pronker

Part Eighty-Six

Was that Palpatine's, the Supreme Chancellor's, my friend's head lipping down Padmé's thighs and then between?

Palpatine's hair had been wavy when Anakin first knew him. Recently, it had thinned and been trimmed shorter than it ever had been in Anakin's memory. Was he vain enough to wear a 'piece' to appear youthful when acting the lover? Vanity was not --- had not been --- one of his qualities. He possessed a certain flair for dress, a fondness for rich fabrics perfectly in keeping with his noble heritage. If wigs were part of that heritage, Anakin had never heard of it. If it weren't Palpatine, then how did the voice overlay the visuals? Was it a handmaiden and her lover in Padmé's --- and mine --- bedroom on a dare? No, the handmaidens have their code, just like the Jedi do. Anakin wiped his eyes on his tunic sleeve and blew his nose there as he had when he'd first come to live in the Temple, before he'd heard of handkerchiefs. He hung his head. Padmé and Palpatine. They had similar backgrounds, the same planet of origin, they worked together, loved the Republic first, last, and always together. Why shouldn't they do this? Because Padmé's married, that's why! She's my wife and even though I said she could go places at night without me, that doesn't make this right. The Force wouldn't suggest this, not any Force I want to be associated with.

After a few minutes more of grinding his teeth, Anakin registered that Obi-Wan sat beside him, patiently waiting for whatever would happen next. Serene. Unflappable. Uh-oh, Master's gonna kil-- kis-- do something to me. Stupid, stupid, stupid Chosen One.

"Something at lunch disagreed with you?"

"No. Something I saw ... and heard."

A gentle squeeze of the shoulders. "A vision?"

A nightmare. "No."

"Tell me, Padawan."

Might as well. Anakin slumped down further, almost out of Obi-Wan's grip. "I saw something about Padmé that Artoo recorded and Threepio, um, accessorized. Just now, when I .. "

"Yes, I noticed." Droids. Living with the Senator full time. No sense of discretion. "I see how upset you are."

"It made me sick."

"Yes." Anakin needed to brush his teeth.

"It was about --- about her personal life." I can't tell him about our marriage. I'm too ashamed. I don't know what it means to be married anymore. I only know that I love him, and that he's not well yet.

"Show me, if it's something that you can duplicate." Obi-Wan glossed over the dislike he felt for her. Whatever this was, he would not judge until he'd seen what Anakin had, and perhaps not even then. He remembered wanting to like her, for Anakin's sake.

Anakin looked down at his glove. "All right, but later. First, I have to tell you something, Master."

Am I up to this? I suppose. "Go ahead."

"Padmé and I are lovers, since Geonosis. She came to me when I was in the Healer's ward" --- and proposed marriage --- "and said that she loved me. We had just been through a lot together, and I wanted someone to be with, like family, Master, and I agreed." Practicing his Telling-Upsetting-News kata with Obi-Wan meant that he didn't know if he'd ever finish it. He'd shot straight to the most difficult part --- not at all the way he'd tutor his own Padawan someday. If he ever had one, he thought gloomily.

Lovers. An adult woman, in a responsible position, in public life, no less, and my little --- my almost grown-up --- Padawan. Kriff. "You. Said. 'Yes.'"

Anakin nodded, looking away. "I wanted to be close to someone, after Mom died. Padmé was there; I was weak, I know it now." He sighed. "She was happy, I thought, until now. Until ..." He gestured at the wall, but Obi-Wan didn't follow the movement and stared at his Padawan's --- my lover's --- profile instead.

"Show me," Obi-Wan said. Anakin ducked from under Obi-Wan's arm, swaying a little as he leaned closer to his toolkit and gingerly retrieved Artoo's lens. To his surprise, Obi-Wan took it from him. "You're trembling. Tell me how to activate this."

