indication.”

“Yeah, Obi-Wan, don’t doubt me so.” Anakin frowned at him. “Take the 501st, so you have someone watching your back.”

Obi-Wan let the conversation go, even though Cody would not have appreciated Anakin's insinuation. “I’ll leave immediately, then, so Grievous doesn’t have too much time to entrench himself on Utapau. I'll take a ship to the Negotiator now.”

“I’ll get you back down to the surface before I leave, Sheev. Good luck, master!”

“The Force be with you,” Obi-Wan said, watching the back of his former padawan walk away from him for what was likely going to be the last time in a while. Whatever Sidious had planned, he wasn't going to stick around for it. He'd comm Mace and let him know where he was going, but he wouldn't be coming back to Coruscant anytime soon that was for sure.

Chapter Text

Grievous and Count Krell had gone too far, kidnapping the Chancellor, but Anakin was forever in awe of the way Sheev managed to turn any and all obstacles around to his advantage. Overhearing the location of the latest base for the Separatist Council had made infiltrating it and wiping out the fools who thought they could stand against the might of the Republic laughably easy. Anakin was absolutely amazing at stealth, no matter what Obi-Wan said.

He made it back to Coruscant before Obi-Wan and the 501st, and went to give the good news to the Chancellor. Now that the CIS leadership was gone, the war could finally end. Grievous was no match for the entire might of the GAR with Obi-Wan leading, so he would also be dealt with shortly, if he hadn't been already.

Sheev listened to the news with a grave sort of delight. “The fools,” he said, shaking his head. “I wish it hadn’t needed to come to this. If only they had recognized the power we had. They would have known it was futile to fight against us. But you did well, my boy, and the Republic is in your debt. Everyone will have to see that you deserve the position of High General of the GAR. You have accomplished too much to be denied that honor.”

Anakin sat up straighter, pleased as he always was to hear praise from his oldest friend. And making High General! As well as sitting on the Je’daii Council! Sheev had pushed to make him a High General in charge of the 212th at the beginning of the war, but there had been too many doubters in the Senate. He’d proven them all wrong now. Padmé was going to be so proud of him.

“But I’m afraid your next mission will be the hardest one yet.” Sheev had a sorrowful look on his face, all delight from the good news Anakin had brought him gone. “I’ve finally confirmed that the Je’daii are traitors. My sources tell me that they are going to attack me on the anniversary of the Ruusan Reformation, which is in just a few days. They are going to coordinate efforts to attack the Senate building, the 500 Republica, and some of my safehouses on Naboo in order to be sure that they take me out. They have been working with the Separatists all along, it seems.”

“I knew it,” Anakin snarled, suddenly furious. “I knew the Je’daii were rotten from the inside out. Too many plans that should have been secret were obviously known by Count Krell and General Grievous. They probably had been passing information along this entire time, just like you suspected. It won’t happen. They won’t get the chance to attack you. As soon as the 501st gets back, we’ll march on the Temple and round them all up. Not even the younglings will be spared our interrogation.”

Sheev sighed. “What high heights the Je'daii have fallen from. I’m afraid we have nowhere that can contain that many Force-sensitive people. How will you ensure my safety, High General?”

A thrill went through Anakin at the use of his new title. He waved a hand dismissively. “What are a few less Separatist-sympathizers in the world? We’ll only keep the ones who might still be swayed to see our strength.”

“Good, my apprentice.” The word was almost a purr, coming out of Sheev’s mouth, but before Anakin could wonder at the odd address, the sound of explosions rocked the air. War-ingrained reflexes took over, and Anakin was across the room and pulling Sheev into a protective embrace, dropping them both to the floor (gently, the Chancellor was old and frail) and huddling over his friend. After a second, he realized that the explosions were too far away to be immediately endangering Sheev, and he rolled himself into a low crouch.

“Stay here,” he told Sheev lowly, just in case there was something happening here that the explosions were a distraction for. Perhaps the Je’daii plot, come early? Sheev’s sources had rarely been wrong before, but it could happen. Only, when he got to the window, the source of the explosion was obvious. And made no sense.

The Je’daii Temple, a prominent fixture on the skyline of Coruscant, was gone. Where there had been five massive towers standing on a tall pedestal, now there were five pillars of smoke rising into the air. Even as he watched, stunned, the pedestal began crumbling as well, more explosions going off in the center of the building. It should have blown the entire thing outwards, but instead, it was crumbling in on itself, as if being sucked into a black hole in the center of the Temple. And then it was over. The entire building was reduced to rubble. And the Force had remained placid and calm throughout the entire collapse, as if not a single Je’daii had been affected by it.

“No.” Sheev’s snarl came from right beside Anakin, startling him. “They didn’t. They couldn’t. They were supposed to attack me.” He spun around, his eyes blazing – literally, Anakin noted, slightly curious, his yellow eyes were actually glowing – as he reached for his comm. The figure of a clone trooper – Anakin couldn’t tell which one it was, honestly, even with paint jobs they all sort of just blurred together – popped up, and Palpatine said, “Commander, execute order 66.” He hung up before the clone had a chance to respond, dialing another number, and ordering the clone who’d answered the same thing, then again, until he’d told fifteen or so clones to execute order 66.

“What’s order 66?” Anakin asked when he’d finished. For a second, Sheev turned to him and there was a strange, unfathomably angry expression on his face… and then it vanished, so fast Anakin had probably just imagined it. Sheev was still the kindly father figure he’d never had.

“I have long suspected the Je’daii to not be fully loyal to me,” he started, a wise look on his face. “I got wind of the clone army they ordered long ago and, out of fear that the Je’daii might try to turn the clones against the Republic, I had the Kaminoans put in some security measures. The clones will hunt down any and all Je’daii and make sure they are brought to justice for their crimes, especially those who thought they could escape Coruscant. The Je’daii must have bombed their own Temple to throw suspicion off them for attacks on me that are supposed to happen in the next few days, but there were no deaths from it. We’ll need to track where they all went.”

Anakin nodded, because that made sense, then paused. “How did you know there were no deaths?” he asked. He knew because he’d not felt any power surges in the Force that had always accompanied the deaths of his troopers on the frontlines. But he’d been here with Sheev for the last few minutes and no one had come to give him any reports about the status of the Temple.

Sheev paused, and then he laughed. It was a crueler sound than Anakin had heard from him. His eyes began to glow again. “My boy, you poor, foolish, blind idiot. You think you are the only one with the power of the Dark side?” He laughed again, and then he was there, in the Force, in a way he’d never been before. It was bitingcoldpain and darkdarkdark and it drove Anakin to his knees when he pushed back against it. Not even Count Krell had been this strong. “There is so much you don’t know. You think you have strength? You think you have power? Only I have true power in the galaxy. Only I know the true strength of the Dark side.”

A ping on Sheev’s tablet broke the silence that followed that statement before it could get too awkward, which Anakin was grateful for. He had no idea what to say to this. How long had Sheev been a Force-user? Was this why he knew so much about Dark techniques Obi-Wan was always unwilling to touch with a ten-foot pole?

Sheev howled in rage at whatever was on his tablet, the Force swirling around him into a condensed storm of Dark. Anakin scrambled to his feet, considering backing away. He had never seen Sheev as anything less than composed and in control, and this side of him was rather startling.

“See! See what I mean?” Sheev threw the tablet against the wall, shattering it. “They claim I am a Sith, that this whole war is my doing. They think anyone will fall for their paltry lies while their home is turned to rubble and they are dying in scores on the battlefield as traitors?”

He paused, the Dark side pulsing around him, as if he was searching the Force for something. “Where are the deaths?” he muttered, eyes darting back and forth. “Why aren’t they dying?” He howled again, rage filling the Force, and then the Darkness around him lashed out, coming straight for Anakin.

Blindsided and bewildered, Anakin tried to bat it away and failed completely. The Force seized him around the throat, and then he was in the air, feet thrashing helplessly against nothing as invisible gauntlets squeezed around his neck.

“You seek strength and freedom, do you not?” Sheev hissed, yellow eyes – Sith eyes, Anakin thought wildly – fixed on him. “I can teach you. Do you have what it takes to be my apprentice? I know you’ve been serving that soft fool Kenobi. I want each and every Jedi traitor dead. You fear for Padmé, do you not? As my apprentice, you will learn all you need to protect her from anything.”

