Darth Strelok
Six months after Ahsoka Tano's departure...
Anakin Skywalker had been in the air before the others, having sensed her. Particularly, the blow across her face, and everywhere else. Not constant, not enough to kill. Not quickly at least. The blows came intermittently.
The other Jedi had noticed how tight his jaw had gotten, the way his mechanical hand clenched as he heard of the attack underway. The attack where Padme lived...
He could see the fires rising up from the tower as his interceptor sped towards it. There were no clones. Every clone in the vicinity was currently under attack, along with their patrol bases. It had been surgical. One minute, green across the board. Next, every single alert system in the temple went off then shut down. No one could find Obi-Wan.
He was alone.
It did not matter. He was the chosen one. And anything that tried to hurt Padme would be hurt by him.
Anyone in those apartments who started shooting wouldn't last long.
"Artoo, switch to auto-pilot, keep trying to contact Obi-Wan!" Anakin ordered the trusty little blue and white astro-mech, who beeped back on the pilot console affirmatively.
The cockpit hatch opened and the dark-clad Jedi Knight and among the greatest heroes of a wretched and bloody conflict that had dragged on far too long leapt out of his starfighter into a night sky and onto a landing platform as his ship passed by low, activating his lightsaber as he landed.
Never get between Anakin Skywalker and the person he loves. He'll always pick who he loves.
Always.
The tall, handsome Jedi's blue eyes scanned the landing area. No hostiles. No real intelligence on who the enemy was. Wasn't Confederacy. He'd have heard the roger-rogering by now.
He moved forward quickly, he sensed them, their life through his connection to all things. Hard, steady resolve. Like many of the clones he had fought beside and led into battle with Ahsoka--
He stopped himself from thinking of her. It was too painful, watching the disillusionment on her as she had left.
Yet another person this wretched war had taken from him.
He could not do anything about that. All he could do was protect who he still could.
That is, if they didn't kill her first.
He had one advantage. At least, he thought he did. No one knew he was married to her.
But the frequency with which he sensed her being hit. It was like some demented bell ring, meant solely to torment. Someone was just...hitting her.
He struggled to suppress his fury, felt the blackness within begging him to slaughter as he had on...on...
Anakin pulled away from the memory of Tattooine.
His steps were heavy as he moved toward the life in the building on a floor above him. He sensed no urgency from his enemies. Just...quiet acceptance.
The security in the place had all been murdered, including the clone honor guard the chancellor had established there recently. The red-armored clone troopers lay dead where they had been slain, some by blaster wounds and others...
Others by lightsaber.
"Huh. Maybe it 'is' Confederacy." Anakin thought out loud, kneeling down to examine the bodies. He tried to pick up some trace of Dooku, wondering if the rotten old bastard had grown a pair and decided to come knocking on the Jedi's doorstep for a change. Nothing. Whoever killed this man didn't feel like Dooku. But then again, by Anakin's own admission he was no Quinlan Vos.
Anakin went through the elaborate engraved passages of the Senatorial Apartments. The lights were out, blaster and lightsaber scouring were everywhere. The cuts were all designed to kill, not maim. No prisoners. Not Grievous. His cuts were messier. Way messier.
He took the service stairs. The ones he normally took to remain unseen to reach Padme's--his--home.
He suppressed his fear. If they wanted her dead by now, she would be...
But he did not know how long that fact would hold out...
Meanwhile...
The armored blow to Padme's jaw made her spit blood as she lay on the ground, bruised and bleeding, with two black eyes and a swollen face, purple on one side. The lights in the apartment were out. Only fires from when the invaders had blown through the wall.
They were Mandalorians. Mandalorians in white armor, all designed exactly the same. She heard Fett clones among the voices.
"That's enough." One of them said to the Mandalorian. "Skywalker just arrived."
The Mandalorian that had been hitting her turned, regarded her for a moment, then rose up, grabbing her by her pony-tailed hair, dragging the bruised, white clad woman to one of her apartments luxurious recliners.
She sat there in a daze, bleeding onto the fabric. When she had learned Anakin had been coming home she had gotten so excited she had put on the outfit she had been wearing in the Arena on Geonosis. She had cleared her schedule.
