Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Book I

ARGUMENT. In which, through the Force, anything is possible. In which, in one reality, two powerful beings from civilizations separated by time and space begin to appear as recurring figures in each other's dreams. One of these beings being the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker of the war-torn Galactic Republic. The other, the young Paul of House Atreides, residing in the rigidly ruled Imperium on the planet Arrakis. With each individual unknown to the other, what will they make of these dreams? How will they begin to understand what they mean?

Part I

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
—Literature of Old Terra, Volume V

(“Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelly)

I. A beginning is a very delicate time

Paul was caught off guard by seeing two burning suns in the sky. He tried to reason with himself that this could be some nonsense dream trait, but every other time he had seen Arrakis in a dream, Arrakis was always represented as it truly was. There was only one visible sun on Arrakis from the ground. This was something that had been confirmed to him when he had studied filmbooks of Arrakis, and later, upon his family's arrival to the planet. Arrakis, Dune, had appeared just the same as in his dream. No, no, as difficult as it was for him to admit it to himself—this was not Arrakis.

Did that mean it was a real place? Or was it symbolism; an oracle hinting at him rather than giving him a peek through time itself?

When, in his dream, Paul found himself in this desert landscape that wasn’t Arrakis, he would see the figure of a man walking in the distance. At first, like a black dot in the tan, monotonous landscape. The figure would come closer, and he would make out some features of this figure—it was a young man, with hair that blended in with the surroundings—as if his hair was born of or shaped by the same desert. It was slightly curly and unkempt.

Then, there was always some useless striving in Paul’s mind to try to identify the origin of the man through his garments. Throughout the Imperium, such a thing usually could be a good identifier of class, planet of origin, or of a particular religious sect. For a time he would wonder at the look, trying to determine a particular modern culture or organization that he could associate with it to help him identify the man. He found it strange to see a young man in those ancient looking black-and-brown robes. They appeared as something that should be worn by a hermit or monastic, or one of the old Zensunni wanderers that were the ancestors of the Fremen people. The robes gave him vague ideas, but nothing he could pin down.

As the dream-monk would stride closer, Paul could see that the figure had blue eyes. But it wasn’t the bright Melange-induced blue-in-blue Eyes of Ibad that he was used to seeing in his dreams. It was a less harsh blue, like something seen in a watercolor painting. The natural blue eyes of this figure were something he'd only seen commonly back on Caladan, which did not often appear in his dream-visions like Arrakis and all its desolate miles and miles of sand.

As he puzzled over this factor, he would be snapped from his thoughts by a sharp glint of light in his eyes that made him instinctively shut them.

It was said by some that one could not feel pain in a dream; in his experience, that was wrong. In his dreams things became realer-than-real, and he got the same start of a headache and black spots in his vision that he would get in waking life. He still felt the dry air, the sun scorching his skin, the ever present dust and scratchy sensation in his throat. He’d felt these traits of the desert environment long before he’d actually experienced them in what was called real life.

When Paul squinted from the light, he would look for the source. Then, he would look at one of the man’s hands and not see the same tan flesh one would expect, but a skeletal black-and-sliver mechno-hand. It didn't resemble any handiwork Paul had been aware of. It didn't have the work of Ixian craftsmanship to it. That was notable, as they had somewhat of a monopoly on the manufacturing of such things, and were the only ones in the Imperium willing to, if only to a degree, break the taboo associated with computer machinery. They had been walking that line for centuries now. They hadn't yet gone too far. 

And so there stood Paul, standing in his dream, unable to move even in his lucid state, with the man getting closer and closer. Every second seemed eternal and it felt inevitable that their eyes would meet. If they did, he knew that he would try to interact with the man. He had many questions, both out of a natural curiosity and a need for data. There was no longer any point in distinguishing the two.

A sense of disappointment would rush over him as the man looked past him, through him, even. Paul wondered how he could be present in this dream and yet not be seen. He was an apparition in his own dream! That gave him an odd sense of indignation. How dare his own mind do such a thing to him? A common question. No answer given.

He'd rather see Arrakis again, and the Fremen girl with the elven face. He could talk to her in his dreams, even if he had no idea why or when or what about. She was pleasant.

Yes, that was the familiar. It was still strange, but the familiar strange was always preferable to the unfamiliar strange.

Of all the strange phenomena in the dream, the idea that he could sense the emotions of the figure stood out to him.

There was grief there, behind the relatively stoic countenance. The emotions that he absorbed from the man manifested in himself as an overwhelming urge to cry for no reason at all and weight pressing on his upright chest that accompanied it.

Paul wondered if he was just making things up. That is, doing the natural human thing of creating stories to explain the unknown, something his ancestors had done since their first beginnings on Terra. How could he—what was it, feel?—the emotions of another, let alone the feelings of a person who may not even be a real person. Was this some capability of a mentat he did not know about? How did that make any sense?

From what he knew of being a mentat so far, the experience was much different than just being an information processor. There was a hunger for data, yes, but emotions were still persistent and could interfere with the mentat process. Paul knew from his own experience that much, even if what lay dormant had hardly been awakened. He’d experienced a separation between the rational mind, the instinct mind, and the emotional mind. Could he really feel this dream-phantom's inner feelings? Was his mind only coming to that conclusion from the visual data of his dream? What was that weight on his chest? Why was there that strain in his throat, that overwhelming sense of upset?

These days Paul felt he knew less and less about himself as he simultaneously learned, in an academic sense, more and more about himself. He knew that even if he was something of a budding mentat, he was also something unaccounted for, the product of millenia of a plan he hardly wanted to think about.

Before the man would stride past him and he would wake, the man would draw a weapon that Paul knew his mind must have conjured up. He’d thought it a sword when it was just hanging from the man’s belt. It wasn’t a sword though, not completely, but it was something akin to one—It resembled a laser, a laser suspended in place but with the hilt of a sword. It was like someone had figured out how to freeze the blast of a lasgun in place. The sword glowed something of a neon color and hummed lightly as it was moved. The blade evoked, to him, the blue-in-blue color of someone’s eyes when they’ve had that long exposure to the spice melange. It was an azure that would, just like the suns, leave an impression in his eyes when he looked away from it. Even knowing that, he hardly wanted to look away. What was this thing? Who was this man?

For much of the time that he’d had prescient dreams, they’d been of one thing, of one place, of one subject.

They were of Arrakis. He’d seen glimpses of the Fremen and their barren desert planet long before he’d ever left Caladan; those glimpses were like a borrowed memory from someone else or like a reel of film, from a him that he did not yet know and that seemed unfamiliar. In a way, they reached out to him, but he was not in them. He was only seeing something from a distance, something not yet to be. This new dream was different in its own subtle ways. It gave Paul a peculiar sense of being present in the event of the dream, not just glimpsing visions of future events. It was him, there, in some strange timeless moment witnessing it. This dreamscape was solid. He could feel the dry air against his skin, the dust that would make its way into his nostrils, the perspiration beginning to gather at his brow.
Why could nothing ever be straightforward?

Interpreting the prattle of his mind had become like fishing to him. The facts and the unknowns of these dreams of his, for a time, would have to swim idly somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious mind, until the pieces could be hooked out one by one and be formed into something coherent. That was the hope, at least. Coherency. Understanding could come later.
…

“Mother…”

“Hmm?” Jessica hummed, looking away from the tea which she had been stirring in a near-meditative way. It was as if like she wanted to command it to do something. Paul always thought she looked ridiculously serious at the most odd times, but he couldn’t say much, he’d been told he looked just the same.

“I’ve had another one of those dreams. I know I shouldn’t dwell on things like that, but it just sticks with me. It’s as if it’s demanding my attention, poking me over and over.”

“The mind is a peculiar place Paul, you know that. Maybe there is something in your life that you’re ignoring, that you need to pay attention to,” she explained, adding something else to her tea and then sipping it.

She was being so vague, but that was his mother. Evasive at the worst of times.

“I suppose it could be that.”

He was starting to get frustrated, at what he wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe himself, for dwelling on these things, maybe at this unknown place he kept looking into, being forced to stare into, or maybe his mother, for being so little help. At times he found his mind was like a void that he was waiting to close or else swallow him whole. He was getting annoyed at being the universe’s, or the Sisterhood's guinea pig, or anyone's at all.

“You should eat,” his mother gestured at the untouched food in front of him.

“I should, shouldn’t I?” but he didn’t, to the chagrin of his mother, “It’s just that, it’s not just Arrakis anymore, or those Fremen, or that girl. I mean, I have a question…”

“And what might that be?”

“Are there any other significant desert planets? The has to be, right? Arrakis has one sun and two moons, but the place I keep seeing has two suns.”

“Well,” she looked at her tea, satisfied. It was finally to her liking. She sat her spoon down, “How do you know this is a real place? It may be that it’s symbolic. It could be your mind adjusting to your new surroundings. There's no need to jump to it being a result of your prescience.”

Why was she being so skeptical? A healthy dose of skepticism could be good, he could acknowledge that, but he knew when a dream was a vision and when it was just the mind processing various impressions of the previous day. She was aware that he knew the difference between such things. Their lives were so bizarre at times that Occam’s Razor hardly shaved anything away anymore. His mother, however, seemed to be trying her best with that now dull Razor.

“It could be,” he shrugged. “What about—” he started, but didn’t know how to word it, “what about—? I mean, I saw a weapon. You see, it looked as if it should have been a sword, but in place of the blade there was a laser. It reminded me of a lasgun, but the laser was suspended into one place. Have you ever heard of a weapon like that?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m not the person you should be asking about weapons. Ask Duncan, he may know.”

She was right in the fact that Duncan would know more about weapons, but had no reason to act as if she knew nothing of them. Not to Paul, at least. He knew very well that she could be volatile if need be, but he didn't press. He assumed that it was just that she, at times, seemed uneasy hearing about his dreams. Therefore, she would avoid going to deep into the topic. He couldn't blame her. He was as well, and they could both stay in a comfortable state of half-denial for a little while longer. Paul slumped back in his chair. He wanted to find a way to stop thinking about this, to find some other subject to fill his mind. Unfortunately, the need for data, like a pesky insect, would not go away. It kept buzzing around his head but he could not yet see it well enough to swat at it and shut it up.

Chapter Text

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
–From A Guide to Ancient Poetry

(From “The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats)

II. The Maker (Or, the Voice of the One Crying Out in the Wilderness)

The dream always started with sand. It made him, even in his half-lucid dream state, feel incredibly uneasy. Not only because of the sand, but because every time a setting like this appeared in his dream it was always a place he dreaded, and by instinct, he'd come to hate it. It was glimpses of slavery, of not having control over his own fate, his mother, her agony, her last words, the dreadful rattling sound a person makes as they breathe their last, rage burning him up inside, the sand people, the dead. Sand sticking to blood and sweat and tears. Tatooine.

This place isn't Tatooine. He realized that with some amount of relief when he looked up to the sky and saw but one burning sun that even in the dream left rings in his vision and—and then the sun was overshadowed by something. It was a sudden eclipse taking the sun and bringing shadows and night all around. There was a vast thing in front of him—what kind of thing it was he did not yet know. It was the size of a large starship, but its color was like the sand. It had an organic appearance to it, as of something that belonged where it was. It belonged here. He was a trespasser.

His mind echoed with words and phrases he didn't recognize, in a dialect he could hardly understand, Shai-Hulud, Shai-Hulud, Shai-Hulud…

The sand. It was rising from the surrounding dunes. It was true, this beast, it was not mechanical. It was a living creature, a leviathan of the desert, something in the old myths, maybe. It knew not of the beings around it and it did not care about them, and Anakin couldn't imagine why it would. Their existence was not a concern to this being, just as Anakin didn't take time to think that he might step on a bug when he walked. He was a mite to this thing and somehow he sensed that he had disturbed it in its own territory.

What the creature knew was the desert and the vibrations that stirred it and woke it, deep, deep down. A sense of both awe and great dread washed over him. There was something about it that evoked a reverence, as the strange mantra he'd before heard echoed in his mind. Was this Shai-Hulud? What did that mean?

The fear the image of this beast sent through him made him want to run and not glance back, but his dream-body wouldn’t budge even as he tried to.

The dread and awe within his gut intensified when the creature opened its mouth, and there he saw what seemed as a void, vast and endless, waiting for him to fall in. In this void were teeth as sharp as primitive blades and twice as big, white and reflecting the sun in a thousand little glints of light leaving little tiny little spots in his vision once he blinked. Even more strange, deep in the depths there was a glowing light like fire. Eventually, the being dove back into the sand, going back to the depths from which it came, and a sense of relief washed over Anakin.

Finally, the dream allowed him some freedom of movement, when it had now become useless, and he turned around. He wondered if there was more to this environment than miles of depressing sand dunes.

Anakin saw people. There are people on this planet! His perspective seemed to have shifted and now he was facing a large rock formation, a jagged cliff that went on a great distance and had overhanging that provided some semblance of shade. No longer was he lost at desert-sea. The bright white of the overhanging sun had moved to the west and was now casting pale yellows and oranges all about, as these people moved slowly and with intent out from some small opening in the cliff wall.

What he first noticed about these people was the nearly glowing blue eyes that they had. There were no whites in them, and the blue contrasted greatly with the endless monotony of the dark cliffs and desert landscape. Everything else, including the strange leather-like suits they wore, was of a dark black or brown color or the same bland, sandy beige of the desert. It was also impossible not to notice their eyes as they were covered from head to toe by their suits, which also included a mask that extended up to just beneath those distinct eyes. Anakin could easily see the reason for such dress, to keep sand out and moisture in, very likely.

How was it that an entire group of people could possess the same eye color? They appeared humanoid from a distance, and when they were close Anakin could tell that they were, in fact, humans. He had never been aware of any group of humans who seemed to have the same eye color. As far as he was aware, they varied and it was a natural occurrence in humans, although not every species in the galaxy was that way. Could it be some sort of mutation? Xenobiology and the like was a mystery to him. He was a Jedi, and though he'd been taught about it a little, he'd never paid much attention.

In the dreamscape everything became a haze as there was an oncoming sandstorm building up. He knew the stirrings of a sandstorm from childhood, and as the wind picked up, it was blowing loose sands into clouds of dust around him. He felt the horrible dryness of the sand blow across his face, and felt the stinging sensation it brought when it hit you at high speeds. He had a burning sensation in his throat and an urge to cough, wipe the dust from his eyes, get out of this place before the wind got to dangerous speeds and he choked on the substance he hated most in the galaxy. He looked around for the people he had seen before, but they were gone, as if they'd become one with the surrounding dunes and been able to slip away with no trace left behind at all.

Before he could meet that horrible fate in a sandstorm, everything shifted and morphed into new shapes around him, until for a moment everything was of the same substance and nothing was distinct at all.

He had the sensation of wiping his eyes, just as someone does when they wake up, and his vision was entirely clear once again. He saw a young man wearing tattered clothes, willowy of figure and with charcoal colored hair. Next to him was an older woman, with bronzed hair and an oval face. He noticed their similarities—both had that oval face and green eyes. They were very likely related, mother and son, maybe?

They were in something like a tent, and the woman looked at the boy with a solemn expression. Anakin’s attention was drawn intently to the boy, not fully of his own doing.

He looked troubled, almost as if he was a man who'd seen or lived the lifetimes of a thousand dead men. The experience in his green eyes was far beyond what he couldn've possibly seen yet in the span of his life, and despite not knowing this kid, he wanted to ask him what was wrong or what was going on. He'd seen that expression before in the mirror. He knew it too well and the consequences that look could have, if he and this boy were similar in any way. It was many things at once: fear, desperation, and a hint of anger. Overall there was a sense of impending dread and confusion. He could feel it in the Force, too. It was an all consuming feeling. The dread, if it were described, would be the sense of sinking. The confusion was the intense sensation of his person being split and pulled in all different directions to the point of utter madness.

In the blink of an eye, and before he could further process the situation, he was in a large cave looking out at what could be thousands of those desert people he'd seen before, their eyes blue specks that seemed illumined in the darkness. There was relief as he felt a dampness on his skin and figured if he was on the same planet he'd seen before, they had some sort of climate control. There'd been ways of collecting and keeping in moisture on Tatooine, this was likely the same. His gaze would shift to a platform of rock, where he saw the young man, who seemed to grab the attention of these uncanny people. He stood on a platform in a shaded area that was carved into the surrounding stone of the place he was in. Under the platform in the hall of stone stood thousands of these blue-eyed people. He was so unlike any of them but had captured the attention of masses in a profound way, by the near-pleading look in the eyes of some. They gazed on him like a being of terror and with a reverence Anakin had rarely seen in his life.

There came another unfamiliar phrase whispered into his ear: lisan al-gaib, lisan al-gaib… and… mahdi…

Then he saw war, blood, terror spreading like a plague among the already sickly and millions upon millions dropping dead to the ground because of it. He even had a vague sense of the sickly-sweet smell of death. He knew it too well. The smell of flesh burning reached him and he felt he'd inhaled some of the ash of cremated remains. He knew those smells, too. He saw these people running into war. He knew war well but this was different from what he knew. He’d figured he must have seen the worst of the worst by now.

This was destruction that Anakin’s imagination could hardly fathom even having been living through a war for years. A war he'd become all too used to. There were no droids here, no venting his anger on machines, and there were no ways to avoid confronting the suffering by viewing from a distance. There wasn’t a way to become detached like he’d sometimes forced himself to do during or after battle. It was too personal, and yet, as far as he knew, it wasn’t real either. Yet it seemed to go on, and on, and on. The level of barbarity here was unlike anything he could recall in the Galaxy for thousands of years. He saw world after world burning with the impact of whatever this was. He'd felt the sense of desperately trying to put out a fire in a wilderness where had only buckets of water. He saw nothing taking the place of something. He saw death glut its hungry mouth on the madness of humanity, and even for him and all he'd seen, all he'd done, it was too much.

...

The next day Anakin recounted select parts of his dream to his former master. He didn't want to alarm Obi-Wan by mentioning the conflict he'd witnessed, and have him assume this was something in the near future, when he wasn't even entirely sure yet that what he saw was real. Anakin was surprised at himself for coming clean to any extent about this dream. He suspected it was the slightly absurd nature of the dream and its total disconnect to anything that he actually knew. It was more like recounting another person’s memory or something he’d watched on a holofilm than something he’d experienced personally.

Normally, when he had a strange dream, he would move on and forget it ever happened. Besides, most dreams had their peculiar aspects. It was the rule and not the exception.What stuck with him about this particular experience is that it wasn’t the usual mish-mash of familiar things, people, and circumstances. There was a narrative of some kind going on in that dream, and he’d seen no people or things that were familiar to him. Everything was cohesive, even all of the terror he saw, there was a similar thread running through it all when that wasn’t the usual nature of any ordinary dream.

His more visionary dreams, like this one, were the ones that troubled him—and this recent one was one that was a mix of both the totally uncanny, and the knowledge, or apprehension, that came to one when the Force opened them up to a vision. The only other dream that he could ever remember telling anyone in much detail was when he told Padmé about the dreams of his mother. He’d mentioned them to Obi-Wan, but it was only to Padme he’d been able to open up fully.

At that point, when he’d told her of it, he was desperate. He’d needed to save his mother. To save her from what he’d seen, because it was not only a dream but a vision. He could feel it in the Force, just as now he felt it about this recent dream—thankfully, despite the horror he’d seen, there was a waking detachment to it and not the urgent sense to move. Seeing his mother dying in his dream, there was no momentary or waking escape from that, being that it couldn’t be written off. With Tatooine and its brutality, it was absolutely plausible.

To see her tortured to death in that dream, it killed him inside. He wasn’t aware he was dreaming, as most dreamers aren’t. What he saw in front of him was, to him, reality in its most gut wrenching form.

When one dreams, they don’t often know that they’re dreaming; for something like that to be real for even a moment, it’s as if something falls upon a person’s entire being and tries to suffocate them. At least, that had been his experience.

He decided, for once, to learn from experience.

Even if what he'd seen was utterly alien to him, he'd learned to listen to these things, lest they come back to haunt him. He didn't need or want any more ghosts.
The young man in his dream—he didn’t know him. He didn’t even know of him, or these people, or those horrible sand-dwelling monsters. Nor did he even want to think of the catastrophic conflict he'd seen, or to wonder how such a war could be or how it could come about. That it existed in his mind and that he alone knew about it was terror enough. The Clone War was bad, and got worse every year it dragged on, in fact, every day it dragged on, but could it escalate to such a thing? If it was the same, why did everything look so unlike it ever had? He thought back to the planet he'd seen again. Throughout the war it seemed like he had been to or heard about every backwater planet there was, so what was this place? Could it be in the unknown regions, or was he missing something that was known about? He took a mental note to check the archives when he got the chance and to see if he could find anything that matched what he had seen. If there did happen to be any knowledge of this planet, it would be in there.

As he and Obi-Wan spoke, they walked down a wide-open corridor of the Jedi Temple. There was a spaciousness to the place that might seem imposing to a person not accustomed to it. It had been to Anakin when he’d first set foot on Coruscant. He’d never seen so much life before in one place when he’d first come to this planet. The entire population of Tatooine could not begin to fill one level of Coruscant. Then, on the surface level of this durasteel-plated ecumenopolis was this anachronism of a structure that stuck out among the monotony of glinting chrome. He’d seen the place and asked about it. Imagine the shock of a boy from Tatooine when he learned he would be living there. There was a quietness, too, to the temple, that one might never guess this place at times housed thousands.

...

“After that, I saw a horrible creature, Master. It was the shape of a worm but much, much larger. It was the size of a venator if not bigger, bigger than a Krayt Dragon, and when it opened its mouth it looked like it could swallow a building. Have you ever seen a Sarlacc Pit? That was its mouth, times a thousand, maybe. I didn’t see much of it before it dove back into the sand…”

“You certainly have an active imagination, Anakin,” said Obi-Wan. In response, Obi-Wan got a deadpanned look.

Obi-Wan responded, “There’s a war on, we have to focus on what’s right in front of us, in our waking life. I mean, are you sure your mind wasn’t just cobbling things together?”

There was a part of Anakin that was thankful for Obi-Wan’s skepticism. He had the urge to let himself sink into the comfort of writing this all off, to push it in the way to some deep recess in his mind and forget about it with a front of rationality. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t him. Also unfortunately, there was a nagging feeling within him that just would not allow that. He didn’t want whatever he’d seen to be real.

“No, Master. I mean—I wouldn’t tell you about this if it was just another one of my dreams. It seemed so much like I was an observer to a real place. Besides, you very well know a creature like that could exist. If a Space Slug or a Zillo Beast can exist, why not that?” He looked to Obi-Wan, hoping for some of his incredulity to subside at the statement. It didn’t.

Anakin went on, deciding not to give up, “I know what you’re thinking—’He just saw Tatooine’---but this wasn’t Tatooine, it was a different place! One sun, two moons.” To emphasize the statement he put up one finger, and then two for demonstration.

Obi-Wan looked less totally-skeptical now, his face more relaxed into his usual listening-expression. Still, Anakin couldn’t get much from that. He made that face often, when he was interested, and also when he was uninterested. The man was impenetrable. Even in the Force, he still gave off that mix of serious, serene, and calm that he generally did and which made it so frustrating (at least to Anakin) to gauge how he was actually feeling about something.

Anakin shook his head, inwardly a bit crestfallen. Outwardly, trying his best to maintain an expression of neutrality. He couldn’t help himself from commenting, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

At his momentary defeat in convincing Obi-Wan of the reality of his dream creature, his mind went to Ahsoka. What would she have thought about it? She would have understood. She would have tried to, at the least. If not, they would have at least had a good laugh about it, and with Obi-Wan he felt that if he went on all he might end up with was some thinly veiled lecture disguised as simple conversation.

He knew why she left the order, very much so, but he missed having her around. If they got in touch again, he would tell her. He would tell Padmé as well, but he had trouble thinking he might burden her with something so ridiculous if it turned out to be nothing. The Senate was a mess these days, and it kept her busy. Still, he longed to see her. To see her as she was. Not in all that garb—which she was admittedly gorgeous in—but dressed down, just as Padme, herself.

There was a long pause, as Obi-Wan assessed what he’d heard, while he absentmindedly repeated his familiar gesture of stroking his beard.

“Anakin, you know you can tell me anything. It’s just difficult not to be a bit incredulous,” he shrugged, “But I promise, I’m open to hearing what you have to say. You always have my ear.”

“What’s strange is that whatever I see has nothing to do with me at all. I mean—why would it want me to see these things?"

He knew he had some form of pre-sight. He’d experienced it enough to this point to know that well about himself. It was why the Force would show him such things that was the mystery. It had all been so totally absurd, out of the realm of anything he could imagine his sleeping brain to cobble together.

"That's a good question, my friend. I'm afraid I don't know. But, if these visions are truly something from the Force, the meaning of them will reveal themselves in time. You may think what you saw has nothing to do with you, but how can you know that for sure?"

Obi-Wan now seemed to be at least entertaining the possible reality of what Anakin had told him.

“Everything I saw was—nothing was identifiable. The sand-creatures, the people, and so on. I’d never seen any of it before the first time I had that dream.”

“I wish I knew the mysteries of the Galaxy, my friend, but I don’t. Don’t trouble yourself too severely about it. I know you tend towards doing that. As I said, trust in the Force and I’m sure things will work out in time, as they always do,” Obi-Wan reassured him, “Back when I was a young Padawan, and I was in my mind worrying about something, Master Qui-Gon used to remind me to focus on things as they are in the present moment. He would tell me to be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the present moment. Never at the expense of the present. I wish there was some other way I could help, but this seems like the kind of thing that might require patience for you to solve.”

“Easy for you to say something about patience when you’re not the one seeing these things.”

Paul sighed, pressing his fingers to the pressure points of his temples. He had been looking through film books for so long that his head was starting to ache and he was considering going to find Dr. Yueh to get some sort of pain killer. He hardly knew what he was looking for; he didn't know what to call any of the things in his dreams. How was he ever meant to find things that he didn't know the name of? How could he even begin searching when he hardly had an idea of what for?

Still, the images were pressed into his mind like a print or an engraving. At the moment, he was looking through a series of images that was essentially from an encyclopaedia of weapons. He must have been through nearly all of them at this point, but nothing resembled that odd glowing sword that the man in his dreams would hold as he strode past. He'd taken a few pieces of paper, and with the small artistic knowledge he had, sketched these images out. He hoped that if he sketched the images out they would leave his mind, now being printed in physical reality.

It seemed to work for a bit, but they came back. When he saw the visions of Arrakis, at the very least he knew of Arrakis. He knew of the Fremen, of the sandworms and that strange girl with the near glowing blue eyes. He didn't know her, per se, but felt he did, and he knew of her people. The Fremen. This was something altogether different, though. What he was seeing now was something entirely different from what he knew. In some ways it was starting to scare him. Maybe he was going mad this time. Maybe there was nothing to these dreams, after all.
Still, he started another filmbook.

Anakin had finally steadied the ship, a ‘borrowed’ old light freighter, seconds before, it was spinning out of control and R2-D2 was screaming at him. He wasn't worried, though, he'd done this so many times before, it was ridiculous. Obi-Wan was about as on edge as R2, freaking out from the turbulence as he always did—and also trying to hide it, as he always did, in a mask of annoyance at Anakin’s foolhardiness. It was almost amusing to him, and would have been more so if it wasn’t a routine in their lives at this point.

"Anakin, what was that?"

There was the ever-present exasperation, bundled up and into a single phrase and perfected in the emphasis and entire lectures he heaped upon the single word ‘that’.

"Just a bit of turbulence, Master. Don't worry about it," he could envision the role of Obi Wan's eyes, but he continued to look ahead, though occasionally swiveling side to side in his seat in a fruitless attempt to calm his own nerves which he tried his best to push aside, just as Obi-Wan did with his not-completely-unfounded fear of flying.

"You call that turbulence? You have a death wish! One day, Anakin Skywalker, you’ll earn us the stupidest obituaries in the Galaxy."

"You can thank me for our elegant escape later—right now we need to make sure the Separatists can't catch up to us, should we make a jump? There's apparently a route here."

Anakin did not mention that he was completely unfamiliar with the route. He’d never seen it on any map, nor had he ever heard of it, but he decided that he wasn’t going to question his luck at the moment. It would get them somewhere far away very fast. Very far away from the Separatist destroyer that was still somehow tailing them, even with the various escape maneuvers he had already pulled.

"Anakin, I'm not sure that's the greatest idea."

“Maybe not, but we don’t have many options. Feel free to chip in if you have any ideas, Master.”

Anakin thought for a second. He wasn't often afraid of taking risks, but was he really about to take a lane when he had no idea what was on the other side?

Yeah, he'd learned about the Jedi Exploration Corps, and how they studied new territories of the galaxy, but the idea of going somewhere so unknown made him feel almost uncharacteristically uneasy. There were, he knew, some species that lived in the Unknown regions–the near-human Chiss, for example, and their planet of Csilla, but they were secretive people, and they'd had to adapt for the particularly dangerous system that they lived in.

He thought back to the legends he'd heard as a child back on Tatooine, and all the superstitious talk about what was beyond the known galaxy.

Yet, there was something in him pulling him, something telling him to make the jump. He usually felt like this when he was getting a 'hint' from the Force, but why would the Force be telling him to do something like this? Was there some sort of bigger threat that was calling him to it? It had happened before, and then he thought about his dreams, and then…

"Making the jump to hyperspace."

"Anakin!"

Chapter Text

You must unlearn what you have learned.
—From Quotes of the Jedi by Grandmaster Luke Skywalker

III. Folding Space

Obi Wan Kenobi felt like he was in a dream. Being on a ship in general made him dizzy, but this stunt his former padawan was pulling made him more than dizzy, it made him feel the sensation of being hardly present in his body, as if his spirit itself was trying to make a quick escape and he had to hold it in before it slipped away.

I am a Jedi, he reminded himself, There is no reason to be afraid.

That was a basic tenet of the Jedi; that fear leads to anger, anger to hate, and hate to suffering. As an abstract philosophical idea, it made perfect sense. When it came to putting it into practice came the difficulty, and Obi-Wan had done quite well through the years keeping his fear at bay, better than many; certainly, he’d avoided struggling with it on the level that his former padawan had. For that he was intensely thankful. During his time with Anakin he’d come to see fear as more of a disease that must be fought back with the medicine of the Force. Seeing Anakin’s struggle, he knew it was no longer as simple as pushing it away—and still, he was guilty of just that. Obi-Wan had come to think that some beings were chronic sufferers of such things as fear because of their circumstances and no matter how intensely they were fought, remission didn’t last long as something so deeply rooted into an individual (or even collective) as fear always lay dormant. On a hopeful note, he liked to believe this back-and-forth struggle made the victory all the more rewarding.

The fear Obi-Wan faced at the moment was much more surface level than deeply rooted. Ergo, he knew it should be simple and rather effective to focus on something more productive, something more in his control. Yet, when one is stuck on a ship with someone as incomprehensible as Anakin Skywalker, it can be difficult to push away fears that are irrational or unlikely, because he so often made the irrational and unlikely a manifest reality.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

He replayed in his mind, over and over as the dizzying sensation of hyperspace travel overtook him and he attempted not to stare into the swirling vortex in front of him, or acknowledge the idea that he was effectively slipping into another dimension. It was such an indescribable sensation, like you were simultaneously moving at a breakneck speed but not moving at all. Nothing came close to it. It was an experience entirely of its own.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

He closed his eyes to avoid the motion sickness he was experiencing from being made worse. Jumping to hyperspace should be normal at this point in his nearly four decades of life, and yet, it wasn't. It always set something off in his body to some degree.

This sort of sickness had integrated itself into his life through the years until it became a hardly notable phenomenon. And now that he was growing older, another small ache or pain was almost nothing to him. If he felt particularly bad at any given time there were generally pain relievers of some sort available on the ships he was on and he would oftentimes distract himself with reports and statistical information or plans for an upcoming battle, mapping out movements and looking to his Clone Troopers for advice. Unfortunately, he had nothing of note to distract himself with and he was unsure if this ship had anything like painkillers on it. He felt worse than usual, and a light throbbing had begun making itself known near his temples. Obi-Wan wondered if his increased reaction to flying had something to do with the ship they were on. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a ship of this kind; a light freighter that they’d taken on a moon in the Geonosis System, slightly older in model but working well from what he had observed so far, common in the outer rim for running illicit spice from planet to planet. Thankfully, they wouldn’t be in too much trouble as this particular ship had no cargo when they’d taken it.

