Anakin sat alone down in the deepest part of Jedi Temple, only accompanied by the hum of the energy shield and the regular guards coming to check that the one and only prisoner of the Jedi hadn’t escaped.

  With nothing better to do he tongued his teeth, feeling each individual ridge with his tongue. Should he just bite down on his tongue now? End the loop now? He would need to change up his next break, play things a little smarter, not get caught in a Huttese casino. Maybe go join the Corellian Jedi, Anakin may have hated them, but they were as antisocial as him. Maybe go be some nameless moisture farmer. Would he enjoy that? It had been so long since he hadn’t been in a war. Would some sick part of him miss it? Would he find out that his brain was fried from eons of bloodshed, that he couldn’t live without it? What if he finally got his break, and he missed the war? Could he live with himself?

  Well, it wasn’t like he could kill himself. Years of experimentation proved that the method of escape from the loop to be futile.

  At least his experimenting did grant him one thing, knowledge of the least painful ways to quickly kill yourself. Better dead and reset than spend as long as your captor can keep you alive, torturing you. A decision that it seemed the fates were eager for him to repeat.

  “What evil eyes you have, grandma,” Anakin noted, noticing the eclipse-like eyes in the shadows. So he wasn’t even trying to hide that he was a Sith to him, such confidence.

  “All the better to look down on you with.” Palpatine smiled, playing into the bit while stepping out of the shadows.

  He looked awe inspiring. Not like Padme, who seemed to light up any room with just her presence. No, rather he inspired awe, the same way people would describe a national tragedy. Horrific. Draped in his long black Sith robes he looked like the night had come alive as two eclipsed-eyes shone with a strange heated coldness like hideous night sky stars.

  “The guards?” Anakin gave a glance over to his former Master, not surprised at his presence.

  “Alive,” Palpatine shrugged. “Though what I slipped into their drink is highly addictive. They’ll need therapy if they don’t want to end up selling their teeth on the Coruscant black market.”

  The chuckle he gave himself sent familiar chills up Anakin’s spine. Was he always so reactive? No, this was different from centuries ago, something was wrong. What has changed this loop? He was feeling things again. That was bound to happen, in infinity even his apathy would diminish before returning. Still, what had caused him to feel things again?

  “You are remarkably calm,” Palpatine continued. He walked past the energy shield of his prison. Teasingly he dragged his fingertips across the energy field of his cage letting Sith Lightning crackle, as blue electricity and green plasma danced gleefully with each other.

  “At least, much calmer than at the riot, I almost called an ambulance for your eminent panic attack.” The Sith’s lips danced in a teasing smile. “Does the cage suit you so well?”

  He didn’t know how right he was. There was a morbid sense of familiarity in this cage, something to help calm his annoying habit of freezing up before Palpatine. Something to heal, or rather scare, eventually. The certainty of the loops would numb him.

  “I should warn you, this,” The Sith Lord gestured to the cell. “Does nothing.”

  The tip of his finger sparked and hissed with electricity as he slowly but surely pushed his index finger through the plasma shield. The distinct smell of ozone filled the room as the plasma shield did its best to try to burn off his finger, unable to get through the protective shell of lightning covering his nail. The sound of it was horrid like hundreds of high pitched birds screaming in a frenzy of cannibalistic violence.

  “I could tell the Jedi.” Anakin threatened as Palpatine removed his finger, satisfied with his display of how feeble Anakin’s level of protection was. “For all your peacocking, the green frog would wipe the floor with you.”

  The mention of Yoda got his eye to twitch the briefest amount. It was almost invisible, only visible to the looper who had burnt every look that face had to offer into his memory.

  “Perhaps, but something tells me you won’t.” It annoyed Anakin how the Sith’s smirk grew with his silence.

  “Was it Dooku?” He strutted around outside of Anakin’s cell. “Did he tell you? My spies mentioned you met on a Hutt cruise ship. Completely ruined Dooku’s cover, waving that red lightsaber around like a child with a glow stick. The Jedi weren’t supposed to find out he was a Sith yet, not till a year or two later. Even Jedi ignorance has its limits.”