She had even heard his voice on the comlink, though she realized in hindsight there were so many ways to fake a voice. Especially one's like her husbands. To her displeasure she had heard one of her aides mockingly pretending to be her husband just the other way, and though she loathed how exaggerated the impression was, even she had to admit he'd gotten the voice dead on...
A faked voice was the least of her problems. They were using her as bait for her husband. Why, she didn't know. But she half expected either her husband or Obi-Wan to come crashing in any second now.
"Hey, boss is here." she heard one of the Mandalorians speak. She craned her head weakly to her left, watching as the door to her apartment hissed open.
He strode in, as tall as her husband, garbed in black leather, with a blacker duster with a mesh pattern that had a hood thrown over a masked face that had a breathing apparatus attached to the outside, making it resemble a primitive gasmask with angular lenses.
The breathing was a slow, automatic light hiss, intake having a slightly higher pitch. The hiss almost wasn't audible.
The black garbed figure strode past his men who stood at attention as he passed by, heading towards her.
"You kept hitting her regularly, like I ordered?" He asked, his voice a low, ragged electronic growl. It was not a baritone. Not deep and commanding. Just gutteral, with a hint of the metallic to it.
Padme focused on him, her head shifting as he moved, pulling up an expensive-looking chair and sitting across from her. He folded his arms.
"Look how old you've become."
"I...I would've thought..." Padme struggled to get out, desperate to stay conscious.
"Thought what?" The figure asked calmly, observing her marred and battered features.
"I would have thought only Count Dooku could be so bold."
"He wishes he were this bold."
"An attack on the Senatorial Apartments." Padme coughed, flinching as she shifted to be more comfortable. The sofa was bloody now. "They'll hunt you all over the galaxy for this, whoever you are. You won't get away with this."
"And what do you suppose 'this' is, old one?" The black garbed figure asked.
"I'm not even forty." Padme replied. "So why do you say I'm old?"
"By old I mean your ways have become a relic. You're the last of a dying breed: A politician that believes what they preach. Democracy!" The figured gestured exuberantly. "Peace in our time! Equality! Is this not true?"
The battered woman nodded weakly.
"I knew it was. How about justice? How are you on that?" The figure asked pointedly.
"I believe in justice." Padme affirmed, unsettled by the near silent, automatic hiss of his breathing.
"For everyone? Everyone deserves justice, right. Everyone?"
"Of course."
"What about murderers? You believe murderers should be brought to justice?" The figure asked.
The battered woman stared silently at the black garbed figure, the flicker of nearby fires illuminating her savaged visage, its wounds reflected from the lens of her captors gas mask.
"Why are you asking me this? Who are you?"
"Answer the question."
"Yes. Yes. I believe murderers should be brought to justice..." she got out.
The figure regarded her silently for a moment.
He pulled out a small, disk shaped holoprojector from his duster.
"Justice, huh?" The Figure asked playing the recording.
Padme, her hair matted and bloodied strained, staring at a blue image of her husband.
He'd still had his Padawan braid back then. He was so passionate, so full of...something...something that had completed her. Something that drew her like moth to light.
He was swinging his lightsaber. She first thought it was some record of a training session. That was, until she saw that look on his face.
She'd really only seen that look once. It was a look of crazed hatred. Anakin Skywalker was the most wonderful heroic man she had ever known. She would never regret loving him.
But when she saw the tusken in the recording being decapitated, she knew she would always regret this. This one part of him.
The recording went on, the hum of his lightsaber powering through the screams of tusken men, then the shriller ones of tusken women. On and on the vicious chops and hacks, Anakin's pained screams of fury and anguish and perhaps even insanity ringing in Padme's ears, making her eyes water in sorrow as his dark side bared itself. Before the blade could cut through a pregnant tusken women, the black garbed figure stopped the recording.
The image froze on a perfect shot of a screaming Anakin Skywalker in mid swing, face twisted into an inhuman mask of rage and heartbreak. He didn't even look like he knew where he was.