There were, of course, many variables to consider, and ironically, he wondered if the consideration of them would aid in him ignoring his current pain.

In the end, he decided his current difficulties were a result of the physical strain of the day, a pronounced lack of sleep, and the stress of fleeing from the Separatists for what felt like the millionth time in the past few years. I’m starting to sound like a medical droid!

Had he been feeling snarking, he might have put some of the blame on the stress of Anakin flying the ship, but he hadn’t been able to logically include that in his argument to himself.

No, Anakin piloting the ship wasn’t a factor. Even if he had trouble admitting it at times, he did trust Anakin to fly a ship. He trusted him much more than most people, as a matter of fact. The problem was he did it in such an unconventional way that everything was still a shock to the system, for him at least. For Anakin, flying was second nature. He'd been flying pods at the age of 9 even before joining the Order. To him, it was like an art form, a skill to be cultivated down to the finest details. To Obi-Wan, a necessity.

He tried not to think about the fact that they had no clue where they were going. I mean, how likely would it be to get lost anyways? Obi-Wan opened his eyes, regretted it, and then closed them again. He would try to meditate, he decided. That would clear things up.

Jessica prided herself on knowing a great many things, or at least being able to fathom them. Not long after they had arrived on Arrakis Jessica had said to the Shadout Mapes, "I know a great many things…" and there Mapes had believed her, and given her the Crysknife--the knife made of the tooth of an Arakeen sandworm, sacred to the Fremen people. This knife in particular was interesting, as she had heard about it only in legends previously. Yet, she had heard about it. That's what mattered, and certainly the Bene Gesserit knew about it. There wasn't a way that they didn't.

It seemed that the knife of the Maker was only thought to be a legend because one had never made it off-planet. Taking the off the planet was strictly forbidden by the Fremen people, just as sheathing it without it touching blood also was. She had learned that when she drew blood from the Shadout Mapes by her own request, before sheathing the and hiding it in her bodice where it remained.

This is why it bothered her what Paul was describing. If such a weapon as he had described did exist, she had never even heard of it in legend. Something totally unknown to a Bene Gesserit was a foreign thing indeed. The morning when he had described it to her, she had dismissed it. Yet, she no longer could. Her son didn't think she noticed, but she had seen him pouring over filmbook after filmbook which were on weapons, the history of weapons in the Imperium, and so on. He obviously felt that there was something to what he'd seen.

She wondered if she should speak to the Reverend Mother about this. Maybe she would know? She had taken an interest in Paul's dreams before, that day back on Caladan during the test of the Gom Jabbar. In some ways Jessica wanted to block that event from memory. It was so terrifying to stand helpless, outside of that room, not knowing whether or not her son, her beloved son, would come out ever again. In fact, it wasn't even likely that he did. The fact that he did survive the test was something of an anomaly. It had strengthened her faith that her son was the Kwizatz Haderach, the one the Bene Gesserit had been trying to produce carefully over thousands of years.

She could hear the Reverend Mother's voice:

"Other men have taken this test before you…"

"They tried and failed?"

"They tried and died."

She felt a shiver from that. It was over now, she had to remind herself. It was over. Her son was alive, and the Bene Gesserit had promised protection to her and her son in the case of an attack.

"But for the father, nothing…"

She didn't want to think about it, but she knew something awful was coming. She had to remind herself to just live and let things play out. As of now, there was nothing she could do. Her mind returned for a second to that odd weapon Paul had described. She tried once again to recall something of the sort, but she had no luck.

With a creaking of durasteel and machinery that made one uneasy no matter how many times it was experienced and a feeling of one’s spirit being pulled forcefully back into one’s body, they were once again in realspace. As the practice of travel through hyperspace was so common throughout the Galaxy that it was often taken for granted, no one really stopped anymore to consider just what the three-dimensional being went through as they entered another dimension. These days it was considered only by the physicists of the Galaxy and those who were misfortunate enough to suffer through a serious malfunction of their ship in the state and live.

Despite its normalization, some beings exhibited a natural physical and/or psychological upset one would expect such travel to bring. On the physical level, some beings experienced a kind of space-bends at the rapid change of state. On the mental level, there were even some Jedi who were granted (often unsettling) Force visions during such travel.

As for Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, it generally left him in only a slightly discombobulated state of mind. A state of mind that generally left him quickly unless there was something else that happened to be heightening his anxiety at any given time.

There was, in fact, something that was currently inducing that anxiety. It was this whole situation.

"By the Force, Anakin, we survived!" Obi-Wan Kenobi let out a long held breath as the incomparable blackness of space re-appeared in his sight as he looked through the transparisteel of the ship’s viewfinder. The blinding light of hyperspace seen through the windows of a ship left a sort of sheen over his vision, the kind one would get if they stared at a planet's sun or suns for more than a moment, the sheen turning into black spots the stuck around no matter how much he attempted to blink away. Thankfully, he had been through this many a time before and knew they would subside eventually.

As his vision began to clear up, he allowed himself to relax his shoulders, knowing there would be a leftover soreness from the long-held tension later. He noted a pointed throbbing beginning behind his right eye and the way the muscles around it remained tight even as he tried to relax them, and mentally noted to himself to check this ship for a medpack soon, on the off chance there was something that could alleviate the oncoming migraine.

"You say that every time I fly," Anakin grumbled, pressing some buttons on the console that aided in the transition from hyperspace to realspace, and asking, "R2, how's the ship looking?"

R2 beeped in response. Apparently, the ship was doing well and only appeared to have sustained some cosmetic injuries. Still, R2 seemed to insist in his own way that the ship needed to dock soon. His own way being loud and repetitive, as anyone who understood Binary could tell you. It would be smart to stock up on fuel, and Anakin was reminded that jumping to hyperspace so fast could have sustained damage that wasn’t immediately visible and it would be best to look at the ship's interior just to double check.

There wasn’t much to see in their immediate vicinity, which wasn’t something that alarmed him. Contrary to what many believed, space was in fact exactly what it was named for—a vast, cold void where nothing tended to prevail over something, and the various planets, stars, systems, and other celestial phenomena if put together could hardly fill a fraction of even the known area of space. When Anakin looked with some focus, he did see what appeared to be a yellow speck in the distance, a spherical formation that was not bright enough to be a star but much too round to be an asteroid. He blinked to ensure that there wasn’t for some reason an oddly symmetrical speck of dust in his eye, as irrational as it was.

Anakin sighed, pulling up a map and hoping to identify what he hoped was a planet, and a habitable one at that. He felt relief at having escaped, and his body was only just coming down from the rush of adrenaline that battle brought. His hands shook lightly as he pressed on the screen that displayed the map, and he was jittery in a way that could be compared to having too many cups of caff in the morning.

"We need to dock somewhere, R2 is insisting," R2 very pointedly whirred in response, "We were just past Geonosis when we jumped. We shouldn't be too far from another system. There was a lane there. Why would there be one if there was nothing nearby?"

“It could be archaic. I’ve never heard of that lane before.”

Anakin scoffed, “You’ve admitted you don’t like flying, Master. I wouldn’t expect you to know much about hyperspace lanes. And that’s fine.”

His goal wasn’t to start bickering. These were the things he just found coming out of his mouth at times, particularly in high stress situations.

Obi-Wan didn’t seem to want to bicker, either, as he didn’t try to correct Anakin on the comment. In recent years he’d found it easier to deal with Anakin’s penchant for running his mouth by just ignoring him. He didn’t enjoy flying, no, but he’d done his fair share of travel in his time in which he’d learned the name of many hyperspace routes. He knew quite a bit more than Anakin seemed to thing.

The older Jedi decided to only push back with a question, “Anakin, are you even familiar with the lane?”

There was a pause.

“Well, no.”

Obi-Wan sighed, though he’d expected the answer.

"The council will not be happy if they have to dispatch someone to find us all the way—wherever we are. Nor will I be happy if we have no way to get fuel and we end up stuck floating aimlessly in space."

The council is never happy, Anakin thought, attempting to locate the nearest planet or planetary system. Something popped up on the screen. Anakin looked to identify it, but all that popped up was, Planet: Unknown. That's weird. Anakin pressed on the screen again, attempting to see if this was just an error in the computer. Once again it popped up, Planet: Unknown. Anakin shrugged, steering the ship so it went in the direction of the planet. Hopefully it was hospitable and if it had life, the life wasn’t hostile.

Momentarily, a strange sensation in the Force swept over him. He shivered slightly, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

"Did you feel that?"

"What?"

"Nothing. We’re going to attempt to land on the unknown planet. Hopefully, it'll be hospitable."

“Hopefully?”
…
It didn't take long before they could see a planet in the distance. It was a sort of beige colour and there were no huge landmarks that could be seen nor were there the shimmering lights like those of Coruscant that you could see from space. As they came closer, though, he did notice signs of civilization, groupings of what could be cities that nearly blended into the beige at their distance. The biggest sign of all, of course, were the large industrial-looking boxy space ships that hovered around the planet like satellites. Anakin tried to identify the types of ships that they were. They didn't look like any ships he knew of, but it could just be the distance.

Without a second thought, Anakin set the coordinates to land on this unknown planet.

"Looks like we've found a planet, Master…"

"The look of that planet… It reminds me almost of Tatooine. It couldn't be Jakku, we were nowhere near that system. Are you sure we haven't ended up near Tatooine? It's not far from the Utapau System, it might make sense…"

"This isn't Tatooine, if you hadn't noticed, there's two moons in this system. Tatooine only has three," Anakin explained, readying the ship to enter the atmosphere of the planet.

"No, I hadn’t noticed. I never really paid attention to the features of Tatooine all that much…"

"It's because you didn't have to live on that miserable planet for years!"

"It couldn't be that bad!” Obi-Wan realized his rather obvious mistake. What he had meant was: “Climate wise, at least."

"It was that bad, Master."
...
Entering the atmosphere was fairly easy. There wasn't much resistance nor was there too much pressure on the ship. Anakin hoped this place was the type that was habitable for humans. They had oxygen masks in case of an inhospitable atmosphere, but even then they had only a certain supply. He would have to have R2 run some tests once they found a place to land, which is what he was concerned about now.

While there was civilization on the planet, there didn't seem to be a great amount of it. He thought it would be best if they landed near a city or a village. There was one place he noticed at first—it looked like a city but it appeared to be walled off. Everything looked crafted out of sand or some similar substance. The city itself looked like a maze covered up with a sand-coloured shield, concealing whatever life was inside of it. Smart. He thought. It was likely a way for the natives to adapt to the harsh sun during certain points of the day. He'd noticed that this system had only one sun but two circling moons. The sun was obviously close enough to the planet itself that it could be possible that direct sunlight could be dangerous.

Still, the sands they were currently flying over reminded him of something familiar, something he had seen before. Was it his memories of the Dune Sea on Tatooine? It could be. Dune Sea had been an appropriate name for the place, and it was for the part of this planet they were flying over. The ripple-effect of the sand reminded him of ocean waves. There it was! his memory snapped back to his dreams. That was what this place reminded him of.
There was that odd sensation again.

No, he told himself, there's no way this is the place from my dreams. He shook off the odd feeling, and looked for somewhere decent to land. He knew well enough that it wouldn't be safe to land directly in the middle of one of these dunes, the grounds wouldn't be compact enough. Seeing the city from above, he noticed that the ground just outside of the city looked a bit more stable. Hopefully it was the way it looked. He couldn't land too close to the city–if these people were hostile that would draw far too much attention from the locals. He decided to land a bit away from the city, but not too far into the more hostile-looking area of the desert.

He closed his eyes as he finally landed the ship. R2 whirred.

"Alright R2, I'm gonna need you to survey the environment."

Chapter Text

Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs forth now. Don't you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

—Revised Orange Catholic Bible

(The Book of the Prophet Isaiah 43:19)

IV. Vier, hier Kommt die Sonne

There was that dream again. Paul didn't want to get out of bed. There was something about the Arrakeen heat that made a person want to do nothing. Back on Caladan there was always a crisp feeling that made him want to do things faster. The chill would motivate him, and keep him awake when he was drowsy. His ears would start to throb from the cold wind blowing in them and that same wind would push him forward as if the planet itself was telling him to keep moving. Something about the heat of Arrakis was just exhausting.

The same dream had come back as it had many a time, but, recalling it, he brought back the sky of the strange planet. He tried to recall the binary sunset he'd seen so many times. It hit him slowly that something very small had changed this particular night. He had looked to the sky behind the black-robed man and seen, for the first time, one sun. It was bright and nearly colorless like the sun of Arrakis. Of all the times he'd had this dream, there had been two suns in the heavens. Nothing had ever changed about his dream until now.

He yawned, reaching to cover up with a sheet he must have nearly kicked off the bed during the night. He tried to run back over the dream again. He was doubtful that anything had really changed. He must have imagined that. Nothing ever changed in this dream. It could just be his memory trying to fill in a blank. No, no, that made no sense. 

He remembered these dreams though. He always knew the ones to remember and the ones to forget. His conscious and unconscious mind seemed to have an understanding about that, a mutual agreement of sorts. The dreams that could be forgotten nearly always slipped away, like sand through a sifter. He could remember only the skeleton of those dreams, if that. These dreams, though, he never forgot anything from them. Why, now, would his mind ever try to fill in a blank? Was he just desperate for something to happen, to see some sort of change? Monotony was known to make one mad. 

Rolling over, an early-morning sunbeam hit his eye. Instinctually, he squinted, and his mind flashed back to the dream. The setting sun hit his eye, and he squinted, as the statue-man walked past him, not acknowledging his existence. Even in the dream, just as now, the blazing light of the sun had left a black imprint in his vision, and it had taken some time for the imprint to leave completely, like the blackness of a bruise healing over time.

So it was the Arrakeen sun he had seen. 

Why, though? He wondered to himself if he should just stop questioning it. There was something in him that pressed against that idea. It was almost a gut reaction, and he could hear the sound of his mother's voice in his head to look closely at things, to motives, intonations, every detail you could. That was what Bene Gesserit did. His whole life he had been taught to observe, to question, and from that to form a conclusion. The way his mother had taught him to accept something without questioning it was almost a sin. He was reminded of a part of the Sisterhood’s Credo, and always the ultimate unspoken commandment is 'Thou shall not question. But we question. We break that commandment as a matter of course.’

Paul sat up, almost too fast. He felt the blood rush to his head. If Duncan was around he could maybe ask him about the weapon he had seen. He'd thought about it before now but the idea of doing so wasn't very appealing at the time. At that point, he believed he'd be able to find some trace of this object on his own. He didn't want to admit defeat. That, and Duncan usually brushed his dreams off. 

He didn't often understand why he dreamed these things.

"Do you often dream things that happen exactly as you dreamt them?"

The words of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim came to mind. It probably had something to do with the Bene Gesserit, no doubt. They displayed themselves on the outside as a group of women meant to serve the Imperium. In reality, he'd known for a very long while that they did much more than that, and primarily served their own interests. He'd known for a long while that they were involved in politics, and had a keen interest in human genetics. They'd wanted, for millennia, to produce a being called the Kwisatz Haderach, or, the Shortening of the Way.

The idea that everything in his life had been orchestrated sent a chill down his spine. Not everything, exactly, but a great many things. The idea of possibly being this thing, he didn't like it. It's true that there was something odd about him, about all of this, but he wasn’t the Kwisatz Haderach, he was something else. Even if he was their so-called Kwisatz Haderach, he wouldn't bend under them, the Bene Gesserit, that was. The thought of all of this gave him a near indescribable feeling. There was no one word in any language that he knew which could describe it. It was a feeling of terror that he felt drawn towards. Getting closer to it increased the terror and the danger, but he trudged forward anyway. He felt pushed to it like the cold winds of Caladan pushed someone. He could condense it into language only by calling it a sense of terrible purpose . Even that phrase and its definition gave only a dip into the abyss he felt may inevitably swallow him. 

Of course, that very substance Anakin abhorred most in the Galaxy was exactly what stretched out in nearly every direction for miles and miles around them, the ripples of the dunes in the desert being a kind of natural inverse to the same rippling monotony that could be found in an ocean. Rather than being a fertile environment teeming with life, welcoming it and providing creatures with nourishment as they made their way through their various processes of evolution, the desert was often the graveyard of any potential life. In the case of a desert, it was the creatures competing with their environment rather than creatures competing with each other for survival. The whale may devour a krill the way the desert devours the weak.

As far as sentient beings went, Anakin felt the principles were somewhat similar. The biggest difference he’d noticed in his own experience is that desert dwelling people not only had to compete with their environment, but with each other.

In the distance, north of where they were standing, there was a settlement of some kind. It was more of a city, really, judging by the lack of an end of it in sight and the vague outline of the large, boxy structures made out of what he could assume, considering the environment the inhabitants were working with, were likely an amalgamation of sandstone and mud bricks made from a hodgepodge of available materials. All things considered, it didn’t look like a bad place given what the inhabitants (whoever they were) had to work with.

Near the city, there were some jagged cliffs that stood out in their dark color compared to the rest of the environment, especially given the large overhangings of some parts of the cliffs that gave off the only very significant shadow in sight. If there was natural wildlife on this planet, it likely lived there, unless there was anything that could survive in the sand dunes themselves, maybe blanketing itself from the sun under the sand.The sun here had thankfully passed its zenith as it headed steadily towards the point of sinking out of view. Even then, it was clear that they would need to get out of the open desert as soon as possible. No shade, improper clothes for the desert, and the loss of their rations (most notably, water) could quite literally mean death for them if they didn’t hurry.

"We should probably get a move on towards that settlement. It'll be safer there and we can find out where we are,” 

Obi-Wan was looking to the city in the distance with eyes squinted, one hand up to his forehead as to attempt to block the sun from them. It wasn’t very far off from them at all, and yet it was difficult to make out any features at all, and there were hardly any shadows to aid in distinguishing one thing from another. Thankfully, there was no illusion of a large body of water so the settlement could be distinguished from a mere mirage.

"Do you think we could get a message to the council out here?" Anakin asked, looking at disgust at the sand dusting his dark Jedi robes. Against the dark fabric even the smallest bit of dust stood out starkly. He felt he would be looking ridiculous by the end of this.

"I would think so, I think we should find out where 'here' is first, though."

"Alright, Master, but what's the rush? What could possibly be here that we couldn't defend ourselves from?"

It was as if, at that moment, the Force itself heard Anakin and meant to prove to him never to be so sure. Had Ahsoka been here, she would have rolled over laughing. He needed to reach out to her at some point. He missed her presence on these adventures. They’d become like siblings in their time together as master and apprentice. It wasn’t easy to see her go.

At first, there was a rumbling. One could almost mistake it for the nervous shiver of their own body. Thankfully, the two Jedi had very attuned senses, and something like this didn't go unnoticed to them. In a moment, R2 seemed to sense something as well, because he made some mechanical noises of concern. Obi-Wan, noticing this, looked at Anakin as if to ask if he felt it too. Anakin only nodded, and took a look back at their ship.

The ship was shaking.

It was a small trembling at first that increased to the point of a visible rocking.

What could make a ship of that size shake like that? Nothing good, to be sure. 

Even as he asked himself the question he felt a sense of deja vu brush past his consciousness.

Could it be the planet? No. No way. 

Anakin looked in horror as the sand under his feet appeared to become unstable, shifting all in small, unsteady movements just as water when something large is bubbling up from the deep. Something was bubbling up from the deep. At this thought, maybe the Force itself told him to run. So, he did, and Obi-Wan followed suit as their feet started to sink into the sand around them. It was as a current, pulling them downwards. If they had not been trained in the ways of the Force, they likely would have been stuck there, pulled down into the whirlpool of sand. R2 was able to escape as well, easier than the two organics, as the little astromech could fly.

What a nightmare! Anakin thought, as he and Obi-Wan continued to run. They were at a safe distance, but something in them said to keep running. Anakin looked behind himself, wondering what that could have possibly been. His eyes widened. He saw the opening of a sarlacc pit-like void, but much larger. The void opened up, not caring what was in its path. At this moment, Obi-Wan looked, too. The two slowed their pace, momentarily awestruck at this awful void that had opened up from the depths of the desert. It had white teeth that looked like a thousand little needlepoints from a distance, and this great void-mouth it…

Swallowed their ship!

An entire freighter devoured by a monster from the depths of an unknown world. If the desert was its own sea, here was the whale. The worst part was, this couldn’t have been a very big meal for the creature. Had they not acted fast, they would have undoubtedly been the krill. No more filling than a few small krill were to a whale, either.

Such things had been known to happen in places with smaller ships and deadly creatures in more ancient days. These days, the Galaxy was thought to be mapped well enough and ships so advanced, often equipped with weapons and shields, that those sorts of things only happened to people intentionally putting themselves in danger. Granted, as a Jedi, that was kind of he and his master’s jobs. Still, the Jedi put themselves often into a kind of controlled danger wherein they had enough precautions of their own that it was more and more the case that the benefit outweighs the risk.

Presently, Anakin realized that they had slowed to a fast-walk, and pulled at the arm of Obi-Wan's robes, gesturing for him to move faster as he sped up. He began to propel his movements with the Force, to the point where he was more leaping than running. With it came a bouncing that made him feel like he would in a low gravity environment, along with the lightheadedness and sensation of his stomach dropping. (He'd once learned, to his utter horror, that in such a situation one's internal organs actually did shift around slightly).  Obi-Wan followed closely behind him, quickly catching up and nearly overtaking Anakin in his own desperate strides.

It wasn’t long until, along with the more familiar discomforts, his eyes began to water from all of the dust hitting them, some small flecks sticking around in his eyes and irritating them even more. Soon, enough would probably pool into one place that his tear ducts would be clogged. So much moisture is lost from the eyes alone! And what about the sweat gathering at his hairline, neck, and everywhere else? What of the fact that they were likely already dehydrated, if not very close to it? It was the part of him that was still that little boy from Tatooine that he found reminding him of such things. 

The fear, the exhaustion, and the environment of this place made him quickly feel the pangs of thirst that came all too often in such an environment. He wondered when he’d last had a drink of water.

Water. Lovely water. A glass of liquid coolness with chips of ice floating idly around in it. Hell, he’d drink it lukewarm and from a stream at this point. Water in any form was a seldom appreciated heaven compared to this.

He hadn’t craved water like this—had been so very lucky not to—since he was a child.

He dared not stop running. This thing was not gone. No, he knew better than that. It was still somewhere deep in the sand, and it could probably sense them and their movements. In Anakin's mind, not only was this a moment of instinctual terror (the kind of terror a Jedi was generally trained to avoid) but it was a moment of revelation. Anakin's dream flashed like a holofilm in his mind–it was one of those giant worms! Shai-Hulud. He didn’t have time just yet to ponder the implications of the revelation, but they were vast, and they would confront him soon (if the worm didn’t first).

Ahead, there were some jagged cliffs that would likely provide safety from the leviathan. Surely the beast wouldn’t risk injuring itself on the rock, especially not moving at the speed that it was. He hoped in the Force that they would make it out of this, because if they didn’t, there would be nothing left of them on a planet unknown to the Republic. If they died, there would be nothing left of them, and no answers for anyone they knew. What a horrible way to die that would be, and what a horrible way to leave everyone else. 

At that moment, Anakin was regretting making that hyperspace jump.

…

The city reminded him of Mos Eisley back on Tatooine, but more populous and surprisingly less shady. There were people draped in various types of veils and loose-fitting clothing that one usually found in a desert environment; cool, but enough fabric to protect your skin from the sun should you come into contact with it. Every once in a while you would see a person wearing an odd leathery form-fitting suit under some sort of cloak. Anakin wondered if this was some sort of cultural distinguishing factor. There was an odd scent wafting through the dry air that resembled the smell of a mix of cinnamon and a spice den on the Outer Rim. There was not a variety of species as there would be in a place like Mos Eisley. Rather, the population was made entirely of humans with the curious distinction of their blue eyes. Having already experienced the wrath of the sandworm previously seen only in his dreams, seeing these people didn’t shock him.

The water they had so desperately craved came quickly, if not by somewhat morally dubious means. Anakin recognized a device that reminded him somewhat of the vaporators of Tatooinian moisture farms, and the two indulged themselves, with cupped hands, in the water collection area of the device. They knew it would be missed but they had little choice.

"Looks like we'll either need to send for someone or see if there's anyone who would be willing to take us off-world," Obi-Wan paused, smoothing his beard like he always did when he thought, "What were those things back there, Anakin? There is something oddly familiar about them." 

Obi-Wan, while smoothing his beard, had begun to realize there was sand in it and brushed it out. He seemed annoyed at the lingering presence of it. Anakin felt a bit of amusement at this. No one really understood why he hated sand so much until they had to live with it. It gets everywhere.

Anakin knew it was meant as a rhetorical question, but he did feel he knew the answer in this case.

"Do you remember when I told you about my dreams?" Obi-Wan nodded, "It was one of those worms. I know it, Master. I wasn’t sure before, but now that I saw that thing—I know this is the place. This is the planet I dreamt about." 

Obi-Wan caved, sighing, "I believe you, Anakin." 

Even as he said this, he still had a faraway look that made it clear he was having trouble processing just exactly what it was he was now accepting as reality.

"That's why we're here!" Anakin exclaimed, too loudly, catching the attention of a local in one of the skin-tight suits. His skin was like worn leather, probably from years of sun exposure. His hair was dark, not far from the color of chalky coal, and his matching eyebrows were thick and expressive, with wrinkles between them where they likely often furrowed. There was a callus under his nose that seemed to be the only other physical commonality Anakin had noted between these people other than their eyes. Of course, the eyes. Seeing them up close Anakin could tell now that there really were no whites where they ought to be, They were covered entirely over in a sheen of deep, and ironically, near oceanic view. He had to stop himself from coming off like a weirdo by staring too intently at them. He didn’t want his curiosity to seem rude. What an introduction that would be: offending a local!

The two stopped, the deep blue eyes of this man meeting his own.

"Outsiders?" He asked, in what sounded like an oddly-pronounced Galactic Basic. It likely wasn't his first language. Anakin knew it wasn’t his at one point, either, but much of the Huttese he had grown up speaking had slipped out of his memory from a lack of use over the years.

The man looked them up and down, studying them intently.

Obi-Wan stepped forward, "Yes, we are travelers from off-world. Tell me, what do you call this planet?"

"Arrakis. Dune,” he spoke tersely.

Already, it was clear they were speaking to a man of few words.

After a moment, "You come to a planet and know not the name? Kull wahad,” the last bit was muttered under the man’s breath.

Anakin did not know the meaning of that last muttered phrase, but assumed it was similar to him slipping into the Huttese he did happen to remember and grumbling e chu ta when the situation called for it.

"Of course we knew the name, just not in your tongue. We have never been to Arrakis before," Obi-Wan spoke in the most placating manner he could, hoping such an excuse was believable.

Anakin had faith that Obi-Wan could make it believable. He knew his former master was good at situations like this, and he'd talked himself out of countless near-death situations in recent years. He hadn't become known as "The Negotiator" for nothing. Anakin, on the other hand, had never been one for words. More for action.

"You outsiders speak strangely," the man took a long pause, some more observations by the man, "Are you with the Imperium or the Guild?"

"As I said, we are only travelers. Tourists, if I may." 

"Well, you've come at a good time. Some say, the lisan al-gaib has come,” The man said it with a bit of humor, like he was skeptical of such a thing—whatever such a thing meant. Anakin realized this was the man’s slightly awkward way of injecting some humor into a slightly tense situation. Anakin gave a smile in acknowledgement of the man’s humor

It wasn't difficult for Anakin to lean into the man’s humor, anyway, as he’d felt a surge of excitement as soon as he heard the phrase lisan al-gaib. He tried to hide the way this affected him, but Obi-Wan noticed this change in Anakin's demeanor, being as attuned to his friend’s emotions, and acknowledged it with a sidelong glance. While he could acknowledge the change in his friend, Anakin knew he had to be confused. He hadn’t mentioned the phrase that had repeated itself in his dream. 

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to say something more, but Anakin interrupted, stepping slightly closer to the man "Lisan al-gaib? Who do you think it is? I've heard the name before." 

"Lisan al-gaib," the man paused, "It's what Fremen call the voice from the outer world."

"Voice from the outer world," Anakin searched his mind. Has he ever heard that phrase before? Not as far as he knew. He’d only heard the enigmatic set of words bound up in the phrase lisan al-gaib, an a language entirely alien to him.

"Lisan al-gaib," he muttered to himself, "You think he’s on this planet, Arrakis? Do you know the name of this individual?"

Winds blowing at high speeds coupled with sand would, over thousands of years, wear down mountains to jagged cliffs; Anakin knew had learned this growing up on Tatooine–the people of this planet had a similar look to them, as if a lifetime of living in such an environment wore them to their jagged edges. Anakin regrettably thought about the sand people, and how they thought of water as sacred. These people seemed to await a person. An offworlder, apparently. That made sense to him. Anyone living in what was practically an inhospitable place would hope for someone to bring change, or to save them from it. Anakin felt a pang of sadness as his mind flashed to an image of Qui-Gon Jinn, and then to his mother.

The rough voice of the Fremen man speaking drew him from his thoughts.

"He’s the son of the new Duke Leto Atreides. They came after the Harkonnen left,” Anakin noted that the Fremen said the name Harkonnen as if it was a detestable word, as if, in saying it, some obscene curse were uttered.

Obi wan must have caught on at some point that this may in some way be significant to what he had been previously told about the younger Jedi’s dreams, because he let Anakin speak uninterrupted, "So the planet is, what's the word? A…" 

"Fief, the planet is a fief, if it's under the rule of a duke," Obi-Wan explained, "What rule is this place under? Earlier you mentioned an Imperium?"

"My people don’t know much of the Imperium. We hardly care to. We keep to ourselves, and we do well. Besides, we have not had good, uh, dealings with them in the past." 

"I see," at that, Obi-Wan decided not to press further, and he looked to Anakin who nodded. Anakin was satisfied with possibly knowing the identity of this lisan al-gaib and in turn one of the key figures in his dream. 

In the dream the young man had looked with horror at something. He had wasted precious water in this state of absolute dread. On a planet like this, Anakin knew that was no small thing to do–even on Tatooine some had been weary to shed tears even to the dead. If you live in the desert, water is more precious than Gold or any rare jewel mined on some remote planet. Often, something is only coveted when it is taken away; even something so vital. As a youngling, he remembered learning that many beings are primarily made up of water. Any being that was carbon-based tended to need water in some way. That boy had shed tears at what he'd seen. The significance of that was not lost on him. He needed to help him, this Duke's son, this supposed lisan al-gaib. What had this boy seen that inspired such terror? What was he gazing at that wasn’t in front of him? Had he also seen the war, the devistation, the death, and obliteration of whole peoples that Anakin had seen? Was this what he was afraid of? Likely so, as even now, recalling the grim images sent a shiver down his spine. In his time he’d seen many places lain waste to, but nothing yet had given him the same visceral sickness in his gut. Anakin felt he had his answer. The boy was gazing at something that wasn’t in front of him yet.

There weren't many things that puzzled Lady Jessica. She knew more than anyone would expect, but never let on. It was part of her Bene Gesserit training to never let on all that she knew. If someone underestimates you, you will have the upper hand. The people of the Imperium knew little of the Bene Gesserit, and from knowing so little called them Witches, as if the abilities they had were magical and not biological; although, the difference between such things was thin. Magic was the name given to a natural thing not understood, understanding was the only thing that divided magic from the natural and the biological.

She'd known a threat was coming for a long time now. They all had. Everything since the Emperor had ordered Leto to take control of Arrakis and for the Harkonnens to leave, they'd known something was coming. One could not deny the Emperor, and if they did they would have to go rogue and disappear somewhere unknown. The Duke had too much pride to do that, the Atreides in general had too much pride to do that. The order to take control of Arrakis had ultimately been a veiled threat. The Emperor was threatened by the amount of support that the Duke had within the Landsraad, and feared the Duke taking his place. So, he sent them to the former world of their sworn enemies, knowing those enemies would be upset at their loss of income on the profitable Spice Melange, and that the Atreides' would not easily thrive on a world like Arrakis. Who would?