  Would it be worth lying? Palpatine and Dooku often fought against each other. However, the Count was always severely outmatched. Forced to play a hand that Palpatine gave him. The distraction would buy him a year at best and a week at worst.

  “Dooku told me you and he were the Sith.” Anakin lied as easily as telling the truth.

  “Dooku? A Sith? He is as much Sith as you are a Jedi,” Palpatine spat. “Dooku is a moron; he hates the Republic for their corruption yet creates a Government built on exploitation. He is an idealistic hypocrite, forgiving of his own crimes in order to create a system of justice which will only exist in his head as he enslaves and kills his way through the Galaxy.”

  “And you won’t?”

  “I won’t pretend it’s for the greater good. I have no illusions as to who I am.” Palpatine gave him a wicked smile. It looked almost like relief on his face, finally being able to express himself. Finally, someone to revel in his malevolence.

  “No, the Sith do not need someone who is basically the equivalent of a morally warped mirror. Rather, a realist. Someone who sees the Galaxy for what it is, someone who can grasp a clear reality and make it their own.”

  “Is this the same speech you told Dooku? ‘Maul is an animal, the Galaxy has no need for savagery and filth. No, I need someone who sees the cancer of the Galaxy, someone to be a scalpel rather than a hammer’.” Anakin knew those were the exact words. Dooku had told him so many loops ago. “I wonder what you will say to the person after me?”

  More often than not, it was Luke.

  “Dooku has told you lots,” Palpatine scowled. “But he knows so very little.”

  “He knows enough to not trust you.”

  “Clever… but so are you,” The compliment irked him. He hated how it made his skin dance, like a well trained dog eager to receive the smallest bit of praise. “You think I would give the Count an army if I did not think for a moment I could wrench it out from him?”

  “No, nor would you do the same to the Jedi.” If Anakin’s knowledge of Order 66 upset him, he didn’t show it. Rather it only seemed to further excite the man.

  “See, you get it. I’ve won, I already control both sides of the Galaxy. This isn’t the prologue, it’s the epilogue. In less than a decade, the CIS will fall as fast as it rose, the Jedi will finally be villainized and slaughtered just as they did to the Sith.” He spread his arms, a proud gesture of all he had achieved before Anakin even restarted his loops. A sick joke that the Whills played on him, giving Palpatine a winning hand from the beginning.

  “And finally, I will sit on a throne with my apprentice by my side. Do you truly think Dooku can provide the same future I can?”

  Anakin knew that future all too well. Anakin stared hard into his cold, eclipsed eyes, remembering all those times he fell for those honeyed words. How Anakin relished in his empire, bathed in his glory, been broken in his shadows. This break was all about him just enjoying a loop and Palpatine would give him that to him atop of a bloody silver platter.

  Planets, whores, the wealth of a Galaxy at his finger tips. Sure, Palpatine would permanently try to disfigure him, try to turn him into a soulless puppet. Nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. Perhaps it was time for him to properly enjoy himself, a single decade of his life slaughtering the Jedi and a lifetime of corporate greed at his fingertips.

  “Of course with Padme in hand.”

  “Padme?” Anakin scoffed, the illusion of a future with Palpatine dying at the mention of her name. “That’s your grand reveal?”

  “You don’t even realise it, do you?”

  “Realise what?”

  “You love her.” He spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Love her?” How naive. “She pays me, that’s all.”

  “Yet you would kill for her.”

  “I’ve killed for less.” Anakin’s eyes narrowed.

  “But you won’t kill for more,” Palpatine almost seemed to purr, “Strange, no?”

  “A childhood in slavery, yet the man who kept you in chains lives. Sent to a Jedi Council which from my reports, you hate.” The Sith continued to strut. How he hated that confidence.

  “No deaths. Come now, even I played a saint, but what? Nine, ten years? With those people?” Palpatine spat the word like filth spewing from his mouth.

  “No murders, even accidental deaths of any Jedi on Coruscant. You reek of the Dark side yet don’t have the blood on your hands to prove it. Of course whores and hobos make for poor company yet adequate corpses. Is that how you sated your bloodlust?