Anakin could barely hear Palpatine’s instructions over the blood pounding in his head and his own wheezing gasps as he suffocated, still dangling in Palpatine’s Force grip. Then the pressure around his neck vanished and he landed hard on the ground. Coughing, he pushed himself up to his knees, and bowed his head, following instincts from his earliest childhood years, hearing his mother’s voice ringing in his ears.

“Yes, master.”

“Dismissed,” Palpatine said, turning around, and Anakin shakily stood and resisted the urge to run to the door. His feet moved on autopilot, his thoughts strangely blank, until he blinked and realized he was in front of Padmé’s door in 500 Republica. Another blink and he was on her couch.

Depuvellta. Palpatine was depuvellta. He was the monster his mother had warned him about, and Anakin had trusted him. Had believed everything he’d said about the Je’daii. And – nothing made sense. Why hadn't Qui-Gon said anything? He was supposed to warn him!

A chime from his comm startled Anakin out of his thoughts, and he looked up to realize that the sun had almost set while he’d been turning his thoughts over in his head. Shaking himself, he got up and opened the message.

A holo of Obi-Wan popped up. Immediately, anger surged up. He was a traitor to the Republic. He’d known all about the Je’daii order’s plan to destroy Sheev. Who was a Sith. Actually, Obi-Wan had always agreed with everything Palpatine had said. Why was he sending Anakin messages now? Was he not a traitor?

“Anakin. I need to start this message off by saying I am sorry. I have failed you, countless times over, and though there are reasons, it doesn’t change the fact that I failed you, lied to you, misled you, and endangered you, and for that, I am deeply, truly sorry. You deserved better.”

That – maybe if Anakin had heard that before the meeting he’d just had with the Chancellor hearing that would have sparked an unquenchable rage in him. He did deserve better, and Obi-Wan should be sorry he hadn't been able to provide it. But now – Anakin suddenly felt like a padawan again, new to the Temple, confused about everything going on around him, half of it in some indecipherable language, and Obi-Wan was there, just being a buffer between him and the overwhelming world around him.

“The Sith are real,” Holo-Obi-Wan continued. “Very real. Chancellor Palpatine is the Sith Master, Darth Sidious. It was at his command that I kept this information from you, a command I didn’t willingly follow, but one I was bound to, by a sii-contract that has been in place since the Ruusan Reformation a thousand years ago. Every Je’daii in the Temple was under this contract, forced to follow the whim and will of any Sith who chose to order them around. Every time I fainted, it was because I was fighting a compulsion from one of them, usually one I believed would hurt you. There were so many things I wanted to tell you, starting with this, Anakin: Qui-Gon never abandoned you. He died, on Naboo, all those years ago. Darth Maul murdered him, so he couldn’t tell you anything. He was always much, much better than me at finding loopholes in the orders Sith gave us. Sidious refused to let us tell you because he thought it’d be fun to watch you hate the man who raised me.”

Anakin felt his eyes widen. Qui-Gon was dead? Had always been dead? And Obi-Wan’s fainting spells – Anakin had stopped caring about those a long time ago. They’d been terrifying, at first, and then just a normal part of living with Obi-Wan. They were because Obi-Wan was vellta-depuan? How many compulsions had he been fighting?

“There is more, so much more that I was forbidden from telling you, and so many things I did say that weren’t what I wanted to. Even in response to things you said to me. You probably aren’t aware of this, Anakin, but you’re a Sith. The actions you started to take during the war, tapping into the Dark side as much as you did, you became someone seeking power for power’s sake, uncaring of the suffering you caused as you did so. I knew it was going to happen, I knew that was what Sidious was raising you for, and yet I grieved, the first time you gave me an order I couldn’t refuse. The boy Qui-Gon had spoken of was such a kind, compassionate boy, and I failed you by being unable to show you how to keep those traits alive when those enslaving us demanded you lose them.”

The holo kept playing, but Anakin couldn’t listen anymore, couldn’t believe his ears. The Dark side – it wasn’t bad! Anger and hatred were more powerful! Anakin had laid waste to countless droids, on the battlefields using those emotions. It’s how he’d earned the title The Hero with No Fear! And Obi-Wan – was he calling him depur? Worse than depur - depukrekta? How dare he! Anakin was – Anakin was -

Anakin could suddenly remember, in vicious clarity, just a few weeks ago when he’d told Obi-Wan to freeze. He’d meant it jokingly, complaining that Obi-Wan always walked so fast these days, and hadn’t really expected Obi-Wan to do anything more than roll his eyes – but Obi-Wan had stopped. Had frozen, balanced on the balls of one foot, the other in the air, mid-step. Anakin had laughed, thinking Obi-Wan was playing along with the joke, caught up, and then kept going. He’d only made it a few steps when he realized Obi-Wan wasn’t walking with him. He’d turned around and Obi-Wan was still standing there – frozen. He’d told him to come on, we get it, you think you’re so funny, but we have places to be. Obi-Wan had started moving again, and they’d continued as if nothing had happened.

If. If Obi-Wan was right. That was. No. Anakin was not going to believe that. He was not depur. He wasn’t. Still, his hands shook as he pressed play on the message again, listening to it from the top.

“I do not tell you this to condemn you, Anakin. The information you had, that I’d been forced to give you, was incomplete, and I cannot hold your ignorance against you. You were acting on what you believed right, when you tapped into the Dark side and when you fell. I only tell you this to explain why you are getting this message, instead of me telling you this in person.” The holo-Obi-Wan paused, visibly taking a deep breath.

“The Je’daii order is free. The terms of the sii-contract that were written into the Ruusan Reformation expired a few days ago. We’ve been working on a plan to make sure that the Sith have no way to trap us into a new one. We’re leaving Coruscant. By the time you get this message, we’re probably already gone, and we’ve taken the clones with us. The Sith had slave chips implanted into their brains, and we couldn’t leave them to be turned into their slaves when that was exactly what we are escaping from. You were deemed too high risk to be included in our plan, and I couldn’t disagree. I'm sorry. I know you trust Sidious more than you trust me. Honestly, if Sidious hasn’t told you already, you probably won’t believe me when I say he’s a Sith, and not just any Sith, but the Sith Master, the most powerful Dark side user the galaxy currently has.”

At least Obi-Wan knew him. If he hadn’t just been choked out by Palpatine, he wouldn’t have believed a word Obi-Wan said about him. But if Obi-Wan was right about Palpatine… what else might he be right about?

“I have to go. There is so much more I want to say, but I don’t even know if you care to hear it. We will be releasing a message to the entire galaxy, detailing more about the truth of the Je'daii Order and the Sith over the past thousand years, and I hope you’ll read it and not dismiss it as lies and propaganda, which Sidious will certainly try to claim it is. In case you have figured out Sidious is a Sith, and are tasked with hunting us down, I will also say that this is a pre-recorded message I stored in the Temple’s servers. You won’t be able to track it further than Coruscant.” The holo Obi-Wan glanced away again. “Goodbye, Anakin. I’m sure we’ll meet again, and how that meeting will go depends on how you choose to take this information. But more than anything else, remember this. You are my brother. I love you.”

The holo vanished.

Anakin didn’t know how long he’d sat there in the dark, staring at nothing, trying to wrap his head around everything, when the door opened. Padmé strode in, muttering angrily to herself. She flicked on the lights, threw her bag to the floor, and banged open one of the cupboards, the one Anakin knew she kept her candles in. She pulled one out and lit it, then paused, taking a moment to breathe in the scent. Anakin couldn’t help but relax as he watched her, his angel, perfect in every way, straighten up and visibly pull herself together. His angel would be able to help him figure out what to do.

Padmé turned around and let out a shriek when Anakin stood up from the couch. She sagged back against the counter, pressing a hand to her belly where their kid was cradled.

“Oh, Ani, don’t do that! You scared me! It’s not healthy! How long have you been here?”

“All day, or near enough.”

“Did you hear the news, then?” Padmé turned around and started to make tea, until Anakin caught her around the waist from behind and pulled her into a hug, burying his face in her neck. She smelled like the wildflower and ocean candle – she only ever pulled that one out when she was really stressed and missing home. “The Je’daii deserted the Republic, the Chancellor ordered them all killed, and then he declared himself emperor! And the Senate applauded! Our democracy is dead, and they all cheered. How could Palpatine do such a thing?”

“He’s a Sith,” Anakin said, as if that might explain everything. And maybe it did – he apparently didn’t know what Sith were really like.

Padmé turned around in his arms and pushed him back a little, so she could see his face. “Excuse me, what?” she demanded.