Still, this seemed an odd attack. The first thing she noticed was that she couldn't identify these two men. There was one, slightly taller and younger with blonde hair that curled past his chin. He had blue eyes, but not the white-less ones of the Fremen people, and there was a scar just above his right eyebrow reaching down to his cheek. The other was a shorter, older man with auburn hair and a short beard and moustache. They were both dressed in loose-fitting garments which gave them a monastic appearance. The tall one had on dark near-black robes with a utility belt at the waist and what looked like some sort of leather vest adorning his chest just over the dark garments. The older man wore the same, but the garments were a sandy beige colour and his belt and boots were more of a caramel colour. They both wore dark hooded cloaks. She searched them both for any signs of weapons, and came across only what should be the hilt of some sort of sword hooked to their utility belts, but what were they, exactly?

She could deduce from her training that these men were trained in some way, apart from her witnessing their use of the Voice. Great Mother, the Voice! They used the Voice! She thought, calming her natural response to outsiders of the Bene Gesserit knowing how to use the Voice. The two seemed very observant of their surroundings and walked quietly in step with one another. Not only were they trained, they were master and apprentice of some sort. Of what sort she did not know. She wondered if they were assassins, coming to kill her Duke. Yet, they were so obvious! The hunter-seeker that had gone after Paul only got in after its operator had been walled in behind Paul's room, only then could the assassin go unnoticeable. Why would they just walk in like this with no shield belts? They were either overconfident, or very dangerous.

She examined them closer with her keen eye and tried to make out if they looked like any group she knew of. They didn't appear to be Harkonnens, and they didn't have any Imperial markings on them. For a moment she wondered if they could be Mentats, but dismissed the thought when she couldn't see the ruby of Sapho Juice staining their lips. They didn't have the deformed look of the Tleilaxu either. She had been trained to know the classifications and looks of the peoples of the known universe, so this struck her as odd. Could they be in some sort of disguise? Face-Dancers? Then again, Face-Dancers had to take on a form of someone already existing, so this look in general had to be from somewhere. Surely, if they're here after Leto they must be hired by the Harkonnens or the Emperor. If only she knew what they were, then she could identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Her mind flashed back to the moment she had first seen them. It was the spacious hall just past the entrance that opened into a foyer. She'd heard a back and forth in the entrance, between two Atreides guards and two unknown voices,which initially alerted her.

"What business do you have here?"

"We would like to speak to the Duke, if possible. We're travelers in need of assistance." The voice was that of a man's, speaking a strange form of Galach. Where was the accent from? It bothered her that she didn't know.

"You think you'll get past us that easily? Do you think us stupid?"

"Most assuredly, we do not. We're from far away and have never been to Arrakis," the same man pronounced Arrakis oddly ,"We know very little of this planet and wish to learn what we can about it while we're here. We learned that it is ruled by a Duke Atreides, and we thought it best to address the leader of this place if anyone."

"You're going to have to learn about Dune somewhere else. There's a library in Arrakeen."

"Well you see," another voice said, "We find ourselves stranded here–our ship is completely out of commission, you might say. We weren't sure who could help us. and we thought if anyone could help us get off-world again and learn about this place, it would be the leader of it." This voice spoke differently, and in a cooler tone. There was a charisma there not found in many places besides courtrooms, churches, and governments.

There were a couple more words exchanged, contesting the entrance of these two men, and then there was a moment of silence.

"You will let us enter the palace." the first man said. It didn't sound like a threat, it was said calmly. 

"I will let you enter the palace." the guard repeated. Jessica knew that tone of voice, that kind of spaced-out response.

The other man said something similar to the other guard, and then she saw these two figures strolling in.

Presently, Jessica was hiding behind the door of a room that she could see them through the crack of. She had just seen them do the same thing to the other two guards. Her mind went to the Fremen Crysknife so recently gifted to her tucked away in the bodice of her dark hooded dress. She felt for it lightly, and relied on her training once again to keep calm. For the moment, she would be as a mere shadow to these men; and when the time came, and if the moment called for it, she would be their worst enemy. The ability to change from one to the other in a swift movement is what made the Bene Gesserit so deadly.

Chapter Text

You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi

—Excerpt from Quotes of the Jedi by Grandmaster Luke Skywalker

V. From a certain point of view

There was a difference between experiential and intellectual knowledge that mixed in the dream state and made it wholly different from waking life. Sometimes he sensed this state connected him better to the idea of the interdependence of all things, the way in which everything arose out of a particular set of circumstances and how truly undifferentiated things were in reality. If anything brought him close to a sense of satori, (a term for enlightenment preserved in the Zensunni tradition) these were the moments. Yet, he shook the idea off. Such an experience, if it happened, couldn’t be explained in words or rational thought—as frustrating as that was to the mentat side of him. 

There was another change, one much more drastic than the last. When he’d looked at the man, expecting eyes of clear blue, he was startled when he saw a different color in them completely. They were no longer blue. Not a hint left. They were starkly different, now a sickly yellow tinted with orange and they reminded him first of a sunset but then more aptly of a fire spreading, consuming. 

In the place of the previous hurt he’d felt in the presence of this man, he felt a burning anger like nothing he could remember feeling before. It was coming off of him in droves to the point that there was an illusion of it becoming physical and forming something like a heat-devil (a thing he’d often seen since coming to Arrakis) around him.

There was no longer an expressionless veil hiding the man’s emotions, but a total vexation of the soul that extended not only to the man’s face but to his whole body and posture, as his eyes had demonstrated. He now appeared as if he was ready to pounce on something, his brows furrowed in anger and hand gripping the hilt of his weapon as he strode past Paul. As always, the man took no notice of him, but he walked towards something. This time, with a purpose.

Paul, for once, felt a relief in not being noticed, and a deep dread for whatever the man had strode off toward.

… 

He was in darkness. It did not take away the sense of space that blind-darkness normally might. Rather, there was a space to this darkness, a depth to it, a limbo of the mind. All the while the rest of his senses were assaulted once again, when he thought the worst of it was over. There was then a sensation of burning unlike anything he’d felt before. He had no sight in this part of his dream, and yet, that served in some way to make this continued agony he was experiencing worse; to not see to know why he was experiencing what he was. There was a smell of burning flesh that he both knew and didn’t know, that he recognized and yet intellectually knew he had never experienced before.

Images and sensations of fire came to Paul in the void. Heat. The continuation of the blinding pain. A mountain revealing itself to be a dormant volcano erupting and cities turning to dust in the process. The start of the disconnection of the mind from the body as it experiences such pain. Worst of all, the inability to do so in this instant. He didn’t know why this was the case here, and even in his infinite curiosity, was hesitant to know.

Was this sensation a manifestation of the mind going outward, or of the flesh, going inward? Or were the two really inseparable at this moment?

He soon got his answer. The fire started inside and then manifested itself on the outside.

There was the most disgusting hatred he could imagine becoming so prominent in him as to almost become material. It was eating him up, and at the same time made him hungry—for what,  he was unsure.

“A powerful Sith you will become.”

…. 

The agony had ended, and it was as if it had never happened. 

Paul observed his dream-form to be unchanged. That experience had been strangely familiar; something akin to taking his hand out of the box during the Reverend Mother’s test of Humanity. It brought him many questions as to the nature of the pain he had just experienced and the origin of it, just as it had with that dreaded test of Humanity.

His vision opened up again and his senses at first felt overwhelmed at the brightness of light compared to the previous void he had found himself in. The lights were artificial and distributed a nearly unnoticeable humming sound that would be grating were it listened to long. He found himself in some sort of medical facility, the machinery of which was ultimately unknown to him. Whirring around him were some kind of robots, a long extinct thing where he was from, going about whatever usual duties they had and as was usual in these new dreams, never noticing him. 

Once again, Paul found himself a stranger in a strange land, wondering what time, or place, or planet this was that his mind had brought him to, and even more exasperatingly, for what reason. Questions continued to pile up before he could answer anything. 

Paul pulled from his thoughts when he heard a pained screaming behind him, and turned around to see a man on an operating table—a man only by the loose definition of the word. When realizing the injuries of the man, Paul felt he had seen a definition of physical pain he hadn’t before imagined. His mind connected the dots to previous parts of his vision, and he realized where the sense of burning had come from when he was in the void.

Why was he awake to experience this? Surely a society that had such things as robots replacing humans as surgeons had ways to put someone to sleep. To keep a burn victim awake was a level of cruelty he had trouble imagining—even when he’d been told by Gurney of the gross proclivities of the Harkonnens and their inkvine whips.

He wanted to look away from the gore but his urge to find answers was even stronger than the instinct to flee from such a scene. He wondered what that might reveal about himself.

He found some answers when he saw the eyes of the man. The same sick-yellow as he had seen moments ago. Was this the same man he’d been seeing in his dreams? The warrior-monk that had so confounded him? It only made sense. Even then, he felt a sense of loss for a person he did not know and was not even dead yet.

Was this the inevitable fate of the man he had seen, or was it only one of many possible futures? He wanted to do something to prevent it, yet he didn’t know why. After all, maybe this was a punishment. Maybe this was deserved. He didn’t know this man, other than being a character in his recurring dream visions. Conversely, was the kind of cruelty Humans often perpetuated across the universe ever deserved? When did the cycle of revenge and violence end? At extinction? Would humans grow past that before such a point?

He didn’t know why his dream-vision had descended to this. No logic could come to mind at the moment of such an experience. What was it? What was the oracle of his prescience trying to tell him? Before, there had been a sense of fascination and wonder at his new dream visions, along with the nagging feeling of an unsolved mystery. These experiences had taken him from the harsh reality of moving to an entirely new planet while simultaneously the sword of damocles swung over himself and his family, ready to be cut down by Harkonnen (or even Imperial) hand. To have these dreams turn from something his mind could gnaw on to distract him to the presence of another creeping horror left him in a momenary state of resignation as he woke with a start and wiped away sweat from his brow.

...

Anakin felt a presence besides himself and Obi-Wan, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. Not until a petite figure in dark clothing moved at what must have been a ridiculously fast and calculated pace flashed before his eyes. Anakin and Obi-Wan stopped in their tracks. As Anakin's vision steadied he could see the figure of a woman with auburn hair and a long black dress that both seemed regal and practical. It must have been for her to move at the pace she had. Anakin noted in his mind that this woman did not have the blue-within-blue eyes of the native of this planet nor the bony look for lack of water. It was familiar—the sense of deja vu engulfed him—

This woman had been in his dream. Another piece of the puzzle had presented itself to him, Arrakis, Sandworm, Fremen, lisan al-gaib, and the auburn haired woman standing in front of him.

"Who are you and what do you plan to do to my Duke?" The woman's voice came out in a strange way. For a moment, a strange feeling rippled through Anakin. He felt almost relaxed, like he wanted to comply, but shrugged off the feeling. The woman held a dagger of sorts in her right hand, short and with an almost bone-like blade like something that would be found on Utapau. From the manner in which she moved he thought she must be a trained fighter. 

Letting the nerves get to him, and against better judgment, Anakin asked her, "You must be the Duchess?"

A look of indignation passed across the woman's face. She lost the battle-stance for a glimmer of a moment, before quickly regaining it again. She seemed nonplussed at the lack of attack and was clearly skeptical of anything the intruders might say. Despite a lack of attack from the two, she nevertheless kept her stance in preparation for anything to come. Somehow, Anakin was certain that she would be formidable to go up against in a fight. 

"I may as well be, yes," the woman revealed, "Who are you? Why did you come here?"

Her questions were enunciated sharply and her accent was different from that of the other inhabitants of Arrakis they had spoken to, even slightly different from that of the guards. That lent credibility to the idea that the old Freman man had informed them about. She was an outsider of some kind, and it was easy to make the assumption that the rest of the family was. Anakin had never doubted the Freman in his information, but it was nice to have it confirmed. 

This time, Obi-Wan spoke, "We're two travelers who've found ourselves lost in this place. We've never been to this planet—Arrakis, as it’s called."

"That doesn't explain why you're here. In this palace," the maintained neutrality of her tone was made more of an impression than an outright angry or accusatory one might.

There was something that manifested itself in her expression that seemed taken aback as her expression relaxed for a few moments and her eyes raked over them questioningly, but other than that, her countenance gave little away. He honestly would have expected much more of a reaction from someone who’d technically had their home invaded. For no nefarious purpose, he reminded himself.

"Our ship is no longer functional. We thought if anyone could offer us transport off-world and some information about this planet, it would be the ruler of the planet. We found out from a local that the ruler of this planet is a Duke Atreides."

"You're not lying," It was as if she was saying it to herself, realizing it and confirming it within her own mind. Did she possess some sort of truth-sense? Anakin had felt no strong Force presence from her, only the level of one found in most human beings. She was evidently not a Force user, unless she’d found some way to shield them from her presence, which he thought unlikely. She was probably just good at reading people.

"No, we are not. We have no reason to." 

Her stance didn’t change, even then—and he couldn’t blame her one bit.

"Who are you, and from where do you come?"

"I am Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and this is Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. We come from the planet Coruscant." 

It had seemed to Obi-Wan the right thing to do, in a place like this, to introduce themselves with an air of formality. At the introduction Obi-Wan bowed and Anakin followed suit, "Who might you be, if not the Duchess?"

"You may call me Lady Jessica or My Lady," her tone was still skeptical, "If you two really are here to learn, maybe you wouldn't mind speaking with me, first? That is, as long as you hand over any weapons you may have. If you hide any, I will sense it."

Sense it, but how? Anakin asked himself.

Obi-Wan spoke again, "We have no qualms doing so," he began to loosen his lightsaber from his holster, and evidently assumed Anakin would follow his lead.

Lady Jessica, her name was, spoke again, "I presume these weapons are not sacred to you like the Crysknife to the Fremen of this planet?" she half-joked. Crysknife, Fremen. Anakin thought. Crysknife, connected to the Fremen. I've gotta remember that.

"Well actually—" Anakin started. Obi-Wan shot him a 'it's not the time' look, "You know what? Nevermind." 

He unhooked his lightsaber and handed it to the Lady Jessica. She looked at the two weapons as if her mind was scanning them to remember later. It was analytical in that way, focused. After looking over them she hid them away in a pocket in her dress. 

"Follow me."

…

The room the Lady led them to was was some kind of a sitting room. It had high, beige-coloured walls that matched the environment of Arrakis, possibly a polished sandstone of some kind. The trim that lined the doorways and walls had a dark sheen, possibly a kind of wood. Any wood must have been imported whenever this place was built, certainly not anytime recently. The presence of wood was an obvious sign of flaunting wealth to any desert dweller. Much more of it on a planet like this could almost be considered offensive. Anakin noted that this place didn't look quite lived in. There wasn’t the usual opulent decor he would expect in a place such as this. It was elegant when taken in as a whole, and the decor that wasn’t stacked together in boxes certainly wasn’t minimalist—nor was it exactly what he would call extravagant, either. It was nicely balanced. It was the sort of thing Padmé might appreciate.

Despite the relative bareness of the room, there were, still, a couple of couches in the center. Both were of a gold color, not quite as sandy looking as the walls, and each with matching ottomans and a table centered between them that appeared to be made of glass. The lights were suspended in the air above the table; these kinds of lights existed on Coruscant but they were of a style he had never seen before. In the time that it took himself and Obi-Wan to take a seat next to one another on the ornate couches,  and after only a bit of gawking at the interior of the room, Lady Jessica had gone somewhere (it seemed too fast) and come back with a kettle and some teacups.

She did not look any bit alarmed, a look she had somewhat betrayed earlier in her battle stance. She had a calm composure in her actions that was almost unsettling, and there was a quiet grace about her of an aristocrat. Had she not just thought them assassins? Where had all of that fear gone, if it had been there in the first place. Or, was she just a master at keeping her composure? Anakin had never had such a gift, but Obi-Wan had always been good at keeping his calm. Still, there wasn't an ounce of nervousness betrayed in her demeanour. It was as if she was going about business as usual. Anakin had noted that she must be a trained warrior of sorts, considering her previous actions, but what kind? Was she force sensitive in some way and didn't know if? As a child on Tatooine his ability to race pods and sense things before they happened still existed within him despite him not knowing their origin.

“You two are very strange,” Lady Jessica poured the hot water into her white and gold patterned teacup, before pouring some water into the cups placed in front both Anakin and Obi-Wan on the glass table. 

“Maybe you think me foolish, going from threatening you to inviting you to talk, but I can sense the truth in your words. I do not see you as a threat, but you are strange people. I must know more about you.”

She let the words out in a low tone while she focused very much on her tea and very little at them. Anakin noticed that it seemed almost painful for her to admit to finding something so strange, so unknown, which was probably why she didn't look at them as she spoke just then. He glanced at Obi-Wan, silently wondering who would speak first.

Obi-Wan spoke first, "We don't think you're foolish. This place is strange to us, so you must think we are very strange," He said, always and forever a charmer, adding a cube of what must be sugar into his tea. Obi-Wan had always been a tea person, while Anakin was more of a fan of any sort of caff he could get his hands on. He would drink the tea now though. To refuse would be incredibly rude, even for him.

Anakin felt out of place in a conversation with two people he knew had a great wit about them. Obi-Wan's he had witnessed over and over again throughout the Clone Wars. This Lady Jessica he didn't know, but it was obvious through whatever training she had and what had probably been a lifetime of diplomatic discussions that led to a refined manner of speaking, and not only speaking, but communicating effectively and perfectly playing that mental game he didn't understand: what to say and what not to say. He had always struggled with words.

He cringed inwardly as his mind briefly flashed back to when he had seen Padme for the first time in ten years. 

"You've grown more beautiful, I mean, for a senator."

Anakin shook his head, as his mind came back to the present. He realized in that moment that Lady Jessica's eyes had gone from piercing Obi-Wan's gaze into his own. She had, apparently, lost any bashfulness about looking at them. Of it was a facade. Either way, when he met her look it sent a quick shiver down his spine. His master had been the one talking, how had she noticed his mind go inward for just that moment? She had noticed, right? No one but a Jedi, and a rather skilled one at that, would notice such a subtle change in expression. This was starting to creep him out. Is this how everyone saw the Jedi?

"You two speak in such an old dialect. Where in the Imperium are you from? I didn't know this dialect of Galach was still in use at all," she seemed to be going over something in her mind. There was so much behind those eyes. Anakin was starting to understand the suspicion surrounding the jedi, and for a moment he felt a pang of self-consciousness. This really is what we must seem like!

Anakin spoke, because the Lady's attention was still on him, "Where we're from this is the standard way of speaking. We're from a planet called Coruscant."

He was raking notes from Obi-Wan's proverbial book as The Negotiator and deciding to not yet reveal they knew nothing of this so-called 'Imperium'. Giving away that they were from the Galactic Republic could possibly make it seem as if the Republic was a threat to this Imperium. If this Imperium was powerful, it could even be dangerous to reveal the existence of the Republic to it. The Republic was already being ravaged by war as it was; it needed no more of that, plus, it would be possible that the Separatists could somehow align with this other government. How powerful was this Imperium, anyway? How big?

"I've never heard of this place," she responded, and it seemed more a confession than anything. She asked, "is it remote?"

This time, Obi-Wan spoke, "From a certain point of view it is. Let's say, it's remote from here."

"I see," she paused, picking up her tea and sipping it. Anakin wondered how she was drinking the tea when it was still so warm. He could see steam still bellowing off of the top of the dark liquid from the fine white cups. He'd never smelled something quite like this; it made the air smell of cinnamon, but the same pungent cinnamon of the city they had just been in. "You two speak in an archaic dialect. Is your world isolated?"

"No, no," How much to reveal? Anakin wondered if he should just let Obi-Wan do all of the talking. "It's an ecumenopolis, we just…" She would surely notice the pause he took. And she did. He noticed her eyes flicker between them quickly, "This is the way we speak. We weren't aware there were other dialects of this language."

"I see, and you're not Ixians?" The both shook their heads, having never heard of Ixians before. "You called yourselves knights–Jedi Knights, I have never heard the term. Yet you-you two seem to posses the ability to use the Voice. How?" There was that strange feeling again! It was like a pulling on his consciousness, something trying to pull him towards an unconscious state, a tugging towards compliance, but Anakin shrugged it off, as the Jedi knew and were trained on how to avoid this sort of thing. He glanced at Obi-Wan, who seemed to have experienced the same thing. He had a puzzled look about him that he was trying to hide. 

And just what did she mean by Voice? Thus woman, she certainly wasn't Jedi, but there were other groups who new of the Force, and the Galaxy (even more, the universe as a whole) was wide, and the Force was within it all. It could be that she used it without knowing it, as he once had. Then again, feeling for her presence in the Force, it wasn't particularly potent.

Anakin looked at Obi-Wan. He wasn't going to be the one to explain the concept of the Force to someone, if, in fact, she wasn't familiar with it.

"We Jedi, we are naturally sensitive to something we call the Force. It is an energy field that is within all things and it surrounds all things. It binds the universe together, moving within all things."

"It sounds somewhat like the Tao."

"The Tao?"

"There is a book in the Orange Catholic Bible," the Lady took another sip of her drink, and seemed to realize that these two were genuinely not familiar with the O.C. Bible, "here it's considered a compilation of religious scriptures, many from Old Terra. There is a book in it called the Tao Te Ching, it speaks of a concept called the Tao. This Force reminds me much of the Tao."

Terra, she was referring to another planet. One that he had never heard of but apparently he should have heard of by the way she spoke of it. This, and the strange talk of entire concepts he had never heard of reminded Anakin that he was a a complete stranger on Arrakis. The Force felt odd around him for a moment, and he felt a bit nauseous. He thought of his distance from any place that felt like home. Padme was lightyears away, with no idea of where he was. He had to remind himself that he and Obi-Wan hadn’t been gone for very long. If they didn’t get in contact soon, especially in light of their sudden disappearance from known space, they might be thought to be MIA. It worried him and for the first time he wondered why he made that jump. Even with the pull to, even with the satisfaction of learning that his dreams had meant something and for once he may be able to do something about them, with the wonder of this new place. Should he keep pursuing this? How vital was it that he did?

"So this Force, you can use it to influence the actions of others?"

"It is not our primary goal. We work with the light side of the Force; therefore, we cannot control the minds of others. What we did was something we call Force suggestion." 

"I see how that could be rather dangerous…" 

"We're only supposed to use it when absolutely necessary, you see…" Supposed, thought Anakin, that's about right, "you mentioned something you called the Voice?"

The Lady Jessica was quiet for a moment. "I am a sister of the Bene Gesserit. I have already said too much—but I suppose you two already understand the power. If word goes beyond this room, I will know about it," she gave a sharp look, "it is similar to what you do, we'll say."

"Bene Gesserit?"

"We are a sisterhood that serves the Imperium," Lady Jessica explained, sitting down her teacup. The tea was unlike anything he had ever tasted before. The overwhelming cinnamon taste was almost too much, yet it was strangely addictive. It seemed to make the edges of the room they were in sharpen. 

The Imperium. So, they weren't so different after all. The Jedi who served the Republic, and the Bene Gesserit who served this Imperium that was being spoken of. What was the nature of this government? If this planet was a Duchy, possibly feudal. He couldn't remember the last time in Galactic history there had actually been a widespread feudal government; Padme liked to go on about politics from time to time, and now that the knowledge was useful, he’d wished he’d paid more attention to her words on the subject.

What he did remember was that feudal governments could be troubling because while there was one ruler, there was no actually unified government or military. Each faction would rely on political ties and strength to keep themselves afloat. One wrong move and it could all collapse; not that the Republic was much different these days, being split and so close to collapsing.

"You say you are Jedi Knights. Can you tell me what exactly these Jedi Knights do?" And once again there was a pulling sensation from her voice, but Anakin ignored it, pushing it away with a deep breath and an almost involuntary outward ‘push’ in the force around him.

"We are peacekeepers of our galaxy. At the moment, we are involved in a war, which led us to a skirmish on the Outer Rim of our galaxy, and thanks to my apprentice's recklessness, we find ourselves in a place that we've never heard of," Obi-Wan explained.

"A war?" Lady Jessica raised an eyebrow, "Should I be concerned about this?"

"No, my Lady, the war is being waged against the government in our galaxy. Where we are from, no one has heard of this place."

It took a moment for Jessica to process this. She could tell the truth in this man's words, and for a moment, she fell into her own mind. So, there really were places outside of the known universe? She supposed it was likely, but having been raised under the Bene Gesserit in the dominion of the Padishah Emperor, the thought of whole galaxies unknown even to the emperor, or even stranger, the sisterhood, shook her a bit, though she would never admit it. She didn’t let herself wonder too much at this revelation. Now that it was at hand, she had to and would deal with it.

Her mind went quite quickly to something Paul had spoken to her about not long ago. He had been struggling with a particular set of dreams he had been having. He’d sat in his study, going over nearly every filmbook they had on weapons and the history of weapons in the Imperium, agonizing over not being able to identify a particular weapon. She’d asked him, finally, what had prompted his search for a seemingly unknown weapon, although she had a feeling what it was before she even asked. He had described the dreams to her in detail, once she had pressed enough. 

After a short debate, her son had insisted that the sand planet in the dream was not Arrakis. He had seen Arrakis so many times, she had thought the idea of his seeing such a similar place absurd. He had insisted to her that knew what his visions of Arrakis were like, and somehow, he could differentiate between the minute details. It startled even her, sometimes, the things that he noticed, even though she knew it was his mentat abilities awakening more and more. 

Paul had said he’d been able to note this from the glimpse of the binary sunset of the planet, while there were three moons in the night sky rather than the two that orbited Arrakis. He also hadn’t been able to make out any distinct features on them. The moons of Arrakis were easy to identify from their features: on Arvon, there was what appeared to be the distinct impression of a human hand, which the Fremen, she’d learned, called “The Hand of God,” while Krelin was called “Muad’Dib” by them, named after one of the few lifeforms that could survive in the open desert, a kangaroo mouse. 

Jessica took her son’s dreams seriously, because she had known for a long while that his dreams were more like visions, glimpses of the future, than actual dreams. Paul had long been experiencing his prescience through his dreams, as she had first picked up on it several years ago even before she told the Reverend Mother, before her Gom Jabbar, before all the whispering of her having tried to conceive the Kwisatz Haderach, before the move to this desolate planet. 

This man in front of her, the younger one, Anakin, fit all of the details Paul included. The only detail she couldn’t confirm was the mechno-hand, although his right arm was hidden suspiciously under a leather glove and the other was bare. It didn’t take much to infer that the glove must be used to hide the hand. She knew of citizens in the Imperium who’d had their bodies modified for such reasons. She thought of the Ixians and their ability to replace things that should be irreplaceable. The human eye, for one. She knew that in some places and in some cultures they shunned any kind of technological replacement, so she thought it may be like that where these two Jedi were from. That, or he had other reasons for hiding it. Either way, she wouldn’t ask. These men seemed resistant to the Voice, too, and she didn’t want to say something that made her seem suspicious. Attempting to use the Voice and ask too many questions would be suspicious. She needed them to be able to open up so that she could learn as much as possible about them and their kind. Making them distrust her during this introduction of sorts would gain her nothing.

Was this something she should tell the Sisterhood? 

What kind of question is that? I must! It was her duty as a sister. Yet, she'd forgone that duty before. Still, it was in her interest that she did. They would find out at some point if more people were to learn of these Jedi; and if their abilities were genetic and not just a cultivated latent ability within people, those genetics could be useful, if only she could find out where these men had their place of origin. The Sisterhood would have a field-day if they did.

Her eyes flitted over the younger Jedi, Anakin, to confirm her suspicions and once again compare Paul’s description to what she saw in front of her now. She knew in her gut that the man sitting in front of her, the one in black robes, was the man from Paul's dreams. To create a more convoluted explanation would be a waste of time, even if doing so brought her some temporary comfort.  Occam’s Razor, she’d found, was no longer cutting away the absurdity in her life. Logical or not, it persisted. 

So, this was the extent of her son's powers? Was this what she had been looking for? Was he really the shortening of the way which the Bene Gesserit had spent more than a millenia planning for? She’d had the idea of his being the Kwizatz Haderach in her mind for some time, and had even felt some pride at the idea, but she’d come to realize that facing the possible reality gave one the feeling of being swept up in a storm, completely out of control of her own fate. Not that she was ever truly in control of such a thing, but such a situation ripped the illusion away completely and left her floating in unknown waters. The knowledge that one day, she might no longer be able to relate to her son because he understood more than her left her with a maternal and plainly human terror. If he was what she thought he was, he would eventually see the past and the future simultaneously. What would he be then? Human, or more than? The kwisatz Haderach. That’s what he may be, but did that mean he was still human? Succinctly, there was something in the idea which could have shaken the average person quite a bit, but she had her training, and with it she swallowed this new revelation like a pill, wondering if it would bring heartburn, before feeling her senses flare from another sip of spice-coffee.

Chapter Text

Part II

“So a voice reassured her from below her, ‘Do not grieve! Your Lord has provided a stream at your feet. And shake the trunk of this palm tree towards you, it will drop fresh, ripe dates upon you…’”

It is important to note that the Fremen see scriptural texts such as these not only as a door to humanity's distant past, but interpret in them their own vision of the future and prophecies to be fulfilled. It is not for this kind of scripture alone that Fremen cultivate palms in such an arid environment, they do so also to keep a dream alive.

—Revised Orange Catholic Bible and Commentary on Fremen Interpretations by the Missionaria Protectiva

(Surah Maryam 19:24-25)

VI. Revelations

Paul shifted on his feet as he dodged Duncan's advance. He felt the light buzzing of the shield around him, and he moved on his feet to try to find an opening in Duncan’s defence. Somehow, it seemed as if his mind was less astute today. Even with the prana-bindu training his mother had given him, there was a cloud over his ability to focus on much other than a strange intuitive feeling he’d woken with. He’d felt something akin to it before, in the sense of terrible purpose he felt after his introduction to the Reverend Mother’s Gom Jabbar. Rather than a sense of terrible purpose, it was a pulling feeling. The cause and nature of which eluded him. He just knew it was different from the terrible purpose. He’d already made that distinction when he’d learned he had mentat abilities, when he’d wondered if they were the cause of that feeling and realized they weren’t. It was the same with this pull. Pulling towards what? He wasn’t yet sure.

Paul wasn’t yet sure, and that’s probably why the next thing he knew, Duncan had been able to slowly push his bodkin through the shield under his ribcage, where the blade, if being pushed by an enemy, would be thrust upwards and he would soon be dead. He’d just been preparing to make his own attack, and he felt a bit of annoyance at his inability to focus. He sighed. Duncan pulled away the dagger, and turned the shield off. Paul did the same and felt a relief at the end of the buzzing sound and the muted hearing. Shields were nice, but they had their disadvantages for someone who, through his own nature or his mother’s training (he wasn’t sure) liked to take note of every sound or sight around him.

“You would be dead, my boy.”

As usual, Ducan was incredibly straightforward and Paul, sheathing his own weapon, wasn’t sure what to say. 

“I know, Duncan, I know.” Is all he could come up with in response. Technically, he did have his reasons for being so distracted lately, but he dare not say him. He knew, as Gurney would say, that the Harkonnens give no mercy to the unprepared, they only slaughter, and took victory in killing those who don’t even know there’s a fight. They had no sense of honour, he would remind Paul, with a level of hatred in his tone that was personal. Paul had long been able to distinguish between the tones in people’s voices. Even when one tried to hide it, there was a clear difference, at least to his ears, between the tone that indicated a hatred of injustice, and a tone that indicated a personal hatred. Gurney Halleck’s was personal.

Duncan sheathed his dagger, said, “You look like you’ve hardly slept. Surely Yueh’s noticed, isn’t there something he can give you?” 

“I have slept. In fact, Duncan, I feel I’ve slept too much.”

The Atreides’ Swordmaster appeared to puzzle for a moment, before he decided it may be one of those things about the ducal heir that had to do with his mother being a Bene Gesserit “witch”, as they called them, and that it was, as it always was with the sisterhood, best not to meddle. Paul often saw the start of questions about strange things he would say or do begin in people’s mind, but the curiosity was often snuffed out when they remembered who his mother was, who the Duke’s Concubine was. Sometimes, he thought, they did this to a fault, as if he hadn't learned anything on his own.