"Given the lack of surprise on your face, I'm going to have to assume he told you, didn't he? Unexpected." The Figure said in growl that somehow managed to sound amused all the same.
"Please..." Padme pleaded. "The Republic needs him. The Galaxy needs him. I need him."
"I forget, you never saw this. Up to now, you had the benefit of disconnect. As long as you didn't have to see it, it didn't really count, did it. And besides, who's gonna cry over a few dead savages and their brood, right?"
Padme coughed as a spasm of pain attacked her ribs.
"What do you want me to say? You act like Viszla long enough...it comes back to haunt you. Not saying its right, but..."
"Fair is fair." The figure finished.
"He wasn't himself. His mother had just died in front of him. They tortured her to death. He had a laser sword and the power of the Force. It was a perfect storm."
"Shall I continue to the part in the recording where he butchers the tusken younglings?"
"Who are you? Are you working for the Confederacy?"
"If the Confederacy knew what I have on Anakin Skywalker I dare say I could perhaps even tempt Dooku himself to part with his lightsaber for it. But no. I'm not."
"Then who--"
"I'm someone who knows Anakin is unworthy of his destiny. But more importantly, I'm someone who just plain knows." The man asserted, switching to a recording of him kissing her at their wedding.
"I never understood what it was he saw in you." The man asserted. "I mean, its not that I don't see the beauty--well, not right now obviously. But you know what I mean. I'm sure you're lovely and talented and intelligent, but still, I see nothing remarkable in you that I have not observed in a hundred other women, politician or not. What is it about you that drives him to insanity?"
"You could destroy us easily with what you have on that recording. Why go to this trouble arranging this?"
"Because," the Stealth Sensitive said as he rose with a flourish of his duster. "I have my eye on the future."
He turned to one of his men. "Has he begun his attack?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. We wait." The man said, pulling out his lightsaber. Padme glimpsed rough, blackened alloy on a design eerily similar to her husband's.
"You a fan?" she asked, gesturing weakly to his blade.
The man was silent for a moment, glancing with what seemed to be introspection at his blade.
"I'm a refinement." He answered finally, waiting for the fighting to start.
Anakin Skywalker had been in the air before the others, having sensed her. Particularly, the blow across her face, and everywhere else. Not constant, not enough to kill. Not quickly at least. The blows came intermittently.
The other Jedi had noticed how tight his jaw had gotten, the way his mechanical hand clenched as he heard of the attack underway. The attack where Padme lived...
He could see the fires rising up from the tower as his interceptor sped towards it. There were no clones. Every clone in the vicinity was currently under attack, along with their patrol bases. It had been surgical. One minute, green across the board. Next, every single alert system in the temple went off then shut down. No one could find Obi-Wan.
He was alone.
It did not matter. He was the chosen one. And anything that tried to hurt Padme would be hurt by him.
Anyone in those apartments who started shooting wouldn't last long.
"Artoo, switch to auto-pilot, keep trying to contact Obi-Wan!" Anakin ordered the trusty little blue and white astro-mech, who beeped back on the pilot console affirmatively.
The cockpit hatch opened and the dark-clad Jedi Knight and among the greatest heroes of a wretched and bloody conflict that had dragged on far too long leapt out of his starfighter into a night sky and onto a landing platform as his ship passed by low, activating his lightsaber as he landed.
Never get between Anakin Skywalker and the person he loves. He'll always pick who he loves.
Always.
The tall, handsome Jedi's blue eyes scanned the landing area. No hostiles. No real intelligence on who the enemy was. Wasn't Confederacy. He'd have heard the roger-rogering by now.
He moved forward quickly, he sensed them, their life through his connection to all things. Hard, steady resolve. Like many of the clones he had fought beside and led into battle with Ahsoka--
He stopped himself from thinking of her. It was too painful, watching the disillusionment on her as she had left.
Yet another person this wretched war had taken from him.
He could not do anything about that. All he could do was protect who he still could.
That is, if they didn't kill her first.
He had one advantage. At least, he thought he did. No one knew he was married to her.
But the frequency with which he sensed her being hit. It was like some demented bell ring, meant solely to torment. Someone was just...hitting her.
