Judgment Day

Chapter 4 - Landing On Coruscant

The ride to the Senate is fairly quiet, and Anakin imagines it's because they're all trying to process what happened. Dooku is dead, and he still can't believe it. Dooku, one of the Sith, the leader of the Separatists, and the one who started the war. They've been searching him for years, and Anakin has fought him without success time and again.

Until now.

Dooku is gone. Anakin killed him. No – he didn't kill him. He murdered him in cold blood, and he feels sick. He feels dirty, and he tries to force his guilt away, because the Chancellor told him to do it. It couldn't be bad, right? The Chancellor would never tell him to do something if it was wrong. It's just like the Jedi: both tell him to do things that he feels are... wrong or immoral. He's accustomed to it, even if he doesn't like it. It doesn't matter how he feels about it though; it never has.

The war is one step closer to ending though. One of the two main Separatist leaders is gone, and that gives Anakin something to look forwards to.

What bothers him most is what's happening to Luke. Everything feels like it's going well now, but he knows something very bad could happen in the near future. The Force is in turmoil, as if it's... trying to decide something. As if it's currently laying out the future of the galaxy, mapping out another path that wasn't supposed to be here previously.

Luke was injured, and Anakin has no idea how or when, but he thinks it's worse than the boy is letting on. He really ought to get checked up in the healer's wing. Plus, he can sense the boy's distress. He's upset about something, and Anakin doesn't know what. He doesn't like it because this space hardly feels private enough to ask him about it.

"Master," Anakin requests finally. "I imagine the Council will want to speak with Luke. I would suggest he go to the healers, too."

"Really?" Obi-Wan asks.

"You too," Anakin adds as afterthought. "You were injured also."

"Minorly," he huffs. "It's no more than bruises, I assure you."

Obi-Wan is always cranky about these things, and Anakin knows it, but his old master is not the only person he's worried for here. Luke was strangled, and Anakin suspects he was injured beyond that, perhaps before he came. He's in pain, both physical and emotional, and he doesn't know what's causing it. "One of us needs to take Luke there," Anakin points out. "I doubt he knows his way around the Temple."

"I've never seen it before," he confesses sheepishly.

Anakin still can't imagine the future which is son is speaking of, and he would much rather not dwell on it, either. He sees Palpatine glancing towards them again – he knows who Luke is and where he's from, but Anakin knows the Chancellor won't tell anyone. This information isn't something they want to let get out, because Anakin knows the Sith would like to get ahold of it.

Assuming Sidious is real, of course. He thinks so, but Dooku could have been lying.

Anakin has also noticed that Luke seems... disturbingly jumpy around the Chancellor, which he can't really blame him for. Politicians can't make him comfortable if he was fighting against the government, and he doesn't want to think about his son being a terrorist.

They land at the Senate not long later, and Palpatine gets off the ship, soon disappearing into the crowd. "Coming, Master?" Anakin asks, stopping at the bottom of the shuttle and turning around.

Obi-Wan leans against the doorway. "No. I'm not brave enough for politics. I have to report to the Council. They will want to see Luke. Besides, someone needs to be the poster boy."

It's not as if Anakin didn't expect this attitude already, but it doesn't stop him from arguing. "Hold on. This whole operation was your idea."

"Let us not forget, Anakin," he argues. "That you rescued me from the buzz droids, and you killed Count Dooku, and you rescued the Chancellor, carrying me unconscious on your back."