  “Maybe it was my first time with the Dark Side.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “No one is that good their first time.” He smirked at Anakin, the sexual innuendo. Oh how he missed this. Anakin had centuries to memorise every little quirk of his Master, yet, even with such little time Palpatine knew how to play him well.

  “So, the Chosen One. Kills the unimportant, yet leaves those who are. This suggests that you don’t care who you murder. If you did there would be a pattern. Slavers, Jedi, civilians, it doesn’t matter to you. Individuals aren’t your target, rather a motive drives you. To bring balance to the Force? No, far too moral. Wealth? Political power? Closer, yet not quite right either. You want credits but you don’t need it, which only raises the question. What do you need?”

  Anakin rolled his eyes, ugh, psychology majors. All he wanted was to stay dead, not deal with this pretentious over-analysis.

  “Love,” Palpatine finally admitted.

  “Are you done?” Anakin raised a brow.

  “That depends on your answer.”

  A dreaded silence filled the room, stupid fucking Palpatine. All he had to do was not bring up the ridiculous name! A life of drugs and sex! That’s all he wanted for this loop. Palatine would give him that all and more, if he had just kept his wrinkled mouth shut.

  “Fuck. You.”

  In the fraction of a moment Anakin felt that terror which Palpatine kept on a leash not dissimilar to himself. A pure hate washed over him as everything wrong with the Galaxy personified tried to fill every pour of him with the unnaturalness of icy hot lava which only the Dark Side could provide. Anakin resisted the urge to retch as the pure essence of the Dark Side was reeled back into Palpatine before his stench could be sensed by any other Jedi.

  “Once a slave always a slave I suppose, you can remove the iron but never the chains. Very well,” Plaptine swept his hands over his robe as if flicking away the filth of the conversation. Eyes of a molten eclipse looked at him with casual dismay. Chosen one or not, he wasn’t the only person Palpatine could ever care about. Himself.

  “I’ll have Padme’s skin made into boots and wear them as I crush your skull in a pool of her blood.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Anakin spat back.

  The Sith turned to face the shadows, ready to disappear back to whatever hell he crawled out of. It should have been the end of the conversation there. Anakin knew they would meet again in this loop, the two of them pulled to each other like binary stars. There was no need for any last words, in the infinite time of the loop, words were useless.

  “Palpatine,” Anakin’s eyes rose only barely, regret clasping onto his words. Those eyes which contained heated ice staring back at him.

  “I will kill you, extinguish each of your immortalities and erase the concept of your being from the Galaxy. I will teach you permanence.”

  Silence hung as Palpatine took a moment to build a response. He could curse him out, threaten Padme or even just try to kill him now. Instead he opened his mouth.

  “No, you won’t.”

  And he was gone.

  The man who looked back at him wasn’t someone he recognised. His shoulders were dragged down, sagging weakly over his hunched back. His chest was wheezing and bent over, like an invisible weight pulled his torso down. Obi-Wan sighed, rubbing a hand though surprisingly greasy hair. When did it get so bad, it hadn’t been that long since shower, has it? Giving his armpit a quick unfaltering quick sniff he reeled back in eye watering pain, it maybe had been a little too long.

  From the edge of the mirror, the shower called to him like a siren, how badly he wanted to crawl inside and just let the water wash away all the grim and filth that had built up. Just five minutes. A blissful five minutes of nothing, no thoughts, no guilt. Just him and the water.

  Not today, no time.

  The irony of both sleeping in and being exhausted wasn’t lost on him. Sleepless nights were becoming more and more frequent as riots outside only seemed to grow more and more. Loud music, groups trying to break the police line, even stink bombs being hurled over, were just a few of the reasons the Jedi couldn’t get a wink of rest.

  What happened to when people would pay for his meals just cause they got a glimpse of a lightsaber? Obi-Wan never believed himself to be someone who needed admiration, he never did what he did for attention. Yet, now that he didn’t have it, the love of the populace, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. Was he truly so shallow?

  With a violent shake, he tried to throw his thoughts from his head. He couldn’t focus on himself right now, not today. Today was far too important for any mistakes. He was already exhausted; he didn’t need any more excuses to make any more mistakes, not while Anakin’s freedom was on the line.