…

Paul wondered why he would be called for such a sudden meeting. When his father’s council met, or there was a dinner he had to be present at, he knew hours or days beforehand. It worried him a bit, although his mother hadn't seemed concerned or even afraid when she said they had guests. He remembered the tremble behind her tone when the Reverend Mother came to visit. Why allow guests now? She knew the Duke was busy (he'd hardly slept since they arrived on Arrakis) trying to reorder the spice mining operations and fix the mess the Harkonnens had so conveniently left for them to pick up. His father was determined to see the damage that the Harkonnens had done was fixed.

This couldn’t be another Bene Gesserit thing, could it? No, he would probably suspect that. So what was it? He asked himself these questions as he changed out of his training clothes and into a more semi-formal outfit that displayed the Atreides' hawk symbol on the jacket. She’d said nothing to him or their guests so he wasn’t sure what he was preparing for. There was a time when he would have chided himself for overthinking, but nothing was simple these days. In fact, everything seemed to become increasingly more convoluted as time went on.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to blink away what he thought he was seeing. His training urged him to keep his composure. He thought, for a second, he’d just thought he had seen the man who’d kept annoyingly showing up in his dreams. No, no, that wasn’t happening. How absurd. In the split second it took to wipe his eyes he’d felt nervous to open them again. Nervous about what, exactly? For the man to be there, or for him to be gone? He wasn’t sure. Of course he wouldn’t be there when Paul opened his eyes. So Paul opened his eyes and–

The man was still there. Alright. This was a situation that was really happening.

He looked to his mother. He’d thought his expression blank, but it apparently was not, as she looked at him with a bemused expression. 

What’s going on? He inquired using hand signals.

Something that may interest you. She answered cryptically.

Paul sighed, and tried to look as put together as possible. The older of the two men stepped forward and introduced himself, bowing. “I’m Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and this is…”

The younger man which Paul recognized all too well stepped forward and bowed with much less gravitas. “I’m Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight.”

Paul stepped forward and shook the two men’s hands. Jedi knight? So there was a name to put to whatever this man was. Good. Still, that left Paul the question of what exactly a Jedi knight was and why, in the histories he’d read or skimmed through, he’d known of no such group called Jedi Knights. He also noticed the strange intonations they used, something that would be clear even to someone without his training. Their dialect certainly wasn’t modern, so they’d come from somewhere either very isolated or far away. That could explain why Paul had never heard of a groud of so called Jedi Knights. Either way, he gave a proper introduction. There was part of him that itched to learn more about this Anakin. Finally! A name to the face. It was cathartic.

“I am Paul Atreides, son and heir of Duke Leto Atreides, it’s nice to meet you two. I’m sure after we’ve taken a seat, my mother will explain to me the reason for our meeting,” he spoke, glacing at his mother who seemed to be examining his reaction carefully. Of course. She did know of his dreams. She’d recognized the man from his description. The cogs were turning in her head now, likely trying to puzzle things out from the strangeness of it all. She had seen, so far, small visions of his come to frution. Nothing yet so outlandishly strange, though. He wondered, with the slightest annoyance, if it wasn’t his mother but instead the Bene Gesserit in her watching for more sighs of the long awaited Kwisatz Haderach. 

They sat in the dining hall, still farily bare other than the looming presence of the painting of the late Duke on one end of the hall and the mounted head of the Salusan Bull that had killed him on the other. Paul sat down in front of the Knight Anakin, and saw the man was also looking at him in great contemplation, as if, just as Paul was, he was making sense of a familiar face. These two men had heightened senses of a sort, of what kind Paul could not yet figure. They had an obviously trained way of holding things back. Paul looked to his mother who was seated next to him, and waited or her to speak.

“Our two guests seem to have come from a place unfamiliar to us. I thought it was best to introduce you because they tell me of things I have only ever heard you speak of, Paul.”

At this, the older of the Jedi, Kenobi, raised an eyebrow. Paul wasn’t sure what to reveal and what not to reveal. He took a second and asked her through sign language, to which she answered that she’d deemed them trustworthy. Paul said nothing. Even with his mother’s trust (which was always difficult to gain) he wanted to continue to observe the two newcomers.

Lady Jessica seemed to figure this was the case, went on, “They tell me of something called the Force, and they way in which they use it is quite familiar. My son is gifted in some ways,” Jessica paused. So she will reveal it? She’ll tell them of my dreams? Was that safe? She had revealed nothing of the powers of the Bene Gesserit, only hinted that this Force seemed familar. So, they had trained abilities of their own? Did they keep them in secret as well, also have something to lose here, or did this just cause a sense of familiarity between them, an understanding of the hinting at things more esoteric? 

“Gifted? In what way?” Skywalker asked, trying to hide an anxious curiousity in his tone. 

 Jessica paused, looked to Paul, amd then forward again. “He seems to have had a sense of you before you came.” 

“A sense of…?”

Finally, Paul interjected, “I have seen you before, in a dream.” It was blunt, but if it had to be revealed he’d rather not waste time. Was it the wrong decision? Time would reveal that. The common superstitious folk had a sense of oracles and sibyls, and even aristocrats called the women of the sisterhood witches, so Paul would expect from most people a recoil or a sense of awe at something seen as supernatural. No recoil or sense of superstitious awe came, only a particularly interesting look of understanding from Anakin. These Jedi, they understood these things, then? Was it true that that they could be trusted? There was something in Paul that desperately hoped so, because he had many questions. There was something, maybe the pulling feeling from before, that told him these strangers could be trusted. Strangers that could be trusted. For most of his life that had been an oxymoron. It was against some instinct he’d developed.

Anakin attempted not to show his excitement at Paul’s words, instead nodding. These people seemed so guarded he was afraid to say anything out of line. Not only had he dreamed of this Paul and Arrakis before, but apparently the reverse was also true. He wondered if Obi-Wan had begun to catch on yet. He’d told his former master of his dreams, and of the boy now sitting in front of him, but he wouldn’t blame him if it took a bit for him to process this. It was all so surreal. “Do you see the future in your dreams?” He asked. 

Obi-Wan looked at Anakin. He knew of his friend’s dreams, and seemed to become more interested in the conversation. He stroked his beard absent-mindedly as he always did when he was wondering about something. Anakin figured that this whole dream-business had at first seemed to Obi-Wan like a hold-up. They’d come to this place hoping for information on how to safely make their way off of this dust-ball without making a fuss. They had no ship now, and from what they’d learned from Lady Jessica, these people did not know of the Republic. They had space travel, but it functioned differently, relying on living navigators like the Chiss did to see paths. This was not a form of travel they felt they had the option to use. These navigators, would they be able to see the right paths to a place supposedly unknown to them?

Anakin and Obi-Wan had agreed that they did not want to be precise about where they were from, lest they expose the Republic and their Galaxy at large to another potential threat (possibly larger than what they were already facing). They knew of this Imperium, but how far did it stretch, how many star systems did it preside over? What kind of entity was it? The citizens of Arrakis that they’d met seemed either neutral about it or had a disdain for it.

The two had argued as they walked the streets of Arrakeen, searching for information but finding themselves strangers in a strange land. Obi-Wan didn’t like the idea of going right to the top for their information. They knew very little of this place and their customs, who could be trusted and who couldn’t. What if they went to speak to this Duke and found themselves in a trap? Anakin argued that there was no trap they hadn't escaped before.

“I can see… I have seen glimpses. It is not as one would think it is.” 

Anakin saw the hesitance in the way this Paul spoke. He did not yet trust them. He could understand the sentiment.

Curious as he was, he’d never been good with words, and Obi-Wan wouldn’t know the questions to ask. If these people had some similar abilities, he hoped the young man would sense his sincerity, as his mother somehow had. “What is it like, then?” Anakin finally asked.

“Sometimes it’s clear, other times it comes like the vague words of a diviner, and what I see I find myself interpreting in many ways. In this case, I’m not fully sure I saw a possible future, but a representation of you, in some sense.”

“That’s… interesting.” Anakin took a moment to process this. His mind went to his own dreams. Of what nature were they? He was still rather sure it was a glimpse, or a warning, of a future to come for this boy, or these desert Fremen on Arrakis. Everything he’d seen so far had turned out to be a real thing. The worms, the desert dwellers, and now Paul were all things he’d seen. Yet, if his dreams were a warning, what were they warning against? What was the threat, and why did the Force itself seem to think he needed to help?

Lady Jessica interjected after a moment. “Are the Jedi familiar with prescience?”

Obi-Wan answered, “Ah, do you mean something similar to foresight?” 

“I would say that the idea is similar, yes.”

“I’m not an expert on the topic, but it is a known ability among Jedi, yes. My friend here may be able to better explain it to you.” 

Obi-Wan patted Anakin on the shoulder and looked at him waiting for an explanation. Anakin noted how difficult it becomes to explain something, especially something experienced by so few, when put on the spot. His mouth had become dry, he noticed. Anakin felt that the familiar parched climate of the desert planet had affected him. Maybe it was lingering from his and Obi-Wan’s brief time on the edge of that open desert when they’d first arrived. Even in a palace that was moisture-sealed and luxurious compared to what most here had to go through, he could not escape the desert. He had to remind himself that this was not where he was from, it was not Tatooine. He was somewhere utterly alien to him and yet because of his childhood and his dream-visons of this place it felt uncomfortably familiar.

“Many Jedi do see the future. It could be a few seconds or it could be years. I have experience with this, and although, indeed, we have never been here, my Lady, I have seen this planet before in my own… visions.” Anakin did his best to explain, but he felt awkward talking about an experience that many in the Galaxy (or universe, he supposed) outside of the Jedi would have a hard time believing. Yet, these people are different. They’re strange. This Paul kid and his mother have strange abilities of their own. 

Lady Jessica appeared to have something to say, but Paul spoke up first. Her son had the same see-though-you gaze of his mother, and seemed, even when talking, to look at Anakin as if he was trying to find or remember something. He supposed he was probably doing something similar. Of all the strange things he’d experienced in his life, this might take the cake. To see someone that had only existed in your mind before, sit right in front of you. It was a bizarre feeling. “In your visions, you saw this place before you were here, didn’t you?” 

Anakin responded, a bit dumbstruck that he was being read so easily, “I did, yes.”

“I did too, before I left my home planet I saw Arrakis too. Maybe there’s some sort of common denominator to this planet. There’s something strange about it, but I’m not yet sure…”

Anakin wasn’t sure if he wanted to reveal that this common denominator was likely the boy in front of him. He wondered if the boy knew the whispers about him here on Arrakis. Anakin knew well the pressures of taking up a savior-mantle when one felt they were anything but. Plus, there was something more at play here. Something just beyond the surface of his understanding. Anakin decided he would mention to Paul that he’d seen him, just not that he’d  played a significant role in what he’d seen. “I saw the worms, and the natives of this planet. You look very familiar, Paul. I think I saw you, too.”

At this revelation Paul didn’t have much of a reaction, but his mother did. She recoiled in an almost instinctual way. It seemed to have been building up, as if she’d been contemplating something before. “That’s not possible.”

Anakin almost felt amused at that. All four people sitting at this table knew very well that reality was much stranger than many people would admit. Why would this woman decide that this was some sort of limit? “And why not? I don’t understand.” Obi-Wan, too, seemed to want an answer to this, but gave Anakin a warning look as if not to offend the woman welcoming them into their home.

“It’s not possible for two people with prescience to see each other.”

“Well, maybe the kind of prescience, as you call it, that I have differs from the kind you know about,” Anakin offered. This was not a problem he’d ever heard before. For the Jedi, the presence of another Force-user was always obvious and could even heighten one’s own ability. 

“I know that you’re not lying, but whatever this is, it’s an anomaly. The visions of those who take the spice has been well-studied. It’s difficult to think that such in outlier could exist after all these millenia.”

“The Spice?” Anakin knew of spice, but the spice he knew of was relegated to the stuff smugglers dealt with, the kind that was a highly illegal substance within the Republic.

...

Paul wondered at the man in front of him who seemed confused at the mention of the Spice Melange. It was one of those things that was so familiar to one within the Imperium that they could never be too sure when they’d first heard of it. It was ever-present and although not everyone was addicted to it, it was indirectly used by all. Everyone knew how vital it was in granting the Navigators of the Spacing guild their ability to see paths through space. One could travel at faster than light speeds without them. The Holtzmann Drive had existed before the Navigators, but without machine-computers, there was no guaranteed way that one would not fly right through some unaccounted for spatial-body that would kill the passengers instantly. He needed to know more, of course, but for the moment he would let his mother keep talking. She would ask many of the same questions he would, plus, he liked the way her own self-assurance collided with that of this newcomer.

“The Spice Melange, do you know it as something else where you’re from? You speak a strange dialect, I still cannot seem to place where it’s from.” His mother asked. He knew she’d added that second sentence to try to get more out of these strangers. Paul, too, wondered where they came from but was still taking time to process the reality of his vision in front of him. He’d never been able to get an idea of where Anakin was from by recognizing his clothing or features or weapon  as he saw them in his dreams. Normally, there were certain tells that gave a person away as being from a particular culture or part of the imperium. He’d learned that the natives of Arrakis could recognize an offworlder from their water-rich appearance, even once said offworlder had developed a spice-addiction and the blue-in-blue eyes. 

“I don’t take anything to have the visions or the dreams that I do. They come to me through the Force.” The Force, Paul repeated in his head, using an abstract to describe an entity, or a being, or sorts? Is this their Shai-Hulud, their Great Mother?

Jessica sat back for a moment, thinking. “I do supppose if you two really are from somewhere yet unknown to us, there could be different variables at play. All people have at least a slight tendency towards prescience. Some more than others,” she looked at Paul, and then back at the newcomers, “The Melange heightens the prescient abilities of some.”

“What do you mean when you say The Force?” Paul asked.

Obi-Wan spoke, “The Force is an energy field created by living things. Just as you speak of this prescience, everyone has some level of access to the Force. Some have a predisposition towards it.”

Paul thought for a moment. Was this a name for something he knew of or was it entirely foreign? Historically, there was a tendency for different groups, entirely separated from the other, to form oddly similar concepts about certain things, as if there was a tendency towards some ideas or things as universal truth. He also wondered if he should be skeptical. There was certainly something going on with these men, or at least, Anakin, but did that mean that this thing that they spoke of was real? Another question; if it was, was it a universal thing or a thing that only their kind knew? He looked at his mother, and she seemed to guess that he needed answers, because she paused a moment, and then spoke.

She said, “It is to be believed, Paul. I have seen them demonstrate the use of this thing. It was by doing a thing I thought only known by very few ,” Paul knew that the lack of description in her language meant this was a thing of the Sisterhood. 

What are you speaking of? Paul asked using hand signals.

We’ll talk about it later.

As if sensing he’d needed more proof, or to see something of this Force through his own eyes, Anakin put his hand out. Seconds later, an off-world fruit that was part of the centerpiece of the long table seemed to float, gravitating right to him and into his hand. The man looked smug. The Jedi Master Kenobi shook his head, sighed, “That’s frivolous, Anakin.”

“I know it is, Master, but how else should we prove it?”

Before the older man could get in another word, and assuming through context-clues that this was an often had argument, Paul spoke, “Telekenisis? Does this come naturally to you?”

Anakin shrugged, “I mean, yes.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi interjected, “Now that Anakin’s had the chance to show off, we were speaking of dreams, no? My Lady, you said it’s not possible for two prescient beings to see each other. What if, My Lady, that’s only the case for those who induce their visions through the spice, or are, like your son here, predisposed to it?”

Lady Jessica supposed this could be the case. This thing called The Force was an entirely knew variable. It stirred up a long dormant sense of anxiety in her. To deal with something so unknown and therefore, unpredictable, one had to be cautious in accepting anything. Still, at the moment, she had no better idea why Anakin and Paul had been able to see each other mentally. “That could be the case, especially as this is an interaction that hasn’t before happened, or at least, one not recorded to have happened.”

“Don’t be troubled by it. I’m sure more will reveal itself in time.”

“Surely it will, yes,” She nodded, but that didn’t quell the sense of anxiety. Revelations, especially those of such a strange nature, weren’t always good ones. It didn’t fit well along with the ever-present homesickness that she’d worked to suppress and the impending threat on everything she’d grown to care about since they’d been called to Arrakis. She could feel her stomach become tight and she started to chew her upper lip a bit. At the realization that the inward anxiety was producing outward effects, she scolded herself for lack of discipline, and started to repeat in her mind the words of the Litany Against Fear. I must not fear. Fear is the Mind-Killer. Fear is the little death that leads to total obliteration…

Chapter Text

Arrogance diminishes wisdom.

—Jedi Proverb

(The Clone Wars 1×16)

VII. The Floating Fat Man

The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen leaned forward to once again peer at the globe of Arrakis sitting on the table in front of him. He took it up in one hand, and spun it idly around. Sand. Nothing but sand. No one would have ever guessed that this planet held the key to something that when discovered, would become so vital to the Known Universe. The most important of things were often found in the most insignificant places. This is why a change to his plans bothered him so. The most insignificant thing could be found to set a cause-effect chain into motion that would alter everything.

One could look at the surface of Arrakis, or even deeper into the planet, and one might only see rock and sand. Yet, somewhere deep within it the Spice was produced. Just as one couldn’t find significance in Dune by glancing at it outwardly, it was the same with people. Dune was deceptive, and so were people. People often had plans within their plans, which was why one must have plans within plans within plans. He suspected now that the Emperor, or someone else, had a plan that he didn’t know about. This troubled him greatly. 

Thus far things had gone according to plan. The Atreides' had Arrakis, and spice production was lower than ever. The Emperor hadn’t liked the growing popularity of Duke Leto within the Landsraad, so why not hide a curse within a blessing? Outwardly, it would seem to the citizens of the Imperium that the Atreides were being trusted with a difficult task because they were such a beloved house, so moral, and all of that nonsense. In reality, spice production would go down, and they would likely start to go out of favor. When the time was right, Dune would be his planet again. Well, outwardly, it would be given to his nephew Rabban for a time, and then eventually to the promising young na-Baron Feyd-Rautha, being their savior from the harsh “Beast” Rabban, would be the one that (with his guidance) would lead the Harkonnen to sit on the throne of the Imperium. 

He sat the globe of Arrakis back down on the table in front of him. He relaxed in his chair, the gravity suspenders taking the brunt of the weight. He needed to think, really think. For a moment he considered calling Piter in, but dismissed the idea. He needed to ponder the new information in tandem with his plan, and then he would tell Piter, whose twisted-mentat mind would go through the minutiae of it. Piter would end up reminding him of any detail he may happen to forget, before attempting to take at least partial credit for the plan. 

This plan of his was protean enough to be changed to fit some new factors within it, but not enough so that he would be able to change anything significant without failing or seeming suspicious in the meantime. Time would tell whether or not the new factor was significant enough to change anything, and he doubted the it would be, but something happening that he had not accounted for previously bothered him. 

He had been told of two strangers who had come to the palace on Arrakeen, who seemed to be welcome in some way. They gave away no obvious signs of whence or from who they came. This was what his spy had told him. When the family had spoken to the strangers, they had taken precaution enough that there wasn’t much more information. The Baron’s first thought was that they may have come from the Emperor, posing as allies of some sort. Still, Imperial spies tended to have their own identifiable peculiarities that marked them as such. Besides, he knew the Atreides’ were too smart for that, especially with the Duke’s witch concubine having her nose in everything. It’s possible that they could have welcomed the strangers into their home in a guise to catch the strangers in the midst of their deceit, and then find out who they worked for. Now, that was a real possibility. Still, what, then, would be the need to be so discreet? If spies could be exposed openly it would only look bad for those who sent them.

What was even more odd were the two men’s lack of identifiable clothing or traits. They didn’t seem to be Imperial, that was well enough. The problem lay in his spy’s own observation that they seemed not to be anything in particular, at least not anything recognizable to someone even of a high education. When he’d read the initial correspondence, the Baron had doubted this. After asking for more description, he’d had to admit that this was true. The two men seemed not to betray features of any group he knew of. In his opinion, this made them all the more dangerous. For the moment, he would not cling onto any one conclusion in particular. Therefore, is any more particular information were to become known, he could hopefully alter the plan to fit this new information, given that the information wasn’t extremely startling or anything. It was best not to make assumptions at this point, but he supposed a little speculation couldn’t hurt. In fact, it was probably good that he started to speculate lest he somehow forget this new component altogether.

Even out of pure curiosity, and maybe a bit for his own gain, the Baron liked the idea of learning this trick. The trick that made the two men identified seem wholly unrecognizable. It certainly could come in handy to know such a thing in the future. Even Tlilaxu Face-Dancers and other abominable creations of theirs could be spotted by the well-trained. A Face-Dancer could, for example, miss the subtlety in the tone of voice or mannerisms of the person they imitated, and if one was trained to spot such slip-ups, they could be identified. A Face-Dancer was especially easy to identify if the person they happened to be imitating was somehow later to be reported as being in two places at once, or the body of said person was found. That was why people such as they were only useful up to a certain point. He made note to himself that if he had the chance to do so, he would like to find the two spies, or whatever they were, and learn this trick of theirs. It would be invaluable! 

Whoever they were, they had a price, like everyone else had. Even the most conditioned and loyal people had a price, just as he’d learned from the Suk doctor that was his own spy. Still, he was careful not to get too caught up in his own giddiness of a good outcome. He still must consider the bad one. Later, he would call in Piter and they would have a long discussion over this. Maybe the mentat would help him identify those two unknowns, or where to place them in this all. He doubted it, though. For all his plans-within-plans, the Baron sometimes questioned the usefulness of the twisted mentat. For the time being he felt a craving, having tired of all of this deliberation (even if in his own mind, for the moment) and decided to call in some food, or a slave boy, or one after the other. For all the work of the mind there was always a craving, then, for something of the flesh. He felt that only natural. He could (and would) return to the plan soon enough. 

Chapter Text

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

—Revised Orange Catholic Bible

(1 Corinthians 13:12, King James Bible)

VIII. As it is

“That are you going to tell my father?” Paul asked his mother, looking out a window to see the Arrakeen sun setting in the distance, starting to dip under the jagged outline of the Sheild Wall far off. If he squinted a bit, he noticed his eyes would double the sun and that would remind him of the dreams he’d been having. Having seen the man in them, he’d assumed he should start to feel some bit of relief but it wasn’t there. Yes, the mystery of the man itself may have been solved to some degree, but much remained unanswered. Even so, he’d been feeling a sense of restlessness ever since arriving to Arrakis. For the time, he told himself that he must embrace the mystery. Only through embracing it would he find a sense of closure, and maybe eventually, some answers.

His mother sighed, turning to face him, said, “The truth, very probably.”

“How do you think he’ll take that?”

“He’ll accept it if it’s coming from me, especially if he understands that it has to do with his son.”

“By that you mean the part of you that’s his love, the mother of his son, not the Bene Gesserit,” Paul added, knowing it might cause some contention, but feeling that either way, it would be something that they both considered even if it went unsaid.

Jessica sounded a tad exasperated. “You know, no matter what you think, Paul, I am not two people. Your mother and the Bene Gesserit are one person.”

“I know that, mother, but not everyone sees it that way.” He wasn’t even sure he believed what he said. No, his mother and the Bene Gesserit woman were not two separate people, and sometimes, not knowing one motivation from the other was all the more frightening. “What was it that made you invite them in in the first place?”

“They invited themselves in.”
Paul rolled his eyes, chuckled a bit. She was joking, surely. “Very funny, mother. Is this your way of evading a question?”

“If I was evading a question, it wouldn’t be so obvious. Do you think my skills have grown so lax?”

“So they really just…” There was a pause, “Invited themselves in? If that’s the case, why would you ever consider them to not be a threat? I mean, our security here is the best. After the incident with the hunter-seeker, and our current circumstances, father’s had us all put under more protection than ever, let alone our own survival training.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t dangerous, I only said they weren’t a threat to us.”

A look of realization crossed his face, “Ah-h, so, they’re a threat to someone else?” He asked, taking a moment to glance back out the window to see the sun dipping lower, casting an orange glow into the sky and through the windows. He saw the desert in the distance, thought of how familiar it looked. Despite the fact that he hadn’t even yet walked on open sand, when he looked at it he had the sense of recalling something, and even inside there was a lingering smell of spice. Maybe it was only his imagination, but it seemed that every inch of this place had at least a lingering hint of the spice in its dry air. There were moisture seals in this palace, some of the best on Arrakis, but still he felt the dryness. He had come from a place that always had a dampness to it, always had clouds hanging above, dew-drops ever present on the flora, and water speckled on the cold-to-the-touch glass of the windows reminding one of rain past and rain yet to come. Caladan was a planet utterly unimaginable to the people of Arrakis. Yes, they could hear of it, but they could not know it. They had no concept for a thing like drowning in the languages of this planet, because the idea of having enough water to drown in was absurd! 

“They could be, yes, but no one that I’ve identified actively at the moment. They could be useful, though. They are skilled, and in no way any enemy of the Atreides would be able to predict.”

“That is interesting, but we can’t just use these men. We Atreides’ are meant to have honor.”

“I didn’t say that! I only said they could be good allies, essentially. That Skywalker already seems to be intertwined with your future in some way, maybe this is why.”

To that, Paul agreed, and sighed, saying, “It’s too soon to tell why, though. I do agree they would be good allies to have.” Having now met the man in his visions, he had only been preoccupied with the wonder and sense of high strangeness which it caused. He still did not know their reason or if there was to be a resolution to this situation, whatever this situation truly was. There was so much new information to process, and he wanted to process it carefully. 

Paul snapped out of his momentary thought spiral, realizing he hadn’t yet gotten an answer to his original question. He wondered ifhis mother had purposefully steered the conversation away. If she had, she wished he’d noticed. Being able to direct a conversation was something of a useful skill, especially in politics, which Paul supposed would be part of his future. “The two Jedi invited themselves in. How?”

“They seemed to have a sway over the guards, as if they could influence their actions by what they said,” She explained.

“That sounds like…”

“The Voice, I know. That’s why I questioned them and decided to keep them around in the first place. They were telling the truth in that they know nothing of the Sisterhood, but they hold similar power. If they were to find allies in someone else, we would be at a disadvantage, as I said before.”

“That’s… strange,” Paul paused, taking this in for a moment. He’d seen small glimpses of this Force the two Jedi spoke of in the brief time that they’d been there, but hearing that they had a power even the Bene Gesserit at times hesitated the use (as not to display what power they really had) made him realize the level of power they were dealing with. “We must learn more of this thing called the Force.”

“I agree, son, but if this Force is of the nature they claim it to be, we may already have some knowledge of it.”

“You believe it to be one of those universal experiences with different names?” Paul asked, turning from the windowsill to face her. Could this Force be one of the phenomena experienced (in some way) universally, but described by all cultures? Was this another thing already known, if so, why would this one group be so supposedly connected with it? 

“It is possible, but I agree with you. We must learn what we can from them. If it is a universal experience, that will become known to us, and we will learn why they have an esoteric knowledge of it. If not, knowledge of it will become even more valuable,” she paused, seemed to think for a moment, run over the implications of this all in her mind. Eventually, she said, “We must also learn from whence they come. The universe is apparently much larger than any person could expected, Paul.”

He smiled, understanding the simultaneous sense of wonder and terror that could induce in one. The sense of the sublime. “And much less predictable than we’d like it to be.”

When he went to bed that night Paul would continually recall the new data and the events of the day over in his mind, and then recall the previous visions. He would compare the two in his mind, noting subtle details. He tried to piece together the new information with that he’d already seen, and found he had to push away previous assumptions he had made. He felt he was seeing an actual glimpse into the reason for this all as he put fragments together in his mind. Even when the fragment, or puzzle, or whatever the term one may use, came together, it was still only a small glimpse into the actual, possible intention of the universe, or this Force-entity that he’d now become familiar with the idea of. 

He was still only seeing through a glass darkly, but he consoled himself by figuring that may be a good thing. Were there perils to seeing things as they actually were? 

…

It only hit Anakin that he was so far away from everything he knew when he laid down in the unfamiliar bed that night, in a place free of soft humming of a ship, the lull of the Jedi Temple at night, or the warmth he would feel at the warmth of his wife next to him. His consolation was that he was not completely alone. Obi-Wan was here, in another bed in a room meant for guests, and so was R2. 

R2 had not initially come with them into the palace. Early on they had found out about the lack of mechanical computers which were so common as to be taken for granted in their Galaxy. The people of this distant place considered any machine that imitated the mind of man to be anathama, and such a thing was outright banned. Not that there wasn’t advanced technology, there clearly was, but nothing could come close to imitating the natural mind, lest it be considered blasphemy. These people did have computers, but they were human computers that he’d learned were called mentats. He’d gotten away with having R2 follow him along by insisting that he was just a holo-projector device of sorts. This was much to the chagrin of R2, despite that it was for his own safety and theirs. The people of Arrakeen seemed not to question them much and attributed it to offworld technology, and some attributed it to a work of a group called the Ixians. 

While he and Obi-Wan knew that they could get away with having R2 around with the common folk, they knew the Duke and his people may have un-common knowledge, so they had R2 find his way in separately, after them. They knew that explaining their entrance would be controversial enough, let along bringing in long-banned machinery with them. 

Even with the comfort of his friends, Anakin couldn’t help a small sense of dread that set in at his distance from every other familiar thing to him. The Galaxy (the one they knew) needed him and Obi-Wan. They likely wouldn’t be considered MIA yet, but what about when they were? What were the Clones thinking? Rex surely already expected that something was up. They’d had no luck contacting the council, but they had decided they would try again in the morning, and attempt to contact any other Jedi they could. 

Anakin wasn’t sure how to feel about being here, either. He did feel a sense of peace at having discovered the source of his dream-visions, which had started to become disconcerting after a while. He was torn. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to leave if they were able to contact someone from back home, not until he was able to help this place from whatever threat it was facing, whatever the Force was calling him to do. He had some memories of Mortis. That’s what this reminded him of. When they left, would it also seem like a dream? Would time have passed?

He didn’t know, but found some consolation in the idea that he may soon know. He wasn’t able to dwell on his fears long before he was asleep.

Chapter Text

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

—Poetry of Ancient Humanity: a Guide

(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake)

IX. The Infinite

Of all the things Ahsoka Tano had expected happening that day, being contacted by the Jedi Council was the last thing. These weren’t the people she wanted to speak to, not after everything. At first, she thought she may be dreaming, but she soon realized that she wasn’t dreaming at all, and this contact from them was based on some very bizarre circumstances. She also realized that Obi-Wan Kenobi was not present in any way among the Council. That raised some questions in her mind, questions that would soon be answered. Answered questions that, ironically, brought on more questions.

As it turned out, Obi-Wan and Anakin had gone missing not long after a skirmish in the Outer-Rim. This was an unheard of thing to happen. Clones rarely went missing and Jedi never did unless they were dead, but there were no bodies found, and there wasn’t a reason to suspect them dead yet. The Council thought it possible that they were lying low somewhere but had become concerned when neither they, nor anyone else had been contacted. If they’d somehow been captured by Separatists, the assumption was that it wouldn’t be kept secret as there were just so many ways for information to get out along with spies for the Republic. There was also the case that if they had been captured, it was unlikely that General Grievous would be able to keep his Cyborg mouth shut about it. He had so much arrogance that he would brag even if it was a detriment to his own cause. He was a terrifying being as far as strength went, but that’s all he was ultimately good for. Ahsoka knew that from personal experience. There were really no brains left there.

This all left the question of what had happened to the Two Jedi Generals. Gone with no trace. It was uncanny. Some dark thoughts seeped into her mind after considering this for a short while, but she soon pushed them away. She had to.

The thought of Anakin being dead, for example, after everything he’d survived, unnerved her, giving her a sick turning sensation in her stomachs. There was something about it that didn’t seem right. The idea of it made everything appear to her as unreal. Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part—that he couldn't possibly be dead—as if people didn’t die all the time in war. Yet, if he truly was the Chosen One, would he die without bringing balance to the Force? Had the Jedi been wrong in their belief in him? Had the interpreted the prophecy wrong somehow? 

Her thoughts regarding Obi-Wan were more grim. He had no supposed prophecy to shield him from an untimely death. No matter how many times he also seemed to escape death, he wasn’t believed to have some sort of prophecy to fulfill, so, as surreal as it would seem, he could really be dead. Even having not been on great terms with him when she left the Order, she would never wish such a thing. 