Anakin let her go so he could fetch his comm. “Obi-Wan sent me this,” he said, handing it to her. “But I can confirm that Palpatine is a Sith. He Force choked me. Though, Obi-Wan believes I’m also a Sith, so I don’t know what that means, exactly. Or why it’s a big deal.”

“What?”

Padmé grabbed the comm and listened to the message, her face screwed up in concentration. She really was perfect, Anakin thought as he watched her. She’d make a good empress, if democracy really was dead. Sidious would have to die, but it wasn’t like Padmé liked him. He told her as much, after she finished listening to the message.

“WHAT?”

Chapter Text

The war was awful, traumatic, and needless. Every Je’daii who wasn’t pulling strength from the suffering, pain, hatred, and fear it generated wished it wasn’t happening, wished it had never happened, wished they’d been able to stop it.

And yet. The past three years had forced them to develop codes, secure channels, and safety networks to keep in touch with each other without the Sith figuring out what they were saying. They had learned, in a trial under fire, how to communicate effectively, how to share plans with each other, and how to organize themselves and the clones under their command (though it couldn’t go unsaid that a large part of these lessons were learned from the clones themselves, who had been more than willing to share the plethora of knowledge they had on wartime efficiency). And, crucially, they were better than ever at hiding their plans from the Sith, a horrifyingly necessary tactic to give them an edge in the pointless battles they’d be sent to fight.

So when the first few reached out with the knowledge that the contract was broken, that it was possible the Sith didn’t know, and that there was a plan in place to run – the news spread through the Jedi faster than it ever could have if not for the war. Plans were made, troops and supplies were organized, and rendezvous points were set, all using the skills they had been forced to learn over the past three years.

For the Jedi not on Coruscant, the plan was a simple one. As soon as each Jedi was sure they would not be missed by the Sith in a way that could jeopardize anyone else’s escape, they were to vanish however they felt would be most effective. They could fake their deaths, share the truth about their enslavement with those who might hide them, or just disappear into the night. Those on the frontlines of the war were asked to wait until almost the very end of the two weeks before making their escape, to hide the disappearance of the rest of the Jedi. They were also encouraged to subtly speak with their clone commanders, to see if they were aware of what was going on and, if so, to bring them with when they finally ran.

This was made even easier by Sidious (obviously preparing for whatever plot he thought the Jedi might be making to attack him) arranging for Count Krell to send the last of his droids out to target crucial planets all across the galaxy. The battalions of the GAR were scrambled in response, almost every single one being sent away from Coruscant, giving the Jedi a place to run from and simultaneously ensuring the Sith weren’t around the Temple to notice people vanishing. Anakin was the one Sith on Coruscant who might have had cause to visit, but he spent all his free time at the 500 Republica. It was extremely obvious what he was doing there, and it was just as obvious he was trying to keep it a secret. The Jedi tried to just as obviously believe they bought it and all but hustled him out the door. Because while the Jedi already out in the galaxy just needed to pick a time and run, it was the Jedi who were on Coruscant, the younglings and the elders who lived in the temple, that were in the most danger and would be the hardest to smuggle away from the Sith.

--

Cody watched as the drop ship bringing in the latest supply of rations from Coruscant landed gently on the hanger bay, touching down slower and softer than he’d ever seen the GAR pilots perform. A pair of troopers jumped out immediately, snapping a sharp salute to Cody as they helped a third trooper wobble stiffly out of the ship.

The third trooper reached up and pulled their bucket off, revealing a distinctly not clone face.

“Commander,” the Jedi said, looking nervous and elated at the same time. “Thank you.”

Cody waved the gratitude away. “How are the cadets?” he asked, watching as the boxes labeled rations were unloaded with more gentleness and care than his vode gave their fully charged blasters. As each one was set down and pried open, a Jedi cadet was carefully pulled up, looking no more than 3 – natborn 6, Cody supposed – and set on their feet. Boil and Waxer looked thrilled at the influx of kids on their ship. Cody was slightly more concerned about the logistics.

“They’re alright,” the Jedi said. “This is an adventure to them. They’re a bit too young to understand the scope of things, but so long as we frame it like a game, they’re going to be alright. The next group slated to come up will need a bit more reassurance – the dragonbat clan is a few years older.”

Cody nodded. The Negotiator was using the time on Coruscant to resupply as many things as they could. Obi-Wa had told the Senate they were preparing for the last push of the war. The boxes they were picking up were supposedly carrying rations, spare armor parts, weapons, blacks, medical supplies, spare engineering equipment, and everything else they could possibly need. Instead, three-quarters of the supply ships were carrying Jedi evacuating from the temple, starting with the youngest first. Longer boxes, usually containing replacement ship parts or crates of blasters were being opened to reveal togrutas and twi’leks, wookies and besaslisks, and all manner of species that couldn’t be smuggled out in other ways.

Every ship that went down to the surface was also supposedly bringing a full batch of clone troopers, there on leave and ready to enjoy the city. In fact, each ship was bringing a full set of clone trooper armor, willingly loaned by the men of the 212th and 501st. The armor was distributed to all elders in the temple who were able to fit into it, any senior initiates who could be trusted to understand the situation they were in and what was at stake, and, with some hesitation, as many of the Coruscant Guard who could be reached in time.

Cody and Bones had been concerned when Obi-Wan had approached them about the Coruscant Guard coming with them. Not because they didn’t want to save their brothers – they did, desperately, but because the guard’d had their chips activated, none of them had taken the biovirus Healer Che had developed. Saving their brothers wouldn’t do much good if one of them decided to tell the Senate where they had gone, and putting the Jedi tubies and cadets at risk didn’t seem worth it. But eventually, after much arguing, they decided to take as many as they could. They didn’t know if they would be able to come back to Coruscant for them, and if nothing else, they could keep them sedated or locked up if they proved to be an issue. They would have to try.

Currently, they had approximately 1,500 younglings and their minders running wild through the halls of the ship, and there were another 2,500 Jedi and 1,500 Coruscant Guard still on Coruscant. Two thousand or so of those would be on the Negotiator, and most of the Coruscant Guard would be on the Resolute, another measure of protection for the Jedi little ones. When the Negotiator and the Resolute were assigned a mission and deployed once again, they would be ferried up in their borrowed armor, with Coruscant none the wiser.

--

“Cody,” Obi-Wan said, stepping off the shadow ship he had taken to the confrontation on the Invisible Hand. Cody didn’t need to be in the hangar to greet him, but after such a ridiculous stunt like that, he preferred to see his General unharmed through his own bucket feed. “We have gotten a heading for General Grievous. Prepare the Negotiator and the Resolute to pursue; we leave as soon as we have everyone on the ships.”

“And what is our heading?” Cody said, nodding to Waxer and Boil behind him to get started on that process. They would know how many Jedi and Coruscant Guard would need to go where, and how to get them settled in.

“Utapau,” Obi-Wan said. “At least, the Resolute will need to make it there. Have you noticed any issues with the hyperspace drive on the Negotiator lately?”

“None were reported.”

“A shame. I do believe I sense a problem there, one that might cause the Negotiator to spin out of control and not make it to the fight with Grievous. It might even cause the ship to explode, if it’s obvious there are no trackers or signals coming from it. I will take the Resolute to finish the fight with Grievous.”

“Noted.” That was a relief, that they weren’t going to bring tubies and cadets into the battle with them. Faking the Negotiator’s loss was something they’d been preparing for. Crys had been combing over the ship with fine-toothed scanners, looking for all the ways the darjetti might track them. Once they came to a stop somewhere, it wouldn’t take a team led by him too long to find and disable everything. But leaving the General alone to fight Grievous… “I’ll prepare a squad to accompany you on Utapau,” Cody decided. “The 501st doesn’t know you as well as we do.”

Obi-Wan opened his mouth, clearly intending to argue, and Cody gave him a flat look. “Assuming I’m reading the situation correctly, this is the last fight of the war we’re going to be involved in. There’s not going to be much longer until we’re all safe. You won’t die on us now.”

Obi-Wan closed his mouth again and bowed his head. “Alright. Don’t take more than can be spared here. We need to make this ship as untraceable as possible.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” Cody said, grinning. “There are more than enough willing hands. The Negotiator won’t know what hit her.”

Chapter Text

They’d done it.