He struggled to suppress his fury, felt the blackness within begging him to slaughter as he had on...on...
Anakin pulled away from the memory of Tattooine.
His steps were heavy as he moved toward the life in the building on a floor above him. He sensed no urgency from his enemies. Just...quiet acceptance.
The security in the place had all been murdered, including the clone honor guard the chancellor had established there recently. The red-armored clone troopers lay dead where they had been slain, some by blaster wounds and others...
Others by lightsaber.
"Huh. Maybe it 'is' Confederacy." Anakin thought out loud, kneeling down to examine the bodies. He tried to pick up some trace of Dooku, wondering if the rotten old bastard had grown a pair and decided to come knocking on the Jedi's doorstep for a change. Nothing. Whoever killed this man didn't feel like Dooku. But then again, by Anakin's own admission he was no Quinlan Vos.
Anakin went through the elaborate engraved passages of the Senatorial Apartments. The lights were out, blaster and lightsaber scouring were everywhere. The cuts were all designed to kill, not maim. No prisoners. Not Grievous. His cuts were messier. Way messier.
He took the service stairs. The ones he normally took to remain unseen to reach Padme's--his--home.
He suppressed his fear. If they wanted her dead by now, she would be...
But he did not know how long that fact would hold out...
Meanwhile...
The armored blow to Padme's jaw made her spit blood as she lay on the ground, bruised and bleeding, with two black eyes and a swollen face, purple on one side. The lights in the apartment were out. Only fires from when the invaders had blown through the wall.
They were Mandalorians. Mandalorians in white armor, all designed exactly the same. She heard Fett clones among the voices.
"That's enough." One of them said to the Mandalorian. "Skywalker just arrived."
The Mandalorian that had been hitting her turned, regarded her for a moment, then rose up, grabbing her by her pony-tailed hair, dragging the bruised, white clad woman to one of her apartments luxurious recliners.
She sat there in a daze, bleeding onto the fabric. When she had learned Anakin had been coming home she had gotten so excited she had put on the outfit she had been wearing in the Arena on Geonosis. She had cleared her schedule.
She had even heard his voice on the comlink, though she realized in hindsight there were so many ways to fake a voice. Especially one's like her husbands. To her displeasure she had heard one of her aides mockingly pretending to be her husband just the other way, and though she loathed how exaggerated the impression was, even she had to admit he'd gotten the voice dead on...
A faked voice was the least of her problems. They were using her as bait for her husband. Why, she didn't know. But she half expected either her husband or Obi-Wan to come crashing in any second now.
"Hey, boss is here." she heard one of the Mandalorians speak. She craned her head weakly to her left, watching as the door to her apartment hissed open.
He strode in, as tall as her husband, garbed in black leather, with a blacker duster with a mesh pattern that had a hood thrown over a masked face that had a breathing apparatus attached to the outside, making it resemble a primitive gasmask with angular lenses.
The breathing was a slow, automatic light hiss, intake having a slightly higher pitch. The hiss almost wasn't audible.
The black garbed figure strode past his men who stood at attention as he passed by, heading towards her.
"You kept hitting her regularly, like I ordered?" He asked, his voice a low, ragged electronic growl. It was not a baritone. Not deep and commanding. Just gutteral, with a hint of the metallic to it.
Padme focused on him, her head shifting as he moved, pulling up an expensive-looking chair and sitting across from her. He folded his arms.
"Look how old you've become."
"I...I would've thought..." Padme struggled to get out, desperate to stay conscious.
"Thought what?" The figure asked calmly, observing her marred and battered features.
"I would have thought only Count Dooku could be so bold."
"He wishes he were this bold."
"An attack on the Senatorial Apartments." Padme coughed, flinching as she shifted to be more comfortable. The sofa was bloody now. "They'll hunt you all over the galaxy for this, whoever you are. You won't get away with this."
"And what do you suppose 'this' is, old one?" The black garbed figure asked.
"I'm not even forty." Padme replied. "So why do you say I'm old?"
"By old I mean your ways have become a relic. You're the last of a dying breed: A politician that believes what they preach. Democracy!" The figured gestured exuberantly. "Peace in our time! Equality! Is this not true?"