She felt herself weighed down by a great burden as her mind explored these dark possibilities. A great stone like weight momentarily pressed upon her chest before she forced herself to take a deep breath in. Her old Jedi training was nagging at her about attachment, and fear of loss, but if she couldn't let herself feel for those she cared about, what was she? No better than a droid, maybe, or an automaton. It was only natural for a sentient to have such emotions; she found the issues arose when they were dealt with badly or hastily. 

Ahsoka was not the first person the Council had contacted. It had initially been Rex who contacted the Jedi. No other Jedi had seen them since the skirmish, nor had the Clones. The attempt to contact them directly had failed, and there was much speculation about the disappearance spreading through the GAR.

Ahsoka didn’t understand how they expected her to have any idea where they were if no one else did, but it was worth a try. She didn’t want to cooperate with the Jedi, not after all that had happened, but she told herself that this was more about her friends than anything. It would be selfish not to try to help. She wasn’t sure if she could keep going with this in the back of her mind, anyway. She pushed her stubbornness aside for the moment, and tried to think of any other possible way to contact them. Was it possible they were in a climate that interfered with any technology? 

Ahsoka started on a list, after attempting to meditate on the subject. First, she would try to contact them through all normal means, though she knew that probably wouldn’t work, as it hadn't for anyone else. Then, she would go back over those who had previously been contacted to double-check if they had been seen. After that, she would attempt to reach out to them through the Force, though it would be significantly easier for her to connect to Anakin. The distance may make it difficult, but it also may not. It depended on if she was able to overcome the concept of distance.

When it came to the Force, distance wasn’t the same. The Force was within-and-without all things. The Force affected the mind just as much as it affected the body, and as the mind was a metaphysical thing, a distance was nothing to something that didn’t exist within the physical, within space and time. That was just the reason some Jedi had visions of the future, because the information found its way to a place that didn’t exist in time, or maybe the Force itself placed it there. It was possible that the sequential events of past, present, and future existed all at once in some place unrestrained by time and space. Living organisms had evolved to perceive what they needed to to survive, but much more information existed than any individual might have access to. This was clear even in small ways. As a Togruta, Ahsoka had noticed herself hearing at a much further distance than many of her human counterparts when she was still in the Jedi Order, and in the Galaxy at large. If it was the case that each species had sensory organs which had evolved based on survival, then what was outside of that immediate perception must be unimaginable. Maybe the Force-sensitives of the Galaxy and their generally higher midichlorian opened up some of the perception-barriers that evolution put in place. 

Having started her list, Ahsoka realized she’d gotten lost in thought. She shook her head. There was something strange about even having the time to do that. Ironically, being part of the Jedi had always been go, go, go. Maybe it’d been different before the War, but she’d hardly had a moment of stillness as a padawan, the kind of moment a Jedi might pause and think about the inner-workings of the Force. Everything was always time-sensitive then. She reminded herself that this, too, was a time sensitive case. It made her uneasy to think what it would mean for time to run out. It made her even more uneasy when she realized she hardly had an idea where to start. She would try, though. 

If it came to using the Force, it was possible she would be able to work with the remnants of the training bond she’d had with Anakin during their years of training. She would have to focus in on him, but not knowing where he was made it difficult. Life forms were vibrant in the Force, even the smallest ones had a little buzz to them. She, like all Force sensitives, could feel the heightened presence of other Force sensitives, but singling in on one wasn’t always easy. For the time being, she would focus on the more obvious options.

“What is the meaning of this? You let two strangers into our home!” The Duke Leto Atriedes had had a long day. In fact, he’d had a long two days. He hadn’t slept in the time, staying awake on a mixture of spice coffee and energy tablets. The lack of sleep likely didn't help the confusion he was feeling. Confusion and a bit of paranoia. In a position like his some might advise paranoia, being that he really very likely did have someone out to get him. Then again, paranoia was often the thing that drove a tyrant. It was a fine line. Being too paranoid, one could work into the hands of their own enemy. Being too trusting, one could do the same. It was the old metaphysic of the balance between two extremes. On the extreme of every virtue was a vice, or so it was said.

At this point it wasn't even a vague idea. There wasn't even a question of who. It was only a question of when now, and how could inviting someone utterly unknown into their keep be a good idea? He’d come to Jessica hoping for some respite, but he could not find it there until he knew what in the hell was going on in Jessica’s mind. At least, not until he at least got an idea of what was going on in her mind. He’d figured out long ago that there was no fully understanding her thought process. 

Jessica was unperturbed, as if she’d expected this reaction. She probably had. Even in his own upset, there was a calmness in her presence that did ease him, if only a bit. Part of the calmness surrounding her likely stemmed from how casually she was speaking to him about this. Currently, she was getting ready for bed, taking down her auburn hair from a braided updo she’d had it in. “I didn’t let them in, they got in.”

Leto chuckled. What a strange time for sarcasm. Is this her way to calm me down? “I doubt that. Would you tell me what happened?”

She sat a pin down she was taking out of her hair, and paused. Then, she turned to look him in the eye. No, she didn’t appear to be kidding, but what else was he meant to think? With all of their security, how would someone, in fact, two people, have made their way into their home? He felt a rush of discomfort at the remembrance of what the last oversight brought. The hunter-seeker. Paul’s vigilance saving him.

“You’re tired, my dear. You need to sleep,” she took another pause, thinking, “I interrogated them, they’re of no threat to us. Still, I’ve had guards placed at the doors of the rooms they’re staying in. You may speak to them tomorrow, if you wish.”

“I know I need sleep, but I cannot sleep when I don’t even know what’s going on in my own house. I do trust your judgment, Jessica, you know that, but say they were no threat, why let them stay? Is this something to do with…”

“The Sisterhood? No, it isn’t. They’re travelers in need of some help.”

“You say that, but there’s no way they’re ordinary travelers. Why would they come here? How did they get past the systems we have in place? No, they must benefit us in some way. I know you, Jessica.”

“What? That I’m not kind hearted enough to help those in need?”

Leto Sighed, said, “You know what I mean. Not in the situation we’re currently in. To let them in here, that is. You must have found them useful.”

“Once again, I did not let them in. And yes, I did find that they may be good allies to have. I’ve found they’re part of a faction entirely unknown.”

“Unknown to us? Or to whom?” Leto asked.

“To the known universe, from what I have been able to tell. They really are travelers, and they really are stranded, and they seem to possess,” Jessica took pause, likely finding the best way to explain what else there was to say, “mentat-like capabilities. They remind me of what I’ve seen in Paul. Now, don’t you think it would be useful to have these men on our side, lest someone else find them first and use them against us?”

As she spoke, he found himself staring into her green eyes, and the yellow in them which had reflected off a nearby glowglobe. “I suppose that it could be a good idea to have information our enemies don’t. We must be careful with this, though, or it could come back to bite us. Is it possible we say they’re relatives, or some kind of tutors for Paul?”

“I was thinking just that, Leto.” She leaned forward, and put a hand on his shoulder.

With this explanation, the Duke felt slightly more at ease. Still, he would be on guard, and he would talk to these two men himself. The only reason he hadn’t gone to do that the second he’d heard about Jessica’s doings was that though he knew very little of the Bene Gesserit, he did know they had an aptitude for seeing right through lies. The Emperor himself had a Truthsayer for that very reason. 

Chapter Text

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. 

—From Collected Sayings of Ancient Humanity

(Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu)

X. Time

Morning came and Anakin had nearly forgotten the situation he was in. Arrakis. Desert Planet. Dune. Outside of the known Galaxy. There was also a notable absence of dream visions that he’d had relentlessly before. His dreams were once again fragments of his brain processing information, strange and random. No impression really stuck with him. Well, except for once. He had an impression left over of Ahsoka looking at him with an annoyed expression. She seemed to be reprimanding him about something for which he had no idea. It had to be a leftover from all of the times he’d seen that look over the years.

For a moment he felt the happenings of the previous day must be a dream and expected to wake up on a bunk in a cruiser or next to Padme in her Coruscant apartment. When he sat up, and yawned, it all came rushing back to him. The potent smell of spice didn’t help. Where was that coming from? Ah. There was a tray sat on one of the bedside tables including breakfast, along with some of that coffee which must have included a heavy dose of the spice of this planet that he’d had explained to him the previous night. Against his better judgment, he reached for it, knowing it might still be piping hot. 

He would blame it on his just waking up that his senses weren’t attuned enough to sense another presence in the room. He nearly spilled his coffee when he heard a voice from the doorway.

“Good morning. My father wishes to speak with you and your friend, and I was hoping to learn from you,” It was the son of the Duke and that strange woman, Lady Jessica. It was Paul, the one he’d seen what must have been future versions of in his dream-visions. He'd fired his words out at such a rapid pace that Anakin took a moment to process them. The boy spoke strangely but seemed to lean into Anakin’s dialect of Galactic Basic, having observed he and Obi-Wan's way of speaking the day previous.

“That arm is interesting,” Paul observed, “It doesn’t look like it could have been made by Ixians. Do you know of Ixians where you’re from?”

Anakin felt a hint of annoyance at being snuck up on. As a Jedi, he wasn’t used to that. This boy and his mother had some sort of training of their own, so he chalked it up to that. That would be interesting to get used to. Probably also annoying.  

“Good morning,” he sat down the spice coffee, and rubbed his eyes. Then, he reached for the inner-layer of his robes and put it on, wrapping it around himself. “About the arm: I do not know of the Ixians. The arm was made on the planet I live on, and I’ve added on quite a few of my own additions. Is there a custom of knocking on this planet?”

“There is, but I only wondered if your abilities extended to sensing the presence of another.”

“They usually do, but they’re not always accurate. Do your abilities extend to that?” He countered.

“We can speak about that later. I wouldn’t want to keep my father waiting. He’s a bit uneasy about the whole situation.”

“I can see why. I guess my friend and I should thank him for his hospitality.”

…

Anakin and Obi-Wan bowed before the Duke. They still didn’t know the customs of this place completely, but both of them hoped it would be seen as a universal sign of respect. Anakin had met many a ruler in his time, so tyrannical, some fair and noble, others somewhere in-between. The Duke, at least outwardly, looked quite noble. He had a stoic demeanor about him that the rest of the family also seemed to have. His skin was of an olive tone, but lacked the leathery tan that most of the inhabitants of this planet had. Anakin noted that he also lacked the blue-in-blue eyes of the common inhabitants of the planet. In fact, he realized that all those he’d encountered in this palace lacked that trait that was so distinct among those he and his master had first encountered in the city he now knew as Arrakeen. Was this a trait of the nobility? Was it some part of the environment of this planet that led to its inhabitants evolving the trait of those blue eyes? Was this why the nobles could avoid it, just like they avoided the rest of the environment at its worst? 

The part of Anakin that was that young boy from Tatooine bristled at the idea of only this select few not having to face the harshness of the environment. Though, in many places that seemed to be the nature of things. Having been on the other side of this situation before, exposed to the desert for the early part of his life, he knew just how cruel such an environment could be to its inhabitants. Hell, it was the reason farming moisture was its own profession on Tatooine. 

He pushed away the memories of his early life for the moment, along with the uncomfortable feeling he had at being in such a high place. Maybe they weren’t bad people, anyway. Who knew what they could do about the situation of the people on this planet? He didn’t know how much governing authority they actually had. They were part of an Empire, and who knew what was at play in such an entity? Even in the Republic, a political entity meant to represent all peoples of the Galaxy by representatives, many different organizations and corporations had their slimy tentacles dipped into it. If the Republic could get to a point where it split because of such internal problems, how much more were the internal power struggles of this Imperium he’d heard about? Had they been at war before? Anakin’s previous unrest was replaced by curiosity, as he and Obi-Wan were invited to what they called luncheon along with the Duke, Paul, and the Lady. Another man also joined them. It was a gruff looking man with a deep set scar across his face. He trailed along with the Duke, and seemed initially skeptical of this whole situation.

…

As Anakin bit into a tough piece of meat, and attempted to chew it, he listened to the Duke speak, “Arrakis must seem a strange planet to those who are newcomers. Rest assured, we Atreides know the feeling well.”

As he was still struggling to chew, Anakin let Obi-Wan do the speaking for the moment. He was always good with that, anyway. “You’re also newcomers to this planet, then?”

“Yes, we are. Our native planet Caladan is a beautiful, ocean-filled world. My family ruled there for centuries until,” the Duke paused to take a sip of his water, “until the Emperor ordered us to rule here on Arrakis. It is quite the change, but we are determined to do our best here.”

“And so you are. You know, my apprentice here is from a desert planet, so he’s surprisingly familiar with the environment,” Obi-Wan added, to Anakin’s dismay. He didn’t like his past being brought up, but he knew what Obi-Wan was trying to do. He was trying to keep the discussion going, to ease any tension where there still was any left, and to open up the conversation to learn more information. 

“I was. Imagine my shock the first time I saw an ocean,” Anakin added. He had been surprised at really seeing an ocean for the first time. Such an enormous body of water was unthinkable on Tatooine, and apparently, Arrakis. It was a place where the miraculous would be to turn wine into water. “Of course, on my homeplanet we didn’t have those giant worms you have out in the desert here.”

“Shai-hulud, the Fremen call them,” Paul spoke from across the table. When Anakin looked at Paul he seemed as if he was looking from person to person in the room, gauging everyone’s reactions to one another. Though Anakin didn’t think that Paul knew this was visible to him, in the subtle movement of his eye from person to person to person. He must be wondering how his father will take the presence of these strange newcomers, and if it will in any way affect how he deals with is own visions. Anakin supposed that if for some reason the Duke decided he didn’t like them, Paul would be cut off from the answers he desperately sought, and he did not seem to be the type to ever stop looking for the knowledge he sought. 

Duke Leto continued to speak to Anakin.

“What did you call your planet?”

“It was called Tatooine.”

“A place I have never heard of, but there are many places in the universe unknown to me,” The Duke paused and seemed to go over any information in his brain that may lead to the remembrance of the place called ‘Tatooine’. There was nothing there, apparently, so he moved his attention to cutting the meat on his plate.

“To me as well, my Lord,” Anakin added in, “I’d never heard of Arrakis before myself and Master Kenobi ended up here.”

“By what means did you arrive here?” This time, it was the man with the notable feature of a prominent scar on the side of his face how chimed in. As he chewed his food, it became more prominent as the indent of the scar remained unmoving while the face-muscle around it moved. Anakin tried not to stare too long. He had his own, though smaller, scar, and he was missing an arm for Force’s sake, though it was always covered with his black glove. 

“On a freighter. It was large, but not large enough for a sandworm not to swallow it.” Anakin explained this truthfully, but Gurney seemed (reasonably) skeptical. 

“It’s rather convenient that the remnants of whatever brought you here happen to no longer exist. You also claim to have piloted this ship. That’s rather risky without a navigator, isn’t it?”

“Ah, the Navigators, yes,” Anakin wondered how in the Galaxy he was going to get around the use of a hyperdrive to these people. They had an apparently centuries long anathema against non-biological computers, so the Spacing Guild had a monopoly on space travel. Anyone who were to travel without the help of the guild might just end up in very close contact with a planet or a star that was unaccounted for when traveling at a faster than light speed. Then again, it wasn’t a secret among these people that he and Obi-Wan, these two strange newcomers, had powers they knew not of. He may need to use this to his advantage, even if it wasn’t exactly moral. It was that or commit some form of blasphemy they didn’t know the punishment for.

“Well, I’m just fine at navigating by myself. We Jedi can navigate the stars using the Force.”

Anakin was only half-lying. Force Navigation was a skill some Jedi possesed, one particularly sought out among the Exploration Corps. Unfortunately, Anakin wasn't one who actually possessed these skills and frankly, he never believed he would ever need to rely on the Force for navigation in the age or the Hyperdrive. If they could somehow get their hands on a ship in this place (he assumed he could fly pretty much anything if given the chance) it would be of no use without a system of navigation, and they'd been told altering the Guild to their situation was risky at best—for all parties involved.

“Can you? So, if I were to look into it…”

“You wouldn’t find anything.”

Gurney Halleck looked ready to argue, but the Duke raised a hand as a gesture for him to be quiet.

“This thing you call the Force… these powers. Jessica told me about them,” The Duke looked to Jessica who nodded slowly, seeming to wonder where he was taking the conversation. “I will allow you and Master Kenobi to stay here under strict supervision until you find some means home, if you agree to teach him your ways. You are both warriors, yes?”

“I am.”

“As am I.”

“You have learned ways and of things unknown to us Atreides, but also our enemies. Your ways could help us quite a bit. You two strangers, you have come at an interesting time.”

What the Duke said rang true to some part of Anakin that he couldn’t immediately identify. An interesting time. Sometimes Anakin felt like the universe itself was a scale and then was the time for something that could be as light as a feather to tip it out of balance. Yet he knew if this were to happen, something would ultimately balance things out again. Eventually, this would repeat. The Jedi had this idea that everything was cyclical. Life, for example, a being was made up of natural elements and held together by the Force, the being lived, and once it died, those elements dissolve and would eventually be taken up again in a new being. There was a constant flux in things, an impermanence. Everything that now lived was made up of past things. The death of one thing was the life of the worms and nourishment to the ground, the ground which produced crops which were eaten by small beings, the small beings eaten by the larger, the larger died, the worms ate them, and the cycle continued. Death and life could not exist without one another. So, was this time of all times really a tipping point? If it was, which way would things go? Dark or light? It made sense to Anakin that things would be this way in his lifetime. I am meant to be the Chosen One after all, whatever it really means. It had been proven to him back on Mortis, but he still couldn’t imagine how the prophecy could actually be fulfilled. A skeptical part of him was reminded that in every age, people always assumed themselves to be living through the end of all things or the rebirth of them.

Anakin, lost in thought, tuned himself back into the conversation when he heard Obi-Wan mention the, “...lisan al-gaib, I think it was. The locals here were talking about a person they call the lisan al-gaib.”

Lady Jessica looked up. “It’s a Fremen term. It means ‘voice from the outer world’. It’s their word for a messiah.”

Obi-Wan furrowed his brows at the word. “Messiah?”

Anakin tried to recall ever having heard the word before, but he hadn’t. It must be another cultural difference. The Lady spoke again, “If I recall correctly, it’s a very ancient term that means ‘anointed one’. It has come to be associated with the archetype of a savior figure for a group of people.”

“Like a Chosen One?” Anakin asked.

“Yes, that would be a more straightforward way to put it.”

That was strange. It had been Paul Atriedes they were calling ‘lisan al-gaib’. Did he fit the Fremen prophecy as Anakin fit the Jedi one? It could, however, only be speculation or desperation from the people. He would need to ask more about the prophecy. “What is the Fremen prophecy?”

Lady Jessica spoke, “When directly translated lisan al-gaib means voice from the outer world. The Fremen have a belief that a man will come from another planet, one with a Bene Gesserit mother. They believe he will lead them to freedom. That is the basic prophecy.”

Anakin listened, genuinely interested. Anakin knew the weight that this sort of thing could put on someone. Being part of a prophecy was a thing many dreamed of, whether or not the prophecy turned out to be true, but there was something uneasy about so many people looking to a single person to save them from their ills. While, meanwhile, they did nothing themselves to right their wrongs or look within for their ills. Maybe that was why he was here, he mused, maybe he was here to relate to someone which, because of the nature of their burden, had no one to truly relate to. Then again, was that such a significant thing? Weren’t there things he should be doing in his own Galaxy? What was the Force playing at? Whatever it was, he found himself becoming impatient. 

…

Duncan Idaho looked at the men his Duke had for some reason so graciously let into his home with skepticism. Why, of all times, would this be allowed? He did not like to question his Duke but this was one of those times that he felt the Atreides were almost too honorable. That, or they so far had seen something that he didn’t. It was sufficient to say he would stay on his guard, especially for Paul, who seemed all too interested in the strangers. In fact, he seemed to some extent to be relieved. What was this about? Why had he brought them to him? 

Having been introduced, Duncan addressed the obvious, “Why are they here?”

“They are to train me in their way of fighting.”

Duncan raised a dark eyebrow, “And what is this way? You speak vaguely.”

“They are from an order of people called Jedi,” Paul explained, and Duncan kept the look of skepticism, “Do you remember, Duncan, the weapons I spoke to you of? They are Jedi weapons.”

“Your Father let them in with weapons?” No, he could not have heard that right. Duncan’s voice was incredulous. Instinctively, Duncan’s left hand brushed over his shield belt and his right hand over where he sheathed a dagger.

“My father didn’t let them in. Well,” Paul paused, as if deciding what to say and what not to say. Duncan knew that expression well, “My mother did, but she has deemed them safe.”

Paul stepped forward and handed Ducan what appeared to be, and what he could only assume was, the hilt of the weapon he’d been speaking of. Duncan took it with hesitancy. Paul had apparently described it accurately, and he’d never seen anything like it. Previously, he’d wondered if when describing the weapon he was missing something which would lead Duncan to a recognition of it. 

“I have never seen anything like it before,” Duncan looked up, looking at the man who had introduced himself as Anakin Skywalker. He could only presume this weapon was his, for he looked at it with a sense of anxiety as he handled it. “This is yours, Skywalker?” He nodded. “Show me how it works,” he extended his hand and gave Skywalker back his weapon. Skywalker took it and held it in his right hand with a sense of familiarity and something Duncan could only call relief. That gave Duncan the indication that this particular weapon was of some importance to the man. It didn’t take any special ability to know that this thing was likely as sacred to him as a Crysknife to a Fremen. 

“A lightsaber is powered by something called a kyber crystal, which rests in the hilt,” he explained, “the crystal focuses energy into the blade which is made of plasma suspended in place.”

It was after a questioning look and a nod that the weapon was activated and he had to squint to adjust his eyes to what he could only compare to the beam of a lasgun suspended as if frozen in place. Immediately he was interested in the weapon, and he wondered why such a thing had never been invented by any powers in the Imperium—if it was true that these Jedi figures were really outside of the reach of the Imperium. Everyone had a suspicion that people and things existed outside of it, but nothing advanced or very civilized.

“Fascinating. What does it take to assemble such a weapon?”

Skywalker paused for a moment, sent a questioning glance to the older man, Kenobi, who was evidently his mentor. Once again, there was a Fremen sort of caution that he had surrounding the weapon. Was this something they weren’t allowed to tell? So many people had so many secrets, Duncan had found. It was tiring at times dealing with the standoffish nature of many groups within Imperium, here was another outside of even the Imperium that would be interesting to deal with. Who knew what they kept secret? They seemed fairly open, and didn’t seem to actively cultivate the mystique of a group like the Bene Gesserit did, but everyone had their secrets.

“I may explain at some point—but even if I could show you how, I can guarantee we do not have access to the materials needed to create a lightsaber. Besides—Jedi training involves more than a lightsaber.”

Kenobi nudged Skywalker at the last comment, “It took my friend here quite a while to learn that.”

 Although both men spoke in a strange dialect, there was something more refined in Kenobi's way of speaking that hinted to Duncan that he was the type to rely more on charisma and wit than brute force to get things done—while Skywalker seemed the opposite. There was a yin and yang dynamic here.

“What can I say? I am a slow learner.”

“Only when what you’re learning doesn’t suit you,” Kenobi countered. Skywalker hardly acknowledged the comment, de-igniting the lightsaber. Paul, who had been looking at the weapon as if to study it, seemed disappointed that he had no more time to study the activated weapon. Duncan recognized the way he was looking at it well. He was trying to commit it to memory. Kenobi looked to Paul, “Jedi would generally start with meditation, but I think that would be redundant in this case. Would I be wrong to assume you’re already quite familiar with meditation?”

“I am very familiar, yes.” There was an air of slight arrogance there that Duncan had hoped some maturing would temper in Paul. He doubted that the influence of this Jedi Knight, as they were called, this Skywalker, would exactly help. There was a similar attitude there and that was even more clear when Skywalker seemed to find something amusing in Paul’s response, smirking.

“Well, that saves time, I suppose. Meditation may still be used to enhance certain things that we teach you or your connection to the Force.”

“So is it possible for me to connect to this Force?” Paul inquired, trying his best not to sound too eager.

“Any living thing can connect to the Force because it is within all living things. To some it comes naturally, and Jedi are generally those who have a very heightened connection to the Force. This, however, does not mean that someone without that could not improve their connection to it,” Kenobi explained as if he’d done it many times before. “Considering the abilities you already have, you may actually have a somewhat heightened connection to the Force.”

Duncan found himself confounded. It was as if Paul, Skywalker, and Kenobi had been let in on some esoteric knowledge he had no idea of. He was in that position all too often around the Atreides—Particularly, the Lady Jessica and her son. He had grown okay with not knowing certain things, but when it had to do with Paul’s training, he felt it vital to know; what was this Force they were speaking of? It seemed to be the basis for these Jedi, but what was it? He couldn’t go on without knowing, “I've heard you two mention it, but what is it? The think you base your teachings on, this Force.”

“And that’s where we start. The Force.”

… 

The previous morning’s attempts at contact were fruitless, and this left Anakin with a cold sense of remoteness from the familiar that made him uneasy. He was surrounded by people, but out of all of them, knew only Obi-Wan and R2. He’d felt this sense of isolation before but never to such an extent. It hurt him to think of how he could not contact Padmé in any way from here. It was common for them to be separated for long stretches of time, but knowing that he was essentially MIA at the moment made him wonder what she was going through. Did she think he was dead? Had she even figured out that he was missing, and if she had, was this causing her to sit up and worry, too, lightyears and lightyears away? What time was it back on Coruscant? 

These thoughts are what led him to sit up in the room he’d been given, disassembling and reassembling every communication device they’d brought with them in an attempt to make them more long range. Even if none of the experiments were working out (yet, he hoped) there was a sense of calm for him in working with machinery. It was like a puzzle, and for a time his mind could extend outwards, focusing into the actions of his hands rather than the worries of his mind. 

He kept at this for quite some time when he felt the presence of another—though this was not uncommon here. It was commonly someone walking to and fro in the halls or going up a lift. This one stopped. He ruled out it being Obi-Wan as that Force presence was much more distinct, having known him for so long he could tell this was someone else. In all probability this was once again—

“Paul? Are you trying to test my abilities again?”

“That wasn't my goal, but I see that you guessed it was me,” Paul came into view now, dressed in more casual clothes than he was earlier, his dark hair near falling in his face just as Anakin's own often did. Having seen him, and the rest of these Atreides, only in their dark militaristic clothing, it was odd for him to see Paul like this. This was especially the case as that look fit the family so well, it was as if the two went hand in hand.

“What was your goal?” Anakin asked, finally putting down a kind of screwdriver he had been holding, using it to once again disassemble another long range device.

“I wanted to speak to you.” 

It wasn't a question. Paul had already decided to take a seat next to him, crossing his legs and then curiously examining the parts laid out in front of Anakin.

Anakin initially thought about sending the young Atreides away and telling him they would speak in the morning, but he figured forcing himself to interact with someone might get his mind off of his anxious thoughts of home. Besides, he was meant to be training this kid, even if not in a traditional Jedi way. He had to accept internally, when he really thought about it, that he would be teaching once again. He thought back to the start of the Clone Wars; seeing Ahsoka step off that ship for the first time, and soon telling him, to his own shock, that he was meant to teach her—not Obi-Wan. He'd never wanted to teach and yet he'd grown attached to her like she was a little sister, and then the trial happened and, like that, she was walking away from the temple. That had all happened so fast. He'd never expected—and generally disdained the idea of—having another padawan. Yet, he reminded himself that this wasn't the same. That neither he nor Obi-Wan really had the luxury to choose not to teach Paul, and it was the least they could do for the surprising hospitality of the Atreides.

“About anything in particular, or just in general?” 

“In general, I suppose. I'm curious about this whole situation we've all found ourselves in. It's very strange isn't it?”

Anakin thought it was beyond strange; so much in his life was strange, this was on another level entirely. “You've got that right.” He nodded.

“What is it you were working on? If you don't mind me asking.”

Paul once again looked at the machine parts of a long distance radio (which now needed to be much more long distance) scattered haphazardly on the floor.

“The technology of your people is much different than our own. It lends credence to what you've told us.”

“Ah, that we're from a different place entirely?” 

Anakin had, in his time here, seen a stark difference in the technology of this Imperium and that of his own Galaxy. It wasn't that these people weren't technologically advanced; it was that there were particular things missing that often found in technologically advanced cultures. Normally, there was a pattern. For example, where there was the ability for space travel there developed complex computers and then the ability for faster than light travel through hyperspace. Yet here, he’d heard about beings known as Guild Navigators—when he'd inquired further and asked about navicomputers, he got no answer and was looked at strangely. This empire, this society, had complex machines and starships, but no droids or navicomputers to speak of. There were strange, apparently intended gaps in the common evolution of technology.

“Exactly that,” Paul agreed, “You're trying to get in contact with your home? Am I right?” Paul gestured towards the parts scattered in front of Anakin which he'd momentarily given up on working with.

“Of course I am. I'm so far away from everything.” Anakin shook his head. The words had come out with much more frustration than intended.

“Not long ago I'd never even been to another world. I was raised on Caladan—a planet I suppose you've never heard of before you came here. I still miss Caladan now, so I can't begin to imagine how you must feel.”

“No, I never had heard of Caladan, but I remember your father spoke of it earlier. Was it any better than this place?” Anakin added, “No offense, of course,” In hopes of not being too rude. Still, he couldn't imagine it would be an offensive thing to say. Couldn't any place be better than a nearly uninhabitable desert planet?

Paul smiled. “None taken. Caladan was better, much better. Though I'm biased; my family ruled over it for generations. More than 10,000 years on Caladan.” 

Anakin looked at the young man to see a somber expression come over his face. He knew that expression; one of nostalgia, of longing, of things that could have been. Anakin wondered if he'd been giving off the same look just earlier thinking of home.

“People would sometimes complain about how much it rained on Caladan. Looking back, I’d like to tell them to savor it. People here have no concept of rain, of swimming, of sailing or any such thing.”

Anakin smiled a bit at the last remark. He could actually relate to the people of Arrakis on that front, saying, “I’d never seen an ocean until I left my home planet to be with the Jedi. The concept of that much water in one place is strange to someone who comes from the desert.”

“Did you find it easier to adjust to the climate when you go here?”

Anakin grimaced, “On a physical level, yes. Otherwise, I’m not a fan of the desert.”

Paul knew there was something behind that but he decided not to prod at it for now. He didn’t want to lose trust. For the moment, if he were to ask questions he knew he could get away with. To start, “When did you become a Jedi?”

“I became a Jedi when I was nine, which is actually pretty late. Most Jedi train their whole lives.”

“Their whole lives? I suppose I better start learning fast,” Paul joked. Still, he wondered how much he could really learn if they were to be here for only a short time. It made him want to intake any information that he could. This was a rare opportunity. “Why is it that you were so late to be trained?”

“I was a special case. The Jedi who found me thought that I had a great deal of potential in the Force, someone to be a thing they’d looked forward to for a long time. Not everyone on the Jedi council agreed. They thought I was too old, too emotional, that kind of thing, and that it would be dangerous. When the Jedi who found me was killed, his final wish was to ask his apprentice, Obi-Wan, to train me. I guess that changed things, because they allowed me to be trained after that,” Anakin explained. 

“A thing they’d looked forward to?” Paul knew that pattern, if he had interpreted his words correctly. It was the messiah pattern. So the Jedi, too, had such a concept? He knew that shouldn’t be surprising. Most similar prophecies he would chalk up to the Bene Gesserit planting their seeds with that Missionaria Protectiva of theirs. That likely wasn’t the case in this scenario if it was true that their two civilizations had never interacted and had evolved separately.

“Looked forward to, yes. Like the people of this planet look forward to the so-called lisan al-gaib. Some of the people on this planet seem to think of you as being this person.”

Paul paused, took a few moments before speaking, “Lisan al-gaib, yes, they think I'm their voice from the outer world.”

“So I've learned. A local informed us on that in Arrakeen, and your mother mentioned the basics of the prophecy. What do you make of it?”

There was a momentary conflict in Paul. Should he be honest and tell Anakin that this prophecy was no real prophecy? It wasn't an organic one, at least. A Bene Gesserit had planted the prophecy like a seed generations ago and now that seed had grown up like a vine and had a stranglehold on the people of Arrakis. He feared that if he lied, the Jedi would be able to tell. That was no good way to gain trust with a person with valuable knowledge, or even, a potential friend. If the Jedi had knowledge of a skill like the Voice, could they also have Truth Saying knowledge or the ability to reach into a mind? How far did this Force let them go? More importantly, how far did they let themselves go?