Grievous was dead. The war was over. The Negotiator had been reported as lost, and they wouldn’t even bother with the subterfuge for the Resolute. Cody wasn’t sure how Obi-Wan had received a signal in the middle of the battle, but somehow, in the same breath as he’d confirmed the end of Grievous, he’d confirmed the complete evacuation of the Je’daii Temple. Just as soon as Obi-Wan got back from wherever he’d been battling the cyborg, they’d be leaving the Republic, running to freedom with all the other Jedi. There’d be a few pitstops, of course, to strip the Resolute of any tracers, rendezvous with other Jedi, and drop off any clones who didn’t want to come with them (there would be a few, eager to experience freedom and try to make their own way, but not nearly as many as Cody thought Obi-Wan was expecting. The Jedi had earned their loyalty.)

Obi-Wan appeared in sight, seeming mostly whole and only slightly singed, and Cody blew out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the 501st to watch Obi-Wan’s back, it was just that the few men of the 212th he’d brought with him had a better idea of how Obi-Wan worked than General Skywalker’s men. Between them, they’d managed to get as many people through this last engagement with the enemy as they could.

As Obi-Wan came to a stop next to him, the giant lizard mount he’d somehow acquired tossing her head, Cody’s comm beeped. Glancing at it, Cody froze. That was the code for the Chancellor’s office. Almost against his will, his eyes flicked back to Obi-Wan, who looked back at him grimly.

“Time to test how well we’ve evaded the trap, Cody,” Obi-Wan said. “You won’t hurt me. I won’t let you.”

With that reassurance, Cody took a deep breath and accepted the comm.

“Commander,” said the seething form of Darth Sidious. “Execute Order 66.”

He vanished from view, likely to comm the other Marshal Commanders, and Cody remained where he was, frozen, waiting for…

Well, he didn’t know what he was waiting for. This was clearly something Sidious thought he’d recognize and respond to without hesitation. But nothing was happening. No emptiness flooding his brain, no compulsion, no idea, even, what Order 66 entailed. He spun to Obi-Wan, smiling so wide it almost hurt. “You did it, General. You saved us.”

Obi-Wan looked at him softly, laying a hand on his arm and squeezing. “Some of you,” he said quietly, as if trying not to burst Cody’s bubble. “There were still some troopers serving under Sith generals that we couldn’t get the biovirus to. I’m sorry.”

Cody wasn’t going to let anything burst his bubble. “We’ll find a way to fix it, now that we aren’t on a time crunch and working against compulsions,” he said, determined. “We can find a way. You know they’ll be the first ones sent after us, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities to snatch them away from the Sith and make sure they’re okay. But we’re going to be okay, Obi-Wan, all of us.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Let’s get going then. We’ve got a few stops to make on our way to freedom.”

--

All the Jedi in the field had made their own plan to escape, doing what they believed the Force was leading them to do to ensure their safety and the safety of their fellow Jedi. Every Jedi was told a different location and time to reconvene with the others who were making their escape, and for every Jedi they passed the message onto, they picked a separate time and location, to create as many possible chances for any Sith sympathizers to reveal themselves and prevent any one person from being able to spill other’s locations if the Sith asked. Only the Jedi Council knew the actual final destination, a planet in wild space where the Republic would have no authority to demand their return. The goal was to set up a new Temple, somehow, one hidden and secure from any Sith powers that would be scouring the galaxy for them. Possibly several different Temples, so if one was found, they wouldn’t all go down together. They were planning on making appearances in the galaxy, trying to fix some of the catastrophes they’d had a hand in making over the past one thousand years, but their younglings and elders would have a place to be safe, to grow up or grow old in peace, and not have to worry about the state of the galaxy.

Obi-Wan was waiting on Jabiim, the rendezvous he'd given to the Jedi he'd explained the plan to. The Negotiator and the Resolute and those taking refuge on them had already gone ahead, to the next rendezvous point, the first foray into wild space. As it turned out, several explora-corps Jedi had navigated this area and had decent enough star maps to get several hyperspace jumps away from Republic Space. Of course, they weren’t perfect, so relying on the Force to listen for obstacles was important, and one of the many reasons they believed wild space would be safer for them than anywhere in the Republic.

The safety, of course, was their main priority. Sidious, somehow, had persuaded the Senate that turning the Republic into an Empire with him as the Emperor was exactly what they needed in order to recover from the Je’daii’s defection. With the Separatist threat non-existent, he'd taken control of their droid army (as if he hadn’t been able to do that the entire time) and sent them after the Je’daii, along with the clone battalions the Jedi had been unable to reach with the biovirus, which, unfortunately, mostly consisted of the other Marshal Commanders. They were still led by about a thousand Sith generals, which had caused some setbacks as they worked to free them, but Cody and the other men with him assured the Jedi that they didn’t blame them for the delays. They would save them eventually.

The formation of the Empire had caused a few other setbacks, especially among the planets the Jedi had been hoping to ally with. They had never wanted to abandon the Republic entirely and had been planning on reaching out to planets that might be willing to host or fund relief missions, including Alderaan, Naboo, Chandrila, Corellia, and hundreds of others. But, with the creation of the Empire, individual planets no longer had the authority to work on independent projects – and being caught working with a Jedi would be considered treason. Though, the working conditions that had immediately been implemented on all Empire planets were so akin to slavery, the Jedi Council was predicting it wouldn’t be long until a rebellion rose up. And when it did, they would be willing to help it however they needed. Honestly, with the way the Empire was setting itself up to be, Obi-Wan was certain the Force had guided him to pick Jabiim as his rendezvous planet. Jabiim had a history of rebellions, and he’d been learning a lot about hit-and-run tactics designed to weaken a much more numerous enemy while he was laying low here.

Now, though, he was waiting for a ship from Dex to arrive, one Luminara had asked for him to arrange. He hadn’t known why, at the time, but when he’d seen the news after leaving Utapau and had been stunned (and relieved beyond words) at the footage of the Temple collapsing in on itself, he suspected he was waiting for whomever the clever saboteurs were. Dex, of course, had been entirely willing to help smuggle people off Coruscant, even before Obi-Wan had managed to tell him what they were running from. He’d been incensed to learn the truth that had been under his nose the entire time.

The ship Obi-Wan was waiting for slid smoothly into its assigned dock in the hangar, despite looking as if it had just come from a fight. The hatch popped open, and a pair of young women came out. Luminara’s former padawan, Barriss, strode down, all the calm dignity of the Mirialan present in her stride. The togruta next to her was walking backwards down the ramp and clearly poking fun at Barriss, her amusement shining in the Force.

“Stop worrying, we made it here in one piece, didn’t we? And now we just get to take it easy until we get some further instructions and you get to show me all the fancy world-navigating skills a knight has. It’ll be fun!”

“I still can’t believe you’ve never been to an outer rim planet before,” Barriss grumbled. “How old are you again?”

“Still an initiate!” the togruta said cheerfully. “Though I have a good feeling about the future. Come on, can’t you already just feel the hope in the air?”

She was still an initiate? Obi-Wan could feel the determination and strength in her Force presence. She would make a brilliant padawan. And she was clearly using her jokes to set Barriss at ease, easing her away from the dark that had settled around many of the young knights who had been exposed to horrors no person should have to see on the frontlines of the war. It reminded Obi-Wan of what he used to do to help Quinlan. Reaching out with his own Force presence, Obi-Wan brushed against the two ladies’ shields, making the initiate snap her head around and almost fall over. Barriss reacted much more calmly, sliding her arm through her friend’s and forcing her to walk sedately to where Obi-Wan was waiting.

“Jaieh,” Barriss said, greeting Obi-Wan with a deep nod instead of the usual bow. Obi-Wan smiled at her. Clearly she had done some undercover ops at some point.

“Barriss,” he said. “And who is your friend?”

“Ahsoka,” the togruta said, practically vibrating out of her skin.

“Call me Ben. I’ve got a nice room waiting for us in the city while we talk business. There are some other friends there too.” Rex and Cody had refused to let him go alone, though thankfully he’d managed to talk them out of a full squad, only taking a few of the men. They’d also been eager to learn tactics from the rebels on Jabiim, so perhaps their coming along had been the will of the Force.

“Woah,” Ahsoka breathed as they walked through the city, taking everything in with wide eyes. “It’s so… different from Coruscant. You can see poor people and the sky at the same time! What’s the culture like on this planet? What are their main exports? How long have you been here? How are you paying? What is the financial state of the, uh, group? What is the plan, anyway?”

She had her mouth open as if to keep asking questions, but Barriss elbowed her in the side, making her wheeze as her breath caught.

“You have to wait for answers,” Barriss said, primly folding her hands by her side again. “You can’t learn anything if you can’t listen.”

