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The room was silent. Cody had finished all the urgent paperwork for the day, and Obi-Wan was somewhere unknown. Xanatos was sitting cross-legged on his desk, taking apart a lightsaber Cody didn’t recognize.
“I still don’t get it,” he said.
Xanatos looked up, blue eyes shining in the dim room. “Hm?”
“The— The whole thing with Anakin. What even happened?” All Cody really knew was that Anakin and Obi-Wan had been called to a meeting in the temple one day and then everything dissolved into chaos. There had also been something about Anakin murdering a tribe of natives somewhere, but the details were hazy.
“That is… a bit complicated.” Xanatos put the lightsaber down on the desk, the red crystal gleaming ominously in its open casing.
“Yes, I think I got that much.”
A laugh. “You have quite a bit more temper in you than people usually give you credit for, don’t you Commander?”
“Yes, well, you aren’t my CO.” Not that Cody was entirely sure where Xanatos stood in relation to him in the chain of command, but he had decided early on that trying to keep up proper protocol with the Shadow was only going to turn into an exercise in frustration.
“Fair enough. Alright, so Anakin. It is important that you understand that Anakin killing the Tuskens wasn’t the main problem. It was a problem, but… Jedi kill a lot of people. Even those of us who actually do think that we are supposed to be guardians of peace don’t deny that part. We—“
“Wait. Wait wait wait,” Cody interrupted him. “Those of you who believe you are supposed to be guardians of peace? I thought that was the whole spiel with the Jedi. What does the rest of you believe in?”
“The thing about peace, Commander, is that it is a very static thing. Which for the most part isn’t bad. Stability is good for people. But something being peaceful doesn’t automatically make it perfect. Plenty of terrible systems endure because the peaceful attempts at fixing them simply didn’t work. Not to say that revolutions aren’t prone to perpetuating the old, corrupt systems but with a new look and an extra death toll, they very much are, but making peace your primary goal has some serious pitfalls. Just look at the last millennium of the Republic.”
Cody was pretty certain that what little history had made it into his training wasn’t enough for him to even understand a quarter of what Xanatos was trying to convey but… “So what about the rest of you?”
“Oh, it varies. I was raised with a few different philosophies on the subject, but the one that eventually stuck is an old one that basically boils down to the idea that an Order of Force Users should first and foremost focus on keeping itself healthy. That stable, well-adjusted force users who can raise and teach other stable, well-adjusted force users do more good for the galaxy than any outward focus could.”
Cody raised a dubious eyebrow. “That one popular in the wider Jedi population?”
“Force no,” Xanatos laughed. “Most of them would much rather spend their days out in the galaxy, helping the poor and suppressed with their wisdom, than focus on their personal issues. Lightsiders, seriously. Always so eager to be altruistic.”
“You don’t seem very stable and well-adjusted yourself,” Cody said. Though Xanatos had turned out to be far more reliable than Cody’s first impression had indicated. He had been sure that the new strange Jedi that had just shown up one day would be causing nothing but trouble. He had been half correct: Xanatos was excellent at causing trouble. He was just equally as good at getting them all out of it again.
Xanatos grinned. “I spend most of my teenage years accidentally frying the emotional centers in my brain because my teacher couldn’t be bothered to notice. Given that I’m not out there tearing some hapless planet apart I would say that I’m amazingly well adjusted.”
“That…” Cody stared at him. What? “I’m going to need more details about that at some point.”
“Sure.” Xanatos made a dismissive gesture. “But we were talking about Anakin, weren’t we? Alright, so Anakin killed the Tusken Raiders. Which was bad, but not a disaster in and of itself. If he had done it because his judgment was flawed or something they would have just stuffed him into therapy and that would have been that. Distressing for everyone involved, but we wouldn’t have ended up with this mess. He didn’t, though. He killed them because he got lost in his emotions and his automatic reaction was all-out violence. Which is one thing for someone using the dark. We tend to that sort of defensive-aggressive response. It’s not a good one, mind you, and we spend a lot of time learning to control it. But it‘s pretty natural for us. For someone on the light side, though? Not at all. Oh, they will argue and justify and generally be arrogant pricks that are absolutely certain they know what is right, but they aren’t prone to sudden emotional rages. And Anakin Skywalker is very much light. Which I don’t mean in a moral judgment kind of way. It’s simply the aspect of the force he uses almost exclusively.”
Cody tried to make sense of that. “So it shouldn’t have happened like it did?”
“No, it shouldn’t have. It isn’t impossible, but it just doesn’t fit. It is also possible that he got manipulated into it. You can certainly influence people like that. Have someone or something push a person’s emotions into the wrong direction until the thought of all-out slaughter seems perfectly reasonable, at least for one terrible, world-changing moment. And unlike someone actually trained to deal with those emotions, most Lightsiders have little to no defense against it.”
“Is that what happened, then? Someone pushed Anakin?”
Xanatos sighed. “Maybe. I personally think so, but it’s hard to confirm either way. Because here is the thing: If you are manipulated to that extent it should be really fucking obvious. It’s not a natural emotion and the dissonance should be immediately suspicious. Especially for someone trained against telepathic manipulation. If it wasn’t his own reaction, then Anakin should have known, at least once he got out of it.”
Cody was beginning to see the problem. “But he hid it instead.”
“Yes. Which also indicates a whole host of other issues that mean he should have never been allowed to act independently in the field, but those are all minor in comparison to the real problem. Because I still can’t find the separation line. No one can and the mind healers have tried. So either a) all of Anakin’s reactions were native, which doesn’t make a lot of sense for reasons that have to do with how the force affects your neurological profile, or b) someone has been injecting things into Anakin Skywalker’s mind for so long and with such skill that his brain just got used to accepting them as its own. Which, I might point out, is a terrifying thought.”
“Wait, so that is why Obi-Wan…”
“Yes. No one really believed it, I think, but it is an obvious enough connection that it needed to be checked. Well, that and the possibility that whoever did it to Anakin might have gotten him too.”
“So you.”
“So me.”
They were silent for a moment. Then something occurred to Cody: “Wait, did they get to Obi-Wan?” The thought made something cold curl in Cody’s gut.
Xanatos made an uncertain movement with his head. “I don’t think so? Not to a significant degree, anyway. But it’s hard to be certain.”
That was good. Probably. “And Anakin? What will happen to him?” And what would happen to Obi-Wan if they really did get to him?
Xanatos grimaced. “Well, one way or the other, his brain is pretty fucked up. And as someone who had plenty of that little issue: It sucks. Completely and utterly. It’s also really hard to fix. He will probably stay a medical ward of the temple indefinitely, what with the proven tendency for mass murder. And with that sort of instability, they can’t let him back into the field either. Best case scenario is probably that the mind healers manage to smooth out the worst of the edges and he spends the rest of his life being a genius ship engineer in some dock somewhere.”
Cody breathed out in something like relief. “That doesn’t sound too bad. Skywalker might actually enjoy it.”
“Hm.” Xanatos didn’t sound convinced, but being stuck in one place building ships was probably pretty high up on the Shadow’s list of worst nightmares.
“Wait,” Cody said when something occurred to him. “Since it obviously wasn’t Obi-Wan, who did do it?”
Xanatos grinned, and it was a hard, sharp-edged thing. “Now that is the interesting question, isn’t it?”