“I wouldn't lend much credence to it if I were you.”

“I didn't say I did. I was only wondering what you made of it, as this supposed lisan al-gaib. Your mother mentioned some aspects of the prophecy earlier, so I was wondering,” Anakin countered.

“They believe that parts of their prophecy match myself and my family. The outsider stuff, the Bene Gesserit mother stuff. The people here are desperate. You've seen the environment of this planet. They will believe what they want so they can hold onto hope that things will change for the better, and can you blame them?” 

Anakin took in the information, still occasionally fiddling with the machine parts spread out in front of him,“So what do they think you'll do for them? To change things for the better, that is.” 

Paul noted the air of skepticism is Anakin’s own voice. There was some annnoyance there, the beginnings of a scowl. Evidently, Paul concluded, the Jedi expected something out of Anakin. Something he wasn’t so sure he could achieve.  

“They think I'll lead them to Paradise, make Arrakis green again. That sort of thing.”

“Ah, I see. I'm supposed to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.”    

“The Sith?” Paul perked up a bit. He’d heard that word. He’d heard it in that last dream of his. 

“The Sith are a group that have an ideology opposing the Jedi. They use the Dark Side of the Force,” Anakin explained. There was a bitter note in his voice. Paul supposed this was personal for Anakin, then. The Sith were not a mythological group but a real threat. He almost spoke of the Sith the same way that Gurney spoke of the Harkonnens, “The Dark Side isn’t a separate thing, per se, but the use of the Force in a corrupted way. It’s accessed through strong negative emotions, for example.”

Fascinating. This particular view of balance was not one he’d expected. “When you said balance, I’d expected to hear something like the Yin and Yang. What you say, though, it’s more like the view of Aquinas, that evil is a corruption of good.”

“Yin, Yang? Aquinas who exactly?”

Paul shook his head, smiling. That would take some explaining. “You guys are here to teach me, but I suppose I could teach you a few things.”

“I’m willing to learn, but I can’t say I’m always good at it.”

“It’s fine. We’re both willing to learn. That’s enough.”

Chapter Text

Sic semper tyrannis: thus always to tyrants.

—Recorded sayings of Earth

(Latin phrase)

XI. Art

Chancellor Palpatine found himself contemplating as he looked on at an ancient piece of art, a large bas-relief in the antechamber of his office. He was disconcerted when he heard through his own sources of the disappearance of the two Jedi. Kenobi, he was not concerned with. In fact, the loss of Kenobi would actually prove a great value to him, if Anakin weren’t lost too. It would push him further. It would pull at the worn rope of conscience that the boy had if not finally snap it. Something had to give, eventually. His mother had died, he’d believed his Master was dead for a time (There went a great deal of the trust he’d had in the Jedi Council, and that extended to Kenobi to an extent), and then his padawan had left him. The great inner weight of his negative emotions, Palpatine hoped—no, knew— must become too much eventually, and then the great hope of the Jedi would fall into his hands, disillusioned with all he had once known and therefore doubting all he had ever believed, his mind so vulnerable then. So vulnerable to influence, even more than it had been to this point. Oh, it would be so easy! He often found himself, behind the mask of benevolence that he wore, in a reverie of sorts, thinking of the future time when the millennia of the quiet planning of the Sith would come to fruition. 

Palpatine enjoyed art, and he liked to think of what he was doing as art. It was the painting of a masterpiece. When trying to achieve such a thing, one had to take it slowly, and if a single brushstroke or even a small stipple was out of place, that section would have to be carefully painted over and redone, lest the entire painting become a mess and only a frustration to the artist. He was an artist, yes, and he was doing it with people. What a great delight it was to have the Galaxy as his unwitting canvas. Did a figure no longer belong in the piece? Ah, well, they had to go then. They didn’t compliment the painting anymore. That was the demeanor he tended to approach the figures in his plan with. Not because it in any way pained him to acknowledge that they were people, he quite enjoyed that, but because it aided him in his method and allowed him to keep the cohesion in his plan with many moving parts. This here, that there, and so on. What would it look like when it was all over? It would be wonderful.

If what Palpatine did was art, he did not only paint. He sculpted, too. Key words and phrases could carve into or mold the mind of those around him. It had to be precise, timed right, and seem as if it was done without intention. It could become a phrase ringing in the head of his subject, tipping them into a choice or decision that he wanted. It was even better if it seemed logical what he said, that it would be for the greater good, or that it was out of good will. To have the ability to chip away or make a mark in someone else’s mind, even a small one, was a greater power than anyone could suspect. Years ago he had done such a thing in persuading Queen Amidala to urge for a vote of no confidence against Chancellor Valorum. How eager the young queen had been to save Naboo! So, why not trust the advice of an experienced Senator from her own planet? Surely he would want the best for it, it being his planet too? Such pure hope and heroism made him sick, but it was certainly useful to him. Even if he had a distaste for such a disposition, he would hide his feelings, as doing so ultimately served his plan. 

Anakin Skywalker had that similar misdirected heroism, always running headlong into whatever mission he had. Palpatine didn’t doubt that whatever he’d done this time, it was something similar. Give it merely a few days, and he would be back. Palpatine had waited decades in his planning, he could wait longer. He could only hope that things would go his way and only Skywalker would come back. That would aid his plan a great deal. Skywalker would come back and his mind, which Palpatine in his current contemplation of art would think of as a slab of clay, would be easier to mold than ever! 

Chapter Text

If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light.

—Preserved Zensunni proverb

(Quote: Rumi)

XII. Contact

By the time that Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had failed to make contact with anyone in the Republic for 12 standard days, and all her own contact attempts had so far failed, Ahsoka began to feel a sense of unease. It was against her better judgment, as she still held to her previous conviction that Anakin, at least, couldn’t be dead. Even then, the lack of an explanation still led the mind to venture into strange territories. She’d gone out of her way to obtain various communication devices, and worked with them for a time, but then realized that if such things had worked for no one else, they had little chance in working for her. 

It wasn’t as if one could get away from the subject—just as the events of the war were plastered all over the news and holonet, so was this sudden disappearance of two Jedi that the public had grown enamored with. It made her feel slightly more jittery about her task and rather alone in it, too. This was even if, logically, she knew there were many others prodding at the same mystery and trying to contact the Jedi. She did fear that if enough time passed, the Jedi themselves would dismiss such attempts, at least to the degree that they were at now, and move on as they did in most things. She understood the importance of moving on, as she had learned to do in her own life, but that was only when nothing could be done. It seemed to her they often came to that conclusion too fast, especially for a group that was meant to be pondering the mysteries of the Force.

She finally determined that she would do the thing that seemed the most natural from the beginning—she would make attempts at contact through the Force. Maybe she should have done it first, but the concentration it took had put her off and there was a small but nagging fear that she wouldn’t succeed. What then? She knew she needed to continue to harness her abilities in the Force, and her connection to the Force was important to her, despite leaving the Order. The Force was much more than that. She had to remind herself of it from time to time. It had bothered her from the time she left how much she tended to associate the Force with the Order. Because of this, she had started to put off her own training and exploration of the energy field that connected all things. There was no reason for that. She had been gifted with this wonderful ability, why shut it out?

She figured it was best she begin as soon as possible. At the very least, she had to begin the process of quieting her mind to try to make an attempt at contact. The focus when it came to something like telepathy was to connect with who one was communicating with and to clear the mind. Distance didn’t actually mean anything. The most it could do was become a mental block. The belief, even if subconscious, that one could not do something, either mental or physical, was generally the thing that prevented a person from doing it. During her training she’d remembered things she would try for weeks only to be frustrated, but once she’d given herself a break and taken her attention off of it, she would try the same thing—and it would come so naturally it seemed she’d always known how, as if she was recalling old knowledge from a wellspring of universal experience.

Unfortunately, keeping her attention focused was starting to become old knowledge, so she hoped some meditation would help to renew it.

…

Anakin glanced at her with a nod, not noting anything unusual in his dream as of yet, “Oh, hey, Snips,” he greeted her, before going back to his task of doing maintenance on R2. She had to suppress some amusement at this. Even in his dreams, he worked with droids. She was glad at the lack of profundity in the dream, and the lack of any situation that would warrant embarrassment—for example, if he’d been dreaming of the Senator. She thought to herself in amusement that she’d taken a real risk in using the realm of dreams to contact him, but hopefully it would pay off.

Time to snap him out of it. She wondered, briefly, if making someone lucid in a dream was similar to that old tale about waking a sleepwalker, but dismissed the thought.

“Anakin, you’re dreaming.”

This caught his attention, if only for a moment, “Don’t be ridiculous,” he waved a hand in dismissal. 

What could she do to get him to realize? 

“Do you know how you got here, doing what you’re currently doing?” She motioned to R2, who appeared much less animated than usual; likely a product of his being a dream-construct more than anything.

“Well, I was—I—” he faltered, stumped at the question. Gradually, realization dawned on him and he nodded slowly. Ahsoka had become aware in her own dreams before, and the feeling could be uncanny. Many of the times it had happened she had woken suddenly at the revelation.

She figured that was why the dreamscape itself faltered for a moment, and their surroundings became suddenly dim. Ahsoka was afraid that he would wake up and their very brief communication would come to an abrupt end. However, in another moment everything around them became clearer and the edges to everything less vague. She could almost make herself think they were back at the Temple in the days when she was training under him, not really so long ago as it felt to her currently. She felt a small pang of nostalgia at the thought, but brushed it off. Now was not the time. She needed to get information on his and Master Kenobi’s wearabouts. She couldn’t let anything get in the way of that.

A very different feeling from the cool melancholy of nostalgia, she felt another emotion bubbling up that she’d often found difficulty controlling—frustration. Even her dream form apparently displayed this, as Anakin gave her a questioning look, one eyebrow raised slightly. There was also a sense of confusion coming from him. She couldn’t quite tell if that confusion was somehow displayed in his expression or it was in the Force. It seemed much more difficult to differentiate such things in a dream.

“Anakin, would you mind telling me where you are? Everyone’s looking for you, you know.” Some of her frustration poured over into the question, though she’d tried to restrain herself. It wasn’t him she felt this way towards, but the situation as a whole. The lack of any closure combined with it being something she was constantly reminded of had made it difficult to think about anything else and therefore she had long been stewing in a boiling pot of emotions about this.

“About that, Snips—it’s going to sound a little bit out there,” He started.

“How out there are we talking?” She gave him an inquisitive look, and sat down next to him on the floor, settling in for a long explanation. 

“Out there as in a whole other civilization.”

“What do you  mean? An uncharted planet, or something?”

“Something of that kind, yes, something the ExplorCorps would have a field day over,” he went on, words pouring out that he’d obviously been eagerly waiting to share, “we’re on a planet called Arrakis–not that the name will help you much. It’s a desert planet, and the climate is terrible, but we don’t have to brave it because we got the help of the planet’s Duke. Where we are, they don’t know anything about the Republic.”

Ahsoka searched her mind to see if she’d ever heard the name before. She certainly hadn’t, but she would at least search for the name to see if there had ever been any knowledge of this planet within the Republic, possibly in some now distant age.

She had so many questions she wasn’t sure which to ask first. Nor was she sure how long this dream would last or whether they could sustain their communication, so she divided her questions into two categories: questions of curiosity, and questions that would aid them in returning to the known galaxy. The important ones would go first. When that was done, she would let herself scratch the nagging itch of her curiosity.

“I assume  that you’ve stuck around because something happened to your ship.”

“You assume correctly, then.”

“And it’s not salvageable?”

Anakin looked somewhat amused at her statement, lips curling up slightly into a hardly visible smile, and although she wanted to ask what the smug amusement was about—very likely, what he’d managed to crash the ship into or do to destroy it—she reminded herself that first and foremost came the gathering of information. She hoped that when—and now, speaking to him, she was much more assured at it being a when then an if—he and Obi-Wan got back she could catch up with him. She also had to assume at the mention of a ‘we’ Obi-Wan was alright. Besides, if he weren’t, there was no way Anakin would seem to be in a relatively calm state, both outwardly and in the Force.

“No. It’s not. We’ll leave it at that for now.”

“Has this civilization not developed off-world travel?”

She couldn’t help but come to that conclusion, given that Anakin and Obi-Wan had evidently received help from some people of power on this planet—Arrakis. If they weren’t dealing with a situation where the planet’s inhabitants were hostile, what was holding them back from getting some kind of transport? He had no reason to conceal anything from her, this was a dream, after all. There wasn’t a fear of being overheard or recorded if they were in a hostile environment or being imprisoned. Even then, she’d be able to sense if something was truly wrong.

“They have. They’re part of a space faring civilization, but they don’t have hyperdrives, so if you want to go very far you have to rely on a Navigator. Essentially, I’ve been told that their Guild of Navigators—or whatever they’re called—has their own agenda, and it would possibly alert suspicion within their government if two complete unknowns somehow were given the funds by Duke and his family to travel to somwhere that to them, are the middle of nowhere.”

“I suppose that would be suspicious for a ruling family to do. It could pose a danger to them and their world, and you can't expect them to risk it.”

He nodded, “I don’t. That would be selfish. People here are different, Snips. They’re so much more calculating about everything. I thought some of the Republic’s politics were bad, but here it’s always preparing to get stabbed in the back. They’re so—what’s the  word—”

“Paranoid?”

“That, yes.”

Ahsoka nodded in understanding. She’d seen the amount of paranoia and backstabbing that had led to it during the war. In fact, she realized with a note of self-pity that generally sickened her, she knew exactly what it was like to have a metaphorical knife in her back—and nearly a literal one. It amazed her that such things could be worse anywhere else.

“I suppose I should have asked this before but, just to make sure, you two are safe, right?” 

Maybe that should have been her first question, but Anakin’s stoic attitude and general good demeanor  had placated her enough that she’d assumed everything was alright and they were very likely in no immediate danger. If they were surely he'd have communicated that by now, or it would have shown in the way he was acting. 

“We're safe at the moment. As safe as we can be for being stuck in the unknown space,” he sighed momentarily, running his flesh hand through his hair. It was a nervous tic of his that she'd noticed over the years. So, they were safe but something was evidently bothering him if he was doing that. She scolded herself of course it is! I'm sure I would feel the same if I was stuck in the middle of nowhere!

Was it a natural reaction to the general stress of his current situation, or something more? She needed to know. 

“What’s wrong, Anakin?”

“What do you mean?”

So, he was going to play it that way. Of course he was.

“I’m serious. If something’s wrong, you need to tell me now. I don’t know when I’ll be able to speak to you next and I need to gather as much information as possible.”

There was a pause, a moment of silent communication between the two. A type of communication that had evolved between them in the years that they had known each other. It was the moment where two very stubborn individuals refused to give ground to the other. That is, neither were willing to admit they were wrong.

Eventually, “I will admit it’s a strange experience being isolated from everything—and almost everyone—I know. I don’t know what I’d do if Obi-Wan hadn’t ended up in this situation with me.”

When he said strange, she felt a short, probably unintentional rush of the cold feeling that loneliness displayed in the Force. It was akin to the more physical sensation of a chill wind rushing past one and ruining a temperate day. The sensation somehow manifested itself in the dream as a cold draft from a nearby air vent (that had certainly not been running before) and she crossed her arms to warm up. 

“You’d do what you always do, you’d find a way out of it or make one.”

And it was true, he would have. She’d seen him do it dozens of times before in some ridiculous circumstances. This time would be no different.

Before she could continue to pry into this particular subject matter, something she figured he’d sensed and wanted to prevent, as always, he spoke again, “Well, that is true,” he played his response up into the confident-cocky tone that was usual for him. She suspected it was somewhat Forced, especially as he’d nearly gone to repeat the nervous habit and stopped abruptly, forcing himself to put his hand down.

This was how emotions often were with him. They were visible, if for brief moments, in his expression and mannerisms, and they displayed themselves in abundance in the Force. The image that came to her when she thought of this was the idea of a cracked bucket leaking water out very slowly at first, and gradually putting pressure on the crack until it spread and water spilled everywhere. That is, if it wasn’t quickly repaired, which he was often able to do. Other times—and she’d seen some of them herself—it would come out with rage and an invisible vice grip around someone’s throat.

“Anyway,” he continued after a moment, and as she pushed her thoughts away she really hoped they weren’t somehow visible in the dream, “We should focus on the information you really need. You know, to have someone come find us, remember?”

“Come on, of course I remember,” and out of one of her own habits, she lightly tapped her fingers on her crossed arms, “Do you by chance know the coordinates you were at when you jumped?”

“Roughly, yes. Ah, I have an idea,” he stood up from the ground, and searched the room for something.

A moment later he once again took a seat next to her, now with a datapad in his hand. He tapped something onto the pad, and then handed it to her, “Here. Try to memorize this.”

She nodded as she took the datapad into her hands. Memorization wasn’t exactly something she was good at, but she wasn’t terrible at it either. She probably should have known this would involve something of the like, given that she couldn’t take anything physical from this dream, only her mind and the information in it.

“I think it’ll be best if I do it before I wake myself up so I can have it fresh in my mind.”

“That’s probably your best option, yeah,” he agreed, “I’m guessing that you plan to get someone sent out to where we jumped?”

She nodded, said, “That’s the idea. I’ve never heard of there being a hyperspace lane in that area but it’s evident that there is one.”

“Obi-Wan’s convinced that it’s some ancient lane that’s been forgotten about, which is why it’s not marked on any of the maps.”

“That’s a good explanation.”

“Is this a lone venture of yours, or did someone in the Order contact you about us being essentially MIA?”

“This isn't something I decided to do on my own. I mean—I would still have helped if I found out,” she admitted, “but imagine my shock when I get a call and I answer it, only to see the faces of some of the council members. I wondered if I was having a nightmare.”

The latter sentence was an attempt at a joke. Unfortunately, it fell flat. It was a bit too soon for both of them to joke about that. Anakin hid the regret that seemed to have hit him with another forced smile that didn’t extend to his eyes, and an awkward but reassuring pat on the back. They both knew that it was a hardly scabbed over wound which didn’t need to be picked away. Seeing those faces, ones she once looked up to, left her more with a sense of cynicism than anything. At one time many in the Galaxy had idolized the Jedi, but as the war had gone on their city on a hill had started to collapse, in the eyes of many, at least. Their foundations had begun to reveal themselves to be built on bricks of sand.

Seeing that the joke didn’t land for either of them, she tried to move on in the least awkward way possible, explaining the rest of the situation, “Well, I guess the 501st realized they were missing you, and the 212th went through the same thing, and then Rex contacted the Council and they didn’t know either. They sent out a message to the Jedi, and got nothing. Then they decided to contact basically everyone you guys know on an off chance they might have an idea of what happened, or that you’d told them.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve succeeded in some way. I’ve felt pretty useless lately not being able to do much. I was trying to rule out all of the normal routes of communication before I did something like, well, this,” He gestured to Ahsoka in her dream-form, entirely undifferentiated from her physical form with the exception of the amplified energy of the Force coming off of her in a nearly invisible, slightly luminous aura. Looking down at his own crossed legs, he saw no such aura. He supposed that this was due to his form along with all of their surroundings being actually in his own mind, and Ahsoka had only briefly taken up residence here with her own presence. It was an odd thought that everything here apart from her, from the light coming in through the window and warming what it hit to the floor beneath him were part of his own consciousness.

“I did the same. I didn’t think this would come as naturally as it did to me, but maybe it was meant to happen now.”

“It’s definitely a possibility. Lately I feel like the Force isn’t just leading me in certain directions, it’s shoving me,” He admitted, hardly trying to be humorous but using his oh so unique way of words.

Despite not intending it to be humor, that got a laugh out of Ahsoka. It melted away some of the tension that had become present in the air when she had mentioned the Jedi Council. 

“People forget it really does have a will of its own.”

He nodded. 

“Something else you should know; when you tell the Council, let them know they need to keep it as secret as possible and be discreet about it. I don’t think it’s a good idea for any large-scale contact to happen with this civilization yet. As far as I know, it’s not very stable and with the state of the Republic—I just wouldn’t risk it, you know.”

“I understand completely. First contact is delicate as it is, but this is bigger than anything I’ve heard of. At least in recent history. Start preparing a cover story to give to everyone else. I’m sure between you and Obi-Wan, it won’t be difficult to do.”

Anakin, for a moment, took pause and tried to think of a good retort to that last comment, but decided it wasn’t worth it at the current moment, and waived a hand dismissively at the comment.

“We can manage, I’m sure. It would be good if they sent out some people from the ExplorCorps, but as small a number as possible. Their ships are always rigged with the best long-range communication devices and they’re the only ones who won’t seem suspicious spending that time so far out.”

Ahsoka nodded, taking some time to make sure she could remember all of the details they had previously gone over. She made a list of key phrases in her mind that she could cling onto and then recite when she had to. Although this had never been her strong suit, the pressure of knowing she was the only contact link for them (at this moment, at least) had momentarily cleared a spot in her mind and refined her memorization skills like pressure formed a diamond. She supposed that this increased skill would melt away when she no longer needed it. 

Ahsoka said, “Where had you come from when you were trying to get away from the Separatists?”

“We were in the Geonosis System. Long story short, we were meant to be discreet in carrying out our assignment and things just didn’t pan out that way, and we didn’t exactly find the information we’d been looking for,” he explained, and she could tell that he was doing his best not to relive this failure. She’d known him to often be hard on himself about this sort of thing, when in the same breath he would be telling her not to blame herself too much about this or that. It was, as Obi-Wan had once aptly put it in some old adage, a do as I say and not as I do sort of philosophy that he had.

She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Did anyone end up getting that information?”

He could only shrug, “I’m unsure. I’m hoping someone picked up the mission. It wasn't exactly unimportant information, if the rumors were true. We don’t usually go on rumors but at this point in the War we had to try. I can’t tell you much else, I’m sure you get that.”

“I do,” and there really was no bitterness in her voice. She’d grown weary of helping to carry the Galaxy’s weight in secrets on her shoulders when she had happened to be entrusted with them, and she did not lament that experience. She was taking up that yoke again, to some degree, in aiding Anakin and Obi-Wan, but she liked to think this was something that meant a lot more to her personally. 

Sure, she had to go about things secretly in the places she was staying, hoping that other tenants in whatever lower level place she happened to be residing in would take no notice of her peculiarities and more advanced knowledge on certain subjects, but none of this was the same as the kind of pressure those previous experiences put on her. It was still a burden, and to coat everything she said with the thin sheet of a white lie was uncomfortable, but she’d found her ways to deal with it. Her preference in dealing with questions, at the moment, was to be as vague as possible and keep as much to herself as she could, avoiding sharing anything about herself unless she was asked and couldn’t evade questions without suspicion; however, this didn’t always come easy. There was no simple solution. She had accepted that she couldn’t become a hermit or fully close herself off from others, not only because she was genuinely a very sociable person, but also because interest from others was inevitable. One could not avoid curious beings in a densely populated place such as Coruscant. She knew this might be solved by slipping away to another, more quiet, part of the Galaxy, but she wasn’t quite ready to part with the planet she’d essentially grown up on, nor was she ready to face an even more profound sense of loneliness. Besides that, she still wanted to help people in whatever way she could, and going to some backwater place would only be counterproductive to that mission of hers. She’d learned during the course of her life that she thrived on working with and being around others, and most importantly to her, helping others. What better place than right where she was?

She could still do such things on her own, if only to a much smaller extent, and that concept had helped her to keep a sense of purpose when much of the paradigm she’d used as a guide for her life had been absolutely shattered. In the array of shattered beliefs, she found a few shards of wisdom that really were valuable and clung to those seeing the finally unclouded truth in them. The false beliefs, however, melted and evaporated away. One of those shards of wisdom that she’d found calling to her, just as a Kyber Crystal in the caves of Illum, happened to be the value in doing to others what you would have done to you—which, in her case, meant aiding them in the best way that she could. 

Their conversation went on for what must have been some time. It felt that way, at least, although she was unsure if time functioned the same in a dream as it did in waking life. Previous to this encounter, she had wondered if there would be some tension between the two of them when they got past discussing the basics, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. If it had been in waking life, it might have been different—waking life, where the pressures of the Galaxy were even more obviously pressing upon them. Though they flowed back into conversation easily, in a way that recalled, to Ahsoka, the old-new sensation of trying an old skill, there were certainly unspoken things floating just beneath the surface.

As she could feel their conversation draw to an inevitable close, there was something she had long debated asking. She decided to ask.

“One more thing.”

“Hmm?”

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell Padme?” She asked, wondering if he would dance around the subject as he always did. 

The abrupt silence between them after the long conversation they’d just had, and while there had been the flash of an expression across his face when she’d asked the question, his look was now tellingly, and likely very intentionally, neutral. 

“Ahsoka, I’ve told you that there’s nothing there,” he dismissed, and just as he maintained that intentionally neutral look. 

“Anakin…”

For a moment, he froze, and then let out a long breath. He wasn’t admitting anything, but he said, “Tell her I said that I’m alright, and that Obi-Wan and I will be back.”

She smiled slightly, saying, “I will. Don’t worry.”

Chapter Text

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

—Confucian Analects

(Actually from the Analects)

XIII. The Reed

Paul had started to grow slightly frustrated at his lack of progress when working with the Jedi. To see such powers displayed by them, and try as he might, not being able to equal them, was a new challenge to him. In some sense, despite the slight irritation, he was thankful for the challenge. It had helped him to not grow complacent in what he already knew, and he was doing better than he had before in his training with both Duncan and his mother. He had noticed some small similarities between the Bene Gesserit teachings and those of the Jedi. For example, both put an emphasis on patience and mind-over-matter. Some techniques of both groups being similar did not at all mean they were similar in structure or ideology.

The groups were built on entirely different foundations, ultimately. The Bene Gesserit were a group of women, which, because of that, meant they were one of the few matriarchal groups in the Imperium—and one of the most powerful groups in general, though few knew that, and many saw them only as witches who served the Imperium. The Jedi, too, were one of the most powerful groups in their society, but that was widely known, and though some feared them as some feared the ‘Bene Gesserit witches’ the extent of their power was somewhat less esoteric. The Jedi weren’t just monks or nuns, but a group consisting of thousands that weren’t only limited to women. 

As there were not enough lightsabers present for the three of them, they taught Paul some of the basics but mostly resorted to working with staffs and swords which the Jedi were able to adapt to rather quickly. They’d taught him the basics of some of the Jedi forms starting with the most basic form I, called Shii-cho or Way of the Sarlacc—a creature that Paul had never heard of and was almost glad he never had one it had been explained to him. The concept of dying in such a thing and being digested over thousands of years made the concept of being swallowed by a sandworm somewhat of a mercy. Even then, apparently Sarlaccs didn’t exactly move from their spot, so it was much easier to avoid one than a Maker.

When he’d come into the training room that particular day he’d noticed a heightened energy in the room, and it was evident that at least Anakin’s spirits were lifted, as he was swinging his saber around in some Form V move of which he hadn’t yet committed the name to memory, a move that appeared to mostly focus on bringing the staff down from over his head. The movement of the glowing azure blade left impressions behind in his eyes and it was mesmerizing when looked at for too long.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was currently absent from the training room, so he couldn’t exactly gauge the man’s feelings. It wasn’t abnormal for one or the other to be absent from a lesson. The two had rather different styles of teaching and it was clear little would get done if they were to spend time bickering on the particulars of what they were teaching. While the two melded well in other ways, almost as one entity at times—like the two sides of an opposing Force, they were sometimes too headstrong to agree to disagree. Thankfully, they were intelligent enough, and had had enough experience with each other, that they knew the kinds of situations that would spark arguments and avoided them when possible. Ergo, most of his Jedi lessons involved one or the other.

In his short education of the Jedi arts he’d noticed the differing fighting styles of the two Jedi in his short time with them, the younger Jedi Knight putting most of his focus towards offense and putting power behind each move, while the older Jedi Master (he had come to learn the distinction) held back much of the power that he did have and way always ready with a strong defense. 

Paul himself had done his best to condition himself out of favoring one style of fighting too much over another, something that had been a constantly emphasized part of his early Bene Gesserit training—to fall into habits could be dangerous. To be utterly unpredictable was fear for one's enemy. There was certainly something unique about the martial arts the Jedi brought to the table, and he tried to take them on in their own merit. Still, he struggled at times not to fall into the oh so dreaded habit of incorporating his own, more familiar, knowledge of the weirding way. It didn’t help that the Jedi, too, essentially fought in an altered state just as was done with the heavily emphasized mind-body connection of the weirding way. He aimed to keep the two distinct until he had a better mastery of the new, foreign skills of the Jedi, and then and only then could he truly practice the Bene Gesserit axiom of unpredictability in a way he doubted many had seen before.

“How are you doing with the Markashi we went over?” Anakin asked, deactivating the plasma blade of the lightsaber and tossing it to Paul. Paul caught it, and activated it, still occasionally finding himself admiring the strange weapon. As he didn’t have any way to construct his own saber, he knew his time with this weapon was limited for the moment, so he tried to take in the moment as much as possible. Because he would have no way to construct one when the Jedi were gone, they had decided to introduce skills with the lightsaber and then apply and possibly modify them so they would work with a metal weapon, generally some sort of staff, or Paul’s preference, a gladius or dagger.

“I’ve been running different sequences with the training dummy. This may be my favorite of the styles so far. I’ve enjoyed how grounded it is, how important the footwork is; it’s like some sort of dance. You Jedi hardly stay on the ground in other styles.”

“It’s good to see you’ve found a style you like. I wish I knew it better or we had a master in it to show you more of its intricacies. It’s meant to be a good form for fighting opponents with lightsabers. I’m assuming that will transfer over to your swords. I see how it could be useful to you, Paul. Let me tell you, you’re much more likely to fight someone else with a sword than a Jedi ever is to fight someone else with a lightsaber.”

Paul had thought of that before. The Jedi lightsaber was a very specialized weapon built to be like another arm for someone who could wield the Force. Were they to turn against each other, for whatever reason, or to encounter the more rare Dark Siders Anakin had spoken of, would be the only time their combat would be lightsaber to lightsaber. 

“Have you ever fought someone else with a lightsaber? For real, I mean. Not another Jedi in training.”

“I have. More than once, actually.”

Paul waited for the automatic target to calibrate, as he moved the lightsaber in his hands in practice of what was to come. The target-dummies that he normally used weren't built or programmed for lightsaber combat, so Anakin had essentially taken the time to rig it so that it could do lightsaber combat—to an extent, at least. As a blade that the dummy would normally operate with would not hold up against a lightsaber, they’d made a system of attaching one of the two lightsabers to the dummy. Paul knew they were putting a lot of trust in him, having assumed that he was experienced enough with handling other weapons and fighting with him that they would not accidentally destroy the saber somehow or slice through the hilt. 

Paul staggered his feet, right leg slightly bent in front of him, left slightly back and straightened. 

He knew he would be able to say the same thing as Anakin at some point, as foreboding as the thought was. It would be a matter of time, he felt, until he would have to use his own skills against another duelist. Probably not with a lightsaber like this, (what were the odds of that in this part of the universe?) but with someone else nonetheless.

Paul wondered if he could get any more out of Anakin on the subject. Had it been one of those Sith he’d spoken of? 

He moved through the opening position of form II, bringing the saber up into a vertical position

“Who did you have to fight?”

“The names would mean nothing to you.”

“I’m aware. I only wondered who it was you had to fight. Were they Sith? Other Jedi?”

Paul dodged a blow coming from the target dummy.

“The first was a Sith. In fact, he was a master at the very technique you’re using. His name was Count Dooku,” Anakin explained, intently watching as Paul went about his duel with the dummy.

Paul managed to nearly land a mark (The thing that could bring an end to a lightsaber duel, as he’d been told) on the side of the dummy where the torso would be. He narrowly missed and had to draw the saber back quickly to defend against a strike. He wondered why Anakin let the idle conversation go on during practice like this, but figured it was just part of how he trained. Even if unintentional, Paul could see the benefit of learning to fight while other things were going on. 

“A Count?” 

Paul landed a mark of contact finally, literally disarming the dummy, and stepping back, deactivating the lightsaber blade. He wanted to ask more about this count that Anakin had mentioned, and wondered if that meant the same thing as where he was from. 

“Well done, though you can’t let your guard down. You were nearly hit at the end there. If your swordmaster’s right about these enemies of your family, you can’t afford a mistake. Take a moment, we’ll run that again.”