Ahsoka rolled her eyes and turned to Obi-Wan. “Well?”

And Obi-Wan – laughed. The sheer joy in learning Ahsoka was radiating into the Force was contagious and refreshing. Now that there wasn’t a war going on and they were free from the Sith, hopefully she would find a master soon. Anyone would be blessed to have her.

“Let’s get inside first, and I’ll be more than happy to answer all your questions,” he promised. “We’ve got time. And we’re free to talk.” Joy bloomed in the Force at the reminder.

They were free. And they would stay that way.

Chapter Text

Bail looked out over Federian. What had been a beautiful ball of emerald from space had slowly grown more battered as they approached, verdant green foliage parting to reveal smoking craters and destroyed buildings. It was only to be expected. Federian had just finished a civil war and Alderaan, ever determined to be the leader of compassionate justice in the galaxy, had been one of the first in the Senate to send their relief ships. Bail’s mentor, Antilles, had recommended Bail assist the relief efforts, both to see the realities of the need on the ground and to model the type of servant leadership Alderaan valued so strongly. It was, Antilles had told him, part a political move, to gain sympathetic exposure, and part a reminder of why public service was necessary and the good that senators should always strive to do.

The ship touched down gently, far more gently than any pilot Bail had ever had before, especially with such an uneven, rubble-filled surface to land on. Bail glanced down at the young man in the pilot's seat next to him, but the congratulations he wanted to offer died on his lips.

The Je’daii who had been sent to accompany them on this mission was staring out the front of the ship, but it didn’t look like he was seeing it. He had bags under his eyes, and though his robes covered it now, Bail knew he had some barely healed blaster burns on his arms. When he had seen them in the kitchen, earlier, Bail had, perhaps, been a bit too vocal in his disapproval of them. It was the first time he’d run into the Je’daii, halfway through their 6-hour trip from the Core, and he’d been so shocked he’d asked if he was on the right ship. This was a mission with a risk factor high enough that the senate had recommended a Je’daii escort, and if the Je’daii were going to send someone along with senators on dangerous missions, they should know to send someone in full health! This – the word kid had only barely been held back, even in his thoughts, – young man clearly needed some time to rest and heal before visiting a dangerous world.

The Je’daii had only smiled, a bland, slightly swollen smile that hadn’t even pretended to reach his eyes, and informed Bail that he was, in fact, on the right ship, if this was the ship bound for Federian, and that Bail was welcome to send any complaints about his service or feedback regarding the selection process to the Je’daii High Council at his leisure. Bail was absolutely going to do that, as soon as he got back from Federian, but for now, he had a relief mission to assist, and for that, he needed the pilot to finish turning off the ship so they could unload the supplies.

How did one address a Je’daii? “Knight Kenobi? Are you” – alright, he wanted to ask, but he should have asked that earlier, so professionalism would have to do – “ready to get these supplies on the ground?”

The Je’daii startled, shaking his head and flipping through the buttons of the final shut-off sequence. Bail felt the ship shudder into stillness beneath him. “Of course. Though, I’m not a knight. I’m just a padawan.” He turned and slipped out the door of the cockpit.

Bail followed. “A padawan? I thought Je’daii weren’t allowed to do solo missions until you were knighted. Aren’t you supposed to have a master?”

“That is usually the case,” Padawan Kenobi agreed. “Though, as a senior padawan, there can be exceptions made. My jaieh is unable to join us for this mission, but this is the type of mission he would usually be sent on, so here I am.”

That was… Bail huffed. “We requested a Je’daii escort because the senate deemed the political tensions unstable enough to require protection and possibly negotiating and we were told no one provides better services than a Je’daii. We would have found alternate means of protection if we had known they would send an injured child!”

Ahead of him, Padawan Kenobi stiffened. “I’m eighteen. I haven’t been a child in a long time. And if you have any complaints about my service, I have already informed you that you may pass them along to the Je’daii High Council. They would be more than happy to teach me how to improve my behavior.”

Bail winced, recognizing that he had, once again, unintentionally offered insult. He still needed to get better at thinking before he spoke. “I have no complaints about your service or your behavior,” he assured the padawan as they stepped off the spaceship and made their way over to the rest of the retinue, who were talking with some planetary officials. “Yet I can’t help but feel Alderaan’s request for a Je’daii escort was not taken seriously. While I have no doubts that you are able to perform marvelously when you are well-rested and in good health, you are not. Are the Je’daii so stretched thin that they must resort to sending injured padawans out without their masters?”

“You may pass your complaints on to the Je’daii High Council,” Padawan Kenobi repeated. Then, he tensed and whirled around. “No, those im’kaien didn’t.”

“What?” was all Bail managed to say when something behind them blew up.

Padawan Kenobi reacted instantly, almost before Bail even had time to do more than register the sound, seizing Bail around the waist and launching them forward with a jump that had to be Force assisted. A wave of blistering heat followed them, and then they were crashing to the ground among the very surprised faces of the Alderaan relief party.

Bail twisted and looked back. The ship behind theirs had just blown up. It would have boded poorly no matter what, but the explosion hadn’t been small. Their own vessel had been sheered in half, on fire, all the supplies and rations they had brought to support the people of the planet utterly destroyed.

“What,” he said again, but Padawan Kenobi cut him off before he could get any more of his question out.

“More fighters are coming. This place will soon be a firestorm. We should get out of here, as quickly as possible.”

Bail closed his mouth. This was why the Senate had recommended they take a Je’daii along in the first place. He wouldn’t insult Padawan Kenobi further by implying that he couldn’t do his job, even if he was young and injured. “Everyone, fall in,” he ordered instead, reaching into his pack (grateful he’d grabbed it off the ship in the first place) and pulling out the stun blaster he’d been issued when he was preparing for this trip. Good thing he’d spent an hour or two practicing before coming. “Padawan Kenobi, can you lead us safely out of here?”

Padawan Kenobi studied him, eyes glancing between the blaster in Bail’s hand, the rest of the Alderaan relief group, and then back to their merrily burning ship. “As you wish,” he said, turning towards the exit of the shipyard. He kept a hand near his lightsaber on his belt but didn’t draw it, so Bail kept his finger off the trigger of his stunner. He would follow Padawan Kenobi’s lead on this.

--

They had escaped that first day, relatively intact, but the following weeks were rough. The civil war, which the Republic had been assured had ended mainly due to lack of supplies and some genuine desire to see peace on their planet appeared to have picked back up again with a ferocity that felt unprecedented. The competing factions had somehow gotten their hands on more weapons (though, how they had purchased any without funds remained a mystery), and, unfortunately, these seemed designed to cause even more destruction, using stronger firepower, larger blast ranges, and wider explosions. Bail had expressed anger when he’d first realized – anger at the bad intel that was putting his citizens at risk, anger at the lies the people of the planet had told about wanting peace, anger over the war-torn everything he saw as they moved to stay ahead of the fighting – but the constant fight for survival had buried his fury under exhaustion. If When they got out of this, he’d remember how to be angry.

“I’m sorry,” Padawan Kenobi muttered. Bail let his head roll to the side so he could see the Je’daii as he sat down next to him, looking up at the stars just as Bail had been doing. A faint inkling of confusion poked its head up through the exhaustion.

“Whatever for? You are doing amazing. You’ve kept my people alive, even while injured yourself, and are going above and beyond what I could have dreamed a Je’daii’s protection could include.”

“They’re targeting me,” Padawan Kenobi said, voice so soft it was almost lost among the other quiet night sounds.

“Who are? One of the political factions?”

“No. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted your rest.” And even when Bail pushed him for a better explanation, he refused to say any more on the matter, so Bail let the conversation drop and simply sat in companionable silence.

--

“You’re good with that,” Padawan Kenobi panted, standing slightly in front of Bail, blocking the deluge of fireblasts coming towards their small hideout while Bail took aim with his stunner and knocked out anyone who got too close. Bail spared a second to eye the padawan. The first time he’d turned it on to help clear a path through the fight that had sprung up around them, Padawan Kenobi had turned, raising his saber in a defensive position like Bail was going to shoot him. If Padawan Kenobi had assumed Bail couldn’t shoot, maybe he’d been afraid he’d have to defend against stray shots coming from behind him. But his wary look hadn’t gone away until after several firefights together, even after Bail had proven he knew how to aim.

“It does pay not to be helpless, Padawan Kenobi, especially when supporting people who might have cause to take advantage of you,” Bail said, firing off a few more shots. “Seems to me that’s something Alderaan might have in common with the Je’daii.”