Anakin quailed at the tone in his Master's voice. It was very, very stern. "B-Bring the lens close to this chip" --- he lifted the chip from the carpet where he'd dropped it --- "slowly, and point it like this" --- he held his shaking hands up in the correct position --- "and keep a small Force-cushion around your hands. It didn't arc before, but you can never tell. I'll activate Threepio's vocabulator so you can hear everything like, like, I d-did." Anakin did the necessary reprogramming with his portable scanner, wiping some vomitus from it first.

"Not on your sleeve, Padawan."

"Sorry. I forgot." They sat together on the floor as Obi-Wan held the two items, smoothly uniting them within a centimeter of each other. He is the Master. He doesn't even need the Force to steady his hands. As before, the blue staticky resolution nearly defied viewing until Anakin said tonelessly, "Are you nearly there." Then the image clarified; the figures writhed and heaved in and out of resolution. Anakin turned away at the first glimpse of Palpatine's head. Palpatine's smooth voice said once more, "... marvelous ... splendid ... heh-heh ... marvelous ... splendid ... heh-heh ... " until Anakin looked out his privacy-shielded window and wanted to hurl himself from it. But the protective shielding would only throw him back inside, where he didn't want to be.

The river defenestrated.

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Part Eighty-Seven

"It was Palpatine, wasn't it. Palpatine and Padmé, together. I feel sick."

Obi-Wan swiftly rose to his feet, sitting once more on Anakin's bed. Anakin is taking this so hard, almost like he is the Senator's husband and has proprietary rights over her person. Obi-Wan shifted his weight. My arm. My headaches. I don't feel like dealing with another mystery. "Anakin, I don't think that was Palpatine. The being's hair was curly, Palpatine's" --- Sidious' --- "hair was very slightly wavy and gray. Given the difficulties in viewing and the lack of color, true, it may seem to resemble his head and hair, but I believe, I believe" --- Anakin looks pathetically eager to hear this --- "that not to be Palpatine. Whoever else it is, I do not know."

I'm nearly certain that was Padmé's hip; the curve of her waist looked right. "Thank you, Master." Padmé and ... someone else. I'll deal with the news later. "Master, please don't hate me."

"Hate you? Never." But I'm not telling you what I was going to, at least not tonight. And I want you to sleep in here. Forget about the veranda. He had to ask. "Anakin, are you in love with the Senator?" He also had to remind himself to breathe.

"I thought I was then. I don't know now." If ever a picture of misery were to be on the Holocomm, its subtitle would read 'Anakin Skywalker.'"

Obi-Wan nodded. "Fair enough answer." An entire year and he didn't tell me. On the commons in Upper-Gitchy-on-Cremba, he didn't tell me. When we returned home, when we were in bed together, he didn't tell me.

"I only know one thing, Master --- Obi-Wan. I love you right down to the ground." The Padawan and the Master faced each other, one sitting sideways on a narrow bed, one kneeling on the floor, arms crossed on the top of the same bed's smooth footboard.

"I know," the Master said. I'll tell you about Palpatine ... Sidious ... the best way that I know how. "Anakin, there's something else that you need to know about the Chancellor." Like the evening that Obi-Wan gave The Talk to his Padawan, he began with a soothing platitude. "'There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.'" This time he didn't accompany the words with a gentle, embarrassed smile. It was too serious for that. This will hurt him. I'm about to hurt my Padawan. But like that uncomfortable conversation, it would be gotten through and survived. "Anakin, please listen to me." Refer to Palpatine as the Chancellor -- the more distancing, the better. "Anakin, the day after his ... passing, our meeting began with Master Yoda and Master Windu revealing their visions about a marvelous good occurring in the Force the evening before." Now for it. "Master Yoda shocked us all by saying that the good was the Chancellor's death."

Anakin's breath hitched as he said, "I hate this, Master. If this person" --- he gestured at the wall --- "was the Chancellor, then I hate him for it. But that doesn't take away the fact that he was our leader through very challenging times." He was my friend. I feel like shit right now, but he was my friend. And he's dead, so I can't thrash things out with him. Anakin rose and paced, his bare feet sliding across the carpet until he built up a charge of static electricity. He touched the same wall that the images had appeared on and the spark made Obi-Wan start in the room's tension. "The next thing you'll be saying is that he was a Sith Lord."