Paul shrugged, “I can do it now.”

There was a Bene Gesserit technique called simulflow, wherein a sister would enable themselves to simultaneously entertain at least two lines of thought. This idle conversation between himself and the young Jedi while he was blocking swing after swing by the dummy was something akin to that, and that Anakin allowed it made Paul feel he must have some semblance of confidence in his new student.

Paul found himself both very similar and very different from Anakin. Very different in life and experience, yet quite similar in mindset and outlook. It was interesting to at least slightly relate to someone nearer his age than most around him were.

He’d never truly had such a thing before, not even back on Caladan. Gurney and Duncan were his friends, no doubt, and very loyal at that, but they were both quite a bit older than him and couldn’t relate to him in that sense. He was pretty sure Anakin was too, but not to the same extent, and while he hadn’t asked his age, he assumed the man couldn’t be more than five or six years his senior. He might be the closest thing to a peer that Paul actually had; someone who wasn’t so set in his ways as others around him and who was still trying to figure things out. Someone else still swimming through the muddy water that seemed to have cleared up for everyone else. 

He thought of Duncan, who had frequently been away on errands for his father and Gurney who had been growing increasingly stressed under their current circumstances regarding the move to Arrakis and any possible Harkonnen plot. Both of them seemed to at least outwardly portray a firmness in their outlook and their lives that Paul had not yet found, feeling, at times, as if he was being pulled in many directions at once like a man being quartered. 

 Paul wiped the sweat from his neck and face with a towel after the end of the training session. Now that it was over, he hoped to try to get more information out of Anakin about that Count he’d fought. He knew it wasn’t necessarily his business, but his mind had a craving for data, and there was a need in him to know more about this far off civilization which Anakin was from and the people that dwelt therein. He wanted to know more of the Jedi and their interactions with this Dark Side faction they called the Sith.

“You said you fought a Sith—a man you called Count Dooku,” he mentioned, as he retired to sit on a bench in the training room, leaning against the wall and feeling it to be surprisingly cool against his back and thus a great relief.

“I did. I’m glad you remember,” there was some sarcasm in the man’s tone that Paul had come to expect.

“I suppose I have stated the obvious. I wanted to ask you more about that situation. How did it come to be? Who really are these Sith you speak of?”

Anakin shook his head lightly, and ran a hand through his hair. He took a moment, and then said, “The Sith—they’re a Dark Side group of Force users. They go against everything the Jedi stand for.”

He spoke of them the same way Gurney spoke of the Harkonnens.

“So this Dark Side–it’s based on negative emotion?” He could deduce that by his small understanding of Jedi teachings and mentally inverting them. 

“Yes. They believe that by anger, hatred, and selfishness they’ll achieve their goal.”

Paul thought for a moment.

“And that leads them to eat their own, does it not?”

“It does. The problem with people like that is that they’re willing to destroy their own to gain power. If you’re okay with evil towards others, what stops it towards your own? Loyalty? There is no loyalty for the Sith. Not really. The Sith are like a serpent that eats its own tail.”

“And this Sith that you fought, what kind of man was he?”

“He had once been a Jedi. He left the Order, and he fell, and became the apprentice of the Dark Lord of the Sith. He saw—sees—the Republic as corrupt, so he took up arms against it and seceded from it with a group who felt the same as he did. I wouldn’t call him evil if he was just an upset politician, but it’s the things he does, the things he allows to happen under his command that shows his true affinity for evil.”

“I had not considered before that Jedi could fall, but it only makes sense. Anyone can fall to doing evil things, but someone with the power or training that you have…”

Paul didn’t finish his sentence, but it seemed clear to Anakin what he was saying. Paul’s mind had quickly slipped into thoughts of what a wrong action of his own could induce. He, too, had abilities that others didn’t posses, and the evil that could come of this, consciously or unconsciously, sent through him once again that recurring feeling of terrible purpose that for a time had been absent, or had been suppressed, as his mind had been on the situation of the Jedi being here.

Paul pulled himself back to the present moment, and looked to Anakin, who’d finally taken a seat next to him. Anakin seemed to have recognized that he was deep in thought but had not interrupted him. 

Looking at the Jedi next to him, from this close, his mind flashed momentarily to the horrifying dream he’d had. The one where Anakin was changed. The darkness, the burning, the agony. The man who was really only a torso being operated on; that had been Anakin. He didn’t know if it was from the nerves of the realization or the memory of the hellish burning, but his throat ran dry and he felt saliva pooling in his mouth. He swallowed and still his throat felt dry. It nearly induced a fit of coughing but he bit that back.

So, he had seen the dark side. In some future reality this man next to him would fall just like that Count he’d spoken of. He would be changed and mutilated beyond belief, the ancient archetype of Milton’s Lucifer falling from Heaven and laying in the fiery depths of Hell, experiencing true torment for the first time.

“You alright?” Anakin finally asked, seeming to sense some strange tension in the room, “Look, don’t be too stressed about anything. You’re doing well.”

Paul shook his head, “It isn’t that,” he would have asked more about the Dark Side, but felt that would be obvious, “So, you see the future, too?”

Anakin sighed, and Paul noticed that he tensed up slightly. Paul already knew the answer to the question, but wondered if Anakin would say any more regarding what he’d seen of him, or if he’d even seen his future self falling. 

“I have, at times. It’s never really anything good.”

“So, when you saw me…?”

Anakin instantly regretted mentioning that. He’d intentionally avoided telling Paul any of the specifics of his dreams, just as Paul had told him little about his own. He had a fear that telling Paul or his family what he’d seen would only aid in helping such a thing happen, such a war. After all, the knowledge of his mother’s death and his attempt to save her had only led to one of the most evil acts he’d ever committed. One of the most evil acts that he had a difficult time regretting. Such a thing terrified him; how far could he go without caring? What would he do to prevent the future? Was Paul the same?

Anakin opened his mouth to speak, but Paul stopped him.

“You don’t have to tell me. I already know what sort of peril my family is in. It would make it worse to know anything you’ve seen.”

Anakin nodded, and asked half seriously, “What about me? Did you see anything bad?”

“No.” 

Paul pressed his lips together tightly.

“Alright,” said Anakin. 

He knew that wasn’t an honest answer, but if he could help it, Anakin knew he didn’t truly want to know what was coming. Paul knew what peril his family was in, and Anakin knew what a peril he was to himself. It was best to let him discover the thing himself.

Chapter Text

If we don’t end war, war will end us.

—Terra and War

(Quote by H.G. Wells)

XIV.  Friends

Padme Amidala’s shoulders relaxed as she heard Ahsoka inform her that she’d managed to contact Anakin and that he was, in fact, okay. A long breath flowed out from her lungs that she’d been holding in since she’d been told there was news on Anakin. He was alive, and he was alright—but he was somewhere unknown. Terra incognita. Further from her than he’d ever probably been, and while there was still some unease in that knowledge, she ultimately knew that that distance didn’t matter, and in time, the distance would close. He would be back. It would be as if he’d never gone, as it always seemed. That was what mattered. 

She sat down, having grown tired of the standing and pacing. She stood so much these days her feet began to swell at times. Something that she assumed wasn’t helped by the new shoes she’d recently acquired which were not nearly as comfortable as they’d been advertised to be. She sank down into her office chair, able to breathe once again with the news from Ahsoka. 

As she took a moment to process the new information, staring down at some neglected governmental paperwork on her desk, and feel the relief that came with it this knew knowledge, her hand drifted to her chest as she felt the japoor snippet that hung around her neck, tracing the intricate little lines in it that the nine year old Anakin had made for her. At times, when she wore it, she would be asked about the significance of it, and have to make up an arbitrary explanation about it. It hurt her a little bit each time she had to make up a lie like that. Sure, she could tell the true story, but for her to have kept it all this time and to wear it might just add credibility to the suspicions that others had about them. They could go on and have their suspicions, as long as they remained unproven. 

Then again, there was a more selfish part of her, deep down, that wanted the lothcat to be let out of the bag. The continued pressure of hiding something so very significant in her life all these years was exhausting. That was not to mention the lingering fear that Anakin would not come back from the war one day. Or, he would come back only to be taken to the morgue and interred. Or worst of all, that there would be nothing left to be interred. What a morbid thought! 

But in war, thoughts of such a macabre nature weren’t unusual. Padme had often pondered about what would happen if she let all the horror sink into her mind at once, and truly understood the nature of this beast that was the Clone War in a more profound nature than just the statistics that one heard on the holonews and in the senate. One could move past numbers for a time, and in her opinion, too many did. She had to bring herself back to reality sometimes and really try to understand the brutality that was going on out there, when she herself wasn’t more directly involved. It kept her motivated to do what was in her power to end the conflict.

It was a delicate balance, though, and if one let themselves slip into that abyss of suffering, she knew it would be very difficult to swim back to the surface and not float idly, hopelessly. She could not let herself be consumed; if she did, she would not be able to do her best to help end this, and then what would be the point? She would only be a bystander to the destruction. 

There was a quote she’d learned in her political theory class. While she could not remember it exactly, the skeleton of the phrase came to mind. What was it? Good men doing nothing is the only thing needed for evil to triumph. It was something like that.

She would not be one of those that did nothing.

Padme had almost found herself sinking into the dark waters of that metaphorical abyss when weeks had passed with no sign of Anakin or Obi-Wan. She’d begun to fear the worst, and in the state of mind her thought spiral had turned into a widening gyre that she’d had to dodge skillfully many times to avoid having it consume her. There had been long periods wherein she and Anakin were unable to meet in person or even communicate directly, but she was always hearing updates about the war when the senate met and the media had an infatuation with Anakin and his master, so one could always know what the outcome of recent battles where they’d last been, that sort of thing. When they had gone missing, the media had briefly shifted its focus more on antagonizing the Separatists (to her displeasure, how would they ever have diplomacy if such things continued?) and had even come to more and more frequently question the moves of the Jedi. When the two were confirmed missing, the brouhaha surrounding them came back in full force to the point where Padme found herself not being able to handle hearing the ridiculous speculation.

She was also glad to hear that Obi-Wan was alright as well, and it reassured her that they weren’t both on their own. They’d often managed to get themselves into absurd situations over the years, and she had to admit to herself that she's contributed  to some of them. Her mind was more at ease than it’d been in weeks, and she found herself with a renewed ability to focus on her present, mundane task of busy work for the senate. 

…

“Senator Amidala.”

Padme nearly jumped as she turned around to see Chancellor Palpatine had been standing not far behind her. How wrapped up in her thoughts had she been, that she hadn’t even heard him approach? Or was the old man really still that limber?

“Chancellor, it’s good to see you.”

“And you, Senator Amidala,” the old man smiled benevolently, then changed his expression to one more somber, “I suppose you’ve heard of the missing Jedi?”

“I have.”

She nodded slowly. She felt a slight rush of annoyance at this being brought up to her again, just when she thought she’d escaped the anxious thoughts about the situation. She didn’t blame him, though. He was probably only trying to be kind and check up on her, knowing her history with Anakin and Obi-Wan. 

“I only wanted to check in and see how you were handling things, as I know you were close to the two, and assure you that I’ve spoken to the Jedi, and they are doing everything that they can to locate generals Kenobi and Skywalker.”

“So I’ve heard. I know they’ll turn up. It hasn’t even been that long–surely they’ve only lost communication and they’ll be back soon,” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of the idea, something that was evidently not lost on the Chancellor, who gave her a knowing grimace. The sympathy almost made her feel gross, and it was like he knew more about the situation he wasn’t telling. Internally, she chastised herself. He was just being kind. She was reading too much into these things. It was all the stress, or something of the kind, making her paranoid and jumpy. 

“I, too, remain optimistic. This Republic benefited a great deal from their help in a time of crisis. They are quite noble, that is to be sure. I do suppose this is particularly difficult for you, as it is for me. Skywalker, for example, was like a son to me at times, and I know you were, er, close friends with him.”

She knew there was no way that he could know about her and Anakin. While they’d had their slip-ups over the years, they’d been careful. At the most, people could suspect they had had a fling at some time that no longer remains, or that they had unconsummated feelings. Nothing that could get them in too much trouble, and what proof was there, anyway? Were strange mannerisms a proof? No, not exactly. Such things didn’t hold up under a court.

Even then, she felt a slight blush rise in her cheeks at the mention of her closeness with Anakin. It wasn’t the mere mention of him, but the way the Chancellor had said it, that stutter before he got out the words. Once again, it was as if he knew more than he was letting on. Then again, she reminded herself that she had been paranoid as of late. 

“He helped to save me on more than a few occasions, of course we’re friendly. He, Kenobi, and Master Qui-Gon were all such a help to Naboo during the Invasion.” 

This was her go-to reason why she was such close ‘friends’ with Anakin Skywalker. She liked to explain it away as more of a childhood friendship, despite that they’d gone many years without seeing each other after the Invasion of Naboo. She liked to give the impression that that wasn’t the case. Surely, then it would be weird to assume they had something romantic going on, right?

“I’m sure you’re feeling a great deal more stress too, Chancellor. What, with some of the best Jedi in the Grand Army gone as well as someone who was, as you say, like a son,” She spoke, hoping to shift the subject of the conversation to him, the Chancellor, rather than to her and her relationship with Anakin.

The chancellor seemed reluctant to talk about himself at the moment, only saying, “It is certainly a terrible ordeal to lose such good Jedi at a time like this, and on a more personal level, such a friend,” is what he finally said, after a few moments’ pause.

Palpatine had been annoyed that the Senator had barely responded from his prodding. The way he had observed her acting lately made him think that at the mention of the right (or wrong, for her) thing would lead to her spilling her guts. He supposed it was foolish to think such a thing. She wasn’t just anyone—she was that same former Queen of Naboo who had kept such a strong front during the Invasion of Naboo, and at only fourteen years old. Even then, there’d been something of being high-strung in her Force presence lately. There was anxiety there. It was like the string of an instrument wound too tight and ready to snap. He had misjudged her ability to keep control. Even after all these years, she refused to show those tumultuous inward feelings outwardly. She was too well trained of a politician. Partly, he felt that might be his own fault. He should have had her under his wing more. 

He had suspected, for a time, that there was something between the Nubian Senator and the foolhardy young Jedi knight, but he hadn’t gained enough information to prove this. To use this as a source of manipulation towards Skywalker would be useful, if it were in fact true. He couldn’t afford to misfire and have this not be true; he couldn’t waste his energies on a thread that could not be pulled or by lighting a fire that would simply fade out. He had to be precise and hit exactly where it hurt. 

Chapter Text

Part III.

If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly

—Literature of Old Terra, Volume II

(Macbeth, Shakespeare, Act I Scene VII)

XV. Double Trust

Somehow, the Duke Leto Atreides knew this was coming. He knew, deep-down, that he was living on borrowed time. He just didn’t think it would be Yeuh. Yeuh, really? So the Harkonnens had gone that far; they’d broken a Suk doctor. A doctor with Imperial training that was supposed to be impossible to break. He supposed, though, that he should know from experience that nothing was any longer really impossible and that there was no such thing as ‘too far’ for the Harkonnens. He wondered if the Emperor knew that the Imperial training had been broken, as it was not a question that the Emperor was involved. Those weren’t Harkonnen soldiers he’d seen; they were Imperial Sardaukar in the bulky uniforms of Harkonnen soldiers. 

 He had made it to the end. This was it for him, but he hoped he could take with him in death that gloating Baron, that demon which embodied the corpulent shell of a man. He would bite down on the tooth, and that would be it. He only had to wait now for the Baron to float over to him, and then he would bite down, and they would hopefully both take their last breaths. 

His last thoughts before he gave up the ghost were of Jessica, and then Paul. His very last feelings of longing, bitterness, and finally, a hint of hope—hope for him was over, but not for those he cared for. 

...

Anakin had sensed something totally off in the Force all night, but had brushed it off, thinking to address it the next day with a hopefully not-too-suspicious survey of the palace. There had been nothing preparing him to see the palace bombarded by legions of an unknown army, an army the name of which he only could give a name to upon the yelling of Saudukar! by an Atreides soldier giving warning. Along with that, the shields were apparently down. 

So this was the state of this Imperium the family was living in. It was why there was suspicion of those closest. It wasn’t even a fear of being stabbed in the back. No, from what he’d heard, this treachery, it had been expected—hinted at even, indirectly. The Lady had told him that the Emperor seemed to see the Duke as a threat, and Paul had corroborated her claims. This was less of a backstabbing, more of a public execution. It was like putting the head of one’s enemy on display for people to gawk at to make them fear stepping out of line. He’d always felt the Republic to be insufficient in many ways (though better than the separatists) but it was greatly preferable to a system like this. At least, he saw that now, when things were crumbling. He wondered what living under such a system would be like, and finally, he understood the constant paranoia from everyone he’d met in this strange place. 

Anakin held the hilt of his lightsaber in his hand, pressing himself against the wall near the doorway so he could closely observe anyone coming along. He would be able to ambush anyone coming along that was an enemy. He knew not of the weapons of these Saudukar but knew he had an advantage in his Force abilities and an element of surprise. Not in their wildest dreams could they know what he was able to do, the people of this part of the universe not being familiar with the Force. 

He paused for a moment, and took in a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. He could feel it beating in his throat and pounding in his ears just as it did before battle. This was battle, he supposed, but of a kind he was not quite familiar with. He felt out in the Force for Obi-Wan’s presence. It was active enough that he knew he was awake, at least, and probably aware of what was going on. He could try to find him, if there was a chance to. Two were stronger than one, and with R2, who had his own weapons, that would essentially make three.

In what seemed like a split second, he could feel the Force alert his senses, and a moment later two men in dark suits ran into the room, yelling in a tongue he couldn’t recognize. Certainly, this must be the Sadukar. He ignited his lightsaber and one seemed to pause for a moment, not knowing what he was facing. But in a second, that was over, and one seemed to speak orders to the other. One of the Saudakar raised a sword. Anakin moved forward, pushing his lightsaber through the armor and into the chest of one of the men. The other attempted to strike him with a sword, but this was countered (if it could be called that) as the saber cut the sword clean in half. It certainly wasn’t beskar, and no one here would know how to create a substance to defend against a weapon such as a lightsaber. Anakin felt his confidence swell, along with a rush of adrenaline, and the other man was down, his helmeted head landing apart from his body with a loud thump, eyes still open. It was a lack of mercy that Anakin felt he could, for once, be completely excused for. At the same time, he was hardly used to the sickening smell of charred flesh, though it certainly wasn’t unfamiliar.

“R2, follow me, but try to make as little noise as possible.”

The little droid seemed to understand the severity of the situation, and didn’t make the whirring and beeping noises that were so common of him. 

After the two sardaukar were down, he made his way into the hallway, keeping in the shadows and pressing near the wall to avoid being seen, R2 following close behind him. He crept along until he made his way to where he was just outside of the room that Obi-Wan had been staying in, hoping he hadn’t already made a run for it and just assumed they would find each other. To be fair, that was usually Anakin’s plan of choice, so he couldn’t judge.

He had been looking one way for a long time, assuming danger would come from that way. He felt his heart drop as he bumped into a figure, and he turned, essentially jumping around. He ignited his lightsaber in an instant.

“Oh, it’s just you! Thank the Force.” 

Anakin’s relief was palpable. Obi-Wan felt some, too. It wasn’t often that he felt so unnerved, but to be alone and under attack in a place where he was so out of his element did that to even the most stoic of people. 

The words of relief from Anakin had been a bit too loud. Obi-Wan put a finger to his lips, slightly unsure if the younger Jedi would see the gesture, before pulling him aside and towards a nearly hidden door that he quickly opened and shut behind them. The three were crammed onto a small landing atop a narrow set of stairs that led goodness-knows-where. It seemed to take a moment for Anakin to get his bearings, as he nearly fell backward down the stairs in a moment. 

“How did you find this?” Anakin’s voice was lower now. He seemed to have seen the gesture. 

“I’ve done some looking around in my free time.”

“You’ve been snooping?”

“Adapting to the local culture, if I do say so myself. Anyway, it’s come in handy, hasn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Enough talking. We need to get going,” he urged, starting down the narrow stairs, mindful of his footing and careful not to slip. They were steep, and made of stone. This was probably an old set of back stairs that servants would use.

“Wait—”

He looked back. Anakin hadn’t moved. 

“So we’re just going to leave them? After what they’ve done for us?”

Obi-Wan sighed. He did feel a hint of guilt. That wasn’t exactly his plan, no, but the first thing he’d thought of was getting as far away from the besieged palace as possible. They knew so little of the nature of the peril they were in and how to deal with it.

“I thought we would be a better help if we survived—if we got to safety, and then formulated a plan.”

“They might not survive that long.”

“You’ve seen the boy and his mother. Even the Duke himself seems prepared for such a situation. They know how to handle themselves. Besides, they’ve likely already hidden or fled to safety. They’re probably not going to be where we last saw them,” Obi-Wan tried, and while he felt conflicted, Anakin didn’t seem to be. There was something much more resolute in his demeanor. He had already started to turn on his heel back towards the narrow door.

“We should at least check. What kind of Jedi would we be if we just left?”

Obi-Wan finally accepted defeat. There was no reigning in Anakin when it came to things like this, he was brash, but he was heroic, through-and-through. He did have a point this time, anyway. The danger was immediate and even if they came up with a good plan it may be too late for them to enact it once they did. This thing between the Harkonnens and the Atreides seemed to be a blood feud, and he doubted there would be any mercy if any of them were caught.

He wasn’t always a fan of splitting up in such situations, but he did have an idea, “Alright. You be careful, and quick. I’ll send R2 on ahead to see what’s at the end of these stairs and if it’ll be safe on the other end. You check and see if either of them are still in their rooms, and see if they’re still in there. If you encounter danger, ping me on your comm. I’ll do the same if this escape is compromised or R2 finds something bad. Come back here if you don’t hear from me.”

“Alright. I’ll let you know if anything goes wrong.”

...

After a glimpse into Leto and Jessica’s room, it was clear they had already been taken. To where, he had no idea. He moved as quickly as he could to Paul’s room, taking a few more Harkonnen soldiers down who stumbled upon him, and felt his stomach turn slightly as he realized Paul, too, was gone. He saw no real sign of a struggle or blood spatter anywhere, so there was at least hope that he could still be alive. They were all gone and if he and Obi-Wan were to escape this place without the risk of being captured he would have to leave. He wondered if he reached out into the Force he would be able to feel Paul’s presence, to ensure him that he was at least alive. Anakin decided to do so as soon as he was able. It wasn’t like with Obi-Wan or Ahsoka, both trained Force users who had such bright presences in the Force, so he would have to do some digging. Still, he suspected he would be able to feel Paul in the Force because he’d come to recognize his more faint, but still unique, Force signature. Unfortunately, he had not spent enough time with the Duke and the Lady to be able to recognize theirs, and as neither of them had done any Jedi training, his hope of being able to find them was small. 

He swiftly made his way back to Obi-Wan, but didn’t notice until it was too late that he had been spotted. As he slammed the door to the old set of stairs and used The Force to flip the lock shut, knowing that would likely do little good, he motioned for Obi-Wan to run. Obi-Wan, not needing to be told twice, began to scramble down the stairs as fast as possible. Anakin followed closely behind him. Anakin kept one hand on the hilt of his saber, ready to ignite it as soon as he had to, when the door inevitably gave way. The lack of any real noise besides the slamming of great weight against the door, the tapping of rushed footsteps against the ground, and quick, audible breathing of himself and Obi-Wan served only to heighten his sense of dread. Just as he heard the cracking of the door’s wood, he lost concentration on the technique quickly descending these steps seemed to require, and his feet automatically skipped a step.  

The last thing he heard was some shouting from above in a harsh, foreign tongue. The last thing he felt was pain surging through his head, and the last thing he saw, in that moment, was blackness.

Chapter Text

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

—Literature of Terra, Volume VI

(From “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot Part V: What The Thunder Said.)

XVI. Waste Land

Blackness.

The desert. The desert stretched out in a vast monotony before him. He was an unperson, an observer in it, aware but not self aware. He saw day turn to night, and then he saw Arakeen and the palace that lay in it, wide and made of a kind of smoothed sandstone probably taken long ago from the planet on which it dwelt. His vision of his surroundings went and came again, and he saw, like from the view of a bird's eye, the besieged palace, the yelling, explosions, and fire that all came with a battle, something so familiar even in its strangeness to him in this place. 

There were dark armored figures running towards each other. Space-faring ships unfamiliar to him had landed, their dark color contrasting the beige of the landscape, and other ships that resembled large insects swarmed about as if someone had disturbed their hive, large blasts coming from them at times and lighting up the night night sky. 

His mind's eye drew him to one of these ships making its way past the city out into open desert. He then saw a vision of Paul, not in this moment, but during a time when they had been training. He saw the Lady, just as he had when they’d first met, with a fierce look and the battle stance she had taken on to defend against the intrusion into her home. He saw the insect ship again, but this time it was laying, crashed and smoking in the desert, its wings fluttering a few times hopelessly in a final pre-death movement. He saw the moons of Arrakis, and then a small, big eared wide eyed mouse hopping along a Dune and then burrowing down into the sand.

…

When Ahsoka found herself meditating, her mind forced her to become aware of something she had been ignoring before, as often happened with the practice. Her stomachs rolled slightly at the thought of being so far from everything she knew. That was it. The sensation Anakin had mentioned to her about feeling isolated from the known. It was much more intense firsthand.

In the dream it had manifested as a cold draft of air, but now it manifested itself in the kind of stomach tightening that came with anxiety but the added effect of a dreamlike dizziness. This, along with the mind’s refusal to accept the actual reality of her place in space being so far removed from known, comfortable, and experienced things. It was as if, paradoxically, the wider that nothing stretched out around her the more she felt stuck where she was. She felt the smallness of her physical presence magnified by the gulf that existed between the place she was and the place she came from—the place she wished to return to. She would have to accept the feeling. Coming face-to-face with such things and accepting them was often what meditation was about.

It didn’t help that there was another odd feeling that came from being surrounded by Jedi again so shortly after the fiasco that was her trial. It was all so very familiar, and yet, something felt slightly off now. Her former life, her former home, now existed for her in the realm of the uncanny.

For some time she’d thought of constructing another set of lightsabers. She didn’t consider herself back, not in the slightest. She did, however, miss having them. They had been, for long time, like an extension of her body, and now she felt the pain of a kind of phantom limb and an unfamiliar emptiness when she reached for them where they used to hang around her waist.

It was to her benefit that the Jedi she was surrounded by were all part of the ExplorCorps, and they tended to be far out of the core, and they often ventured into the periphery of the Galaxy or even past it. Their isolation meant that she had little in the way to deal with in attention regarding the previous events she had been involved in. Mostly, they seemed enthused at the prospect of finding a hyperspace route that had vanished off maps long ago, despite the fact that they probably wouldn’t be permitted to explore it much.

She was not bored during the trip, not able to find herself sinking into the worry regarding if anything had changed in relation to Anakin and Obi-Wan, if they were still safe where they were, and if this route truly would lead them to a place just near an uncharted planet in unknown space. The Jedi of ExplorCorps were happy to inform her on their various projects throughout the Galaxy, and she had a keen interest in them. They weren’t nearly as directly involved in the War as the Knights and Padwans. Of course, they fed information to the Jedi Generals and to the Council but generally remained outside of the middle of battle. 

The same could not be said for the Medical Corps or AgriCorps, who weren’t part of the front lines but were still much more involved in the current war. Being with the ExplorCorps, she got a strange vision of the Order as she remembered it when she was a youngling. It was oddly nostalgic, and made her long for an end to this conflict so at least the other Padawans and Younglings could one day experience the Order as it once was. 

As it once was.

Was it ever really the way it was in her memory?

Memories tended to get filtered through rose colored glasses. That’s what she’d always heard. Maybe things had never been that great. Maybe the Jedi had always been somewhat corrupt and, being a child, she would never notice such a thing. 

Anything was better than war, though. The old way of things had to have been better than things as they presently were.

In setting out into unknown territory, they hadn’t taken one of the large praxeum ships that those of ExplorCorps usually operated on, thinking it probably wouldn’t be good to go into unknown space with a gigantic ship that would be so easy to detect. They weren’t yet sure if the space surrounding the planet Anakin had told her about would be hostile, being part of a completely different society and under the rule of a totally foreign government. He’d said the Duke of the planet and his family had been welcoming after their situation had been explained (and even they had remained suspicious to some level), but they didn’t know for sure if that would extend to any other power in that society, and it very likely wouldn’t if what Anakin had told her was true.

From what Anakin had told her in their shared dream, it didn’t seem like hospitality was widespread on Arrakis or within the society that it was a part of. The way he described it to her made the place seem tense, as if everyone was so high-strung they might jump at their own shadow. The culture was paranoia. She couldn’t imagine living like that, didn’t want to. She didn’t like looking over her shoulder. It would be a heavy way of living, and certainly not conducive of any long lasting peace of mind, so she was glad this place would soon be a footnote.

  …

His first sensation in a long while was that of a pounding headache. 

He could feel the beat-beat-beat of his heartbeat in his head and hear it in his ears. Reluctantly, and knowing the pain would only increase, he opened his eyes slightly, squinting, and glanced up to see another set of eyes looking down at him. The whites of the eyes stood out oddly in the dark of this place.

It was only Obi-Wan, whose concern faded back into a mask of Jedi stoicism as soon as he saw the other wake.

“Good to see you’re finally awake.”

Anakin groaned in response, closing his eyes again for a moment, some part of him hoping that Obi-Wan would let him fall back into unconsciousness.

That hope was soon lost as he felt Obi-Wan shaking him by the shoulders.

“Oh no, no you don’t!” 

There it was again; concern. Anakin wondered what for, before he called to mind the situation. He could very well be concussed considering he’d hit his head rather hard when…when they’d been escaping those Sardaukar. That’s what they’d been doing. Running down that claustrophobic hallway down that hellish set of stairs—and he’d skipped a stair, finding his next memory of anything to be a cryptic dream-vision, one of the kind that had ceased since he’d been here, until just then.

Now where were they? He opened his eyes again, still squinting in fear of light, despite the environment being rather dark, and saw what might only be described as the interior of some kind of an old shed or a hovel. It looked to be made of a kind of sandstone, and reminded him of many of the interiors of structures that were common back on Tatooine. 

After a moment he looked up at Obi-Wan, feeling a touch (or maybe more) of sympathy at his Master’s having to carry him all the way to—wherever they were—and escape seemingly unharmed. He wondered, momentarily, about R2, but ceased when he heard the astromech make a whir something in binary akin to an expression of relief that couldn’t be translated word-to-word in Basic. 

The next thing he knew, Obi-Wan had taken a light and was shining it in his eyes, holding them open even as he instinctively tried to squeeze them shut.

He saw spots in his vision for some time after that.

“It looks like you may have a concussion, so the last thing you’re going to do right now is go to sleep. Alright, Anakin?”

“Alright, Master, alright.”

Anakin sat up and propped himself up against the nearest wall he could find.

“Where are we?”

“We’re in Arrakeen. There’s a bit of commotion out there, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to slip out of the city without being noticed. We’ll need some supplies before we go. Water, for one.”

It was as if, at hearing the mere mention of the substance, Anakin first noticed the presence of his thirst. His throat was dry and trying to swallow just made it worse. 

“Water…? Do you have any?”

“A bit. Don’t go crazy.”

Anakin was handed a small canteen of water, which Anakin unscrewed the cap of with some urgency before realizing he had to have some self-control, Force knowing when they would be able to get water next. He took small sips, and savored them, resisting the urge to gulp down the whole thing. 

It was surprisingly easy for him to resist that urge, if only because he recalled a memory of what had happened back on Tatooine when he drank more water than had been allotted. In that moment of recollection, he shoved the bottle back into Obi-Wan’s hands with an unnecessary amount of force, as if getting the canteen out of his hands would clear his mind of the memory. 

“Why leave the city?”

“It’s unlikely that will be the last we see of those Sardaukar, given they don’t seem the types to let things go so easily. If they catch us, we’ll be in a great deal more trouble than we are now.”

“I guess we’d need to go into the desert anyway” Anakin had begun to speak as if Obi-Wan was somehow clued in on his dream-vision, “But it’ll be bad, here, I think. Miles more dangerous even than Tatooine. With the worms, and all. Paul showed me how to avoid attracting them. Paul…”

“Hold on, Anakin. What do you mean, ‘anyway’?”