“Some of us,” the padawan huffed. “And really, Ser Aide, you can call me Obi-Wan. Using my full title while defending my life is a little stuffy, even for me, and my friends accuse me of being too polite.”

“Well then, I insist you call me Bail,” Bail said, pleased. For all that he was young, Pada – Obi-Wan had been a brilliant guide and protector, and an intelligent conversation partner when they could afford to chat. Bail wasn’t sure if the Je’daii contract with the Senate allowed them to be friends with those who could be considered clients, if the Je’daii ever accepted payment for the services they rendered, but he hoped so. Despite their rocky start, he was quickly finding Obi-Wan to be the type of person he’d want as a friend for life.

--

They’d made it off the planet. They’d lost two of their party, a loss Bail felt keenly, but he refused to accept Obi-Wan’s apologies, as their deaths were not in any way Obi-Wan’s fault. Indeed, that Obi-Wan had spent two months dragging a party unprepared for open war halfway across a fight-ridden continent with only two lives lost was a testament to Obi-Wan’s skill. He’d even managed to find them a ship (Bail suspected he’d stolen it, but given that its other use would have been to make bombing runs until it was blown out of the sky, Bail wasn’t going to complain), and had piloted them back to Coruscant while the rest of the party had crashed in exhaustion.

Now, they were landing safely on Coruscant, and Bail had never been so relieved to see the silver cityscape. They were all worse for the wear, much thinner and more ragged from long months with little reliable nourishment, hurting from various scrapes and bruises, and heart-sore from the tragedy they’d gone through. Bail, of course, would be submitting several scathing reports to as many Senate committees as he could, to protest the fact that this had happened at all.

They stepped out of their commandeered ship onto the Senate landing pad, and Bail sighed in relief and weariness as he took in the group of senators and paparazzi here to greet them. There was also a pair of Je’daii, one dark-skinned and one who should have been tall but was hunched over, a full cast on their leg, their skin pale and drawn. Beside Bail, Obi-Wan sucked in a breath.

“Jaieh,” he whispered, and then he was gone, running to the Je’daii’s side, hands fluttering anxiously around the injured man as he clearly demanded to know how he was. Bail smiled at the touching scene, and then turned back to those coming to make their own demands of him.

“Aide Organa, it really is a relief to see you returned safely to Coruscant,” Senator Palpatine of Naboo said, a kind smile on his face as he approached. “When we heard the fighting had broken out again on Federian – why, we all feared the worst!”

“Alderaan knows how to protect their own,” Bail offered, giving the man a polite smile. Naboo had often been allied with Alderaan in the cause for justice and peace in the galaxy, but several of the bills this particular senator had supported made Bail a little distrustful that he actually understood how best to accomplish that. “And Padawan Kenobi was a marvelous protector. We are very grateful for his aid.”

“Indeed, the Je’daii are very impressive,” Senator Palpatine said, casting a look over at them. Bail glanced over as well, in time to see the injured Je’daii flinch and stumble on his leg, causing both Obi-Wan and the other Je’daii to lurch forward to catch him. “A shame his master wasn’t able to go with you, I’ve been told a pair of them together are quite formidable. Perhaps they even could have ended this nonsensical fighting!”

“Given the state of the man, it was probably for the better he remained,” Bail said, not giving into the urge to side-eye the senator. “In fact, I was going to suggest a proposal be drafted requiring the Je’daii to be given leave between missions. The state Obi-Wan was forced to join us in was quite unacceptable for such a valued servant of the Republic. I’m sure I can count on Naboo’s support in this proposal, given your planet’s own commitment to the health and safety of all peoples.”

“But of course!” Palpatine beamed. “Draft your proposal for Senator Antilles. I’m sure between us we can ensure such a bill sees its time before the committee.”

“I’ll do that.” Bail had several other proposals to draft as well, regarding the poor intel surrounding the entire mission and the lack of available resources to pull his people out of the line of fire. Someone would pay for the lives lost on this mission, and he’d do everything he could to ensure it never happened again.

--

Bail did keep in touch with Obi-Wan after that, inviting him to lunch when his mentors (and, later, aides and junior senators) kicked him out of the office, or dragging him in for a cup of tea when he saw the padawan stumbling through the Senate. For all that Obi-Wan would twist his lips into a smile and assure Bail he didn’t need anything, he never seemed to be fully healed or well-rested, still jumping from chaotic mission to chaotic mission that all seemed to be as dangerous as the one he’d gone on with Bail. The proposal to monitor the Senate’s use of the Je’daii in order to ensure they weren’t overworking themselves never made it off the table, killed by the Je’daii High Council themselves, who assured Bail that they were eminently aware of the limits of the Je’daii in the Temple and did not need any oversight from the Senate regarding how they assigned Je’daii to missions. They did apologize that Obi-Wan had shown up for his mission in a less-than-satisfactory state (which Bail had objected to, emphasizing that it was not Obi-Wan’s fault), but said that the Je’daii were willing to go above and beyond their limits, they were so dedicated to serving the Senate as they had promised to do. Bail was distinctly unsatisfied. He thought they could use a lesson or several on Alderaan’s teachings on being unable to serve from empty cups. The Je’daii would serve no one, least of all the Senate, if they got themselves killed from something a few days of rest could have prevented.

But Obi-Wan, though he’d been wary and suspicious the first few times Bail had invited him in, had soon relaxed into the dry-witted, whip-smart young man Bail had seen on Federian. Bail didn’t begrudge Obi-Wan his suspicions. Once he’d started looking at the way the Senate used the Je’daii, he’d seen the way the other senators treated the Je’daii, demanding their time and energy as nonstop and as rudely as they treated their droids, or even worse, in some cases. It enraged Bail, most especially because there was little he could do about it without the ever-recalcitrant Je’daii Council’s cooperation, but he could make it a point not to ask for favors or demand more from his friend than Obi-Wan had it in him to give. And he was rewarded as his friendship with Obi-Wan grew and blossomed into something that actually had the young man relaxing when he saw Bail. (The fact that when he relaxed showed just how tense, how suspicious, how wary he’d been in the first place, Bail carefully set aside into his ever-growing mental folder of things that made Obi-Wan clam up and hoped, desperately, his friend would one day feel able to open up to him.)

“Do you think I should ask for a Je’daii to accompany me on this?” Bail did have to ask one day, seeing another relief mission had been scheduled. The intel suggested it wouldn’t be anywhere near as dangerous as the first, given it was to aid in natural disaster relief and not fickle people-driven war efforts, but he wanted Obi-Wan’s opinion anyway.

Obi-Wan glanced over the mission intel Bail pushed toward him, then got a faraway look in his eyes that usually meant he was probing at his Force. “This seems safe to me,” he said. “Why would you think you need one?”

“In case of bad intel. Again.” Bail said, scowling at the datapad. They never had found out why their intel had been so spectacularly bad, for that disaster of a mission on Federian. Every report they had swore up and down that Federian hadn’t had the funds or able bodies to be able to wreak that sort of violence, and the fighting had stopped shortly after they had left the planet. It was almost like it had been targeted at the Alderaanians.

Or Obi-Wan.

Bail remembered that night spent looking at the stars.

“Ah.” Obi-Wan pursed his lips, looking frustrated. “Sometimes, the presence of a Je’daii is what causes changes to the mission intel. We do have many enemies, you know.”

That was vague, for Obi-Wan, whom Bail had found out could wax philosophical on just about anything. Bail had assumed that would extend to having opinions on the types of missions he might be sent on. Keeping his face passive, Bail added that topic to his mental folder on Obi-Wan Oddities.

“I guess we don’t need Je’daii help for this mission,” he said. “But do let me know if there is ever anything you want to come along with.”

Obi-Wan looked incredibly relieved, for some reason. “If the Force prompts me, I’ll let you know,” he said and took his leave.

--

Bail once again refreshed his newsfeed to get the latest on the story that had shot to the top of the holonews cycle in minutes and had remained there for an unprecedented amount of hours, reading through the latest batch of dismissive commentary from “experts” and the evidence to the contrary that other people, like Bail, had noticed in their interactions with Je’daii. It had barely been a day since the series of essays written by prominent Je'daii had been released to the holonet, followed immediately by the bombing of the Je’daii temple, sending the entire senate into an uproar. (Literally, in some cases. Bail heard Chancellor Palpatine’s screams echoing throughout the Senate Building, which had only confirmed in his mind the truth of what the Je’daii had written regarding Palpatine’s own Force use.)