  With a flick of his wrist, the lightsaber, which sat on his night stand, shot into his hand. The cold metal slightly woke him up.

  Could he? This sham trial was nothing more than something to keep the Council busy while the riots outside continued to rage. What a joke everything has become, vilified by the very people he spent his whole childhood protecting. Maybe in a few years, the people of the Republic would forgive the Jedi. When they realised that blaster fire isn’t so fun to face when you don’t have a Jedi in front of you. A decade, most likely. For everything to go back to the way it was before. Perhaps less. Obi-Wan had seen Republic Senators commit just as bad crimes and be forgiven so long as they kept out of the limelight for long enough. Anakin wouldn’t have that time, though. He would be locked in a cell and forgotten.

  Obi-Wan’s grip tightened. Leaving his room with a haste his body hadn’t felt ever since the start of these riots.

  No, he couldn’t. To break the law for himself would not be morally right, just selfish.

  “Obi-Wan,” Still, the lightsaber weighted surprisingly more heavy than it used to.

  “Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gonn would have never kept Anakin trapped. He would have broken the boy out of jail while prancing it around infront of the Council.

  “Obi-Wan,” Yet for all of Qui-Gon’s wisdom and argument, the Jedi still upheld the Galaxy’s morals. The Jedi were not without flaw yet compared to the Senate and the Hutts they were the driving power for ‘good’, to go against them was morally wrong, no?

  “Obi-Wan!” Reality snapped back to the man. No longer in his room or the halls of the Temple, instead he stood before the Masters of the Jedi council. When had he gotten here?

  “Masters,” Obi-Wan bowed, how long had he not been paying attention? “Forgive my absent mind.”

  “Forgiven you are, the feeling of stress, something we all understand.” Yoda said earning the nods of several around the room. Obi-Wan tried his best to nod along but all he could think about was going back to bed.

  “Kenobi… I hope you do realise what this could spell out for your future. You are a hero to the Jedi, do not waste your reputation on a boy who does not deserve it.” Master Windu gave what Obi-Wan assumed was a look of concern for him.

  “I believe everyone deserves a fair trial. You would not trust his own words so let me speak for him. I’m the best option for a lawyer he has.”

  “Admirable you are. Very well, Kenobi, defend the boy you shall. Bring in Skywalker, soon we shall commence.” Yoda announced. “The trial of Anakin Skywalker.”

  “You don’t need to follow me everywhere I go, I’m not going to run.” Padme blankly stared at the man she had come to know as Plo Koon. The Kel Dor had become an increasingly common occurrence, always appearing whenever she turned her head and while she at first didn’t hate his company

  Despite his claims that he wasn’t ‘stalking her’, every turn she found him. When she went to visit the medical droid he was just happening to check inventory, when she went for walks to stretch her legs, he just happened to be going for a stroll as well. It was particularly bad when one time she had caught him camping outside her room under the claim that he just happened to suffer from a sudden narcolepsy attack.

  “I am just trying to find the cafeteria. Where is it? I am also so forgetful.” He barely lied, his voice carrying a knowing smugness. Boredom was becoming a sickness during the siege of the Jedi Temple by the rioters outside. It would be coming up to four days now. A four day riot, Padme would be almost proud of the anti-establishmentarianism she had inspired if she now weren’t reaping the seeds she sowed.

  “We’ve already passed it,” twice now. By now they had walked the whole temple, yet still he followed closely behind.

  If he was trying to spy on her he was doing a terrible job. No he wanted to be seen, not just by her but the other Jedi as well. Every room they walked in, eyes fell to them, as a fog of tension seemed to follow in every step Padme took.

  They hated her.

  She had brought this to them. She had been the one who caused the Jedi to stay in locked rooms, caged by those who a week ago were singing them praises. She didn’t have the Force but she didn’t need some magical sixth sense for her to tell they wanted her gone. Thrown into the very crowd she had inspired, to be torn up and turned into a martyr against her will.

  It didn’t help that whenever they looked outside they saw posters of her face, or rather her previously unscarred face, being waved around alongside Jedi hate speech.