Obi-Wan's continuing silence made Anakin stop in his tracks. "Oh, my. Oh. My. That's what the Council --- you --- think?"

Obi-Wan rose, too, threading his hands through opposite underarms over his bathrobe, as if to clasp them together over his shoulderblades, an impossibility. "The Darkness has mostly lifted, Anakin. The timing of the passing of the Sith" --- Anakin turned away --- "coincided. I realize that this is difficult --- "

"Difficult? Difficult? He was my friend, he tutored me in things I'd never heard of" --- like oenology --- "and you all say he was a Sith?"

All right, all right. Give him room to breathe. In fact, get out of this room completely. Obi-Wan shuffled to the veranda, his slippersox making more sparks than Anakin's bare feet had. At first, he sat rigidly in the wicker settee, then leaned over the balcony's edge. There was no privacy screen or security safety screen on, and it was a straight drop to the almost unseen hard surfaces below. He hadn't turned to see if Anakin followed him, yet even without the Force he knew that he had. He heard Anakin's ragged breathing beside him after a time. This was too serious for Anakin's tears, he supposed. "Anakin," he said, "do you believe evil to be obvious? To wear black robes, a hideous mask, think evil thoughts that warp its Force-signature every single moment? Isn't it more reasonable to believe that evil is a sometimes thing" --- did the Zabrak apprentice ever have kind impulses? --- "that overwhelms a being's, uh, being, and leads him or her or it or them," --- stay on target, Negotiator --- "to evil actions, with that being's complicity?" Like Sidious befriending you, my own.

Anakin snorted. "This is Philosophy 301, The Evilness of Evildoers, Master. I've studied it." And nearly flunked out. "All I know is that on the Chancellor's last ride with me, the last time I saw him, he hadn't changed his nature. We listened to opera, he got speeder-sick --- he was an old man, Master! --- "

"We crashed in that same Courier, Padawan, one week later." I nearly drowned on Trow.

" ... and then when the opera ended, h-he seemed to be closer to me than ever before, like he wanted me to share his experiences and all the knowledge he'd built up over his long life --- "

"Was he absent from your sight at all?" The detective in Obi-Wan needed solid clues to present to his unbelieving client.

"Once. He needed the 'fresher, I told you he got speeder-sick ... and stayed a long time, naturally" --- and there was a weird drilling sound --- the 'fresher abuts the fuel compartment --- 'Undetectotane' label, 'Flame-On' contents, was someone fooled in a black ... market ... deal ... Huttese writing on the melted accelerant container ... Huttese codes in the unmarked ... black market ... chip ... in Artoo ... next to Padmé's --- no, our --- no, her --- bed, night after night ... Oh.

Obi-Wan stepped closer to Anakin, who stopped talking and leaned far over the railing, staring blindly down into the depths of Coruscant's upper levels. Anakin swayed. Obi-Wan grasped his arm and led him to the settee. He's put together the clues and had another epiphany. They are so hard on him.

The river knew.

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Part Eighty-Eight

"Anakin, who is Jira?" The comms were filled with news of the many tributes to Palpatine and plans for his memorial service. Obi-Wan had listened for only seconds before switching the unit off. Their morning habit of laughing to Diurnal Dron's Drive Time Download's jokes would have to wait until the Republic came to rest on an even keel and Dron resumed his routine, and the lack of entertainment left the kitchen oppressively quiet.

Anakin stirred his cereal listlessly. "An old friend on Tatooine. Probably dead by now." He poured more blue milk into his bowl of Cheeri-Osks. A few still floated. He mashed them down savagely with his spoon.

Obi-Wan fetched a small towel and wiped up the spill without comment. "Did you ever mention her to me before?" If he could get Anakin to think about his past that he had overcome, his Padawan might gain perspective.