Reading the essays once again, Bail couldn’t help but open up his mental folder of odd things he’d noticed about Obi-Wan throughout the years and point to various essays as the answer to why his friend was like that. The first, broadest essay, authored by Mace Windu, divided the Je’daii into two factions, the Jedi and the Sith, and talked about how the Sith control of the temple on Coruscant had driven the Jedi to seek escape as soon as the Sith contract holding them bound expired. There was a much more detailed essay on the Sith and the terms of the Ruusan Reformation Contract, authored by a Jocasta Nu, and a complementary medical report on the physical effects of the contract, the trauma of the Dark side, and what ‘falling’ meant to a Je’daii authored by Vokara Che that Bail had painfully pored over and found the answer to why Obi-Wan had always refused to share his thoughts on certain topics. He was much more able to understand Adi Gailla’s essay on how the Je’daii’s relationship with the Senate had been entirely controlled by the Sith who sought to pressure as many Jedi as possible to fall through dangerous missions (even going so far as to foster chaos on missions marked not dangerous, if there happened to be a Jedi too – which just screamed Federian), being overworked, and refusing adequate rest time. That was an essay that validated every single red flag Bail’s brain had ever flown during interactions with the Je’daii High Council, and made so many things make sense about Frederian.

Obi-Wan's own essay talked about the war with the Separatists and how it was a facade, detailing evidence that showed Chancellor Palpatine and Count Krell had been working together to plan where to strike and who should lose to cause the most suffering in the galaxy. It made Bail grieve the scope of the atrocity that had been committed, the horrors countless people had suffered at the whims of a few too-powerful people who had wanted to play games with people already under their control. If he were a younger man, he might have quit the Senate in a fit of fury, enraged that it had been so complicit in the very things it was supposed to oppose. He still might have, if he hadn’t found a plea buried in one of the last essays in the list, one authored by Rancis Oppis on the future of the faction of Je’daii who called themselves Jedi, asking for senators still committed to justice and peace to be willing to work with the Jedi in the future, if they reached out, and promising that the Jedi were not going to abandon the galaxy to its current state of turmoil. If Bail quit the Senate, he might never have another position from which he could help so many people. He’d have to tread carefully, especially with the suggestions announcements the Sith Lord Chancellor – or was it Emperor now? - Palpatine had made during the session today, but he would be ready, should the Jedi ever reach out to him.

Really, Bail was quite disgusted with the Senate’s response to the Jedi’s tell-all. Though he could see the truth in the essays, clear as day given his own many suspicions that there was something wrong in the Je’daii Order, many of the Senators didn’t care. They just wanted their convenient slaves back, and if they couldn’t have them, they were happy to label the Jedi traitors to the Republic Empire. Emperor Palpatine, especially, was almost rabidly denying all involvement with the CIS and Count Krell, and declaring the Jedi, who had run away with almost three-quarters of the clone army, as an enemy even worse than the CIS. The fact that the Jedi’s essays had labeled Palpatine as their main foe certainly hadn’t won them any favors in a Senate that only saw the kindly old man mask Palpatine wore, but it was the truth, and they were refusing to hide behind lies anymore. Bail respected them for that. And if they were serious about working to make the galaxy a better place, maybe that would include deposing the tyrant who had enslaved and abused them for years now. What would it look like to ask the Jedi to help take the Empire down, Bail wondered idly. What did rebellion against a Sith Lord look like?

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He looked up to see Padmé Amidala rushing into his office without waiting for his leave. “Senator, excuse me,” she said, looking rather pale. “But I needed someone to talk to and there was no one else I trust around. Please. Can you help me?”

Chapter Text

Shmi watched the ship containing her son and the Je’daii zabrak rise from the desert and vanish into the dusty Tatooine atmostphere. Watto hadn’t given her any warning before selling her son – as was his klat, as depur – but he’d told Shmi that the Je’daii who’d purchased him wanted him to believe that he was free. Apparently, the Jed’aii had even gone so far as to threaten to detonate Anakin’s slave chip if anyone tried to tell her son differently. She’d wondered – agonized, really – if that wasn’t the better of the two options, as Anakin had rambled excitedly to her in the few minutes they were given to say goodbye, repeating all sorts of nonsense the zabrak had told him about what being a Je’daii was like and promising he was going to grow up to become the best slave-freeing Je’daii ever. Was him living in ignorance better or worse than him living without a limb – or dying? But – perhaps she was weak to the look of pure joy on Anakin’s face. She couldn’t bear to see her son maimed in front of her, not when there was, hopefully, another option. She’d told Anakin she hoped he’d find Master Qui-Gon when he arrived in Coruscant, as he’d hopefully help Ani find the depuvellta. It was a risk, speaking Amatakka when Anakin’s new depur was right behind him – but it had been the best she could do. Now, she’d have to trust Qui-Gon could help her son, as she could not.

The ship was long gone by the time Shmi wandered back into the small slave quarters that had been her and Anakin’s home. “What now?” she mused aloud, running a finger over the sandy table top that still held Anakin’s dirty breakfast dishes. Working for Watto was off the table. She had only stuck around in his shop, accepting his pittance of a salary because Anakin was there. By selling her boy, he'd lost all of his staff. She hoped he went out of business because of it.

“Master Shmi? Did you say something?” The walking lump of wires that her boy – her brilliant, compassionate, gone boy – had built into a helper for her poked its head out of the back room.

Shmi looked at the still unfinished droid. “Can you take a message for someone, C-3PO?” she asked, a plan starting to form in her mind.

--

A few hours later, a small knapsack over one shoulder and a toolkit in one hand, Shmi was boarding the more than slightly suspicious light freighter that had been willing to give her transport off-planet in exchange for her mechanical services and willingness to overlook certain pieces of cargo sitting on the floor around her working space. C-3PO had been gifted to the gan-amu of the slave quarters that Shmi no longer had a place in. She was free, she was a vikka-terak, and she was nimku. She did not want to stay in the place that had taken such things from her in the past, and no one could tell her she must. Her one tie to Tatooine was Anakin and he wasn't there. C-3PO knew what to tell him, should he ever come looking for her.

--

The galaxy was a large place. Shmi saw a lot of it, living as a wandering mechanic. It had been easy enough, for her, to identify those in the various port stations who were the unofficial job-finders – and there was always work to be done, in trade for food, transportation, and a small bit of coin. She quickly gained a reputation as quiet and reliable – two qualities almost guaranteed to land her a job wherever she went. And she discovered that the contacts she made while working on various ships were vital for her future endeavors. The one she cherished the most, it turned out, was one particularly eclectic up and coming group of pirates – they changed their names every time Shmi worked for them, but Shmi could appreciate Hondo’s flair for the dramatic like that, especially after discovering Hondo was kol-depuan.

It was her reputation as solid and her nature as wandering that allowed her to establish herself as a relkin. After all, what captain in their right mind would question the number of spare parts a mechanic might need? Or judge one for having a large toolbox? She did good work, and she needed her tools of the trade. It was her reputation as quiet that gained her passage on ships that also knew how to be quiet if they realized partway through the trip they had one more passenger than they had originally accounted for. It was also her reputation for quiet that gained her passage on ships that happened to transport cargo that cried too much for her taste – and if those ships happened to be waylaid by pirates and all cargo stolen, well, that had nothing to do with the quiet mechanic who didn’t so much as blink an eye at the boarding and was, somehow, even quieter in the aftermath.

Even if Shmi hadn’t been a part of the riya-chelik, it would have been hard to miss the stories of a Je’daii toppling world governments in the name of Ekkreth. (The holonews networks who reported on this laughed and poked fun at a Je’daii proclaiming a religion other than the Force for once – Shmi had to be grateful most of them didn’t bother trying to find the truth, even as she quietly mourned the sudden, dangerous, widespread knowledge of that name.) As part of the riya-chelik, the effects were impossible to miss, and it was truly the worst kind of tematta nel uttar Shmi had heard about.

People flooded off the conquered worlds, slave and slaver alike turned refugee, fleeing brutal criminal empires that seemed to pop up overnight, almost as if they’d been ready for someone to kill enough politicians to create power vacuums large enough for them to take over without any opposition whatsoever. Those lucky enough to have personal transports or friends in spaceports made it to safety, and Shmi heard stories of people taking advantage of the chaos to finally find their way onto the riya-chelik. But more and more, as years passed, she heard story after story after ferfeking story of those who had fled the cruel laws of the new ‘governments’ only to run right into the arms of pirates (without the morals of Hondo and his gang) and slavers, trading one miserable existence for another.