The battered woman nodded weakly.
"I knew it was. How about justice? How are you on that?" The figure asked pointedly.
"I believe in justice." Padme affirmed, unsettled by the near silent, automatic hiss of his breathing.
"For everyone? Everyone deserves justice, right. Everyone?"
"Of course."
"What about murderers? You believe murderers should be brought to justice?" The figure asked.
The battered woman stared silently at the black garbed figure, the flicker of nearby fires illuminating her savaged visage, its wounds reflected from the lens of her captors gas mask.
"Why are you asking me this? Who are you?"
"Answer the question."
"Yes. Yes. I believe murderers should be brought to justice..." she got out.
The figure regarded her silently for a moment.
He pulled out a small, disk shaped holoprojector from his duster.
"Justice, huh?" The Figure asked playing the recording.
Padme, her hair matted and bloodied strained, staring at a blue image of her husband.
He'd still had his Padawan braid back then. He was so passionate, so full of...something...something that had completed her. Something that drew her like moth to light.
He was swinging his lightsaber. She first thought it was some record of a training session. That was, until she saw that look on his face.
She'd really only seen that look once. It was a look of crazed hatred. Anakin Skywalker was the most wonderful heroic man she had ever known. She would never regret loving him.
But when she saw the tusken in the recording being decapitated, she knew she would always regret this. This one part of him.
The recording went on, the hum of his lightsaber powering through the screams of tusken men, then the shriller ones of tusken women. On and on the vicious chops and hacks, Anakin's pained screams of fury and anguish and perhaps even insanity ringing in Padme's ears, making her eyes water in sorrow as his dark side bared itself. Before the blade could cut through a pregnant tusken women, the black garbed figure stopped the recording.
The image froze on a perfect shot of a screaming Anakin Skywalker in mid swing, face twisted into an inhuman mask of rage and heartbreak. He didn't even look like he knew where he was.
"Given the lack of surprise on your face, I'm going to have to assume he told you, didn't he? Unexpected." The Figure said in growl that somehow managed to sound amused all the same.
"Please..." Padme pleaded. "The Republic needs him. The Galaxy needs him. I need him."
"I forget, you never saw this. Up to now, you had the benefit of disconnect. As long as you didn't have to see it, it didn't really count, did it. And besides, who's gonna cry over a few dead savages and their brood, right?"
Padme coughed as a spasm of pain attacked her ribs.
"What do you want me to say? You act like Viszla long enough...it comes back to haunt you. Not saying its right, but..."
"Fair is fair." The figure finished.
"He wasn't himself. His mother had just died in front of him. They tortured her to death. He had a laser sword and the power of the Force. It was a perfect storm."
"Shall I continue to the part in the recording where he butchers the tusken younglings?"
"Who are you? Are you working for the Confederacy?"
"If the Confederacy knew what I have on Anakin Skywalker I dare say I could perhaps even tempt Dooku himself to part with his lightsaber for it. But no. I'm not."
"Then who--"
"I'm someone who knows Anakin is unworthy of his destiny. But more importantly, I'm someone who just plain knows." The man asserted, switching to a recording of him kissing her at their wedding.
"I never understood what it was he saw in you." The man asserted. "I mean, its not that I don't see the beauty--well, not right now obviously. But you know what I mean. I'm sure you're lovely and talented and intelligent, but still, I see nothing remarkable in you that I have not observed in a hundred other women, politician or not. What is it about you that drives him to insanity?"
"You could destroy us easily with what you have on that recording. Why go to this trouble arranging this?"
"Because," the Stealth Sensitive said as he rose with a flourish of his duster. "I have my eye on the future."
He turned to one of his men. "Has he begun his attack?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. We wait." The man said, pulling out his lightsaber. Padme glimpsed rough, blackened alloy on a design eerily similar to her husband's.
"You a fan?" she asked, gesturing weakly to his blade.
The man was silent for a moment, glancing with what seemed to be introspection at his blade.
"I'm a refinement." He answered finally, waiting for the fighting to start.