Why the inquisition? I'll be before the Council soon enough, with their questions. Stupid Chosen One. Can't even tell friend from enemy. "I don't ... know. What about her?" The caf was too hot, but he drank it at one gulp, knowing his gullet would suffer. No self-healing for me. I deserve whatever I get. Not going to be Knighted, Qui-Gon's faith a big joke ... Obi-Wan's time wasted ...

"Anakin, stop it."

"Why? My whole life, a waste. Wasted your time, Obi-Wan." He won't be 'Master' much longer.

"Stop it right now!" Obi-Wan threw the towel in his Padawan's face. "You're not the only Jedi to have been deceived. You're young. It happens. Even to Knights, it happens."

Anakin surged up and his chair tipped backwards to the floor. "Years on end, Master. Friends with Padmé, friends with the Chancellor, a Sith Lord, for kriff's sake! My judgment ... isn't."

The only way out of this is through. "My judgment on Melida/Daan brought me great grief." And Cerasi died. "My friend, Nield, turned on me after I'd given up the Jedi path. I thought my whole life as a Padawan was for nothing. And when I came back to the Temple under a cloud, my Jedi friends snubbed me." Siri, you bitch.

Anakin waved his hands in the air. "'Snubbed?' Snubbed?"

"Yes, 'snubbed.' I was barely a teen and being disciplined by the Order, on the outs with Qui-Gon for months, my friend Cerasi's death hurt every bit as much as finding out about the Chancellor and your ... other friend." Naboo? They were together on Naboo, someplace in a fort, or a villa, near a lake. She fucked him there. She was the one. It was his blazing Force-signature that I envisioned, somehow.

"Obi-Wan, did you take your memory vitamins this morning?"

"Yes, I did."

"Good, because I want you to remember this day. It'll be the day that I get thrown out of the Order." Anakin splashed his bowl and cup and saucer and spoon into the sink, breaking the cup and cracking the bowl. He stomped into the common room.

Obi-Wan wiped the table, smearing the blue milk all over it. He pressed down harder with his right hand, but it refused to grasp the towel tightly. He switched the towel to his left hand to complete the job. And my head aches, too. And I know that Anakin never mentioned Jira to me before this morning. Obi-Wan slogged into the common room. Anakin stared at the comm station, his jaw dropping. "A pallbearer. Amedda wants me to be a pallbearer at the funeral." He laughed and laughed. Obi-Wan grew alarmed. "I-I'm representing the Jedi Or-Order!" Tears rolled down Anakin's cheeks and he seemed to be having trouble drawing enough air. "And Padmé's representing N-Naboo!" Obi-Wan jerked Anakin away from the station, shoving him onto the sofa while he snapped off the comm with the Force. "Oooh, frivolous, Mas- Obi-Wan!" Anakin rolled from side to side, holding his ribs tightly.

Obi-Wan slapped him hard. He drew back his hand again, but Anakin charged up from his seat, shouldering Obi-Wan's midriff in a full scramball tackle. "Whooof!" Obi-Wan tripped back over one of Anakin's discarded boots and sat down jarringly on its mate. He flung back a hand to break his fall, but the wrist buckled and his cheek smacked into the floor as he twisted to the side to avoid Anakin's grasp. Anakin kept up his momentum, however, and rolled Obi-Wan face down, straddling his waist while pulling up on his right wrist to crank it behind his Master's back, forcing it upwards.

How odd I don't feel his grip. Obi-Wan sniffed back blood from his nose. Time to be a Master. Using not one whit of the Force, he stiffened his right leg despite Anakin's weight on his back, tucked his left knee into the space thus created between his right knee and the floor, and twisted to the left. Anakin's head bobbled as he fell to the side, losing his grip on Obi-Wan's wrist, following the rollover until Obi-Wan's position changed to the superior one. I've got to end this fast. Since his right hand and wrist were numb but not his forearm on up to the shoulder, he leaned fiercely on Anakin's throat with his forearm, grabbing his numb wrist with his left hand, using the right forearm as a bar to press into Anakin's vulnerable jugular.

The river squeezed.

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