The chelik told her stories of a saber-wielding butcher who claimed to be setting people free by slaughtering leaders and politicians on worlds he didn’t feel were enforcing the Republic’s anti-slavery laws. Some those Shmi listened to cursed whoever Ekkreth was, speculating that they were a god of chaos, and the Je’daii saying his actions had anything to do with slavery was his justification for the Republic Senate. Shmi couldn’t blame them, even as she yearned to correct them. She’d seen the difference for herself on planets the Je’daii had ‘liberated’. Bars that had welcomed her and other transient wanderers were now staffed by suspicious, paranoid people, who looked as if every drink should be their last. The number of bodies huddled in despair in back alleys had risen, and Shmi lost almost as many spare parts out of her toolbox as she lost coins in her pockets to the filching fingers that seemed to get smaller every year.

It was the chelik who cursed the woman who’d allowed such a person into the world that Shmi found harder to stomach. Because even if the holonews never said the Je’daii’s name, and even if the holographs were vague and from a distance, and even though she hadn’t seen Anakin in years – she knew the Je’daii was her son.

--

Shmi stepped onto Tatooine and breathed in the dusty desert air, feeling the warmth sink into her bones once again and welcoming it. For all that Anakin had been a weapon raised against slaving worlds, he’d never been pointed at Tatooine. On some days, that was a hopeful thought, that clearly Anakin wasn’t in charge of where he went, he wasn’t making monumentally stupid decisions of his own will. Other days, when she heard the name Ekkreth in those who never should have known of their stories, she thought Anakin had become keekta-du, was choosing to ignore the core of their culture, that it was a secret, and his avoiding Tatooine was a natural consequence of that. It hurt to think of Anakin like that, but long nights cared little about which thoughts hurt.

At least he wasn’t depukrekta. Probably. If he truly believed that the destruction he wrought was setting people free. He likely wasn’t depuvelta, either – at least not of his own will. If what Shmi had understood from Qui-Gon was correct, Anakin was even more of a slave in the Je’daii temple than he had been on Tatooine. (She tried to avoid the question of why Qui-Gon hadn’t been able to teach her son better. She knew she didn’t know anything about what had turned her son into the war-mongering boy wreaking havoc. Long nights rarely cared about those attempts, either.) Klatun was perhaps the best word for him. His acknowledgement of Ekkreth in his conquests seemed proof enough that he believed what he was doing was right and deserved. His ignorance as to the truth removed some culpability from him – but more remained than Shmi wanted. How could her son have turned into this?

Wandering the streets of Mos Espa brought that question to the forefront of Shmi’s mind once again. She paused in front of the store that Ani had always bought blue milk from and watched a young boy laugh as he raced away with a treat in his hand. A sudden clatter of boxes from this alleyway made her think of the cat Ani had befriended once. He’d snuck food to it, tidbits of his own meager lunch, going out of his way to come to this alley where it lived. A tired woman stepped out of the house she and Ani had once shared together, the door closing on the sound of a toddler screaming its complaint into the world. Shmi had always hated having to shush Anakin in Watto’s shop, so she’d let him yell as much as he wanted at home. He didn’t do it often.

The last time Shmi had seen Ani, he’d promised to set people free before walking away from that very house. Shmi watched the woman study the horizon until she looked down and startled at Shmi's stare. Then she made a quick gesture of apology and moved on, walking the few houses down to the gan-amu’s home. It wasn’t the same one that had been there when she left, but she recognized Shmi nonetheless and welcomed her in. C-3PO was where she had left him, sitting in the corner clumsily working at something in the dim hut. He looked up at her approach.

“Master Shmi! It is so good to see you again.”

“C-3PO,” Shmi greeted. “I need to change my message.” Shmi didn't know her son anymore. She couldn't predict how he (or whoever his depur was now) would react if he got word that Shmi was a relkin. Anything that made her easy to find needed to be deleted. If Anakin ever decided to come find her, he'd have to hunt for her, and she'd have a warning.

For some reason, Shmi doubted he'd ever come.

--

Anakin felt like he’d chased his mom around the galaxy twice over, and was trying very hard to clamp down on the strong desire to burn this entire bar to the ground as the barkeeper nodded at the image on his datapad and said, “Oh, sure, I’ve seen her. Last I heard she took a job on a ship bound for Camson.” Which was once again halfway across the galaxy from here.

It had been Padmé who'd suggested finding someone to give an outside perspective to everything that was going on. He usually went to Palpatine, Padmé, or (as a last resort) Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan had vanished without a trace and Palpatine was currently more prone to throwing lightning than listening. Padmé didn't know anything about how the Force worked and she'd objected rather startlingly to being made empress, so Anakin had been forced to wrack his brains for someone else who could possibly help him make sense of the world. It had been the possibility that he was depukrekta that made him think of his mom. Out of everyone, she’d be able to tell him. If he could just ask her!

He'd assumed his mother would be right where he'd left her, waiting for him in some cozy hut on Tatooine. Instead, he'd shown up to an overly excited robot with cringe-worthy programming (what had 8-year-old him been thinking? Being referred to as Master Ani... well, it was not great, when he was trying to figure out if he was depur) telling him his mother had left Tatooine not even a day after he had, years ago. And though his mother had left a message, it had been vague and unhelpful. She hadn't even included a comm number! She just said that she had taken work as a traveling mechanic and left a list of bars she usually found work at. Anakin needed answers and advice yesterday, but here he was, weeks later, spending precious time tracking random barkeepers down. He'd wasted so much time, especially since the list had clearly been outdated – half of the bars it mentioned had been closed!

Still, Anakin wasn't going to give up. At least he had an excuse to be poking around bars asking questions. Emperor Palpatine had been swift in cracking down on the law in his new empire, and that included finding the traitorous Jedi who'd fled Coruscant. Anakin knew he wasn't the only one tasked with scouring the galaxy for any sign of them, though, as he'd watched the Coruscant Guard, now Palpatine's personal enforcers, robotically give their reports and accept new orders, he did wonder if he was the only one deviating at all from those orders. The clones he'd worked with in the war had been much more flexible and sentient-seeming. But as long as he stopped on the planets he was ordered to and made it back to Coruscant within the appropriate amount of time, no one questioned him.

Anakin didn’t have time to go to Camson, on this scouring trip. It was probably a dead end, anyway. Who knew how long ago the barkeeper had seen his mother. Who even knew if she’d made it all the way to Camson – the number of stories he’d heard about ships getting waylaid by pirates on that route was depressingly high. He didn’t want to have to mount a rescue mission from a pirate stronghold just to talk to his mom. Maybe she'd be at the next bar on her list.

For some reason, Anakin didn’t think she would be.

Chapter Text

A Long, Long Time Ago

1. Chapter 11: All the Lights going Dark

Obi-Wan's Padawan Years

1. Chapter 1: Swooning

2. Chapter 4: Shock

3. Chapter 16: Don't Go Where I Can't Follow

4. Chapter 32: Bonus Content: Bail

Phantom Menace

1. Chapter 9: Mistaken Identity

2. Chapter 22: Speeder Accident

3. Chapter 6: Made to Watch

Anakin's Padawan Years

1. Chapter 8: Outnumbered

2. Chapter 13: Infection

3. Chapter 19: I'm Not as Stupid as You Think I Am

4. Chapter 2: They Don't Care About You

5. Chapter 3: Solitary Confinement

6. Chapter 10: Broken Comm

Attack of the Clones

1. Chapter 14: Water Inhalation

2. Chapter 7: Radio Silence

Clone Wars

1. Chapter 5: Pinned Down

2. Chapter 23: Shadows

3. Chapter 15: Suppressed Suffering

4. Chapter 20: Found Family

5. Chapter 27: Scars

6. Chapter 24: I've Got a Head Full of Chemicals

7. Chapter 12: I Haven't Slept in Days

8. Chapter 18: Tortured for Information

9. Chapter 17: Collar

Rise of the Sith Jedi

1. Chapter 21: See the Chains Around my Feet

2. Chapter 26: Working to Exhaustion

3. Chapter 30: Borrowed Clothing

4. Chapter 28: You'll Have to Go Through Me

5. Chapter 25: Buried Alive

6. Chapter 29: Troubled Past Resurfacing

7. Chapter 31: Take it Easy

8. Chapter 33: Bonus Content: Shmi