  Padme wanted nothing more than to crawl up into her bed and forget all of this had ever happened and go back to Kamino before she sent out that stupid article exposing all this. Back when she and Anakin cuddled half naked together listening to the sounds of rhythmic rain and his heartbeat. She wished she deleted that article like he warned her and instead took him to Naboo where she could break his icy exterior over time keeping him trapped with wine and cheese. No amount of death sticks could compare to good company and enough finger snacks to make her forget about her diet. Just the two of them, maybe Obi-Wan for the occasional third-wheel. How easy could life be? Then again ignorance is bliss she supposed.

  “Senator, I would wait here.”

  “Why?”

  “I sense trouble.” Plo Koon almost seemed to groan.

  A second later two bullets of orange and green hurled into his chest nearly knocking him to the floor had he not been prepared for it. It didn’t make the sound of flesh hitting flesh any less pleasant. Padme winced hearing Plo Koon holding his chest in a mix of pain and surprise. Even he didn’t expect just how sudden the impact would be.

  The two bullets themselves rubbed their heads, the Kel Dor not being the softest of impact. They were so young. A pair of alien girls, one being around the age of thirteen and the other looking the same as Anakin.

  Padme observed the two with an old curiosity, everyone in this temple had been plagued by a cold metonymy as being trapped in the Temple. Yet these two, or at least the orange girl seemed to still have some sort of semblance of life in her eyes dancing with the curiosity of a child. How she managed to grasp any sort of semblance of interest being locked in this cage of a temple was beyond her. Padme herself only now just realising how miserable a massive palace without any sort of wine or crackers truly was.

  “Sorry Master!” The girl full of life gave a quick hurried bow.

  “Why the rush?” Plo Koon winced, if he was angry by being barreled over, he certainly didn’t show it.

  “We wanted to see the Sith b-“ The green girl delivered a quick elbow to the Togruta.

  “We were just curious about Sith… research,” the green Jedi quickly blurted.

  “Sith research?” Plo Koon, raised what Padme assumed to be a brow for his race. “Unless we have undergone sudden construction in the past hour I do believe the archive is in the opposite direction.”

  The two girls gave hesitant looks to each other.

  “We had a different sort of research in mind.” The green girl began.

  “You always said the best learning is done in person… so, we thought we would get in person experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Ashoka,” the green girl hissed. “Ethay umanhay irlgay.”

  The girl’s eye flicked over to her, a sudden realisation came to her eyes. They were talking about her in a language she didn’t know.

  “Utshay upyay Iyay owknay.” The orange one hissed back.

  “Girls.” Plo Koon chided.

  “Sorry, Master.” They both said in a shameful unison, until the orange one opened her mouth once more.

  “We heard that the Sith boy was having his trial today in the Council chambers. We wanted to see what they look like.”

  “I heard he had fangs.” The green one added.

  “I heard his eyes are black like his soul.” The orange one almost seemed excited at that.

  “I heard he carries death sticks that are illegal… in the Outer Rim.” The two girls went back and forth sharing rumours that only grew in absurdity with each passing moment.

  “You shouldn’t listen to rumours.” Plo Koon sighed. “And you shouldn’t be so quick to make judgements, it’s unbecoming of a Jedi to come to conclusions without knowing the full story of any situation.

  The girls rolled their eyes at the impromptu lecture they had heard thousands of times before from Master Yoda while they were Younglings.

  “Still, this could be our first and last chance to see a Dark Side user after Master Kenobi split the last one like a pi?ata.” The green skinned girl whined.

  Plo Koon gave a disapproving hum at the phrasing. “You’ll be sorely disappointed if you expect a monster when you see him. The monsters we create in our heads are rarely the reality, and the best weapon against them is empathy rather than a laser sword.”

  At his words the two girls groaned. “What were you doing with the Senator anyway Master?”

  “Escorting Miss Amidala, Barriss.”

  “The lady who was with you?”

  “Was?” Plo Koon turned his head to find the space next to him lacking a distinct Senator sized object. “Where did she go?”

  “She ran off at the mention of the Sith boy.”