“Oh, right, right. Paul and his mother are in the desert. I saw it when—when I was knocked out, after I fell.”

“The desert. Right. That’s helpful,” Obi-Wan said sardonically, “The whole planet is a desert. Could you be a little bit more specific?”

“I have a good sense of his presence in the Force. Of Paul’s.”

“Can you follow that presence?”

“I should be able to, yeah.”

There was a brief moment of silence as they both thought about their situation.

Anakin spoke, “If I was correct about the coordinates of the hyperspace lane, Ahsoka should be here soon with some of the ExplorCorps. By then they should be in range to comm us.” 

Obi-Wan nodded, “We shoudn’t lead them down here to Arrakeen with everything that’s happened. Who even knows if the airspace is safe around the planet right now. It would be nice if we could warn them.”

“If you could knock me out again or let me go back to sleep maybe I could.”

“Not going to happen, my friend. Not so soon after hitting your head like that. Besides, we need to get moving. As I mentioned, the Sardaukar aren’t going to relent, and we should still gather up some supplies before we go.”

“It would be good if we could find some stillsuits—the ones the natives of this planet, the Fremen, use in the desert. Paul told me how they work—they recycle the body’s moisture. I know we’re Jedi, but there are some conditions even if we can't fend off forever. At least not with human biology.”

Obi-wan looked thoughtful, and sufficiently surprised that Anakin was thinking in such a cautious manner. That was usually his hallmark, not Anakin’s. Either way, he was thankful for this moment of unusual clarity.

“What’s with the sudden ability to be cautious, Anakin?”

“What? I’m cautious sometimes…” Anakin began but shook his head, “Obi-Wan, I’ll be honest, I know what living in the desert is like. The desert is a creature of its own, one even to be feared, maybe, especially here on Arrakis with those worms ready to swallow up anything that disturbs their sleep.”

In more normal circumstances Obi-Wan might have launched into a speech about what fear led to, or that Anakin meant respect rather than fear but this was not the time. 

The thoughts surrounding this led him to think of a conversation he’d had with Lady Jessica about similar distinctions. She and her Sisterhood, just as the Jedi did, seemed to see the key issues with the emotion of fear, so they similarly sought to eliminate it within their order.

For the Jedi, fear was often called the emotion that in the extreme led to the dark side. Fear was the thing that began to unravel towards anger, hate, and suffering. For the Bene Gesserit, Lady Jessica had said fear was the mind-killer, the thing that paralyzed a mind into inaction or wrong-action, the thing that could spread from one person to another like a psychic virus. He thought it an interesting way to look at fear, in line with much of what he thought.

But aside from the philosophical meaning or definition of fear, Anakin was right. The desert wouldn’t be merciful. It ate the weak. It ate the mighty, too, at times. It would eat them if they went in unprepared. How did one avoid the fear of that, of being devoured?

Chapter Text

I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me 

and through me. And when it has gone past 

I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

—The Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear"

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

—Grandmaster Yoda

XVII. Fear (the blind leading the blind)

“Initially, they can all feel like fear–emotions like awe and caution—but awe tells us to have respect, and caution tells us to tread lightly, to think deeply about our actions, those have logic behind them. But fear is illogical.”

“And fear leads to all sorts of illogical things, doesn’t it? The Jedi teach that fear turns on itself eventually, and it becomes anger.”

“Yes, and it can bring on a kind of pessimism that is just as dangerous as optimism.”

“Just how is it your Sisterhood teaches optimism can be dangerous?”

“Is this one of the things we differ on, our two groups?”

“It depends on the particular Jedi, really.”

“Are you an optimist, Master Kenobi?”

“In many ways, yes, I am.”

“You see,” she drew out her words, “an optimist can become dismissive of the things that may go wrong, just as the pessimist is overly critical. Both can be blinding.”

“Those are wise words, my Lady, but I assure you—I am not blind.”

“I didn’t say that you were.”

There was a long pause.

“We were talking about fear. How does your Sisterhood deal with fear?”

“We face it. Absorb it the best we can. It’s the only thing you can do with it. How do the Jedi deal with it?”

“In similar ways.”

"What happens after the anger?”

“Pardon?”

“You said the Jedi believe that fear turns on itself and then it is anger. What happens next?”

Obi-Wan sighed.

“It depends on what the anger is directed towards, the self, others, maybe both. It creates hatred.”

The Lady Jessica processed the words for a moment, “So the fear, going inward, may turn back outward. This way of looking at things is fascinating,” A knowing glance, then, “And you’ve seen this in your time, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

Obi-Wan couldn’t evade the question. He was a Jedi and good at hiding things, but as good at hiding things as he was she was just as good at being perceptive.

He added, “If you were wondering, and I am supposing you were, the end result is suffering—for that person and all those around them.”

“That makes sense. I have a suspicion this could be cyclical. The suffering created could cause fear in others.”

“That’s astute of you.”

“So who have you seen fall to fear in your time?”

“Where to start? Much of the society I’m from has become afraid. When you get down to it, it’s why we’re at war.”

“Fear of the other,” it seemed more a statement to herself than to Obi-Wan, “A very ancient fear indeed. Very easy to provoke, especially if it’s been laying dormant in a person or a population.”

To Obi-Wan it was somewhat strange that she could call this information to mind with such ease. There was much she wasn’t telling him about that Sisterhood of hers. He didn’t want to risk losing her trust by asking more.

“Is there anything more dangerous than fear?”

“I don’t know about more dangerous, but there are things that exist on the same level,” it wasn’t clear whether she paused to think or for the effect of it, “Being able to speak well can make a person exceedingly dangerous. Not a poet, but the kind of person who can make something ridiculous sound completely reasonable.”

“Someone with charisma, yes?”

“Exactly that, Master Kenobi.”

“What about the ones who listen to this person? Do you believe they are culpable?”

“Not usually to the same degree. Especially when the ones who listen far outnumber the speaker, but they are, in their own kind of way. Really, it’s the follow-the-leader tendency in some people—most people. If you just think about the person in front of you, you might end up in a death spiral without knowing it. That’s what ants do sometimes.  They get in this spiral where they follow the one in front of them until they eventually die of exhaustion. Do you have ants where you’re from? Small insects about half an inch big, large rears, like to build hills. They’re uncommon here on Arrakis, but we had them in abundance on Caladan.”

“I am familiar with them. At least, what you describe is familiar.”

Obi-Wan failed to mention that there were even intelligent insects within his society, such as the Geonosians and their forceforsaken hivemind. It didn’t seem relevant, and revealing such information probably wasn’t the safest bet anyway. 

He and Anakin had also (purposefully) failed to mention that there was nonhuman life within their society, something that was apparently utterly foreign to the Imperium. He had learned of this fact of the Imperium when he’d overheard some kind of philosophical discussion  between the Lady and her son. It had centered around the question of how much a human could change and still remain human (if so, did this mean aliens of a kind were among them?)—this regarded the group of beings known as the Guild Navigators. Evidently, they took on their change intentionally and individually, so as unrecognizable as they might be, to Obi-Wan, they sounded quite human, even if somewhat grotesque.

But that was beside the point. They said nothing of nonhuman life because it couldn’t be anything but a shock to the system for the unnaccustomed—and that led to the fear of the other, which led to all of the other convoluted things he and Lady Jessica were now discussing.

“Enough about ants. What about you? What I mean to ask is: what do you think about the ones who listen?”

“I would say that they probably have an obligation to do something, if they can. I understand the comfort of pretty words but if they mean nothing—well, then they mean nothing.”

“So there’s fear, there’s  charisma—by the way, would you like more tea?”

“Of course I would, thank you.”

“Back to what I was saying. There’s fear, there’s charisma—is there anything else quite as dangerous as those two things?”

“Is it cliche to say power? I’m starting to believe it’s power itself that corrupts.”

“Simply the possession of it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why do you figure that is?”

“I can’t quite say. But I’ve seen very few people who can handle it. It’s as if there’s something inherently corruptible in mortals. If someone does rule fairly I’m relatively convinced that given time and the wrong circumstances, they’ll become a tyrant.”

The Lady hummed, took a sip of her spice tea.

“Isn’t that all of us in the wrong circumstances?”

“Why, yes, it is—but not all of us can command armies or influence billions.”

“But all of us can become afraid, desperate, and willing to listen to anyone. We can all become complacent.”

Obi-Wan took a sip of his own tea. It was the perfect temperature, tasted of cinnamon and the bitterness of a well-brewed black tea. It was delicious; a stimulant and a palate cleanser. So why did his stomach turn a bit at the sip? 

Despite the puzzling sensation, he didn’t disagree. 

“And for that we are punished, yes?”

“It depends on how we see it. If we don’t feel the results of our action or inaction, our descendants will, and they will ask themselves; What did I do to deserve this life?”

“That is…unfortunate.”

“Do you disagree?”

“No.”

Chapter Text

et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. 

to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature.

—Metamorphoses, Ovid

XVIII. Metamorphosis 

Paul’s mind was changing, and he knew it. Even so, it felt so out of his control. Everything that had happened as of late was nothing more than another piece of information that his mind was fitting together to form a whole. He might even feel afraid or angry at this, if there was room in his mind at the moment. But alas, there was not, There was room only for data. Was this what it was like to be a mentat?

No, not quite a mentat. Not quite a Bene Gesserit, either. A kind of thing hitherto unknown. 

He almost longed to feel grief, to be able to let go of what he knew must be somewhere inside. That was why people showed emotion, wasn’t it? To let things inside seep out so they didn’t all go inward, turning them either into a shell or making them snap at the insignificant. It must be in there, he knew it, but he couldn’t find it among all of the information being processed. Despite it being strange, it was probably a good thing that this was happening now. Despite the tragedy preceding his current circumstances, he was in a survival situation, and it would be that way until either he and his mother died or they found some sort of sanctuary.

Before, when he’d thought of the idea of being swallowed by a Maker, and it had induced a sense of existential terror now unavailable to him. There was now only a hollowness when he thought of it. The terror would return later.

That’s what the Harkkonens were hoping would happen to us, still probably think has happened to us. A desert grave. Not a single bone retrievable.

Instead of terror at the admittedly still looming possibility of such a death, he wondered if it might be a good thing to be presumed dead by the Harkonnens. If there were ever to be any kind of retaliation towards them, letting them not be prepared for it was a good idea. 

Retaliation. It was a tempting idea but a distant one. He needed to think about survival. His mind turned to that subject as he glanced at his mother in the dimness of the stilltent. Even in the darkness, he recognized the familiar look of her being lost in thought, that was at times briefly substituted with an unfamiliar look of sorrow. Sorrow visible only to someone else trained in the ways of the Bene Gesserit. It would appear as indifference to the untrained eye. 

Momentarily, he noticed some dust stirring up in the stilltent. More than dust, in fact. Spice. 

The effects of the Spice Melange were fast acting.

Before him he saw many things. In his visions for the first time in some time his feelings came back. Some  things he saw as distant and some near at hand, even the good of which evoked in him a sense of dread, he wasn’t sure why. He saw how people and factions orbited around each other like planets. He saw how one decision could affect another, how the choices he made created an endless reaction. From every action seemed to come endless tributaries flowing out in all directions. He felt boxed in by the choices of his ancestors and those he had himself made, not knowing their consequences. 

As his mind expanded he struggled not to lose himself in an ego death that was more and more tempting.

…

The planet Arrakis, Ahsoka noticed, shone just like Tatooine did from a distance. 

Anakin’s gotta be miserable there. 

Was what ran through her mind as she looked out the viewport at the shining planet and its two orbiting moons. She recalled the early days of her apprenticeship with him when they’d gone to Tatooine with Jabba’s child. His mood had soured as they’d stepped foot on those sand dunes, and at the time, she’d had no clue as to why. Sure, the desert might put anyone in a bad mood—but there was something more there, she had been certain. She’d tried to ask about his past, but soon realized when he shut the idea of that down quickly that she was picking at a scab, and left it alone before changing the subject to the equally bad topic of sand that was just another scab to pick at.

Looking back and knowing more about his past, she cringed at her past self for even asking. Still, there was no way she could have known at the time. 

An older twi’lek Jedi, Master Votya, along with Ahsoka had been put in charge of this expedition. Master Votya, of course, in the more official sense—she was an actual part of the Order, after all, and a Master—and Ahsoka in the more unofficial sense. Still, no one questioned her knowledge about all of this as she had been the only person who had been able to directly contact either of the missing Jedi, that being Anakin. 

“Master Votya, this is definitely the planet he was speaking of. We should stay a good distance away until we can get into communication with him and Obi–Wa—Master Kenobi.”

Master Votya nodded, looking with keen interest at the unfamiliar planet looming in the distance, “This is a great discovery to ExploreCorps. However, we must be careful in our actions here. What we do here could have consequences we could never foresee.”

Ahsoka nodded, still looking out into space  She found, looking inwardly, how little she had actually thought of the consequences of any sort of interaction with this civilization  She supposed any good xenobiologist would have reminded her of the physical consequences of interaction with an unknown civilization; often, beings who had never been exposed to one another could pass on nasty plagues that while being harmless to one group, could utterly wipe out another. However, much was done to prevent such a situation, and Master Votya was aware of this. As for Anakin and Obi-Wan, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she hoped that since the inhabitants were also humans and seemed relatively advanced the spread of something dangerous had been averted. Ahsoka concluded that she probably meant the possible societal consequences of their actions here.

The hope was that their presence would hardly be noted, and that if noted, it would be seen as an anomaly. That, or they would just be assumed to be strange people from inside this civilization. Either way, they wouldn’t be staying long, and the ExplorCorps, despite their fascination with the new world, knew that sticking around for long could be dangerous for themselves or the people of this civilization. Sometimes, curiosity did really kill the loth cat. 

…

A face he’d never thought he’d see again—that of Duncan Idaho—had helped them up out of the desert to this ecological site that was run by none other than Liet Kynes. Part of him was surprised at the idea that Kynes was willing to house them at all, being tied to the Emperor and the Emperor possibly having a plan in this whole attack against the Atreides. Then again, Kynes was one with dual loyalties—and primarily, his loyalties were to his people, and to this planet. It was clear in the ecological work he had done.

Paul found it surprisingly easy not to question his own actions too much and to just move forward in what seemed the most logical manner. While there was much in his mind he found his body almost carried forward by outside forces. His body hadn’t left fight or flight mode since Arrakeen had been attacked.

He knew they couldn’t stay for long. Ultimately, the Saudakar would probably find this place. Even if they didn’t they still needed to move on. If there was suspicion that they were living, there would always be someone after them. They had to get help from the Fremen, disappear into the deep desert. 

There was another face—rather, two—he wondered if he’d ever see again. It was those of those two Jedi. Those two men from what seemed another reality. Another reality with all the oddness and complexities of the one he lived in, with billions of living and breathing creatures all in another place with their own problems outside the Imperium. Such a thought was oddly comforting, that there was something outside of this mess.

What had happened to the two Jedi? For the most part, he had little doubt they’d escaped. They were trained in a way even the Saudakar could scarcely understand, and that gave them a great deal of advantage over the Emperor’s warriors. Then again, they were strangers in a strange land. He did hope to see them again. At the very least, he hoped to hear of them again, somehow.

…

For the first time in what seemed like ages, Anakin’s comm lit up. He felt a sense of relief wash over him briefly, as he clicked the button to listen. 

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

“I can hear you, Snips.”

“How are you two holding up down there?”

“We’re holding up for the moment.”

“That’s good to hear. Now we just need to locate you.”

Anakin wondered how he would describe where they were at. This planet hardly had many distinguishing features, and they’d left Arrakeen far behind as Anakin found himself following, and leading Obi-Wan, to where Paul’s presence vaguely was. He kept getting images in his mind flashed images of a particular series of rock formations. Anakin had heard the Fremen had their own civilization within such places, living underground during the daytime. It was clever of the Fremen to do that, Anakin thought. If the various settlements of Tatooine were a bit more civilized they might have decided to do the same. Anakin could imagine he would rather take to being a subterranean during the day than battling with the heat of the desert. It wasn’t a far-fetched to think that Paul and Jessica and their cunning ability to be aware of their surroundings that they’d been able to persuade the Fremen for help of some kind. The Fremen and the surviving Atreides did have the mutual hatred of the Harkonnens in common. After recent events, Anakin was starting to think he, too, had that hatred in common with them, although he knew it wasn’t quite dignified of a Jedi to hate.

Paul would be looking to hide and Anakin wondered for a moment if it would be more dangerous to find Paul than to let him and his mother be, wherever they were. He was alive, at least. That mattered most. Then again, there was another part of Anakin that reminded him that alive for now didn’t always mean alive for very long, and that he may need help. He knew Paul’s presence but he wasn’t close enough to identify any sort of emotion, and he’d not grown close enough to Paul to feel such things at a distance. If it were Obi-Wan, he might be able to. When he focused on it, he could feel his former Master’s sense of resolve—with a very deeply buried sense of anxiety. He could even get something from Ahsoka, if he focused in—maybe it helped that he’d just heard her voice—something of a giddiness and a sense of relief like she often felt after a battle. However, there was less veiled sorrow than there would be after a battle, less of that thing Jedi often pretended that they didn’t have, at times to their own detriment.

…

The place’s interior was warm, and there was a humidity there that wasn’t to be found on the rest of Arrakis. It reminded him slightly of the climate of a planet like Felucia. It was a pocket-environment on the larger planet just like the palace and even, to some extent, Arrakeen had been. Even the stillstuits were their own little environment. This was all necessary because unaided, human life just wouldn’t thrive here. In fact it would barely survive. The human life that did survive would have to be terribly clever, and terribly careful—and the Fremen were, making them doubly dangerous when compared with most other human life.

They hadn’t gotten into this place easily. He’d nearly been taken out with a crysknife on his way in, and it had taken the verification of Paul himself for the Fremen to let him and Obi-Wan go. Now that they were there, he wondered if there had been a point. This wasn’t just for sentimentality, was it? For his peace of mind, to know for sure that Paul had a way out? It wasn’t very Jedi-like of him at all, but then again, he supposed, he had never been the typical Jedi and never had the typical Jedi mindset. Even after years of training, there was something in him that resisted the coldness he saw in some of his fellow Jedi. He could put on a cold exterior but there was always a crack in that ice that saw heat seeping through. He was unpredictable and some feared that—he himself did at times, especially when he felt his emotions begin to drive and his consciousness become a passenger, witnessing things that sometimes amounted to a speeder crash. 

In Anakin’s time with Paul he’d realized the boy had had a similar experience. He was a person formed out of what seemed many centuries of expectation, and yet, he broke the mold that had been formed for him as often happens in these situations. The idealized version of a thing was only an abstract version of the thing itself, and could never be fully predicted or pulled directly from the realm of forms and ideas in which it existed. The Chosen One had been a Jedi teaching for centuries, and whatever Anakin really was he felt nothing like that idealized being called the Chosen One that Jedi had built up in their minds. He thought that everyone might as well learn that things aren’t generally what one wants them to be.

Chapter Text

"Always in motion is the future."

-Grandmaster Yoda

—From Collected Sayings of the Jedi

(The Empire Strikes Back)

XIX. Past, Present, Future

“So what? We ask them to go with us?”

The question had been brewing silently between them for some time. It just happened to be Anakin who said it aloud first, finally opening the can of worms, so to speak.

“I don’t see why not. They’re in a great deal of trouble if they stay here.”

There was no question about that. Even without the betrayal, this Imperum seemed to be swarming vermin that were constantly in a game of kill or be killed. To bring them out of this place would be to give them a chance at a normal life, the only chance for such a thing they might have, but would they want it? Maybe, being unaccustomed to such an idea, they would reject it completely.

“That’s true, however, there’s much to be considered.”

“Like what?”

Anakin knew that there was much to be considered, but he figured Obi-Wan was going to go on about this at some point anyway, so asking now would get this discussion out of the way.

“It’s already somewhat of a risk that we’ve been here—not that we had much control over ending up here, but if we don’t bring them, all we’ll be taking back a story. Ahsoka, and the ExplorCorps that's been here will be the only ones that find what we say to be veritable, or verifiable in any way. There’s all kinds of stories about what Jedi do floating around the Galaxy. This would be but one more. However, if we bring the Lady and her son, we bring tangible proof that this place exists. Tangible proof to our part of the universe, that is.”

“I see what you’re saying, Master. You want to keep this place a story so this Imperium and our Galaxy—they stay separate, because a meeting could be. Well, it could be…”

“Bad. It could be quite bad, Anakin. I don’t need to explain to you why.”

“No, you certainly don’t, Master. I do think—well, what if we just make up a cover story for them? If they were to accept the invitation, that is. If we could get everyone to agree on it, I don’t see why that couldn’t be done.”

“There’s always the risk that the truth gets out.”

He knew there were always risks in these kinds of situations, but really, it was the percentage of risk versus the possible reward that they had to consider. They took risks in everything that they did. What were the chances that this risk would be too big, out of all the risks they’d taken thus far?

“Tell me about it,” Anakin muttered, mulling over the possibilities before them, “But what about the Imperium? What if they find out we’ve been here?”

“We don’t have as much control over that. Yet, I believe that if we leave quickly, and we leave nothing behind but our short existence here, there will be little to worry about.”

“Except for what people remember.”

“Anakin, unfortunately, many of the people who remember us—or at least remember us well—they’re dead now, for the most part other than Paul and Jessica and Duncan Idaho.”

“The Duke seemed like a very noble man. I wish I’d gotten to know him better in our time here. I wish there was something else that we could have done for these people, before all of this had happened.”

“I wish that, too, but how could we have suspected an imminent attack in a place so unfamiliar to us? There wasn’t much of a threat to pick up on, before it happened. Nothing very specific.”

“There were some warning signs,” Anakin reasoned, “I mean, they told us of their suspicions, of the rivalry they had with the Harkonnens, and there was that paranoia they all had. No one ever really relaxed because they were always looking over their shoulder.”

“That’s true, anakin, that’s true. However, much of what they said regarding these things was vague. It didn’t seem nearly as imminent a threat as it was, and noble families such as theirs are known for being paranoid because that’s what comes with having power and influence. I do admit I should have trusted the Force more that evening. There was something off that evening. That feeling in the Force before the attack, I know you felt it, too. It made me feel as if—”

“As if you were going to barf? As if the Force was poking you but you had no idea why?”

“That could have been put more eloquently, but yes, exactly that. In the end, though, we must not blame ourselves. Whatever this attack was, plans for it were clearly set in motion for it long before you even dreamed of Arrakis, let alone before we arrived here. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Anakin. There’s nothing that can be done now about the past.”

Obi-Wan knew very well that Anakin had always had an issue with that—the idea that nothing could be done about the past. No matter how powerful one was, they couldn’t change what had already occurred. Anakin tended to deal with this by doing his absolute best to prevent the various things that haunted him from ever happening again. He did this to a fault, his master would probably argue.

There was a silence between them as they both reflected on the events that led them here, to this unknown planet, and then out into the man eating desert.

“So are we asking them to come or not?” Anakin asked.

“Don’t be impatient.”

Anakin didn’t think of it as being impatient, only getting to the point.

“You were the one who mentioned moving quickly!”

“I didn’t mean—nevermind, Anakin,” Obi-Wan waved a hand dismissively, “But yes, I do think that we should ask them to come along if they wish. They’re in trouble, and we wouldn’t be good Jedi if we didn’t at least offer to help. They showed us hospitality when they had every right to be suspicious of us.”

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to argue with you on that, Master. Because you know I would’ve argued with you.”

“I’m well aware of that, Anakin.”

…

In the end, Obi-Wan’s offer went something like: 

“We’ll have to be going soon, but the offer is there, if you choose to take it. If you wish, you are welcome to come with us.” the Jedi Master said. He kept his tone neutral. He didn’t want to seem as if he was trying to convince them of one thing or another. This was a decision that they had to make alone, amongst themselves.

For now, he was only throwing the idea out there, knowing there would be no instantaneous answer to such a question. It wasn’t a small thing to consider, after all. They would need some time to think it over, and Obi-Wan wished he could offer them more time to do so, but seeing as they needed to go quickly so as not to raise too much suspicion, six hours would have to be enough.

Chapter Text

Problem solving is hunting. It's a savage pleasure and we're born to it.

—From Villains of the Old World: a Collection 

(From The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Also featured in Hannibal.)

XX. The na-Baron

Many lightyears away on Geidi Prime, where the cloud of smog in the air was thick and heavy like a poisonous blanket and industry never ceased, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen had begun to grow tired of hearing his uncle gloat. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy hearing about the defeat of House Atreides—he relished in that as much as any reasonable Harkonnen would, but there was something his uncle had mentioned while raving that he wanted to hear more about. He’d heard many times now how glorious it had been to see the Duke, always so proud and stoic, brought down, even trying to take his uncle with him in one final, pathetic moment. However, he had been intrigued to hear of these two strangers that the Emperor’s Sardakar had reported encountering. Really, the two men left little behind their brief existence with the Atreides, but unlike Paul and the Duke and the Bene Gesserit Witch, they seemed to have managed to escape with their lives. He didn’t much care for that.

When his uncle had first started speaking of them, he had thought them stories. Hell, maybe Yueh had been lying or the Sardaukar had some shared delusion in battle. It was true that some of the Sardaukar had supposedly lost limbs to these men, but who’s to say they didn’t lose them in some other way and cauterize them after the fact? Men went mad in battle, even the Sardaukar did at times.

Then, Feyd-Rautha let his skepticism give way to imagined possibility. Feyd initially had a difficult time even picturing the strange weapons the Sardaukar—the ones who had survived their supposed encounters with these men, because not all had survived—had spoken of.

At first, when told of the weapons of the strangers, Feyd had pictured in his mind those flaming swords described in so many of Humanity’s legends, but that wasn’t quite right, apparently. They weren’t flaming swords nor glowing swords even, they were swords that were made of fire, the kind of fire that was shot in one consistent line out of a weapon like a lasgun. Now, Feyd thought, why had no weapons manufacturers in the Imperium thought of such a thing? Since such a thing was possible, and was in existence, out there, being used by…someone, or more accurately, at least two someones.

Feyd-Rautha could imagine the savagery such a weapon could be used to inflict, and the apparently cauterizing effects when one didn’t want to leave behind great amounts of blood could be beneficial in the right circumstances. It could be torturous, too. He could think of how.

Feyd imagined severing someone’s limbs this way and, to him, it was a delightful thought—a person would continue to live and suffer far longer if they weren’t bleeding out—though still, he frowned slightly, he could imagine missing the presence of warm blood flowing out of someone along with that hint of iron that would perfume the air. Alas, nothing can be perfect.

Slipping out of familiar thoughts of exsanguination and the smell of burnt flesh, Feyd again thought of the strangers. Two men, as had been described, one tall and blonde and young, the other middle-aged copper haired and bearded, both in some kind of monastic style dress. These strangers, whoever they really were and wherever they had come from, they really had done much to leave little behind but the brief memory of them, and memory, after a time, usually became nothing but stories. 

However, they had slipped up and left a small piece of technology of theirs behind which was, if nothing else, proof of their ephemeral existence on Arrakis with the now disgraced family. It was a small round handle-like object with what appeared to be a microphone at one end. It did not work—appeared to have been dropped at some point and then broken—but it didn’t matter if it worked or not. What did matter was that it was tangible proof of the strangers’ existence, proof more substantiated than stories, and an excuse to look further into this issue without being thought a fool. He didn’t know why he clung onto this artifact in particular, why it truly grounded him in interest, but this was the thing that did it. It was true he was fascinated by the idea of the weapon the Sardaukar described, for instance, but the wonderful idea still came to him only in stories, and what was the use of a weapon made only of stories?

It had been the anonymity of the two men that had at first captured the attention of the informant, and then his uncle—their total lack of anything that could, even to the well educated, pinpoint their origin even to a vague degree. He could admit the usefulness of that, of course, but what interested Feyd-Rautha was the power they had displayed in fighting off and killing what must have been at least a few dozen Sarduakar. How was it that so many highly trained Atreides soldiers had been slaughtered, (and the few warriors who survived barely doing so, fleeing desperately at being overpowered) and two phantoms were supposedly able to take down so many? This was an anomaly, unnerving as it was impressive (and Feyd didn’t often find it in himself to feel unnerved) and one that would eat at his brain until he would be able to get at the source of it. Nothing like this ever stayed unexplained forever. Not in his experience.

Chapter Text

To say goodbye is to die a little

—Earth Proverb

(Raymond Chandler)

XXI. Escape?

Jessica looked at Paul expectantly. She knew she could no longer persuade him as she used to, his mind was so different now, less pliable to her—but what these two men were offering was like something out of a dream. Escape from this side of the universe entirely, far from the Harkonnens and even the Imperium itself. No one would ever know what happened to them, think they perished in the desert—devoured by worms in the strange meaning that takes on on the planet Arrakis; not individually, bit by bit, but devoured whole by a god like a whale on Caladan devoured krill. A blood sacrifice to Shai-Hulud and an example to the Imperium of what would happen if the Emperor felt threatened. To the Known Universe, the Atreides would be dead. To any possible Atreides survivors of the attack that there might be, they would be dead. Wiped from existence in a brief moment thanks to a blood feud nursed and rocked by hatred for centuries and an Emperor that sat uncomfortable, squirming on his Golden Lion Throne like he was Damocles waiting for the sword to fall down upon him.

Knowing that this would be how the universe would come to view them if they decided to stay dead and move on to this other place, it made her feel insignificant, and that brought a unique amount of discomfort. This discomfort persisted as a cold, hollow feeling despite her being used to and, in fact, brought up by the Sisterhood into the idea of viewing things in the bigger picture. She supposed it was only human not to want to be forgotten, and to not have one's bones abandoned to the desert. 

But her bones weren’t abandoned to the desert. Nor were Paul’s, and her baby was fine, healthy within her womb and steadily growing. They were not dead, so how much did it matter what others, even the sisterhood, thought? They had already scorned her for her choice with Leto, for her love of Leto.

Leto. She thought of Leto and felt hatred bubble up in her chest like it rarely did to such a level. It even made her lose some of the tight control she'd been trained to have over the way her body reacted to emotion, and she felt her face grow warm and likely red from the anger she held inside. Thinking of her noble Leto, and how he would never see his son become a man, never see the birth of his daughter. Thinking of Leto, the one she had chosen to have a son for—the one she had been warned not to fall in love with but had anyway—it made her understand revenge. It made her know exactly why some longed to thrust a blade into their enemy, and for the first time she understood how violence could come to be not a necessity, but a delightful pleasure. This was what bloodlust felt like. She saw how dangerous such a line of thinking, of daydreaming could be, and why it was so often warned against. It made her like her enemy. It was the type of thing the Harkonnens lived and breathed and fed on, and gods forbid she become like that. No doubt, Paul would be feeling similar, longing for revenge. No doubt, it would be his argument to stay, as feelings lingered in him that were far more dangerous than they were in her.

She could continue to think of herself in circles. But in the end she had to remind herself that it wasn’t up to her whether they would go or stay. It was up to him, up to Paul. She couldn’t entertain the thought of separation from him. It would be whatever he chose. Where he went she too would go, and for her, that was final.

Chapter Text

All's Well That Ends Well.

-Title of a play authored by William Shakespeare.

Epilogue

“Ani!”

She’d known they were on their way back, known he was alright, and yet, it wasn’t until she wrapped her arms around him that she could feel okay, feel grounded again. Feeling his warm body here, against her, with his arms around her in mutual affection—it was these moments, she told herself, that she lived for. It made all the worrying and the lying and sneaking around worth it in the end.

“I’m alright, Padme. See? I’m alright.”

“I thought you were gone for good this time, Anakin. I thought—”

“But I’m right here now.”

“You are,” even then, her nerves had been frayed for so long she found it difficult to calm herself,  and she found her hands were still trembling slightly, “and I’m guessing you have quite the story to tell.”

“I do. You’ll hardly believe some of it. It’s way out there. I mean—” He shook his head, sighed, “I can’t get into it now. I’ll tell you the whole thing when I get back to your place this evening.”

“I wish you could tell me now.”

“Me too, but I promise, just as soon as I can, I’ll be talking so much you’ll grow sick of hearing me.”

“I don’t think I could ever grow sick of hearing you. I look forward to hearing the story.”

“I look forward to telling it.”